Farm Shows

My husband and one of our hired men headed to a farm show for the day.

In the twelve years we’ve been married, I think he’s only taken off a day to go one other time. I started pushing last week for him to “just take a day and go,” because he works all of the time. Even though he’ll be going to talk, well, about farming, it will still be a day of rest and enjoyment for him.

I was folding clothes while he waited for Craig to arrive this morning. I had five tall stacks of folded clothes around me when he walked through the room.

Joe: “Would you like me to start carrying these upstairs?”

Me, confused/surprised: “Uh, only if you want to.”

He did.

When finished, I also heard him taking out the trash and picking up things in the kitchen. That’s when it occurred to me.

He’s feeling guilty for taking a day off to go “have fun” while I stay here to work today.

Bless his heart.

He probably thinks I feel a little badly because I’m not going!

Yeah, right.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there are plenty of exhibitors there that I would enjoy visiting, but here is how I see things going down if I attend the show with him:

I’ll follow Joe and Craig for the first 45 minutes. In that time, we will have seen the first two exhibits — that is, if we haven’t already run into someone from our hometown. (In that case, we’d still be just inside the entrance talking to someone we saw yesterday while out at lunch, or will see tomorrow at the service station.)

After 45 minutes of standing in one area, my blood pressure rising and feeling like I’m going to burst out of my skin if I have to listen to someone talk about the details of how something works (because there will be questions which reiterate the points over and over again), I’ll decide it’s time to take my fate for the day into my own hands and go see the farm show by myself.

I’m not a lingerer. It has to be something pretty special for me to linger beyond a couple of minutes.

I’ll see the whole enormous spread in an hour — maybe an hour and a half.

Joe will be on the fourth exhibit by then.

And I’ll have to sit in the pickup for the next six hours.

Not happening.

No, I’m not heading to the farm show. I will be working on some “catch up” work. Around the house, in the office and for a library board I sit on. Then the kids will come home and we’ll start getting ready for school pictures tomorrow.

That’ll take much of the night. I have a 10-year-old daughter.