~ The Real Deal ~

I’ve had a few readers ask if the pictures on the headers of Mamaboe.com are mine or simply pilfered from the internet.  I’m very happy and proud to report that they are mine entirely.  They ARE the real deal! (The photos INSIDE the posts are mostly shamelessly pilfered, thank you very much.)

You should be able to discern that from the crappy quality of the photos.

Most of the pics are from various trips to Montana.  When My Captain retires, and the kids are away at college, we are moving there.  Like, the next day.  Maybe even the minute after his last shift is over.

Why?

Aesthetics.  My soul is FILLED with contentment when I’m surrounded by land that is not tamed by human hands.  That sounds so artsy-fartsy dramatic.  But you all know me…I am a lot of things, but artsy-fartsy dramatic I am most emphatically not.  I just hate pavement and concrete with a passion.

Concrete aside, I’m happiest when I’m there.  I feel like I am where I belong.   My whole life I have felt like I was just waiting to get where I am supposed to be.  And then ten years ago I went to Glacier Park Montana for the first time, and I KNEW it.  I knew that was home.

But by then I had started a family, and my husband had a career that was firmly entrenched here.  I couldn’t just pick up and move.  But OH LORD if only I could have moved with them in tow.  But it was not to be.

So I honor my love and commitment and responsibility to my family here and I stay.  I stay until Troy retires, my kids are off to college, and my mom is too senile to realize I’ve moved her across the country.

Obviously I’m a planner.

It’s hard to wait sometimes, but some things make it easier.  My friends here, (all two of them) keep me happy.  My garden and my kid’s community fulfill me.  And I believe my kids are in an extremely good place to grow up.  The Ag Reserve here in Montgomery County is about as wholesome as you can get, considering we are not far from a major metropolitan area.   Here in the Ag Reserve, my biggest concern for my kids is that they might decide to go cow-tipping when I’m not looking.  With Critter, anything is possible if it would evoke laughter from his friends.  I have to keep his options limited!

I don’t kid myself…I’m sure drugs and crime are everywhere…including here.  But it isn’t prevalent.  Or if it is, I’m blissfully ignorant of it.

Montana.  Why the heck couldn’t I have been born there?  I would have made the awesome-est Rancher’s wife.  (Except for I can’t stand killing, and I don’t like mud in my house, and I don’t look all that good in a cowboy hat…. Other than that I would have been a shoe-in…er, boot-in).

My Captain, thank the Lord, shares my love of God’s Country.    I’ll give you a few more peeks at why:

See what I mean?

Yes, Yes, I know….”Bloom where you are planted.”  Right.  Gotcha.  And I am doing that as much as possible while I’m here.  I do subscribe whole-heartedly to “Be Here Now”.  I will not live with nothing but ‘Montana hopes’ on my mind.  I am firmly planted here in Maryland for now.

But I do have a dream.  I have a vision of where my retirement will be spent.

And my more short-term dream is to take my Varmint and Critter on vacation to Montana and show them the beauties there. The wild, primal-ness of it there.  That will take a buck or two.  And right now I’m short that buck or two.  (Blame the damn Dollar Store).

My friend Peggy moved to Whitefish, Montana a couple of years ago.  She has not looked back ever since.  I will promise you another fuller post on Peggy…she’s amazing and worthy of a post or three!  But she moved, uprooted, went through all the hardship of detaching and re-attaching relationships.  And she is ….well….amazing.

That’s going to be me someday.  I’m going to be Peggy.  Only I’m fatter, and lazier, and whinier.  But otherwise I’ll be just like her.

I can dream, can’t I?