If You Feel Something Wet, Don’t Look Up

I work from home, and as it happens, I live in the middle of nowhere on my family farm, affectionately known as "Lollygag Farm." As a consultant, my daily "office" attire is practically a uniform of the following – a gown or flannel pj’s, colorful socks, greasy hair, makeup-less, and usually no bra. My office dress policy is my biggest perk . . . it makes up for the fact that I have to provide my own insurance and pay quarterly taxes.

There’s almost no traffic on my road, so I do a lot of stuff outside in my pj’s: weeding the garden, checking the mail, BBQing hamburgers. You name it. Just this evening, my husband and I were standing outside deciding where we’d like to put our water tap. I was dressed in a nightgown, a winter coat, and UGGS.

Yes, civilization is coming to Lollygag Farm in the form of city water, and we suddenly have workers littered across our rural neighborhood. I should probably be more careful about my outside attire. I have already gotten into trouble. My doorbell rang one afternoon recently. My office is upstairs, so I had to scramble to put on clothes and get downstairs. I couldn’t find a bra, so I just threw on a sweatshirt. It was the mailman, who happened to be an old classmate of mine that I hadn’t seen in 20 years. There I was, bra-less, makeup-less, in a pair of yoga pants with 4 holes in them. I pretended I didn’t know him, and I thanked him kindly for the package.

Living in the country does give one an opportunity to commune with nature in a way that one just doesn’t have in the city. My husband, for example, likes to pee outside. He will walk down a flight of stairs past 3 bathrooms to pee outside. He’s not alone . . . I’ve noticed many men like to be "exposed" to nature this way.

A few years ago, we built a federal-style house, complete with an upstairs balcony. Knowing his propensity to pee outside, I made my husband promise that he wouldn’t pee off the balcony. But, I fear that he will someday succumb to peer pressure when his friend, Micah, is over. I’m afraid they’ll have a liquid shooting contest from the balcony, trying to hit my Jehovah’s Witnesses that visit every few weeks. I suppose I really shouldn’t worry – if they can’t hit the toilet, I seriously doubt they could hit servants of God from 14-feet away.