Dairy Life

Here's a run-down of our day:

Scott gets up anywhere from 5 am to 6:30 am and goes to work
I get up around 7 am and go to work
I get home around 5:30-6 most nights
On call nights I can get called out at any time
I fix dinner and usually have it ready when Scott gets home
Scott gets home anywhere from 6:30 pm to 8 pm
We go to bed 10 to 11 ish
We get up and do it again
Every day....

Sometimes, somewhere in there we can carve out a few minutes to eat lunch together, take a nap together, go to church together, run to Wal-Mart or, on a good day, run to Decatur or Wichita Falls. Usually, however, these moments are cut short or delayed by having to put out hay or grain or go see a sick animal.

I was told numerous times that marriage is hard. I think that the nature of our jobs adds another layer of difficulty in that we can very rarely plan anything. And our jobs are hard. Scott does physical labor all day every day. My days vary from physically, emotionally, and intellectually exhausting.

There's never a day when I can look forward to both of us being off. There is never an end to the responsibility (unless we go out of town). We'll never have a lazy weekend at home, no family holiday morning where we wake up and just be together, not even a relaxing Sunday. Scott has been around this his whole life- I'm very very new at it. I suppose any kind of farm life is like this, but dairy cows demand a lot of time and attention, twice a day.

I think it takes a special kind of woman to be a dairyman's wife. I'm still proving to myself that I'm that woman. Scott thinks I'm doing fine- but I'm always my worst critic. It's this game of trying to be patient and waiting all day to see him and get to spend time with him and then trying to combat the disappointment when he gets in late or has to run an errand or is too tired to do much more than watch TV.

This is what marriage is all about: learning each other, finding patience when you think you don't have any left, and remembering why and how much you love each other.