What A Ranch Woman Wants to Hear

This column was originally published December 11, 2013

After the first year as husband and wife and every day thereafter, a ranch wife loves to hear certain words from her husband. Words that renew her romantic notions about the man she married.

Whether husbands realize it or not, there are certain things a wife never tires of hearing repeatedly. For me, it’s when my husband says, “I’ll get the gate.” Anytime I’m dreading getting out of the pickup because I’m unmotivated, it’s freezing out, or Art and I approach a notoriously tight gate, such words can highlight my whole day.

I get up between 4 and 5 a.m.  so I’m usually the first person to make the coffee. Normally I wake up my spouse and bring him a cup, but occasionally I’ll hear the bedroom floor creak from my husband’s footsteps followed by his voice speaking words as sweet as honey: “You ready for some coffee?” I immediately open my eyes to him holding out a welcomed cup of coffee, and I’m in love all over again.

Hearing my husband say “I got (horse I’m going to be riding) saddled up for ya,” is serendipitous.  As the mom, I’m always the last one out the door with all the snacks and drinks that no one else bothered to grab but everybody craves during a long cow-moving ride. Although I can saddle my own horse, it’s a treat when my husband has my ride ready for me so nobody is waiting on me to get my horse saddled.

Suppertime can be a drag because of all the shirking regarding the clean up. The most overused excuses are homework, needing to take a shower, or needing to use the bathroom. One of my husband’s most romantic gestures is sticking around and saying, “I’ll sweep the floor.” To ranch a wife, floor-sweeping is the stuff aphrodisiacs are made of.

I also hate it when I can’t think of anything to make for supper and the whole family is hungry. My hero saves the day when he says, “How ‘bout a cheat night?” I’m fully aware that he only says that because he doesn’t want to wait 45 minutes to eat something, but he still saves the day. Cheat nights are when everybody has a bowl of cereal for supper.

There’s nothing more appealing about my husband when we go to feed the heifer calves than when he says, “If you feed the calves, I’ll push up the hay.” Since he created a much handier, safer, more efficient system for filling feed buckets, I prefer feeding the calves, but especially when the hay that has to be pushed up is covered with a heavy layer snow.

I don’t transition well from toasty warm to freezing cold very well, so when my husband tells me, “I got your car warmin’ up,” I go from cringing at the thought of a cold car to feeling warm and fuzzy toward my husband.

“Wanna trade foot rubs?” is one of the most romantic things my spouse says to me—but only when he’s not engrossed in watching a Netflix. Movies distract him, creating frequent stops and delays in my foot massage.

Probably the best thing my husband says to me is, “Here’s your cut.” When somebody buys scrap items out of our junkyard they usually pay in cash and I love these deals because to a ranch wife, nothing says love more than being handed cold hard cash when I didn’t even have to do any labor to get it.

© Amy Kirk 2013

 

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