It’s getting to be about time to put the lawnmower away for the winter and thank goodness for that. Thank goodness we still have a mower to put away. Most of all, thank goodness the temptation to use it will be locked up for a full five months.

I recently learned from my teenaged daughter, for example, that we are an “ingredient family.” She mentioned it casually one day, just as if she was talking about growing up during the Great Depression or surviving the Dust Bowl years. “Yeah, we never had good stuff to eat like my friends did. I grew up eating chocolate chips for dessert because, you know, we are an ingredient family.”

There’s a flavor of humor in Idaho that is hard to define. It’s not salty. Well, no, I guess it can be salty. But it’s not dry. Then again, I guess it can also be dry, really dry. But it’s definitely not bitter – though at times it might sting a bit.

“Cows are out. Can you give me a hand getting them back in?” That one question told me that he was officially scraping the bottom of the barrel – a man clear out of better options. I am the last person anyone wants to have to call when cattle are involved.

The awful truth is, we don’t really want to go anywhere. We are so old and so set in our ways, so boring, so calcified, so embedded in this farm, that what we really want is for everyone else to go away, so we can get our work done.

I come from a long line of women who cook according to the theory that everyone is just one step away from starving to death. My mother’s family, in particular, plans for the worst no matter the occasion.

“So Dave,” I asked, “Explain the math to me. We couldn’t tear down the barn because you were afraid it would cost too much, so once we ate that cost, we bought a pivot?”

Apparently, I’m just not cut out for self-improvement. What I need to do is start making resolutions for other people. Whoever said, “You can’t change other people; you can only change yourself” was obviously a pessimist.

David was also trying to text and walk, which was probably his real problem, so he didn’t see the black and white “cat” before he was literally on top of it.