What are we Doing Wrong?

The interest in the western channel started sometime around Thanksgiving with a Cheyenne marathon--but that's beside the point.

Have you noticed that in western movies, except for the bad guys everyone else is pearly white clean? They travel by covered wagon across the wilderness, they don't bathe or change clothes for days and yet they are still so clean! Riding across their Ponderosa to check the fence line, rushing off on horseback to find someone lost from the trail, hoisting the lost soul up on the rescue mare for a safe return home, no matter what, they mount their horse or carriage and they arrive...yes, you guessed it, clean. Crisp even.

We walk out to simply say hello to the horses, no feeding or riding or rescuing involved, and we come back dirty. If it's not being instantly covered in horse hair because it's the time of year for shedding, or mud on our jeans or jacket because we were greeted with a dirty muzzle, surely it's just some run of the mill dust from the ranch. But it's something, I assure you.

Are we still ranch green? Or are we just bad guys?

East Meets West

A couple of weeks ago I came back from a quick trip to Boston with two live lobsters in hand. I told Larry that the next day we needed to go out and pick up lobster crackers. We talked about which stores might possibly carry them--here in Central Oregon. So, the next day we set out to do a few errands and our conversation went like this:

Me: "Hmmm, I'm not sure where the best place is to find lobster crackers."
Larry: "What about Food for Less?"
Me: "No. They wouldn't carry something like that."
Larry: "Would Safeway or Trader Joe's?"
Me: "Doubt it. I'm not sure Target would even carry them. Maybe back east, but not out here. I think we need to find a gourmet kitchen store or something like this."
Larry: "Really? Are they that hard to find?"
Me: "Out here I imagine it might take a few stops."
Larry: "Oh. What's the difference between lobster crackers and oyster crackers?"
Me: "You don't crack oysters. You shuck them."
Larry: "Are you talking about the little salted crackers you put in clam chowder?"

After quite a bit of laughter and cultural appreciation, we opted for the easy option...a new pair of pliers and a new dental pick!