A Real Man

Where have I been? Oh, glad you asked. I've been ogling this sight. These are the type of people I love. LOVE! Why? Because their hands are rough. They have prematurely aged skin from sun exposure. They get up hours before the rest of the world starts hitting the snooze button. They wear chaps....chaps and cowboy boots and they drive trucks and wear chaps. At the end of the day they probably smell a bit like axle grease, manure and horse sweat, but it doesn't matter cause their wearing chaps.

Now, let's go back to the rough hand comment. I'm married to a man with big, dry, rough hands. I prefer to hold a warm, dry, rough hand. When I shake the hand of a man and it's soft, silky and (God-help-me) dewy or moist or clammy or sweaty or lotioned, my view of him changes. I instantly wonder if he ever works with his hands. Work that extends beyond a keyboard. Work that would require him to break a sweat, use his muscle or end up in the emergency room from oh, lets say, slamming his hand in the spring of the garage door he is repairing while the rest of the house is still asleep or jumping off the roof because his wife just screamed that their toddler fed an open safety pin to the baby. You know, common stuff like that.

My husband comes home from work everyday sporting a dress shirt and tie with his leather bag strapped over his shoulder and his ipod plugged into his ears. But, on weekends when he's working on a project and he pulls on his Carhart pants and leather tool belt (which is the closest thing to chaps around here...grrrrowr) I think, "Now there's a man!". I love watching him wield a chainsaw or chop firewood or, my favorite, when he single handedly schlepped what seemed like ten tons of shingles up a ladder to our roof.

I love that he will discard his white collar appearance and get down in the muck to fix anything. Now, he doesn't always do it right the first time and we have had to call for help more than once, but he's willing to try to accomplish just about any repair job or need around the woodsy existence that we call home.

With that said, this weekend he's got big plans to slip into his Carharts (grrrowr), sharpen the blade of his ax, round up the evil rooster and kill him. Not quite the same as cowboys working cattle, but close enough. Do you all want me to take pictures? Who's up for a chicken dinner?