Oh, Get Real!

    I hate magazines.  The majority of them at least.  There are a few, like National Geographic or Smithsonian that I can tolerate.  Most of them are just fiction mashed in between ads.  Someone gave me a subscription to a couple of them last year for Christmas.  Don't get me wrong.  I love the idea.  I relish the time I can spend curled up with one of them.  It's a chance to forget some of the unpleasant realities of my life.  Open them and you can travel into a fantasy world of what their editors think is reality, or want us to think is reality.

    One that came in the mail this month is titled so you would think it was aimed at those of us living in the country.  What a joke.  One beautiful home owned by rich professionals who moved to a rural area within spitting distance of megalopolis areas made me chuckle.  I live in the country.  I mean IN the country.  There is a lawyer living near us.  She lives over her office and drives a little station wagon. That same wagon has been in the driveway for years.  No glamor there.   The writer glamorizes the goat herd housed in the pristine looking barn in the photograph  Perhaps it was unintentional, but they made it sound so profitable and wonderful. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about goats!  They stink, they have to be milked every day, their stalls have to be mucked out and they can get downright mean.  There's no time for trips to the big city to buy all that fancy furniture that we country folks are supposedly decorating our homes with.   You can't have white rugs and couches if you raise goats!  Not unless your mud room includes a car wash strength shower.

    Okay, so I got over the goat thing.  Let that two income professional couple think they live the country life.  I'm sure compared to their Manhattan friends, they do.  I  turned a few pages to read something to the effect of "It only looks expensive".  There was a pretty model with a frilly blouse on for the holidays that "only" costs $89.  Eighty-nine dollars for a blouse?  Honey, in my book that IS expensive, especially when there's no way that shirt can be worn for much more than Christmas parties.  I was once told that the only difference between my Summer wardrobe and my Winter one was the length of my slacks.  The thing about it is, they were right, except that in the Winter I tend to wear a turtle neck under the Summer shirts.  IF I had $89 to blow on clothes it sure wouldn't be on a frilly blouse that can't be worn year round.  I might consider getting some new boots though.

   Somewhere in my holiday reading I saw a menorah made entirely out of salt and pepper shakers.  I don't know how many salt and pepper shakers most country folks have on hand, but unless they collect them, I'll bet not enough to light a candle every night of Hanukkah.   I'd make it through the 6th night if I dumped the salt and pepper out first..  Most country folk I know don't keep a lot of stuff they can't use on a regular basis.

   One more rant and I'm done.  A while back one of the magazines dedicated to keeping your house in good form decided it was necessary to advise me about my underwear drawer.  They had a beautiful picture of pretty colored panties all nicely rolled and lined up in a special divider.  Lovely to look at but who the heck looks in your undies drawer?  My white only collection is lucky to make it out of the laundry basket before I need to wear them again.  It only reinforced my belief that magazine editors have absolutely no idea what country life is like.  If you are going to be milking and mucking out the goat barn, you sure as heck aren't going to have the time, or the energy to line your underwear up in neat little dividers.

   When is someone going to write a magazine that is REALLY for the real country life?