If you know me, you are probably not going to believe that deep down, I dream about having a farm or a ranch in the country. I love designer clothes (I do!), Prosecco and Jimmy Choos, but I also love rolling fields, hay, horses and the pitch black sky at night when the only light comes from stars because street lights are hundreds of miles away. I think the perfect life would be to have a condo in Dallas and a ranch about two hours away, any direction. Green acres is the place where you can skip the blow dry at Hair Bar and leave your makeup back in Dallas. We’ve got some land down in the Hill Country on a condo-type ranch where they do all the work, kind of like an HOA. But there is that part of me that would like to get my fingernails dirty and dig in to a fixer-upper: sure wouldn’t need Total Body if I was hauling up cedarboard to build a fence. Talk about muscles! My Aunt Stella had the most muscular arms ever. She told me it was from milking cows. She had grown up on a dairy farm in northern Illinois.
There is a saying in the country: “Nothing is more attractive than your neighbor’s property.” The grass is always greener on their side of the fence, and you just want your horses to be eating it. There is a constant, persistent desire for a “bigger place” that just never, ever goes away. Another guaranteed factor after purchasing a farm is What’s One More? Syndrome. Absent of the built-in governor of a monthly board check, you buy a farm and start adding to your collection of misfits, er, future Olympic contenders like you’re auditioning for Hoarders: Buried Alive. Any common sense you formerly possessed, backed up by a monthly bill from your barn owner, pretty much just evaporates the moment you sign next to that little sticker that says “Buyer.”
