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I know the Cubs are in first place. I know that Obama chose Biden as his VP running mate. I also know that Agricola is the hottest new Euro board game in some time. Other than that, the only thing I’ve managed to learn this summer is how to run fence. Lots of fence. Lots of corner posts. Lots of sweat. These things I have internalized every spare moment of this summer. When you think about moving to the country, you think about the hard work, but you have these Miller Time/Chevy Truck commercial ideas about a job well done and men in dirty Carhartts shaking hands after doing some manly thing like catching wild horses at a dead gallop by leaping off the back of a speeding Chevy. Or something. You never think about the grind. About getting up day after day (on your vacation no less!), feeding the kids a bowl of Cheerios, and then heading to the back of the property to plant fence posts in the hot sun for 9 hours. Even now, I hear a couple of you thinking that sounds like manly beer commercial work. Trust me. After the first hour, the beer commercial part of it fades away completely.

After a few days, you stop being sore from throwing fence posts around like matchsticks though. After a few weeks, you wonder why you aren’t breaking much of a sweat anymore. You’ll also start to realize that your summer is slipping away and that there are weeds in the garden and the front yard. And that old fencing is piling up in the driveway making the place look like the Clampett’s. And that all the other things you need to do, from reading a book, cutting firewood, relaxing, to EVERYTHING, have vanished into the last fence post hole.

Now, I’m pretty proud of my new fence. For one thing, it actually seems to hold cattle on the correct side. But I lost an entire summer to the project. I’d wanted to redo a back room in the house. That’ll have to wait. So will redoing the kids’ rooms before winter. And playing Agricola.

But then…I still got to go to the beach with my kids. I’ve still got time to cut firewood. Life is about choices and you have to deal with the consequences of those choices whatever they are. I chose to move here and raise cattle. Thus, I also have to build fences. Was it a pain? Yes. I’d hoped to deal with it in a few years. Yes, life isn’t like in a beer commercial, but so what? Life ain’t like on TV. Deal with it.

Maybe we should try this a bit in all areas of life. You bought a Ford Excursion and gas prices skyrocketed? Deal with it. Not making as much as you’d like in the new economy? Neither is anyone else who didn’t line their pockets on Wall St. Cut back. Drop that extra movie channel. Tired of shuttling your kids to various events? Do more events at home (You could play Agricola!) instead of watching TV.

I’m just saying that sometimes it seems like everything is harder than you planned or your reality is less than your dreams, but you know what? That’s how it is. Always. Everywhere. Enjoy it. Now that I’ve offended everyone with an SUV, a good job, and kids, I’m going to go back to working on my new workout video, “Fence Your Way to Fitness.” Billy Blanks watch out.

An IT Guy, a Greek Classics Professor and a Graphic Designer walk into a bar…. or should I say barn? In any case, given the setup, you’d never think we could have built a fence. We did. It looks great and the cattle seem to be staying on the correct side of it for a change. After Chris (Greek Classics) and Ivan (Graphics) left, I cleared some brush and small trees in our woods and ran another zillion feet (read: much less than a zillion, but it was hot) of new fence myself to enclose the new parcel and open it for grazing.

What I Learned: With a tractor and an auger, making the hole is the easy part. Corners are a pain. Stringing up the fence is a pain. Filling in the hole is a minor pain. I’m thinking of capturing the next stretch of fence on video so I can start my own upper body workout DVD and retire in style with Billy Blanks. Oh, and drink lots of water. Wear lots of bugspray. Don’t wear shorts, and always watch out for poison ivy.

Until Denise Austin’s people call, we have more mundane matters to attend to. Like a new unregistered bull calf, for instance. Unregistered bull calf is code for “will one day become hamburger” and also code for “will get steered by next Spring.” Knowing his fate, I put off naming the little guy for 2 weeks. Cath unilaterally decided that his name would be Von Stueben. It’s not an El stop, but at least it’s Chicago related. I can’t wait til we get back to the top of the alphabet. V is bad enough, but Y or Z might kill me. At least next year I’ll have “Western”.