Boots on

Disclaimer: I've been listening to too much Country Western lately.

I'm driving a bit more often in the city this year as I teach night classes at another university one night a week and I have a FREE parking pass on the campus parking lot. Traffic isn't too bad at the hours that I need to go in and back out, and hauling piles of books and materials is easier by car than bike. It's made me think a little bit about whether I bike because it is more efficient, more ecological, or just because I am too cheap to buy the monthly parking permit, but that is another posting entirely.

All of that aside, I have been enjoying listening to the radio while I drive. Diverting from beloved WAMU and NPR, I listen to Country... I crank it up and begin to feel all kinds of out of sorts with my city environs. What is a woman like me doing in a city when what I yearn for is the bright blue skies, crisp air, wind, and openness of the prairie? In all of my acquired worldly urbanness, I wonder if I still have the right to even identify myself with the plating of my car (Yep, still Wyo).

By the time I get to my educated, white-collar environs to work with very earnest and very sophisticated graduate students, I really feel like heading back to Small Town USA, putting on work clothes, finding my dog, and heading out to fix something (what I might fix is more an idea than a plausible reality). I guess that there are a lot of great things about a lot of great places, but at the end of the day, I really do hope that in all honesty and with recognition that I may be labeled as a city-slicker or a poser I can go out with my boots on...

Diagnosis: Bit of homesickness and a little too much Country
Treatment: Put those boots back on and hope that you can take the girl out of the Honky Tonk but You Can't Take the Honky Tonk out of the Girl