Detour

Wow, I didn't know that the relatively near future meant over a month between posts. But I'm going to take a detour from the recap bit. I want to share a story about something that happened fairly recently. The other week, I got an email from a friend who deals with SSA. It was a "gay joke."

A successful rancher died and left everything to his devoted wife. She was a very good-looking woman and determined to keep the ranch, but knew very little about ranching, so she decided to place an ad in the newspaper for a ranch hand.

Two cowboys applied for the job. One was a drunk and the other gay. She thought long and hard about it, and when no one else applied she decided to hire the gay guy, figuring it would be safer to have him around the house than the drunk. He proved to be a hard worker who put in long hours every day and knew a lot about ranching.

For weeks, the two of them worked, and the ranch was doing very well. Then one day, the rancher's widow said to the hired hand, 'You have done a really good job, and the ranch looks great. You should go into town and kick up your heels.'
The hired hand readily agreed and went into town one Saturday night. One o'clock came, however, and he didn't return. Two o'clock and no hired hand. Finally he returned around two-thirty, and upon entering the room, he found the rancher's widow sitting by the fireplace with a glass of wine, waiting for him.

She quietly called him over to her. 'Unbutton my blouse and take it off,' she said. Trembling, he did as she directed. 'Now take off my boots.' He did as she asked, ever so slowly. 'Now take off my socks.' He removed each gently and placed them neatly by her boots. 'Now take off my skirt.' He slowly unbuttoned it, constantly watching her eyes in the fire light. 'Now take off my bra.' Again, with trembling hands, he did as he was told and dropped it to the floor.

Then she looked at him and said,

'If you ever wear my clothes into town again, you're fired.'


I thought it was pretty funny. I laughed a lot. My wife laughed a lot. My mother-in-law has a great sense of humor and I wanted to tell her. I work for my mother-in-law and there are two other women who work in the office. I started to tell them that joke.

When I got to the second paragraph and said the word "gay," one of the other ladies there (H) said, "I don't want to hear a gay joke. It makes my stomach sick."

It wasn't a huge deal. The rest of us went into my mother-in-law's office and they loved the joke. It was just frustrating that (H) has been so rude to me ever since she found out a few months ago. It has felt like she wants to make sure I'm fired because she's uncomfortable with my SSA. In talking with the boss about this, I've learned that (H) is just like that to everyone. It really doesn't have anything to do with me. In fact, from what I gather she seems to like me a lot more than the last delivery guy.

I don't know what to think about her. I know that she her sister recently divorced her husband because of his bipolar disorder and SSA. (H) was in favor of the divorce. I know the man. I didn't know about the SSA or bipolar, but he was one of my favorite college professors.

I just wish people weren't so ignorant and insensitive to problems like SSA.

Oh, and a side note while I'm writing about the present. I started a new personal blog that is going to deal a lot less with SSA and is going to be more like my journal. If anyone is interested you can take a look at The Cooking Horseman.