. . .  I would live in a caboose. 

Really.   Well, obviously not while I’m raising my three boys.

But after . . .  when they're grown and gone.

"Like now?" you may be thinking, but are  too polite to ask.  "Your sons ARE  grown and gone.  This IS  'after.'   So, get thee a caboose already."

To which I will just as politely reply:  “Yes, my sons are grown and gone.   Yes, I am an empty-nester.  (And, by the way, thanks so much for reminding me.)

You could even argue that the distance from my backyard to a railroad track can be measured in yards rather than fractions of a mile.

 So why am I not living in that caboose?   

Ask Bob.  

Bob is my husband of  38 years, and, for some reason, he thinks my fantasies of living in a caboose are just slightly this side of absurd.   Can you believe that?!!  

(He also vetoed my "let's see the country through the windows of a motor home" idea.   Enough said.) 

 But Bob is under the mistaken impression that he will still be around on the other side of my do-over!

 He’s forgetting what a do-over is all about.   

 (Just kidding, Honey!)   Marriage is all about compromise.

But, I digress.  

 In my do-over, I’d be all about horses.

Maybe I'll get myself a  hobby farm . . . with a small barn big enough for  a horse or two.  An appaloosa or one of those nice chestnut colored models.

I’ll take them to Cuivre River on weekends and ride the trails like I see others doing who are of that ilk . . . the horsey ilk, that is.

And, in my do-over, I'll definitely start my writing sooner.  Like 20-30 years sooner. (I think I could use the extra years of practice.)

But then, what will I have to write about?  I'll have so little experience to draw upon.  Like the suffering artist, a writer needs a few good years of adversity under her belt ... a little hardship, in order to nurture that sensitive side, and give her some perspective.  Right?

That and years of people watching . . . 

And reading good literature . . .

And bad (for comparison's sake). 

Still, I think I'll write my first novel much earlier in my do-over . . . long before Al Gore ever dreamt of inventing the internet . . . or Abraham Lincoln  became a vampire hunter.

Definitely while I'm still physically able to sign my own name.

And, I’ll have a platform, something worthy of a comment or two on my blog page.  (Hint.  Hint.)  I’ll write about more hard-hitting subjects than, say, my dog (although who doesn’t want to read about her?), or my youngest son’s wedding (which, incidentally, was about the last time I saw him.  But that’s a blog for another time.  I'll show him!  Or would  were he ever to read anything I wrote).

 In my re-do, I might even be an artist.  I can draw my horses -- with their heads peeking out of their little stall doors.  So cute.

And about that.  Do you think maybe a large storage shed would work as a barn?  You know, like the ones they sell at Home Depot in the spring, about the  time  they begin landscaping the parking lot with spring annuals and bags of mulch?

I could paint a picture of my little red caboose and hang it on the wall -- right over the cot where I sleep—because a caboose has no room for a bed.

Now that I think of it, maybe I should pick up an extra one of those storage sheds to use as a closet. 

Or for Bob to sleep in.

. . . IF I decide to keep him in my do-over.

By the way, did I mention I just "celebrated" the XX^th anniversary of my birth?   Talk about confronting mortality head-on!

But you could never tell that from my blog.  I mean, right?