Sitting on a stool in this barn located about 25 miles past NoWhereVille, milking this cow.

And while I’m milking Ol’ Bossie, I think of all the shows I’m missing. Like The Imagine Tour featuring Amy Grant and MercyMe, or Alan Jackson in St. Paul on February 21. Yeah, I think about concerts all the time while I’m squeezing the milk out of Ol’ Bossie here.

It’s not much of a life, but we all have our callings, and Ol’ Bossie needs to be milked every day. Every morning I get up, go out to the barn, slap my rump down on the stool, grab me a handful of Bossie’s teats and start squeezing. And while I milk her, I think of the tours. Peter Gabriel. Squirt! Cher and David Bowie. Squirt! Squirt! Brian Wilson, John Mayer and Reba McEntire Squirt! Squirt! Squirt!

Of course, there’s more to my life than milking Bossie. I also have to feed her each day, which means gathering up the hay and making sure she has plenty of water. I usually think of support acts while doing that, like Noe Venable opening for Ani Difranco. And just the other day Bossie had a little constipation problem, which made me run the Deep Purple dates through my mind while reaching for the fire hose and the extra-long rubber gloves so that I could… well… You get the picture.

That’s my story. Each and every day I’m out here in this barn milking Bossie. Just me, the cow, the stool and the bucket. Every day I’m out here squeezing moo juice out of Bossie, her tail flappin’ in my face and flies buzzing around my head as I mentally picture the routings for acts like Norah Jones, Rod Stewart and Kansas while I’m stuck out here between NoMansLand and Dullsville. But everyone has to be somewhere, and this is my lot in life.

But I’ll tell you. If it wasn’t for my cow hobby, I’d go nuts.