Category Archives: Funny Stuff

Stuck Season

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This week on the podcast we talk stuck stories and I share a rough cut of a song from the new album. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.


I don’t know what comes over us when the snow melts and forms spontaneous rushing rivers in the barnyard, in the ditches, and through the trees, but I will tell you it’s not exclusive to the kids. I heard my neighbor’s grown man son took his kayak out the other day to see where the water would take him and I was immediately jealous that I hadn’t thought of it.

Yes, the first day the weather hit above 50 degrees my daughters were out chasing the runoff in their shorts and rubber boots and skinny white legs. And I was following right behind on the same mission, only in long pants because I have learned some lessons in my advanced age.

Like no matter your careful intentions on this mission, you will always wind up with the entire creek over the tops of your boots. Not a soul can help it after months and months in a deep freeze. We always go a bit too far.

And it seems the same goes with the mud. It could be. Or it could be hereditary, or it could be that I just really wanted to get closer to the first new calf of the season on our way home from celebrating Easter in town with my husband’s family. Turns out the sight of a cute calf makes you forget that just 24 hours ago that little mud puddle was a snow bank. Turns out off-roading in a SUV/Grocery Getter on the first warm day of the year with two kids and everything the Easter bunny could fit in the back is a dumb idea. I sunk into mud half up my tires immediately. It was only by pure willpower and utter embarrassment at the thought of having to call my brother-in-law to pull me out that I was able to maneuver out of that sticky situation. I counted that as a bullet dodged and moved on with my life.

The next few days were warmer yet, like 70 degrees! We hadn’t seen this since the Middle Ages! My little sister called to see if we wanted to go walk the creek bottoms and float sticks, even though our darling daughters were plumb happy with the little rivers forming puddles and running in the ditches in our yards. But the responsible adults in this relationship, that was not going to cut it. With one whiff of melting snow my sister and I were transported to our childhood, knowing the window of opportunity for this sort of dramatic landscape change around here is fleeting.

My husband was busy digging out things that had been lost in the snow banks for months and so I told him that we were going to load the girls in the pickup and head for the creek. He suggested we take the side-by-side instead so we wouldn’t get stuck. I ignored him.

And so off we went to find the creek as big as it’s ever been, rushing and flowing and cutting through ice and snow along its edges, melting and forming a new river right before our eyes. This was no stick-floating situation, we should have brought the kayak! We stood on its edges a while with our daughters, mesmerized. The we pulled them some good walking sticks and I held the big girls’ hands while we waded in a bit along it’s edges, until, inevitably, Edie got two boots full of ice cold creek and we hauled them back through the snow bank and up to the pickup to make our way back home.

It’s here my husband showed up with the four-wheeler. I dumped a gallon of water out of our daughter’s boots and we loaded our soggy selves into the pickup. From the driver’s seat I told my dearly beloved that we were heading home, put it four-wheel drive and crept toward my fate. In the rear view mirror I saw my husband on that ATV quietly watching to see how I was going to turn this big ‘ol pickup around on a skinny scoria trail surrounded by snow banks and mud and icy puddles.

And I could go into the step-by-step details here, but I think you’ve predicted it. Not only did I get stuck, I nearly landed the whole pickup in the creek. I did a number that not even my husband could undo. And the man, he didn’t even say, “I told you so” when I profusely apologized. He just poked his head in the window and replied, “We all gotta learn our lessons our own way.”

And then my sister called my brother-in-law to come with the towrope.

Oh, Happy Spring! If you need me I’ll be ignoring logic and the mud in my entryway. 

The dangerous life of a handyman’s wife

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On the podcast I pop in quick to give an update as we get ready to go on vacation!

I am the wife of a handyman.  Because of him we live by the mantra: “If you want something done and still want to be able to afford to buy Cheerios, we do it ourselves.” I came to terms with this concept early in our marriage when we were young and naïve and took on the complete strip-down of a shag carpet, hot-tub-in-the-living-room remodel that brought a 1974 Brady Bunch house up to the times of hardwood flooring and no hot tubs in the living room. Seven thousand hours of staining and varnishing and stripping and sheet rocking, a few dozen arguments and one head stuck in a ladder later I began to fully understand what it truly meant. Wife of a handyman=this is your life, forever and ever amen.

Here we are, ten years ago when the shell of our house arrived. So young. So naive.

Fast-forward twelve years and here we are, proving that I was right. We’re still working on our house. Because just when it starts looking like it’s going to be finished, I come up with an idea for an addition or a remodel. I guess that’s what happens when your tool-belt-wearing man can make anything happen, you start to feel empowered with your vision.

Anyway, lately he’s been empowering me by requesting I help him put rocks on the new fireplace in our new living room, to which I say: it could be worse. I could be trembling on an eight-foot ladder on top of ten-foot high homemade scaffolding with my arms above my head because we decided that 20-foot ceilings were a good idea without considering that one of us is deathly afraid of heights.

Plummeting to a bone-crushing, bloody, mangled death is what I pictured every time I walked across that homemade scaffolding, boards creaking in my attempt to bring a nail-gun to my dearly beloved who thought positioning his ladder on the tippy-toe edge of the ledge, standing at the very top rung and then leaning out into the abyss of death that is now our living room was an acceptable risk to take in the name of homebuilding. The urge to scream “screw the board, save yourselves!” and run to lay on solid ground is a hereditary condition spawned from my prairie dwelling ancestors who passed up the terrifying mountains to come live in houses with one floor, low ceilings and basements.

My dad has the condition too, and so that’s why this memory of recruiting him to help install a wooden beam on our tall ceiling is etched in my brain. I suggested calling the National Guard, but my husband just told me to go get my dad. And the task I approached him with was one straight out of his nightmares: Stand on this tall ladder on this shaky scaffolding and hold this 15 foot beam up to the top of the 20 foot ceiling while my husband climbs and dangles and runs and jumps and back flips with nail-gun in hand to get the thing to hold.

My job? Same thing, only with trembling, holding my breath and throwing up a bit of my morning eggs.

And so there we stood, my dad and I, conjuring up worst-case scenarios as Ninja Bob Villa went from one near death position to the next. Dad told me not to watch as my husband stretched his ladder across the stairway and stood with nothing but a thin board between him and a fifteen-foot fall.

So I didn’t watch. And neither did Dad.

I remember us working hard to hold it together. The two of us only hollering “be careful up there!” and “don’t fall!” like fifty-five times during the course of fifteen minutes. But just as we thought we were out of the woods, everybody’s head in tact, my husband climbed down from the ladder and put his hands on his hips.

“Looks good,” he said.

“YES! IT DOES. GOOD WORK,” shrieked Dad and I.

“I just need to nail one more spot,” my husband said scratching his head. “I wonder how the hell I’m going to get to it?”

We followed his eyes to where they rested on a piece of the beam that towered past the edge of the scaffolding, too high for a regular ladder, un-reachable unless you had wings.

Dad used our best material to try and convince my husband that a nail in that particular location was not necessary. We suggested putting more nails in other places to make up for it. But my husband wouldn’t have it and before we knew it he had his ladder on the ledge of the scaffolding, his feet on the top rung, his back bent at a 90-degree angle out over the staircase with a nail gun in his hand reaching for the ceiling.

And that’s where we both lost it.

I whimpered and squeezed back tears as I white knuckled the ladder. And while I was saying fifty prayers to Jesus, Dad threw down his tools and grabbed on to his son-in-law’s belt buckle as my husband leaned further back over the abyss.

“Son, if you fall it would be sure death,” my dad declared.

“And if either of you tell anyone that I grabbed your belt, I’ll kill you both…”

So there’s that story. Now if you need me, I’ll be hiding from both my husband and my dad.

Stay handy!
Jessie

This is five

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It’s a snow day at the ranch and all the roads in ND are closed. So while all the kids were in the house, I sat down to chat with my little sister, Alex, about parenting five year olds and trying to replicate the magic Christmases we had as kids. There are interruptions, per usual, I talk about Rosie and her packrat tendencies and Alex shares a story about how she and an egg went to town.

Listen to the podcast here, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play or Spotify.

Happy snow day moms and dads! Don’t forget to move that elf.

This is Five

Rosie, my youngest daughter, turned five at the beginning of the month. If you’re wondering what five is like, if it’s been a while since you had a five-year-old living under your roof, or have been five yourself, then I’m here today to paint a picture.

And that picture begins with all of the things that could be hiding under a five-year-old’s pillow. Because I, myself, just had a recent revelation a few nights back when our household was conducting one of our middle-of-the-night bed shuffling rituals, the one where Rosie wakes up and climbs the stairs with her blankie at 2 am and then climbs up on our bed and then climbs up on my head to finish her good night’s sleep. And despite contradicting viewpoints on a mother’s need for personal space, I do admit that I like mine, especially at 2 am. So I made my way down to her big empty bed only to discover that it wasn’t as empty as I assumed. I slid my arm under the pillow to snuggle in and was greeted with a half-eaten bag of goldfish crackers, a Santa squishy ball, five rolls of Smarties candies, a tiny notebook, an ice-pop wrapper, a bouncy ball, a tiny doll shoe and a partridge in a pear tree.

And so it was 2:04 am on a random Tuesday night in December when I discovered my youngest daughter is a pack rat. A sneaky one.

And that not all five-year-olds are created equally.

I mean, I could leave a bag full of chocolate in the middle of the kitchen table, within reach and sniffing distance of my oldest daughter, and she wouldn’t dare make a move without first being granted permission. And chocolate is her absolute favorite thing in the entire world. But so are rules. She’s the firstborn and her universe can only run on order.

And so I’ve been moving through parenting both daughters naively and blissfully thinking that sort of discipline and obedience must be a package deal.  But it turns out the second one is sneaky, thriving on flying under the radar, letting the older one take the spotlight until her comedy routine is honed and she can steal the show. As a middle child myself, I should have known.

Anyway, today I offered to help her make her bed and the darling assured me that she had it under control, which just turned out to be a ploy to get me off her trail while she tried to figure out what to do with the sticky stash of pillowcase Sweet Tarts she’d been hoarding. I didn’t even know we had Sweet Tarts and so this is what I’m saying.

I took the child with me grocery shopping yesterday and we had the cart overflowing with what I was hoping would be at least a week or two of meals and snacks. And while I busied myself bagging up the vegetables and cereal at the end of the conveyer belt, Rosie took my distraction as an opportunity to try a new strategy. 

Among the string cheese and tortilla shells, Rosie got one of those Kinder Joy Egg things that is conveniently placed at small-child-eye-level, the kind with the candy and a tiny plastic toy, past me and through the grocery clerk. By the time I found it, I’d already paid for it.

“Rosie!” I exclaimed. “Did you put this candy in with our groceries without asking?”

“Yeah,” she replied, not phased in the least. “I didn’t ask because I knew you’d say no.”

“I would have said no,” I told her.

And then she told me, “But now you paid for it, so I might as well eat it.”

I was so baffled by her antics that I plowed my cart full of groceries right into the Christmas tree by the door on our way out, which apparently has now become a part of her core memory, because she’s reminded me and anyone within ear shot of it at least a dozen times already.

So that’s five.

Oh, and also, tonight at supper she told me she has a crush. He’s a cowboy and he’s cool and he ropes and she’s a cowgirl so what’s the deal?

The deal is, send prayers.

Happy Birthday sweet Rosie. We love every little thing about you.   

7 billion hours until chokecherry jelly time

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7 billion hours until chokecherry jelly time
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Do you know how many chokecherries it takes to make six jars of jelly? Seven billion.

Do you know how many hours it takes to accomplish this task? About the same, give or take.

Depending on whether you decide to bring most of the small children on the ranch with you when you pick them. Which I did.

And a grandpa, too.

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And when you take small children with you to pick chokecherries on a warm (OK, hot) August afternoon up in the fields where the cows haven’t had a chance to graze yet, you lose those small children in the tall grass.

That’s an actual thing.

You think they’re following you to the low hanging branches, but then you turn around and they’re gone. Don’t worry — you can still hear them, which is helpful for the rescue.

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I have so many memories of chokecherry-picking throughout the years growing up out here in western North Dakota, monitoring the blossoms in the spring, hoping a late frost didn’t kill our chances at jelly.

We would stand in the bed of the pickup backed up to the tall bushes to reach the clusters of ripe berries on the top, or I would scour the scoria road ditches with my best friend, trying to meet our goal of a full feed bucket. I can feel the horseflies biting my arms, the grass itching my legs and the sun scorching my shoulders just thinking about it.

Last week was my first time making those sort of rustic memories with my daughters and niece in tow. And given the amount of time they spent lost and tripped up in the tall grass, I think I accomplished making them appropriately itchy.

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The oldest two bounced back up pretty well, though, and with a lot of praise and Papa Gene basically bending entire bushes down to meet them, they kept to the task.

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My 2-year-old? Well, it was over for her as soon as that grass touched her armpits, and so she spent the next 45 minutes in the side-by-side yelling various versions of “Are you done yet!?” into the sky and bushes during breaks between singing at the top of her lungs and trying to figure out how to get the thing started.

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We called it quits when both my girls were whining enough to scare the horseflies away, but I think my little niece and Papa Gene would have stayed out there until every branch was bare.

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Did I tell you about the time we thought we lost my dad entirely picking chokecherries a couple years back? Sent out a search party and found him basically in the next county, because apparently the berries keep getting better one bush over…

Anyway, so that’s the first step. The next? Put the 2-year-old down for a nap while I try to convince the 4-year-old that sorting the sticks, leaves and bugs out of the berry stash is a fun game. And she believed me, but only for like 15 minutes.

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Then she needed to go put on some lipstick or change her princess ball gown or something, leaving me alone with the task of sorting, washing, boiling, straining and juicing these berries — all while breaking up sister fights, finding snacks — and, oh shoot, it’s suppertime.

Do you know what you shouldn’t do? Work on a chokecherry jelly project while also trying to make pork loin and rice. To my credit, I thought I started this project with plenty of time in between. But it’s been years since I tried to be this domestic. Like, before I had children.

And it turns out time moves a bit differently when you have small children in the house and I didn’t recall that it takes 7 billion hours and about the same amount of kitchen utensils to make six small jars of jelly.

And so this is your reminder, in case you were thinking about taking on the chore, to make sure you clear your schedule. And all of the surfaces in your kitchen. And when you spread it on your toast or pancakes, you better not spill a drop…

Maybe next time I’ll try making wine.

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The adventures of tiny ranch girls…

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Kids and ponies
The adventures of tiny ranch girls
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My little sister has been living in a new house on the ranch over the hill with her family for a year now. In the fall, her family welcomed a new little girl, Emma, who is now 8 months old. Her oldest daughter, Ada, is 3.

 

This means at any given moment, you could drive into the Veeder ranch and likely see a swarm of wild blond hair, glitter, flowing dresses, skinned knees, pretty chaos running down the scoria road squealing, with my sister and me trailing behind, occasionally hollering things like “Be careful!” or “Don’t push!” or “OK, OK, let the frog go now…”

Yeah. Right now, there are four girls between us — aged 4, 3, 2 and 8 months — roaming the barnyard. Which means in addition to six cats, four dogs and 10 horses, we also now have two little ponies.

Two ponies, named (you could probably guess it) Sparkles and Tootsie.

Of course.

Along with the kittens, the backyard sprinkler and endless Popsicles, these ponies have been the center of our life at the ranch this summer. Every morning my little sister puts her roly-poly baby in her pack, grabs her 3-year-old and goes down to the barn to brush, pet, pamper and, of course, feed the ponies who could care less if there’s a little girl hanging on their necks, pulling on their tails or brushing their bellies, as long as they get treats.

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And after supper, if the weather is right and they’re all behaving well enough to brave it, I call my sister and we meet them at the barn to saddle up the ponies and teach the girls to ride.

I could weave you a magical tale right now about the bonds between little girls and horses. I have plenty of firsthand experience falling in love with horses out here myself. And yes, there have been dozens of sweet moments captured between these little girls and these mini equines — but mostly it’s a firestorm of lesson upon lesson packed into a pink, noisy, explosion at the barn.

And it sounds a lot like: “OK, don’t scream around the horses remember? No, no running behind them… calm, remember? You’ve gotta stay calm… OK, OK, that’s enough grain. Woah, enough I said!”

“Edie, don’t drop the reigns. You have to hold onto them when you get off.”

“Oh, you’re trotting! Good job, good… woah, woah, woah, you’ve gotta hang on!”

“Where’s Rosie? Rosie!? Oh Lord, is your head stuck in the gate? Wait there, what the heck girl? How in the world… Daddy! Rosie’s head’s stuck in the gate!”

“OK, it’s Ada’s turn! OK, it’s Rosie’s turn. OK, it’s Edie’s turn. Yeah, you have to take turns. Yeah, you can lead her… no she doesn’t want to run… girls, no screaming around the ponies.”

“OK, no crying either. It’s OK…”

“Rosie! Rosie, don’t climb so high on the fence. Where’s Ada? Ada, enough splashing in the water tank… Edie, Edie, slow down now. Pull back and say ‘woah!'”

And on and on like this until someone gets an owie or the adults and the ponies in the pen wear out. But the adventure doesn’t end there — anything can happen in that quarter of a mile back to our houses.

Last night? Well, it was a detour to inspect a grass snake…

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followed by heroically freeing our dog, Remi, from my little sister’s sticky fly trap…

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Yesterday, it was a ladybug and a handful of sunflowers…

And today? Well, in this magical place, with these girls running wild, anything is possible.

And my sister and I, well, we’ll be right behind them, yelling “Be careful!” and saving the frogs and salamanders from their tiny dress pockets and purses.

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How to make a Rainbow Sprinkle Whipped Cream Pudding Oreo Unicorn Cake with your toddlers

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Baking with your kids in 10 easy steps
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How to make a Rainbow Sprinkle Whipped Cream Pudding Oreo Unicorn Cake
with your toddlers:

Step 1: Make sure the kids are sleeping and you’ve had ample time to pour a glass of wine, forget what it’s like when they are awake, browse Pinterest and become delusional enough to believe that you should attempt baking with two toddlers.

Step 2: Wake up the next morning to a rainy day and ask, “Girls, do you want to make a Rainbow Unicorn Cake today?” They will say yes, but then don’t get to until right before naptime so the kids are nice and cranky and you can spend all morning threatening to take the opportunity away from them if they don’t stop strangling each other.

Step 3: Start gathering the ingredients. This will take between 20 minutes and 50 hours because you will have to take one of them potty, get the other one a Band-Aid, deny them both another snack before giving in and getting them a snack, clean up a puddle of puppy pee and get them to wash their hands without flooding the bathroom.

Step 4: Get them ready to measure, mix and pour. Set each up with a separate job and then watch them argue over which one gets the spatula. Get them both spatulas like you should have in the first place. Watch as they enjoy stirring the whipped cream concoction and for half a second, allow yourself to think, “Maybe one of them will wind up on the Food Network.” Scratch that thought while picking up the one who fell off the stool again. Get another Band-Aid.

Step 5: Get out the food coloring like the mom-idiot you are. Offer to let them pick which color they want. Listen to them fight over pink. Convince one to chose purple and place a few drops in their bowls. Listen to the youngest cry because she wanted to do it herself. Give in and let her do it herself, but make sure you tell her “just a little bit” as if that means anything to anyone. Blink and realize she’s squeezed nearly the entire bottle out into her mix. Realize that by some magic act, your hand is now completely pink, but the 2-year-old came out unscathed.

Step 6: Let them crush the Oreos for the crust. Set them each up with a little plate and measuring cup for mashing. Grab your phone to snap a pic of this photoworthy moment of the youngest putting the third Oreo in her mouth and the oldest licking the frosting out of the middle of every cookie. Tell them they can only eat one cookie as if that means anything. Confiscate the cookie plates and do the crushing yourself.

Step 7: If you’ve made it this far, you’re likely about six hours into what the mom-blogger promised to be a quick and easy baking project. Yell to the kids, who have now abandoned you and disappeared into the recesses of the house where they are being suspiciously quiet, “Hey girls! It’s almost time for the sprinkles, come help me then we can eat it!” Read the rest of the recipe. Realize that you’ve just lied to them, because this cake needs to chill. For four hours. Cuss the blogger under your breath, but not quiet enough that your 4-year-old won’t hear when she appears in the kitchen wearing a face full of pink lipstick. Decide not to ask where her sister is.

Step 8: Wonder if it’s too early for wine.

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Step 9: Squish a pile of pudding underneath your foot on your way to the cupboards to get bowls because you’re the mom and you’ve decided to skip right to the eating phase. Serve them up a plop of a tie-dye concoction that resembles the blog photo only because you bought the same sprinkles. Watch as your offspring, for which you’ve sacrificed your body and your kitchen, take one bite and hate it. Stand alone in a pile of pudding eating both bowls yourself.

Step 10: Declare that you’re never doing that again.

*Tip from the baker: You can use this plan to accomplish many things, including: Take Your Toddlers on a Bike Ride; Make an Elaborate Craft Project; or, my favorite, Take Them All Fishing. In these cases, simply skip to Step 10.

Here’s a link to the actual recipe if you’re insane and want to try it. 

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Mine didn’t turn out remotely like this, in case you were wondering. I hope yours does.

It’s (not quite) spring, bring a shovel

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It’s Spring, Bring a Shovel
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Spring fever. There’s nobody else in the world that suffers from it more than my dad.

As soon as the sun hits that ice and snow, warming it up to see some ground exposed, he’s out of the house like a caged bird. He doesn’t know what to do with himself really, so he gets that list in his head going — all the things that need to be fixed, all the fences to check, all the tinkering to do — and then he lets it all fly out his ears as he climbs to the top of the nearest hill and plops himself down in the warmest, driest spot he can find and just lets the sun shine down on him.

That’s his thaw-out ritual. I have witnessed and I have adopted it.

But here’s the other thing about my dad in the spring: When it thaws, he forgets. He forgets that one warm day does not the summer make. He forgets that the 6 feet of snow in the coulees does not melt in a mere two hours of warm sunshine.

But he frolics anyway. And the meltdown happening at the ranch this week reminds me of an incident that happened a few years back that seems to continue on trend year after year.

It was one of the first warm days we’d had in months. There he stood, my dad, in his cap, overalls and muck boots, hammering on the tractor and shuffling around the shop. I parked my car and walked out to see what he was up to.

“Oh, had to get out here. It’s such a nice day. Feels like 60 degrees… water’s really running. Won’t get the tractor fixed today… Oh well… want to come with me to check the horses?”

“Sure. We walkin?”

“No, we’ll take the four-wheeler.”

“Really? You think it will make it?”

“Oh… we can make it… it’s a beautiful day. Beautiful. We’ll bring them some grain. Hop on.”

I hopped on and wondered how this was going to go as Dad took his four-wheeler, me and my doubts along the gravelly, mucky road and then turned, nice and easy off the path and up the melty drift that had been growing and growing all winter long at the entrance of the farmstead.

I let the warm air whip through the hairs that escaped from my beanie. My pale cheeks soaked up the sunshine. My lungs shouted “Woo-hoo!” as they remembered what fresh air above 35 degrees felt like.

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I released my white-knuckled death grip as we approached the gate to the horse pasture. Ah, it was springtime and the living was easy, and as Dad went to get the gate, I thought of all of things I was going to do under this big warm sky: plant a garden… lounge with a vodka tonic… clean up all of the things that have magically appeared as the snow disappeared (who put that kayak there?)… wear shorts… avoid washing my windows…

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Dad hopped back on and as we continued on our little journey… grill… find my floaties… eat pineapple…

“Jessie… Jess. Jessica!!!”

“Wha… what?”

“You need to get off.”

“Wha… why?”

“We’re stuck.”

And just like that, the green and blue landscape that existed in my head was replaced by reality’s sharp kick in the pants. A good mile from the house and a good half mile to our destination, there we sat in the great white north with a 600-pound four-wheeler buried to its gullets in the heavy, wet, limitless, not-so-springlike snow.

Without a shovel.

I wasn’t surprised. The man has tested the limits of his ATV before, taking the beast where no machine was meant to go: to the tops of buttes; over giant boulders; through fences; up trees; and across muddy, ravenous, woody creek beds. I know because I’ve had to help pull, cut and dig him out.

But this particular day, as I squinted my eyes against the sunshine, I just looked at Dad and laughed. And he shrugged.

We kicked the tires. We pushed a little. We dug a little. We commented about the shovel. And then we grabbed the bucket of grain and abandoned our ride to continue the task at hand.

It was a beautiful day and we didn’t mind walking…

Aw, spring. You can’t rush it, but maybe you can bring a shovel.

Horses

Christmas tree tumble puts things into perspective

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Christmas tree tumble puts things into perspective
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Merry Christmas.

I want to share with you all the holiday spirit that’s floating around this place. I’d really like to tell you that I’m writing this as I sip hot cocoa in my best holiday sweater while a Hallmark movie is playing on TV and the snow softly falls on the treetops outside.

I would have told you that, in my other life.

But this life looks less like “all is calm” and more like the giant cedar tree my family cut off of the ranch in the middle of the weekend’s blizzard toppling down in a huff of glitter and glass bulbs, timber style, just as I reached up and put on the finishing touches.

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That was after four days of putting one or two ornaments on at a time as I got distracted by a nose wipe, a potty break, supper, a phone call, a visitor, a job or a coloring emergency. Yeah, coloring emergencies are a thing.

But thank goodness we narrowly missed a real emergency as I hollered “WATCH OUT” at my girls from atop my ottoman perch, as one of the biggest Christmas trees we’ve ever had in this house tried it’s best to take out my scruffy little daughters.

They came out unscathed, but blinking and wide-eyed, an ornament dangling from the oldest’s hair.

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“Our TREE!” she exclaimed as I took assessment of the damage.

And I would have cried except no one was bleeding and, well, of course this happened. Because I just got done sending a text to my friend telling her “I’m going to get this Christmas tree decorated if it’s the last thing I do,” and the universe laughed and laughed.

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And so I did what any completely capable, calm, cool and collected woman, wife and mother would do — I called my husband, told him to bring power tools and went to the kitchen to bake cookies with the kids.

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Because a tree trimming disaster that I can’t even blame on the cat? Well, it’s a long way from my heart.

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In my other life, my younger life, before I had the experiences that have helped me sort the big things from the little things, I would have face-planted on my bed and declared it a holiday disaster.

But today? Well, today it was annoying at worst. Funny at best. Because I’m learning to give up the notion of perfect and give in to the eccentricities that are, frankly, embedded deep in my DNA.

Like, I will never be the woman who has scented holiday candles and matching Christmas towels in every bathroom of the house. But I will be the woman who is proud to show my husband that I put the Christmas lights up on the house, only to discover that I hung them with the plug on the opposite end of the outlet. I’m that woman.

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And the holidays, well, they can get overwhelming or lonely or sad, even with all the sparkle and glitter and feel-good moments on TV. I know this. I get it. I’ve been there. If you’re missing a piece of you, or battling demons, or taking care of someone fighting for each breath, or fighting for a breath or a break of your own, you would give anything to be able to laugh at a Christmas tree tumble.

And maybe you would anyway, because you know what the end of the world might feel like, the worst day of your life, the hardest thing you can imagine. And it’s not a living room filled with broken bulbs from Target.

And while I doubt Martha Stewart would drill her Christmas tree to the wall, I think I could give her some tips on how to ignore a 2-year-old attempting to climb in the kitchen sink while I help the 4-year-old make the Christmas cookies of her dreams in the middle of a life I used to pray for while watching the snow fall on the bare branches outside, in a quiet and clean house, alone and hoping, in my other life.

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The Nutcracker experience…with a 4-year-old

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Last weekend, I took my 4-year-old daughter to the Moscow Ballet’s performance of “The Nutcracker.”

If I hadn’t been raised with grandparents who once took a 5-year-old me in a velvet dress and patent-leather Mary Janes to a performance of “Phantom of the Opera,” it might have never crossed my mind to drive my young daughter three hours to the big town to experience such a thing.

But I was. And I remember the feel of the big seat folding up and down underneath my small body, the melody of the music, magic of the stage lights and the weight of my eyelids as my grandpa’s arms carried me, sleepy, out into the night when the curtain fell.

Of course, Edie had never seen a ballet, but I told her she could wear the new sequin dress her great-grandparents sent her and I even put on a dress myself and lip gloss on us both to seal the deal and held out hope that the outfit wasn’t going to be her favorite part of the whole experience.

Let me tell you. I. Had. No. Idea.

Below is a rough transcript of about three of the 90 minutes of dialogue I had with my small daughter sitting in the seat next to me, whispering in my ear while snowflakes, sugarplum fairies, creepy looking mice, a nutcracker and countless ballet dancers leapt and twirled across a lit-up stage while the people around us tried to enjoy the show, despite the incessant narrative that was being asked of me.

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Ahem.

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Edie, coming up for air after the shock and wonder of the first dance.

Edie: “So is it really Christmas or are they pretending it’s Christmas?”

Me: “Well, it’s Christmas in the ballet, but technically, they’re just pretending it’s Christmas. It’s not Christmas today.”

Edie: “So is that a real nutcracker or is he just pretending to be a nutcracker? And is she a real doll? Or a person?”

Me: “They’re just pretending, but in the ballet, the magician is making them come to life.”

Edie: “Oh, look at those dresses. I want a dress like that when I grow up. I want a dress like that with no sleeves and sparkles and I want a prince. We’ll dance and get married. Are they married? Are these the same people in different outfits or different people? Where’s her blue dress? Why does she wear dress jammies? I have dress jammies. She has dress jammies like me.”

Me: “Shhh… whisper.”

Edie: “Do those boys have feet? I can’t see their feet. What kind of shoes are they wearing? Where’s the music coming from? Where are the speakers?”

Me: “There. Do you see them? No? They’re right there: Do you see those snowflakes? Gramma Beth performed this dance when she was young.”

Edie: “Gramma Beth? Gramma Beth was young? Are these dancers young? Do these dancers have grammas? Do they have mommies?”

Me: “Yes, they have mommies.”

Edie: “Where are their mommies? Where do their mommies live?”

Me: “Ugh, I guess in Russia.”

Edie: “Where’s Russia?”

Me: “Shhh, just watch. Look at those scary mice!”

Edie, looking away: “I don’t like those mice. Is this just pretend? What was that noise? What happened to the mouse?”

Me: “He fell down. The noise scared him. They took him to the hospital to be checked out. He’s OK.”

Edie: “Well, where is his mommy? Do the mice have mommies? I don’t see the doctors? Where’s the hospital? Does he have blood? Does he need a Band-Aid? Oh, look at that tutu! When I grow up, I want a tutu like that…”

And so on and so on until the lights went up, they all took a bow and Edie sat in her seat wondering if it was over.

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I didn’t have to ask her how she liked it, so I asked about her favorite part.

“All of it,” she exclaimed, and then I carried her up the stairs and out into the crisp night, her Cinderella jelly shoes dangling from her toes and my hope of an experience etched deep enough for her to remember some of it, if only the dresses with no sleeves and the seat that folded up beneath her.

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Just call me Martha Stewart

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From now on, you can call me Martha Stewart
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Excuse me for a moment while I make an announcement.

It’s very important, something I never thought would happen to me in this lifetime, and I’m very proud of how far I’ve come in my life, so I feel the need to shout it from the rooftops.

Ahem: Yesterday, my friend called me for cooking advice.

Now this might not seem like a big deal at first glance. I mean, my little sister calls me about every time she’s in the grocery store for a reminder on how to make things like chili or slushburgers or how to properly boil an egg, but that’s my little sister, bless her and her domestically challenged soul. She makes me feel so superior.

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But this wasn’t my little sister, or my friend from college calling about that dip that goes over really well during the Super Bowl. No.

Ask this woman how to hard boil an egg and she’ll likely give you answers based on temperatures and yoke textures, because she’s made this sort of thing her living and dare I say, her expertise. She’s taught classes on food safety and nutrition and set up lesson plans on how to make things like butter in jars or how to properly pickle things so that you don’t give your friends botulism for Christmas.

Like, I mean, she’s probably never Googled “how to make chokecherry jelly” right before accidentally dumping a whole day’s worth of work down her kitchen sink and running to her room to lie facedown on her bed and cry. Not that I know of anyone who has, but anyway…

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This woman, my friend, is raising four growing children on a ranch 30 miles from the nearest grocery store or take-out restaurant and cooks for a crew of men at least twice a day. And I guarantee what she’s stirring up doesn’t come out of a yellow box and rhyme with “Mac the pony has fleas.”

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And I admire her. She once hosted a party where her friends got together to make freezer meals to plan ahead and I would have made it except for I was out on a highway somewhere in the middle of North Dakota in my car eating McDonald’s while my husband was at home feeding my children supper at 10 p.m., some sort of elaborate elk meat stew he likely took 64 hours to create.

Because my husband is the cook in the family. And in all reality, it’s likely because of him that my friend picked up the phone in the first place, because she knew that our family likes to make homemade noodles together, a tradition my husband picked up from his mother and her German heritage. And so after entering into my relationship with him boasting the cooking skills of someone who once left a failed Hamburger Helper attempt on the stove with a note, “I’ve gone to get cake,” I’m now pretty pleased to report that I can, indeed, pull off a pretty fail-proof homemade noodle.

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Which helps me with homemade pizza. And homemade knoephla. And homemade chicken noodle soup. Which was what my friend had attempted when she called with her question.

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A question, mind you, that had nothing to do with her failure and everything to do with her success. On the first try. Without 20 years of practice and guidance from her mother-in-law.

She wanted to know, like the domestic diva she is, if she could make the noodles ahead of time and cook them later. You know. Because she plans ahead.

And I was so excited she called me with such faith in my abilities in the kitchen that I seriously contemplated delivering her a completely made-up answer, if only that answer wouldn’t have put her entire family at risk of food poisoning. And so I told her I’d call my mother-in-law and get back to her right away. Which I did.

But still. She called me. And so I call that a cooking win.

And from now on, you can call me Martha Stewart. Thank you for listening.

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