The evolution of a season.

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It’s another rainy, windy afternoon at the ranch. It seems like once the sky decided to open up it just can’t stop. It feels like March when the sky wouldn’t stop snowing. It feels like this spring has been finicky and harsh and extreme and it has enjoyed every minute it has kept me waiting.

Waiting for the snow to stop.

Waiting for the sun to shine.

Waiting for the rain to come.

Waiting for it to stop raining.

Waiting on the sun to shine.

I know there will be a time this summer where the dust will blow again and we will pray for a bit of relief from the heat and the dry, but where I come from there is not a balance.

There is only extreme.

Extremely cold.

Extremely windy.

Extremely hot.

Extremely green.

Extremely wet.

Extremely dry.

Extremely perfectly beautiful.

Some days I feel like the weather. These days especially. The windows have been streaked with rain for a few weeks and I have been suffering from a weird sort of lingering head cold that refuses to break up and leave like the damn rain.

I’ve been working hard to ignore it, to say the rain will clear and I will feel better, but today I submitted. I stayed home under a blanket to watch it fall.

I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Head cold or no head cold, it seems I’m always so affected by the seasons and how they change, like the weather and my mood hold hands to greet the day accordingly.

Which makes me wonder how annoyingly bright-sided I’d be if I lived in the sunny, 70 degree climate of southern California.

It sounds nice right now, the sun.

But I think the constant change of seasons help me and what my husband refers to as my “restless spirit.” He says it’s hard for me to sit in one place. It’s hard for me to be comfortable in routine.

He says it’s good for me to have all this space to wander out here.

Maybe he’s right and maybe it’s hard to understand how a girl can be so rooted and so restless.

But it’s no worry to me really. I know where I belong out here, changing with the weather.

Evolving with the season.

A walk.

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

In honor of spring and the wind and the sun and the green grass poking up around us, I would like to take you along on my favorite trail, the one that leads to the east pasture from our house, up along the buffalo fence, to the top of a rocky cliff and then down again to the stock dam and back toward home.

Next week this walk will be a little bit greener, a little bit warmer and, hopefully, I’ll find some crocuses.

Next week maybe I’ll leave the damn dogs at home so they don’t scare away the wildlife with their slobbering, panting, running, and puking.

I guess that’s what happens when you run at full speed after a duck, ignoring the screams from your owner to come back.

That’s what you get when you try out your instincts after seven months of lounging.

It’s been a long winter.

I would have puked too.

Anyway, I hope the sun is shining wherever you are and you have the chance to explore your favorite spot this weekend.

Now, off we go…

Sorry weird cat, you gotta stay home…

Take a breath. Take a walk. Take a break. Take some time.

Happy, happy weekend.

Prom Day, thirteen years later…

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It’s prom season and on Saturday young couples in Boomtown spent the day dressing up, pinning on corsages, posing for photographs in front of the mantle, eating a fancy dinner, laughing and dancing the night away.

In honor of the season and happy memories, I’d like to take this moment to cue up a flashback:

Yes. There we are back in the year 2000, back before Garth Brooks retired, before bedazzled flip-flops were cool, every teenager on the planet owned a data plan and before I knew what I was getting myself into.

If only we could have seen into the future.

If only someone would have warned us that thirteen years later these gangly, innocent, teenagers who single-handedly kept Suave hair gel on the shelves and were so convinced they were in love would find themselves un-showered and un-filtered, wearing overalls and saggy work jeans, crammed ass to ass in an unfinished bathroom in an almost finished house arguing about what iPod mix to listen to while in the middle of another argument about how someone is hovering and someone else doesn’t understand the importance of cleaning the mortar off the trowel between tiling projects.

Thirteen years ago the plan would have been to get a job where you make enough money to hire someone to tile the damn bathroom.

Thirteen years ago we would have been listening to Garth Brooks and there would be no argument.

Thirteen years ago we would have been pretty excited about the whole iPod thing.

If only we would’ve known. Perhaps we could have avoided this situation all together. I could have suggested that my future husband, the one standing so coiffed, cute and confident next to that girl in the bedazzled flip-flops, just go ahead and become a trapper/mountain man like he dreamed of as a boy and I would just go on to marry a man who wears khakis and doesn’t own a table saw or a wet saw or a hand saw or any other kind of saw that would give him the idea that maybe, perhaps, he should build an entire bathroom from scratch, and then spend a good three to four days with his dearly beloved tiling the damn thing, from floor to ceiling.

I would have missed that mountain man, but as I pick the mortar from under my fingernails and behind my ears, I think maybe I could have gotten used to the khakis.

Why manicures don’t work on me…

I mean, did you know endless hours of mixing mortar, scraping it on the walls, cleaning it from the floors, accidentally splashing it into your eyeball and spraining your wrist while operating the high powered drill necessary to mix the stuff can turn you into the worst possible version of yourself?

Did you know that you can sprain your wrist operating a drill?

Me neither. But it’s true.

Turns out that forty-thousand trips up and down two flights of stairs to get to the wet saw does something weird to your right butt cheek too.

It’s true.

Just ask Husband.

Oh, now you might be thinking to yourself ,”Well, a couple that can survive building a house together can survive anything.” And the two of us might agree, but only under the condition that the house doesn’t have a single tile in it.

Because tiling sucks. It is hard and it is messy and it makes perfectly sweet and well-intentioned wives really mouthy and equally well-intentioned husbands really annoying.

And that, I fear, might be the only thing my dear husband and I agree on when it comes to the project that consumed our weekend.

But oh, I love this man, I do.

I love that he is capable and handy and looks good in those overalls. But our lives would be so much easier if he would just let me pick the soundtrack for the project.

And if he would stop with the suggestions on how I should hold the trowel, even if it might help me avoid getting so much mortar on my pants that not even tightening my belt can save him from the sight of my plumber’s crack.

I don’t need his suggestions. I mean, doesn’t twenty straight minutes of tiling make me an expert?

And don’t you think when your wife screams out in agony, drops the drill, grabs her wrist and falls to the floor that a husband should come running to her side and ask her what’s wrong instead of calmly assuming she’s overreacting to another injury, waiting for her wails to turn to whimpers before asking her sarcastically if she needs to go to the hospital?

I mean, that like, really hurt.

I’m ok. It’s fine. But still.

Somehow I don’t think Sunday morning motivational home construction pep talks that include promises of foot rubs, negotiations on who will make the coffee and a vow not to get pissy with one another today is the future prom-goers in Boomtown imagined as they walked arm in arm with their dates at the grand march last Saturday.

But maybe it should be. I mean, if I have to tile a bathroom at least it’s a result of my own brilliant idea that our bathroom be covered in tiles.

And at least I get to do it with a man who’s willing to do what it takes to give me everything I want, even if it means spraining his right butt cheek from forty-seven thousand trips to the basement while putting up with the whining coming from his wife and the music on her iPod mix.

And if I have to tile a bathroom at least I get to do it with a boy who took me on a date to Bonanza when I had purple rubber bands on my braces and still thought I was presentable enough to pass as a prom date.

Which proves he has just the right amounts of delusion and optimism to survive a tiling project and, consequently, a marriage to me.

At least I hope so. I guess we’re not quite done yet…maybe it wouldn’t hurt to compromise a bit on the music selection…

Oh the price you pay for a pretty place to pee.

Our geese.

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Our summer guests showed up this morning. I heard them honking when I woke up, but I didn’t think it was them. I thought it was another flock flying over, looking for the river, the neighbor’s stock dam or the big lakes east of us.

But the honking persisted.

So I got up from my desk to look out the window and up at the sky where there were no geese, just blue and I thought I’d gone crazy.

It was possible, seven months of winter will do that to a woman.

I sat back down with my coffee and heard Husband call from the kitchen where he stood with his face plastered to the sliding glass door.

“Look down there,” he said, pointing to a patch of brown earth below the house.

“The geese are back.”

And so they were.

The geese.

Our geese, who spend the summer floating and canoodling with the pair of ducks in the stock dam outside our window.

The sight of those big, lanky birds walking around and honking between the snow banks was a welcome sight. We had been waiting for them to show up, as if their appearance solidified what is still quite unbelievable to us.

Summer is coming.

And just like spring, I would have loved to welcome this couple a bit sooner, but they know what they’re doing.

This isn’t the pair’s first trip back North. It isn’t their first spring together.

And had they arrived Monday they would have come home to this.

But they didn’t. They arrived on a day that turned into sixty degrees. A day I imagined they spent getting reacquainted with the place and showing the third guy around.

I’ve never seen a third goose. I wonder if he’ll stay?

Husband and I opened the door to let in the sunny morning air and watched as the familiar animals waddled and honked and moved closer to the house. We laughed as the pug stood stoic and protective outside the door, contemplating the size, shape and strength of the intruders before deciding to retreat.

We wondered what the hell our bird dog was doing in a time of such an invasion?

We said we loved these geese and were glad they were home.

We said, it’s nice to see them isn’t it?

We said, isn’t it amazing that they keep coming home?

We said we were glad they were still together.

And then we turned away from the window, back to work, back to life and into another season together.

A billion little reasons to love a spring storm.

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

A spring storm swept across the state this weekend, creating drifts in the valleys, shutting down the interstate from Montana to Minnesota, breaking accumulation records and closing schools, businesses, post offices, newspaper offices and pretty much every office in between.

I watched the white stuff fall from the spring sky on Saturday while Pops and I placed rocks on my wall near the kitchen, Husband climbed the big red ladder to put trim on the tall windows and Father in Law wired the outlets in the master bedroom.

We are gonna get this house done. Like the snowflakes, little by little we’re changing the way things look around here.

And so we weren’t much bothered by the weather because it meant we weren’t tempted to abandon our indoor projects for something we could tinker with under the warm spring sun.

Yup, we were given a few more days of winter to finish up our inside world before abandoning it for the great outdoors in the three warm but short months we call summer.

Mark my words, when the sun shines, I am opening these windows and doors and not coming back inside until the sun goes down on the day.

Because, yes, it’s spring, but North Dakotans have not packed away their mittens and coveralls just yet. No. We all know better. We know to keep the shovels leaning up against the doorway, our boots in the entryway and an extra set of coveralls in the truck. We know we’re not out of the snowy woods until June turns into July 4th and the mosquitos have settled in for the long haul.

Spring storms like this, as I’ve said, are hard on the cattle and the calves being born, but I know there are some ND farmers out there thankful for the moisture.

The rest of us, it appears, are getting a kick out of it. Because if the residents of this state are known for anything it’s for our tolerance for this arctic tundra we live in. And a winter storm mid-April just confirms all the notions that our state is a tundra and the people who live here are bundled up snug, tough, and a just a little crazy.

So we send each other photos of kids building snow forts, our dogs jumping through drifts, our husbands clearing snow and the big pile that’s blocking our front door.

And then we ask, “how much did you get? 15 inches you suppose? Can you believe this?! Haven’t seen a spring storm like this for years!”

But we know spring always comes, so we’re ok. We know all this snow will have turned to water running through culverts and cutting little rivers in our gravel roads by the end of the month.

So we go out and take a look, check on our neighbors, shovel our driveways and unstuck the stuck things.

Husband and I are no different. After a day cooped up in home construction mode, we were happy for a bonus snow day. After the morning coffee we were eager to asses the damage and see if we could get out of the nook we created for ourselves.

Four-wheel drive is my hero.

So is the county blade.

A hero to us, and the semi jack-knifed down below that hill in the draw between our house and Mom and Dad’s.

I should have stopped to ask him if he could plow a trail for the pug…

Anyway, when our little exploration was finished, we pulled back in the yard, Husband trudged up the steps to strip off his layers and shrug his shoulders and let the snow be.

I stayed outside poking around, snapping photos, kicking around the drifts and thinking it’s kind of cool to live in a place that can be so unpredictable.

Because Californians may have the sunshine, but they don’t get unexpected snow days. They don’t get to wake up to a phone call telling you to stay home this Monday because the weather demands it, and everyone else is doing the same. And you don’t really know what snuggling is or how good warm feels until you’ve rosied your cheeks and numbed your fingers behind the grip of a snow shovel.

Funny how all that white blanketing our landscape, piling on our cars, sticking to our wool caps, dangling from our rooftops, closing our interstates and putting our lives on hold is simply an accumulation of billions and billions of tiny, beautiful, delicate little miracles intricately designed to fall from the sky and land on this earth where we squeeze them into snow balls, scrape them from our windshields, taste them on our tongues, curse them to our neighbor, crunch them under our boots, report them on the evening news and watch them dance and blow outside our window.

The snowflake.

It’s a reason to love winter, even when the season has worn out its welcome.

Because only the wrath of nature could make us truly believe that tiny things…

can make a huge difference.

Close up!

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I’m obsessed with observing. I could sit on the top of a hill in the spring and listen to the wind, watch the bugs come to life and inspect the ground for any sign of green for hours. I’ve been known to do it.I’m also known for bringing my camera every where I go, another little obsession and one my family and husband don’t always appreciate, but will thank me for when they are old and gray and trying to remember where they put the glasses they have dangling around their necks or pushed up on their heads.

I will show them these photos and remind them how young and beautiful they used to be.

And they will love me for it.

Anyway, on Tuesday a little treasure I’ve been pining for for a few years showed up in the mail, and I was like a kid on Christmas, rushing to get home so I could try it out.

A few years ago I wouldn’t have guessed that something like a camera lens would provide me such joy, but there I was, running around the countryside, putting my nose near the dirt next to an acorn, squatting down to inspect the mud, leaning in to see what that horse hair looks like dangling from the barbed wire, because now, with this new little miracle piece of equipment, I was able to capture it.Because I’ve always been fascinated with the way our world looks close up. I generally don’t care so much for bugs, but when a photographer can show me the sparkle of their wings or the dynamics of their eyes, I suddenly think flies are beautiful.

So when my lens arrived I went on an all out mission to find a some sort of living, flying thing out there so I could test my macro-photography skills.

Little did I know that the only living insect in North Dakota was currently coming back to life in the windowsill of my bedroom.

But that’s ok. I needed practice on non-moving things before I moved on to tiny, living things that move really really fast.Taking a look and seeing the familiar a little bit differently is a nice little adventure. And so I relished it a bit because I knew what was waiting for me when I got inside involved mortar and holding heavy things.

So here’s what our world looks like right now up close.

Green grass,and mud,and barbed wire,and horse hair,and left-over flowers,and rocks,and lots of brown things.

And although my little sister, who once declared brown as her favorite color because she felt sorry for it, would commend me for finding the beauty in the mud, I just really can’t wait for wildflower season.

And I really can’t wait for this house to be done.

So if you need me, I’ll be avoiding it and out looking for some color.

So that was Tuesday.

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Today is Tuesday.

It started like this.

And ended like this.

And in between I wrapped my robe around me and cursed the blasted cold that came in with the blasted snow in a real-live and never unexpected spring blizzard, officially making April my least favorite month of the year, only because it’s turned into a merciless tease.

I mean, last night the temperature nearly dropped below zero and this morning my car groaned and moaned while it worked to turn over.

And when I finally got it all warmed up and pointed it toward town, I passed the creek next to the highway that was open and flowing on Sunday, welcoming the geese home by providing them a nice place to float. Today those geese were all tucked up in little balls on top of the frozen water, occasionally lifting their heads from under their wings to look at one another, tap the ice and say “what the hell?”

What the hell indeed, I said as I followed a truck for the remaining 20 miles as it dropped and flung dangerously large clumps of mud and rocks at my windshield, just tootling on his merry way.

But I didn’t get another rock chip. Not right then anyway and not that I would notice considering I’ve accumulated about a dozen or so on my journeys through the oil patch.

No, I saved the rock chip for the way home from Boomtown, where I saw a man walking down the street rocking a legit kilt and looking damn good doing it, which is something you just don’t see every day around here and that pretty much made my day so I didn’t really mind the rock chip that came next.

And so I made it home safe to make bacon for dinner, which is always a good idea, but then I had to deal with all of these strawberries, because in a delusional, Martha Stewart type moment last week I ordered eight pounds from the food co-op. But now I don’t know what to do with them, because it’s still too damn cold for rhubarb and the only thing I know how to make out of strawberries is strawberry-rhubarb jam and strawberry smoothies.

So unless someone from a warmer climate wants to send me some rhubarb, it looks like I’ll be having strawberry smoothies until next fall.

And I was just about to sit down with one, maybe add a few swigs of peach schnapps and turn on some mind-enriching television programming, when Husband informed me of his plans to build a fireplace, beginning at approximately 8:30 pm and that I should get my mortaring jeans on because it’s happening.

So I did, because I want to get this house done more than I want a smoothie. I mean, I can have like twenty smoothies tomorrow.

But it took like a half-hour for Husband to find his trowel and another half-hour to figure out how to get the T.V. off the wall and another half-hour to decide we were missing some essential supplies, so Husband decided that was enough progress for the night and now my coffee table looks like this:

and my living room looks like this:

and Husband left me sitting on the couch watching a History Channel special series on Hell while he got in the shower, leaving the remote out of my reach, and now I’m kinda getting scared considering that it’s 11:00 already and I’m deep into a lesson about the devil and how he could return to earth one day.

So, yeah…

that was Tuesday.

Sunday column: On living with the time we’re given.

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Every Sunday I write a column for the Fargo Forum, an eastern North Dakota newspaper out of the largest city in our state, Fargo. The column focuses on life out here in Western North Dakota and what it means to be making a life back home in the buttes and oil fields.

Those of you who follow Meanwhile, back at the ranch on Facebook and @Veederranch on Twitter have probably caught these columns as I post the online versions there each Sunday.

But I’ve been thinking it might be worth while to share the columns here with you each Sunday as they are published to give you another perspective of life out here and something to browse while you’re enjoying your morning pancakes and coffee.

And if you haven’t yet, I recommend checking out Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the big, wide, world of social media to get more photos, more observations, more chaos and more pictures of the one-eyed-pug you all love so much despite my best efforts to de-fame him.

Click the link below to read this week’s column on how to live within the time we’re given.

Coming Home: Time marches on no matter what you wish

I hope you’re enjoying your Sunday, my favorite day of the week!

Love you all and thanks for reading!

Spring Resolutions.

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I tell you, brown and blue have become my favorite colors.

Because it means the snow is melting and the sun is shining.

Soon that brown will be replaced by the best color in the universe. Green.

I’ve seen a little of it lately. Poking through the mud, just eager to make an appearance.

Last year at this time I’m sure I was out counting crocuses.

This year, I’m still snow bank hopping.

But I know it’s coming. Spring always comes. It’s the one constant we can rely on when everything else is crazy and unpredictable or gray or dull or blizzardy.

Spring. Spring will come and so will the baby calves and soon it will be summer.

So I’m waiting and doing what I’ve done since I was a little girl…following the new creeks and rivers that are escaping from the snow.

I follow them because I like the sound the water makes. The rushing, bubbling, quiet roar as the it rolls down hills and through gullies, across logs and over polished rocks. It reminds me of breathing and heartbeats and freedom and a world that gets another chance to clean up and show us what she’s got.

Everyone makes resolutions in the new year, in the middle of winter when the world is still in a deep sleep, frozen and unambitious.

I make my resolutions in the spring, in solidarity with the regrowth and new things blooming under the watch, guidance and encouragement of the warm sun.

I resolve to open up my heart as wide and fearless as the chokecherry blossoms, because our lives are short.

And I promise to be as dependable as the pair of geese that return to our dam year after year because love means loyalty.

I will work to be as strong as the oak, even under the harshest winds. Because that wind is steady only in its unpredictably and I don’t want to be a woman who backs down.

But I’ll listen close like a deer at the snap of a branch and I will take time to understand my home and what is meant to be here and what is a threat.

I will sing at the top of my lungs like the chickadees,

splash the brown world with color like a wildflower,

and I will run wild like the water in the creeks roaring down the banks and through the trees and warming up for a new life in the bright spring sun.

An Easter snowsuit.

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Only in North Dakota would a little girl have to bundle up in full snow gear to hunt for Easter eggs.
An Easter egg hunt in a snowbank is not something any of us were too thrilled about.