Category Archives: Nature

Why do we live here?

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Well, winter arrived here in full force, and I got to be one of the first to welcome it as I packed the kids into the SUV to drive 40 mph for 30 miles through sideways-falling snowflakes and atop icy, snow-covered roads while cussing under my breath. It’s not like I was surprised, I expected it. It comes every year.

And it turns out the first blizzard of the season fell on “Hawaii” day at school. And if stuffing the tropical dresses and plastic leis under winter coats and snowpants that are too small because you’ve been in winter denial and haven’t gone snowpants shopping doesn’t scream North Dakota kids, then come and see how we dress for Halloween. When it’s cold enough I don’t have to convince my daughters that cheerleaders and fairy princesses wear snowsuits, too.

It’s days like these, I understand why there are towns and why so many people live in them. 

My 7-year-old daughter and I have been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “The Long Winter” before bed every night, and you know what? Even that beloved homesteading family moved to town in October. They figured it might be the right thing to do when Pa and Laura had to free cattle with their noses frozen to the ground after a fall blizzard. Figuring they could be next, they packed up for their version of civilization.

Why do we live up here? If you asked me last week while I was riding horseback with my family through trees lit by the golden autumn sun, I would have answered with a love song. Ask me today, and it’s a threatening breakup song.

But it’s only a threat. We’re stuck here come hell or high snowbank.

Anyway, this morning while I was plowing through the dark space-scape of blinding snow trying to stay between the invisible lines on my way to get the kids to school before the last bell, I was reminded of an epic winter school bus ride I had when I was in third or fourth grade. It was over 30 years ago now, so I figure the statute of limitations is up. And plus, it was the ’90s.

Once upon a time, I was an elementary school kid who went to a country school only 15 miles from the ranch. Every morning, I rode the school bus with about 10 of the neighbor kids, our house being the first to pick up and the last to drop off, which is the same as our parents saying, “I walked to school five miles uphill both ways,” but I digress. 

This particular morning was especially brutal. I think it was early spring or late fall, one of those times when the winter weather still surprises you. Our bus driver, as seasoned as he was, was struggling to navigate his route on roads completely slick with ice. But he diligently made his rounds, nice and steady and slow, to finally arrive at the last house at the bottom of the final long stretch of hill with only a half-mile to the school to go, only to find that he couldn’t get the bus to move another inch.

After several failed attempts at backing the bus up and taking a run at that big, icy hill with all 10 kids breathing down his neck and sending prayers up to the almighty for miraculous traction, something inside him shifted and he made a decision that, if it worked out, would be regarded as a ranch-y type of heroic that would be recorded in infamy in the Bus Driver Hall of Fame.

Turns out the move did become infamous, but only because no other bus driver in the entire history of the universe would have decided to take his attempt to cross the ditch and then rev the bus into the stubble field where he figured he could get more of that almighty traction. And so off he went, us 10 praying kids now wide-eyed and bouncing around and up and off our seats while our gallant driver slammed the pedal to the metal to keep the vehicle in motion past one tree row and on to the other before Little Yellow School Bus #25 finally sunk into the snow up to its floorboards a quarter of a mile off the highway.

It was silent then as we all took inventory of our new situation. Our bus driver reached for his CB. “Breaker, breaker, ‘Operation Go, Go Gadget snow tracks’ failed us.”

That SOS call would result in my very first ride in a four-wheel-drive SUV when an area superhero mom came down that icy hill to the rescue. I can only imagine what she was thinking as she spotted that bus, bright and yellow and stuck out of place in a white and gold sea of winter stubble field, all 10 of us kids trudging, with backpacks, snowsuits and confused looks through the snow to pile in the back hatch of that 1993 Chevy suburban, a shiny new beacon of hope that we’d make it to school at last.

Making it home would be another story, which is what I’m thinking now, a mom with my own four-wheel-drive SUV, watching the snow drift another inch outside the door.

If you need me, I’ll be checking the radar and ordering the girls snowpants that fit. Because winter’s here, just like it comes every year.

A safe place to land

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Geese

A safe place to land
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Today it’s the wind that’s getting to everyone.

Even in the protection of the trees, the house is shaking, creaking and groaning under the assault of the weather. If I let my little kids go outside, they might fly right out of here, Mary Poppins-style.

So we’re playing inside today and watching the trees bend and sway while I shuffle these children from activity to argument to food and back again as time ticks on. It’s the outside that’s saving us these days, exactly the way it always has for me, rescuing me from the darkness of my own thoughts and from the work and worry that seems to push on me harder between the walls. And outside is the only thing currently rescuing my couch from being used as a trampoline…

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Outside is where new calves are being born on this ranch as I type, their mommas finding a safe spot in the trees or a dry spot in the sun to bring them into this world, lick them clean and urge them, only minutes earthside, to stand on their own four legs.

And if all goes well, like nature intended, a day growing in the sunshine will find those little calves running and bucking and kicking their legs up into the sky.

First Calf

The same sky that chatters with the faint cry of cranes and geese flying back to us, their summer home, trading places with their fellow bird for their spot in the V that helps carry them to a safe place to land.

 

They’ll come down to poke through a tangle of last year’s foliage to find green grass and clover and, right on time, the soft petals of crocus after crocus, slowly and deliberately emerging from the damp earth.

They’ll come down to sit in the beaver dams and stock dams and sloughs and lakes that are just warming up enough to lose the last of their ice. We would be so cold, but they were made for this, the birds.

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So then what are we made for? I can’t help but wonder it more each day as the world is shaken and we adjust our habits and face loss and uncertainty in so many of its forms. And unlike the birds, unlike the beaver or the cattle, the grass and the wild wind whipping through this place, humans can answer this question with list upon list of our individual strengths and passions that help make the world go ‘round.

But if there’s a collective answer for us, I think now more than ever we might realize that it is to take care. And so it has always gone out here on the ranch. The regimen of digging into the stockpile of work, feeding and caring for the animals and the land so that it can, in turn, feed and care for a larger world, feels a bit more comforting now.

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It reminds me that even the howling wind has a purpose, to slow us down so it can help move the rain clouds and spread the seeds. And although we might not all be able to withstand the bitter cold or the blazing heat or this relentless uncertainty alone, we can lean into the wind and, like the geese and the cranes, find our spot in the V and together, find a safe place to land.

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Only the crocuses know

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Only the crocuses know
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A few days ago, I went out searching for crocuses.

The sun had been warm enough to dry the hilltops and gravel roads and so I thought a few of them may have been summoned. With my head down searching, I climbed to all the familiar places on the ranch where I know they live, just under the dirt, waiting for the right morning to take the risk and reach up.

I didn’t see a hint of that purple promise of spring.

The next day, I woke up to a blanket of fresh snow covering every inch of this place. It was April 1. I’d been fooled.

And so the snowflakes fell in big chunks outside our window all morning as my kids were slow to wake up for another day of playing mommies or monsters or dress-up. I shuffled around this house, picking up toys, kissing owies, taking phone calls, making food, cleaning up food and answering countless inquiries for Mommy to find it, Mommy to fix it, Mommy to come here, Mommy to hold me…

A few weeks ago, these tasks and countless requests from my children would have been competing with my sense of urgency to get my work done, to meet a deadline, to prepare for an event, to wake my kids up early to get in the car and leave the ranch with the sunrise. These days, the only place we need to be is home.

And aren’t we the lucky ones.

“Seems like we’re just living like we used to live out here,” my dad observed, recalling memories of his childhood on this place before the road to town was paved, before private phone lines, before he was old enough to know what he might be missing in that great big world that existed beyond these hills.

A few months ago, my 4-year-old started to ask me every night, “Where are we going tomorrow?” It was a question that snuck up on me, like somehow I didn’t think she would notice the rushed breakfasts, the late suppers, the weekends spent without me while I was on the road singing for that supper.

You all know we’re only in the beginning of this plea to retreat and distance ourselves from the lives we’ve grown accustomed to. And that looks like different things to different families, depending on situation and story.

But for us, even with the weight of worry heavy on my chest for all of the circumstances out of our control, I’m finding peace and strength in leaning into what is, like picking up toys, kissing owies, taking phone calls, making food, cleaning up food and answering countless inquiries for Mommy to find it, Mommy to fix it, Mommy to come here, Mommy to hold me…

And my walks to the hills, a daily reminder that to everything there is a season, and there’s no amount of worry and wishes that will make the crocuses grow.

Because only the crocuses know.

crocus bouquet

The Animals of Winter

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Animals of winter
Like the animals of winter

Last week, I went out into the winter. I squeezed into my long underwear, pulled on layers, tied my scarf around my neck, made sure my wool cap covered my ears and zipped my coat to my chin.

The snow was fresh and the wind was blowing it in sparkly swirls around the barnyard. The hay bales were adequately frosted in neatly stacked white drifts, remnants of the small blizzard that blew through the ranch in the evening and was lingering into the late morning hours.

I stuck out my tongue to taste the snowflakes and snuggled down into the collar of my coat like a turtle as I walked toward the horses munching on hay below the barn. I wished I had their fur coats, thick and wooly and brave against the wind. I wished I had their manes, wild and tangled and smelling of dust and autumn leaves, summer heat and ice.

They keep it all in there, all of the seasons.

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They nudged and kicked at one another, digging their noses deeper in the stack of hay, remembering green grass and fields, tasting warmer weather in their snack. I lingered there with them, noticing how the ice stuck on their eyelashes and clung to the long hair on their backs.

I scratched their ears and pulled some burs out of their manes and imagined what grove of trees they picked to wait out the storm last night, standing close and breathing on one another’s back. A herd.

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I followed them out of the protection of the barnyard and into the pasture where the frozen wind found my cheeks and the dogs cut footprints in the fluffy snow in front of my steps. They played and barked and jumped and sniffed and rolled in the white stuff, like children on a snow day.

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I found the top of the hill and let myself feel the cold. I had forgotten how my cheeks can go numb, how my fingertips ache, now my eyelashes stick together at the close of a blink and how the wind finds its way through the layers of clothing and freezes my skin.

I forgot that sometimes it doesn’t matter that you took care to wear wool socks and three pairs of pants — we are never as prepared as the animals. Sometimes, the weather just wins.

Winter barn

I wished I had fur on my ears, tufts on my feet, whiskers to catch the snow. I wished I had hard hooves to anchor me, my own herd to lean against, to protect me from the wind. I wished I was part of a pack, chasing and jumping and rolling through the drifts.

I might have stayed out longer if I had these things. I would have explored how the creek had froze, stuck my nose in the snow, walked along the banks of the coulee, leaned against the buttes and followed the indecisive sun.

But my scarf wasn’t thick enough, there was snow in my boots and my skin is fragile and thin. No, my body’s not wooly and my nose is not fuzzy. And my fingers? Well, if we can’t have hooves, then we at least have fingers, to knit sweaters and sew together blankets, our hands to build fires and houses to protect us, our arms to wrap around one another, our feet to propel us toward shelter or sun and our brains to invent things like warm, spicy soup and hot coffee and buttery buns.

No, we might not have fur coats, but we have opposable thumbs. I pointed my frozen feet toward the house and flung open the door, stripped off my layers and stood over the heater vent, happy for my warm house and man-made blankets.

And happier still for a promise of spring that isn’t too far away on this winter day…

Winter Horses

Not on days like today

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Spring Trees

Not on days like today
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I planted some flowers this afternoon as the temperature reached up toward what we can finally call warm.

Some are working to root themselves in pots that have sat for years on this deck, and some sit next to me on the deck waiting for a turn as I watch the moon come up. Behind me, the sun streaks the sky pink, making its long, dramatic exit.

I leave more things undone these days than ever before. It’s a part of motherhood no one told me about. Inside the house, the ice in my husband’s whiskey glass clinks as he walks across the room, but I am outside searching for words tonight.

So I look up. The tops of the oak and ash trees are budding a neon sort of green, trying to compete with the birches. It’s quiet out here in a way that a world waking up and winding down is quiet.

The birds are having their final say for the evening. I hear whistles and chirps and the flap of the wings of ducks on the dam against the drone of crickets and the creak of frogs.

Something big is moving on the trail in the trees. I watch for it to appear — a deer, maybe an elk or cow — but it quiets and so I look up again.

Up at those treetops that were bare this morning, before the sun shone at 75 degrees, and I wonder if those crickets and birds and frogs, if that wind and the barking dogs in the distance, if the cattle and the babies and the mommas and the daddies and the engines of the trucks rumbling way up on the highway could take the same breath and hold it all at once, at the right moment, if we might actually be able to hear those leaf buds emerging one by one.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

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We will never know. Nothing here could ever stay so quiet. I suppose it’s all magic enough as it is.

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I’m anxious for the change of seasons. I feel like those leaves. It’s why I loaded up our pickup box with little cherry tomato plants and basil, petunias and geraniums, black dirt and seeds. All of the hope that is held in the small bud of a sprouting leaf I hold inside of me.

This afternoon, I filled up the baby pool with warm water as the sun shone on the backs of my splashing, naked children, and I dug in the dirt. Before I could strip her down appropriately, my youngest daughter, 1-year-old Rosie, climbed in that tiny wading pool. With her blankie clenched in her fist, she drug it with her to the water that was soaking her socks and up over the hem of her little pink pants.

And when she was where she wanted to be, she just stood there and looked out over her world and up at the big blue sky and fluffy clouds shaped to fit her imagination. A better mother might have scooped her up, but I just let her be for a moment.

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We’re all so thirsty. Tomorrow it will be cooler, and maybe it will rain, but today they were mermaids and then they were fishermen and I was a gardener dreaming of plump red tomatoes bursting in our mouths and a world where we might sell them together, my daughters and me, in little Mason jars on a card table at a farmers market in town.

Someone told me a story like this once, and there are times that my dreams are much bigger, but not today.

Not on days like today.

A song for a new season

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A song for a new season
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If I could fill my page with words to make up an ending to each season that has given us her all — glorious orange sunsets and wildflower purple and the deep, dark blue of the rain — I would give the wind a voice.

And his voice would be deep and coarse as he reminisced about the way the grass bent beneath him as he worked to push the storms through the buttes and over the prairies. He would tell us how he worried it might dry up, or maybe how he thought the big banks of snow might never disappear and he would cry about the flames he can’t keep from rising, and he would declare, “It has to be, it has to be, just like I must take the leaves from your trees.”

And then he would laugh a big laugh at the way our hair stands on end when he comes around and how we lean into him out here. If I wrote the book, I’d make the wind tell us.

If I could paint the most beautiful cooldown, I would splash the canvas with gold and rich pinks and burgundy hues. I would use my soft brush to give the sky more clouds, thousands of clouds, for the sun to reflect her light and choreograph her show. And I would paint her glow on horses’ backs and splash her down between the shadows of the trees where the deer go to water.

And next to the barn, the cats would bask in the light — the light I would make live forever if I could, or at least to live on that canvas in the space between day and night, sun and storm, warm and cold…

If I could paint the cooldown, I would use all of my brushes. And if I were to sing an encore for the season’s end, I would put the chorus on the wings of the geese so as they catch the wind and touch those clouds, it would ring familiar and in harmony with the croak of the frogs taking a breath in the creek bed to “ooh” and “aah” along..

And then, the wild elk bedded down in the tall yellow grass would throw their heads back and bugle a sad song of goodbye, the crickets would hush and the coyotes would take to the hilltops. The kittens would purr softly, the mice would hold still already and the cattle would stop their chewing to hear as the verses moved from the crocus to long days and onto cool rain and the smell of snow coming…

And then, the song would swell and blend with the howling dogs in the yard and the last screech of the red-tailed hawk as the bridge pushed through to the sound of the geese fading out, heading south.

And in their place would be only the sounds of winter.

And a palette of blues and grays, a familiar wind to remind us and a new quiet chorus repeating

Small things

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A few small things
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I love standing on the top of the hills around our house and scanning the horizon and the ribbon of road below me to see who might be coming or going — the sun, a neighbor, an oil field worker on his way home.

But often I feel like looking closer to see what’s happening underneath the grass, in the shady cool places of the ranch. All those small pieces that make up the mosaic of this landscape fascinate me.

In my other life, before the babies came, I would spend my evenings in my walking shoes, enjoying quiet moments out in our pastures. My favorite was when my husband would come along and we would wander together, slow and hushed along the deer trails, noticing how the dragonflies swoop and swerve, their delicate and transparent wings reflecting the sun.

Pushing a path alongside the beaver dam, the late summer cattails fuzz and the flowers hang on in the shade, staying cool and crisp as they reach for small glimmers of sun peeking through the trees. On the surface of the creek, the water bugs stay rowing and afloat by some combination of mechanics or magic above the school of minnows flashing their silver bellies in the hot sunlight.

I look at him; we look up at the birch tree branches. He looks at me and I tell him to watch for mushrooms growing on trees and chokecherries and the plums in the draw.

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And we walk. Along that creek that runs between the two places and down to the neighbors’, through beaver dams and stock dams and ponds where the frogs croak wildly. We would clear a path through bullberry brush and dry clover up to our armpits, jumping over washouts and scrambling up eroded banks, noticing how some oak trees have fallen, hollowed out and heavy with the weight of their age, the weight of a world that keeps changing, no matter if a human eye ever sweeps past it or inspects it or theorizes about it, or tries to save it. It changes.

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We’ve been married 12 years now, but I’ve loved this person since I was a just a kid. Three years ago on those quiet walks, we could only imagine a time in our lives where moments like these would have to be planned and adjusted to accommodate baby bedtimes, bathtimes and suppertime schedules.

That our life and our living room would be covered in noise and toys and new tiny moments we’ve created on our own that now hold their own mystery.

And I used to wish that this man and I would walk together in the coulees in these acres for a lifetime, with eyes wide to the small things that live and thrive and swim and crawl and grow outside our door.

And now, I hope that for us and for our own little creatures living and growing and crawling and thriving inside of these doors so that we might all move together in life like we moved through those trees — switching leads, pointing out beauty, asking questions, being silent, stepping forward, taking time and loving the moment … and one another in it.

Mushrooms on Trees

Comfort found in the rain drops

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It’s raining this morning. The windows to my bedroom are open and I woke to the sound of it trickling from the sky in the darkness, the bathroom light on and my husband already up, downstairs, brewing coffee and getting our baby dressed for her day at daycare.

Although it took me a while to realize. That’s usually my job. I get her up and properly snuggled and dressed so he can take her down the road with him. But I blinked my eyes open to listen to the rain, and then I heard them on the baby monitor sitting on my nightstand, the clicking and swishing and chattering of our morning ritual.

“Blankie?” She said.

“Yes baby,” he said.

And I thought, “how sweet,” and that I could just lay here under these covers, under this roof, listening to the sound of the rain and their chatter as I drifted back to sleep.

But then I remembered her hair’s probably a huge mess, some standing straight up, some sticking straight out and the rest down in her eyes and she will need her ponytail, and her dad, with his big, calloused fingers, gets nervous about ponytails.

So I swung my legs over the bed and shuffled down the stairs, rubbing my eyes and sneaking up on them as they entered the hallway.

“Oh good, just in time!,” he smiled, handing me our daughter with one arm while carefully placing the tiny pink elastic hair tie in my hand. She laid her head on my shoulder and we sat together in the chair, putting on her finishing touches for the day, her shoes, her flowered jacket and, yes, her little ponytail before her dad swooped her up and down the road in the rain.

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Eleven years married and this is what our life is now, a series of balancing and handoffs and what’s for supper? Did she eat? Did she bath? Did you see her latest trick? And some days this life feels more overwhelming and out of our control than others, with a crazy schedule and bills and bad news and bad weather and bad things happening to good people and we can’t do much about so much…

But this morning we all rose slowly together under the calm quiet of the morning, a team of a little family who has each other’s hands, and hearts and ponytails under the roof that is a our messy little sanctuary, under a sky that’s raining again…

Thank God it’s raining again.

Coming Home: The hope that lives in a rain shower
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Rainbow over east pasture

It rained last weekend. For the first time since spring arrived, the clouds rolled in during the early morning and they hung over the land all day like a sweet, life-giving blanket, sending waves of drenching water, turned to sprinkles, turned to mist turned back to heavy rain, on and off all day.

It rained. It really rained last weekend. And it didn’t matter if there was an outdoor event planned, or a camping trip, or a parade — we all welcomed it on our skin, remembering what it felt like to be given a promise that the dust will settle.

We’ve been waiting for this moisture for months, although the drought hasn’t affected us or hit us as hard as our neighbors to the south. Our hay crop is alright this year. We have enough grass. Our livelihoods don’t fully depend on the cattle we raise. We’ll be fine.

Others are not so lucky this time around.

And I can’t help but think of how the weather controls us as I stand with my face pressed to the screen door, letting the rain speckle my cheeks, watching it drip off of the deck railing, shiver the leaves on the trees, turn the garden dirt black and open my purple petunias up for a drink.

It’s magic really. I’ve been watering those flowers for months from the sink every day with Edie and her little green plastic watering can. And they were fine, if not a little sad and hopeless sitting there stuck in the hot sun in those pots.

And then it rained like it did and they grew new leaves, petals sprouted overnight, vines reached toward the sky and they were alive again, with one big gulp.

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I felt like those flowers, sluggish and worried about lightning strikes and fires, stuck inside in the afternoons with Edie, eating popsicles and both of us refusing to put on pants.

I remember hot summers like this from my childhood, the sharp, dry grasses scratching our bare legs as the buzz of the hoppers cut through the heat.

The dog days of summer had its own smells of dusty hay bales and sprinklers waking up the lawn. It tasted like water from the hose and sweat and push-up pops on Grandma’s front porch. It felt like the prick of a cactus after a misplaced seat and mosquito bites itched clean off the skin and sweaty horsehair sticking to your legs after a bareback ride to pick chokecherries.

But when it rained, it changed our world from dust to mud, from popsicles to warm soup, from itchy legs to soaked jeans, from grasshoppers to chickadees, from sprinklers to puddles.

And maybe it’s just how I was raised, but even as a kid, even on the days I planned on swimming in the big lake or meeting friends at the pool or riding my horse in the parade in town, I can’t remember ever being disappointed by a summer shower, knowing full well, maybe even then, that in those tiny drops, hope lives.

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Listen to my song, “Raining”
From the album “Nothing’s Forever”

Buy it on iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby or on jessieveedermusic.com

Spring: From the experts

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Signs of spring come earlier for the experts
by Jessie Veeder
4-9-17
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The first calf of the year was born on the Veeder Ranch last week. That afternoon I went out on a walk to clear my head and to climb to the top of a hill to see if there were any mommas off alone on a hillside or in the trees, a pretty sure sign of some birth action.

But I didn’t see a thing.

Spring Thaw

But I struck out again.

Yes, to me the world was still brown with a few splashes of white snow in the deep coulees and, except for the dang hornets that have magically come to life to bang against the windows of my house, no sign of new life quite yet.

I strolled home with the dogs sniffing out the path in front of me, on their own mission for signs of spring, kicked off my shoes and went inside.

That evening my husband and I loaded Edie up in the pickup to go feed the cows, and just as we were pulling out of driveway, I got a text from dad.

“Got our first calf today,” it said.

First Calf

“Of course we did,” I said out loud to myself, wondering when the heck I will develop the sixth sense and laser beam eyes Dad has for things like this. We met him down the road a ways and Edie helped him unroll a bale by pulling out handfuls of hay and picking a nice strand to chew on herself.

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We drove over to take a look at the new baby who was standing on wobbly legs, fresh, slick and black as a bean. When my husband came back with the tagger (because we never have what we need when we need it), all four of us lingered out there in the warm spring air, leaning against the pickup doors and letting Edie work the windshield wipers, radio knob, steering wheel and headlights of the parked pickup, certain she was accomplishing the most important task on the place that day.

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After a half hour of solving life’s problems, we all went home for supper.

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The next day while I was in town for a meeting, I got another text from Dad.

“Found them first!” it said, with a blurry photo of a bunch of crocuses attached.

Apparently he also knew we were in an unspoken contest.

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I put my hands on my hips and huffed.

“Of course you did,” I texted back, thinking if it couldn’t be me, at least someone found the first promises of spring.

Thinking how different the world can look behind another set of eyes.

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And so with the first calf, the first crocus, the frogs croaking in the dam and the birds flying home and the appearance of Edie’s garden hat, I think it’s safe to say spring is here.

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Oh, thank goodness, spring is here.

My attempt at winter.

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Oh my gosh you guys we got a lotta snow out here the past few days.

In a blink of an eye it turned from Thanksgiving to Christmas and I haven’t been out of the house since Sunday.

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I’ve been home with the baby and then, the past two days, Husband brought her in town to play at daycare and I’ve been hunkered down at my laptop trying my damnedest to finish this book project, which means I’ve been combing through the archives of the past five years of blogging, column writing and photo taking, trying to pick my favorites and make it all make sense together and generally going crazy and becoming completely sick of myself.

So before the sun set I decided to go outside to see what I could see and get this stink off of me.

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Husband said the road up and out of the house was pretty bad, but that he got after it with the tractor last night and cleared it up a bit more, so I was feeling confident I could help him finish the chore he didn’t get to last night (or last weekend before the storm hit like we should have done), which was moving the 4-wheelers into the big garage in the barn yard.

No problem.

But first I needed my hat, cloves, boots, neckerchief and coveralls, which were upstairs in the garage in a bin where, apparently, judging by the evidence of hair, the cat sleeps.

No problem. A little cat hair never hurt anything.

Now, time to start the 4-wheeler. But first, I need a shovel to brush the foot of snow off, and also, maybe dig a little trail behind it to help it get unstuck.

No problem. Started right up. Pulled right out, drove down the road along the snow trail Husband cut with his pickup this morning and I was toot-tooting right along until…ugh…what’s that smell?…stop.

Sniff my coat.

Sniff my glove.

Sniff my hand.

Sniff my coveralls.

Sniff my coveralls again…

Smells like cat piss.

The cat pissed on my coveralls.

I was wearing cat piss coveralls. A perfect outfit for failing my five attempts at making it through the snow and up the hill and out of our driveway to get to the big shop in the barnyard.

snow-2-1

So me and my cat piss coveralls brought it back home to get the pickup and, still trying to be helpful and avoid going back to my computer, I drove the pickup to the shop so Husband could drive it home when he figured out a way to easily get that 4-wheeler out of the yard and into the shop, finishing my half-assed attempt at getting a chore done like usual.

I don’t know how he’ll feel about his pickup being parked there, but it’s too late now. I walked home and left it for him anyway, me and my stink cloud trailing behind me, hitting some snow banks that had me crawling on my hands and knees to get out, successfully completing enough exercise to at least get me through the rest of December.

Now I’m home and my lungs are burning, my back is sweating, my cheeks are frozen, my book’s still not done and getting the stink off me failed in more than way than one.

But if I hurry I might get myself a full shower, leg shave and everything, before the baby gets home.

So that’s something.

Peace, Love and Cat Pee Pants,

Jessie