Flannel shirts and wild plum blossoms

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

When I grow up I want to be the kind of woman who lets her hair grow long and wild and silver. When I’m grown I hope I remember to keep my flannel shirts draped over chairs, hanging in the entryway and sitting on the seat of the pickup where they are ready and waiting for me to pull them on and take off somewhere, the scent of horse hair on the well-worn sleeve.

When I grow up I want to remember every spring with the smell of the first buds blooming on the wild plum trees what this season means to me. When I grow up I pray I don’t forget to follow that smell down into the draws where the air falls cooler the closer you get to the creek, where the wind is calm.

When I grow up I hope I don’t find I have become offended by a bit of mud tracked from my boots onto the kitchen floor. I hope I keep the windows open on the best summer evenings with no regard for the air conditioning or the dust…because a woman can only be so concerned with messes that can be cleaned another day, especially when she needs to get the crocuses in some water.

When I am older and my memory is filled to the brim, I hope that the smell of damp hay will still remind me of feeding cows with my father on the first warm day of spring when the sun had warmed the snow enough to cause small rivers to run on our once frozen trail. I hope it reminds me how alive I felt wading in that stream while my dad rolled out the bale and I tested the limits of the rubber on my boots.

And when my hair turns silver I hope I remember that my favorite colors are the colors of the seasons changing from brown to white to green to gold and back again. I pray I never curse the rain, that I don’t forget the rain is my favorite color of them all.

Yes, when I am an old woman and my knees don’t bend the way they need to bend to get me on the back of a horse, I hope I am still able to bury my face in her mane, to run my hands across her back and lean on her body while I remember the way my spirits lifted as she carried me and my worries away to the hilltops.

I hope I recall how the first ride of spring made my legs stiff, my back creak and my backside sore, even as a young woman with muscles and tall boots.

Yes, boots! When I am an old woman I hope I will wear my red wedding boots every once in a while and recall how I stood alone in them out in the cow pasture at 22-years-old waiting for the horse-drawn wagon to come over the hill and take me to the oak tree where my friends and family gathered and the man I loved was waiting to marry me.

My red boots will remind me, so in all of the shuffle and lost things that become our lives, I hope I remember to save them.

And as I watch the lines form on my husband’s face, little wrinkles around his eyes from work and worry and laughter, I hope I remember to say something funny, to tease him a bit, so I might be reminded again how he got the most important ones…the ones that run the deepest.

Yes, when I am old and my hair is silver and long and wild, I hope I feel it was all worth it.

But more than anything I hope that those things that made me– the dirt under my fingernails; mud on my boots; a good man’s laughter; the strong back of a horse; the rain that falls on the north buttes and the scent of summer rolled up in a hay bale at the end of a long winter–I hope they remain here on this place so that another spirit living along this pink road might one day find herself in flannel shirts and wild plum blossoms.

Victoria’s Secret models don’t get wood ticks…

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Feel it? You do don’t you? That tingling crawling up your bare leg, on the inside of your pants, towards parts of your body you’d rather not mention. You’ve got a creepy feeling, and now that feeling has spread to the back of your neck where you’re sure something is there poking up toward your hair-line. Go ahead, slap it. Scratch it. I’ll wait.

Ok, now it’s moved to your arm where you feel like the hairs are standing on end. There’s something there you’re sure, and it ain’t a mosquito. What is it? Where is it? You crank your elbow around and retch your neck toward your back to reach it.

Nothing.

But something! It has to be something! There it is moving up your leg again.

Oh, oh dear. You’re stripping off your pants? No worries. I understand. I’ll look away while you inspect your pale white stems, leaning over to rub them down, scratching, calling to your husband, your momma, your sister, your preacher to come and look! Come and check! I think I have a tick!

A tick?!

Yup.

You found it didn’t you.

Invasive little bastards (sorry preacher).

They’re here. It’s official.

He looks innocent, but crawling under that fur and those floppy ears is a nightmare...

Yup. It’s tick season and I’ve rung it in in typical ranch style fashion, celebrating by discovering my first little friend while on a shopping spree to Victoria Secret. I had showered, combed my hair, put on some makeup and made the long trip to the big town for undies. I was feeling good. I was feeling a little less like a grubby ranch girl and nearly presentable, dare I say damn sexy while I thumbed through the racks of impractical underwear. I was wincing at the thought of a permanent lace wedgie when I reached up to scratch my head only to discover one of the many reasons I will never be a Victoria Secret model.

And it's too bad, I mean, I showed so much promise in my early years...

Because I can’t imagine Heidi Klum has ever discovered a wood tick stuck in her hairline while frolicking amongst the ridiculous push-up bras and butt-crack revealing undergarments and smelly lotions and powders and weird music only to wonder just how long the damn thing had been there.

Nope. Victoria Secret models shave their legs…

Victoria Secret models have other people comb their hair for them…

Victoria Secret models live in places with white sand and big sunglasses and gentle winds that blow their hair in just the right direction.

Victoria Secret models don’t have to check for ticks.

But dammit, it’s April in Western North Dakota and I have been reminded, once again, I am no model. And unless I want to show up to a meeting with one of the world’s most loathed blood sucking insects taking up permanent residence on my body, I have to check for them everywhere and on a regular schedule.

Because out here surrounded by grasses and trees and fallen logs and dogs that never stay home, they are indeed everywhere.

Yesterday I found a really large family of them having a Thanksgiving style meal inside the pug’s left ear.

Disgusting.

I wrestled my pudgy black mutt to the ground while I applied Frontline to his back and wondered if they make something like that for wild humans who live in wild places.

Seriously people, after finding a wood tick in my bed last night I have decided I’m not above wearing a tick collar. I mean, I am sure I wouldn’t be the first human to go to these lengths to avoid the plague of the pests. Maybe I could make some sort of fashion statement.

Ugh, it’s intense people, the hatred I’ve had for them ever since I was a kid who would come home from the trees at night only to strip down to my underwear while my momma pulled up to sixty or more wood ticks from my skinny, pale body.

When I was that age, nothing could keep me from those woods. But the ticks? They tried their damnedest.

And we still hate each other.

Well, I hate them.

They love me.

They love the place behind my ear, the spot where my waistband rests at my back, my arm pits, my thick head of hair and even my damn belly button for the love of Martha.

Scratch…scratch…scratch…

You feel itchy don’t you. You’re running your hands through your hair, huh? Calling your husband? It’s that spot on your leg again?

Go ahead, take off your jeans. Inspect for the insect.

I’m doing the same.

The boy on the hill…

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Most Sundays we get together with mom and pops for dinner. After a week of work and crazy schedules followed by a weekend of chores and projects or travel, one of us decides that someone should cook a decent meal, pour some wine in a glass and make us all sit down.

I admit, with the house and my weird schedule, it has been momma making the meals lately.

But it’s one of the things I think we both look forward to, and now that the sun stays out a little longer and there’s no snow in sight, I pull on my shoes, whistle for the dogs and follow the winding creek to my parent’s house over three big hills, nestled in the oak groves. Husband, usually busy putting in the last nail for the day, meets me over there in his pickup and soon we’re settled the kind of easy talk that comes only with the people you’re closest to.

We complement my mother’s cooking, tease her about her bottomless wine supply, talk about work and weather and my stupid dogs. Usually I whip out a story that requires use of an accent and pops laughs and squeezes his eyes tight as he throws his head back. It’s my favorite look on him for so many reasons…

But my favorite is when we start talking memories. It usually always comes to this, a story about my father’s childhood in the very spot we’re building a house. A revelation about how my mom was forced to run track by her cheerleading coach, so she did it…in ballet slippers. Husband’s confessions about the punishment dealt out after fighting with his brother that included holding hands with him on the couch for as long as his father saw fit.

There’s something about being a room with people who you know the best in this world, people who know you in the same way, and still being able to learn something about them. And it doesn’t matter if we’ve heard the same story a few times, there is always something to add, a question to ask that reveals more character, more memory, sheds a different light on this person.

Last night pops shared a story about his childhood that I’m sure I’ve heard before, possibly dozens of times. But it doesn’t matter, I could hear it a thousand times and be transported.

I want to exist in this story, in this ten minute vignette of my father at four years old that somehow sums up everything he became here on this landscape as a child, growing into a man with white hair and a wife who he transplanted from city sidewalks and dance studios to a house at the end of a dirt road in the coulee with party-line phones and a bull snake in the shed.

I love the way he tells it, sitting at the end of the table, plate pushed forward, arms folded, coffee brewing for dessert. He looks to the ceiling as if up there he might catch a glimpse of that little boy, four-years-old with curly black hair riding bareback on a paint pony alongside his father. It’s fall or summer, he can’t remember. But I imagine the leaves were just starting to turn as the pair trotted out of the barnyard, the little boy on his father’s trail moving east toward the reservation where the cattle graze in the summer.

He’s not sure why his father took him along for an almost seven-mile-one-way cross-country trip. At four-years-old, he thinks now that it might have been a little extreme for such a youngster. But ask him then and it was all he wanted to do. Leave him behind? He would have tried to follow anyway.

The pastures out east, even today with an increase in activity, are some of the most isolated and untouched places out here. The rolling buttes rise and fall for miles between fences into creek bottoms with black mud and cattails, creeks that are difficult to cross with a horse, even in the late summer. The oak groves, bordered by thorny bull berry brush and thistle, begin to blend into one another and look the same. I’ve seen them play tricks on even the most familiar cowboy, getting him mixed up on what draw he’s in or where he is when he emerges from ducking and cutting through the narrow cattle trails along the banks.

So there he was, a little boy, clinging tight to that pony as it jumped over the creek and raced up the side hills to keep up with the big horse. And it was at the top of one of those rocky hills that his father told him to stay and wait.

“Don’t move,” his father said as he made plans to check the creek bottoms, to find cows that have been milling in there to stay cool and get away from the flies. “I will come back and get you.”

So on top of that hill sat my father on his pony. He shakes his head now and laughs as he tells it and we take a sip of our coffee, shift in our seats and imagine him as a little boy, wind flopping his hat and moving fluffy clouds that made shadows on the buttes.

He can’t remember if he was scared or nervous now. He searches for a recollection of that feeling in his coffee cup and then rests his chin on his fist. All he can remember is that he was told not to move and so he didn’t. He didn’t move as he scanned the hills and squinted into the oak trees for any sign that his father might be on his way back to him.

And while he was peering into the horizon, holding his breath and the reigns of his pony, someone did come over that hill. But it wasn’t his father in his saddle and cowboy hat, but a Native American girl with long black hair and legs dangling on each side of her bare backed horse under the late summer sky.

“Can you imagine what she thought,” my father chuckles at the memory of this girl, who he recalls was a teenager, but was probably only about ten or eleven years old, so young herself. “Here she found this little boy on a pony all by himself out there on the hill.”

He goes on then to tell us the part of the story we remember from last time it was told here at this kitchen table. He recalls how she asked him if he was ok and if he was lost. He told her that he wasn’t supposed to leave this spot. That his dad was coming back for him.

My father doesn’t remember many of the details of conversation, what she looked like, what they said, but he remembers she stayed with him, she stayed with that little boy with curly hair and a hat flopping in the prairie wind, on that hilltop, more than likely holding her breath and scanning the horizon for any sign of a cowboy coming back.

Now he pulls at his napkin and says though he doesn’t remember how long she sat with him, but when you’re four years old ten minutes can seem like hours. And I can relate, remembering my own time spent on hilltops waiting for this father of mine to come back for me. It could have been hours. It could have been minutes. But she stayed until that little boy had an escort through the valleys and over the creeks, back west to the barnyard and to his momma and big sister waiting with canned meat and biscuits and for a report of the day’s events.

And so he told it to his mother, the story about the girl. And for years to come around their dinner table this would be one of their family’s stories, one of the memories they would share over Sunday meals about a little boy who was my father who had found a girlfriend out east in the hilltop.

And as my father protested, they would throw back their heads and close their eyes and laugh…

Spring is springing…

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Spring is slowly springing on the ranch and I thought I would send you off into the weekend to enjoy it.

Pick yourself some crocuses…

Climb to the top of a hill…

Count the birds that are finding their way home…

Search for green things…

Follow the winding, thawing, crisp cold creek…

Catch the sunrise…

Stay out until sunset…

And just live in it.

Happy weekend

The dangerous life of a Handyman’s wife…

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So we’re in the middle of finishing that house that came down the road to our little valley at the end of December. And by finishing, I mean, we’re the ones responsible for the little things…like a floor, doors, steps, a master bedroom/bathroom and, well, a ceiling…pretty much all the basics that one might need to actually LIVE in a house.

No big deal right? I mean, I should have known when I said “I do” to a man who was raised with a father who had a collection of lawnmowers/washers and dryers/stoves/boats/kitchen sinks in his back yard in case he needed a part for the one that was currently in use in the house.

I should have known when my own washing machine went out that the options were not “get a new one,” but “call dad and see if he has any extra motors laying around.”

He did.

Four of them.

And I think three of them might still be in the basement.

"You know, in case we need 'em"

Anyway, that’s how things are around here. If you want something done and still want to be able to afford to buy Cheerios for breakfast, we do it ourselves.I’ve come to terms with this concept after completing a full out, strip down, shag carpet, hot-tub in the living room remodel that brought a 1974 Brady Bunch house up to the times of hardwood flooring and, well, no hot tubs in the living room. Yup, 200 hours of staining and varnishing, three hundred less brain cells and one head stuck in a ladder later, I was convinced.

I am the wife of a handyman.

And this is our project...forever...

So I went into it with a combination of confidence and dread. I mean, I knew my love in a tool belt (and oh how I love him in a tool belt) could get us living in a beautiful home designed by our two brains. I knew that under his direction I would hand him tools, saw a few boards, make lumber-yard runs, choose the paint colors, try to avoid my thumbs with the hammer, deliver sandwiches and beer and keep the music on the iPod flowing with motivational tunes. I had that covered. There are some things I can handle.

And really, it has been going good so far. If you ask my brave and fearlessly confident husband, he’s got this under control. Take out the minor incident where my three-year-old niece came to visit, decided she had to try out our new potty and plopped a little poopie in our unplumbed bathroom, and I’d say it’s been down right Bob Vila-esque around here.

Don't worry, we're still friends...

So why have I spent that last month fighting off night terrors you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya. Some genius decided to build a house with 20 foot ceilings. And that genius, knowing full well who would be praying to Jesus, Mary and Joseph while trembling on an 8 foot ladder on top of 10 foot scaffolding with her arms above her head, fears heights the same way most people fear plummeting to a bone-crushing, back-breaking, neck-wrenching, bloody, mangled death.

Yup.

shit

That’s what I pictured each and every time I walked across that homemade scaffolding, boards creaking and bending, the sound of someone hyperventilating in my attempt to bring a nail-gun (the one I am always sure is going to go off randomly, shooting a 2 inch nail through the top of my foot without warning) to my dearly beloved who somehow thinks 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 one day going to be our living room, is an acceptable risk to take just to ensure that a board is secure.

I scream “screw the board, save yourselves,” fling the nail gun and run to the corner of the house, the corner far away from any ledge and plummeting death.

It’s ridiculous, I’m aware. And I feel sorry for husband who is just trying to make our vision for a beautiful cedar ceiling a reality. I feel sorry for him because I come by it naturally. It’s a hereditary condition spawned from my roots of prairie people who passed up the terrifying mountains to come to live in houses with one floor, low ceilings and a basement.

One of the first Veeder ranch dwellings. You see where I'm coming from?

I feel sorry for him because the only help he’s had at his disposal for this sky-scaping, death-defying, circus-act of a job is the two prairie people with the worst case of vertigo in the family.

Yours truly, and her father.

Yup. Pops has it bad too, and frankly, I blame him for all of these undesirable qualities I’ve inherited. The big nose, the fuzzy hair, the tendency to ramble AND the crippling fear of high places. All him.

I might just blame my unhealthy obsession with four legged creatures on him too...

But the difference between Pops and me is this. I avoid, complain, sob, tremble, look away and repeatedly tell my significant other to “be careful, watch where you step, hold on, hold on, don’t lean…I’ve got the ladder…shit…don’t fall…don’t fall…don’t fall…you’re killing me…”

But Pops, he just sucks it up, wipes the sweat that forms uncontrollably on his brow, suffers in silence as his son in law dangles with one arm from the rafters while he leans over the ledge, and then goes home to have vivid nightmares about people falling off skyscrapers.

Which brings me to last weekend where, after weeks of this type of torture, the end of this dreaded ceiling project was in sight. I was feeling pretty good about the fact that we had managed to nail approximately thirty -thousand boards to the rafters without anyone losing a limb, shooting an eyeball with the nail gun, cutting a finger off, or, you know, plummeting to a gruesome death.

But we weren’t out of the woods yet. Nope. We still had one giant task that included raising and nailing a 15 foot beam to the very, tippy-top, peak of our the ceiling of our new home. This was to complete the job, make it look finished, give us a place to hang our chandelier and get us moving on to the next task that required shorter ladders.

So I suggested calling the National Guard.

Husband took the phone from my hand and told me to go find my pops.

I cried.

And then did what I was told, because in the end practicality always wins over drama in my life.

Although you would never guess it by the looks of this outfit...but that was in my pre-husband era...

I found Pops in the shop, on solid ground, working on his beloved 4-wheeler. He followed me to the house to find husband waiting for us on the damned, creaky scaffolding equipped with two ladders and a nail gun.

The task? Hold the beam up to the top of the 20 foot ceiling while husband climbs and dangles and runs and jumps and back flips to get the damn thing to hold.

I trembled and felt a little of that morning’s eggs hit my throat. I held my breath and as Pops held the beam on one ladder I stayed on the scaffolding holding a 10 foot 2×4 against the middle part of the beam.

And there we stood, the two of us conjuring up new nightmares and worst-case scenarios as my Bob Villa Ninja went from one near death position to the next. Pops told me not to watch as husband stretched his ladder across the stairway and stood with nothing but a thin board between him and a 15 foot fall.

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

We held it together, the two of us. We only hollered “be careful up there!” and “don’t fall!” like fifty-five times during the course of fifteen minutes (although I would have been more comfortable with a number in the hundreds.) And we thought we were out of the woods, everybody’s head in tact, when husband climbed down from the ladder and put his hands on his hips.

“Looks good,” he said.

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

“I just need to nail one more spot,” 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 to reach. 20 feet up there, un-reachable unless you had wings.

Pops used our best material to try and convince 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 Ninja Bob Villa 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 stair case with a nail gun in his hand reaching for the ceiling.

And it seems we lost it.

I whimpered and squeezed back the tears as I grabbed the ladder. And while I was saying fifty prayers to Jesus, Pops 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 Pops declared.

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

Well, I guess we all have to die someday…If you need me I’ll be around here somewhere…hiding from Pops.

From the top of the hill…

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Sometimes, when the day is coming to a slow close and my head is spinning with worry and lists, schedules and a pile of things that must wait until tomorrow and the dishes from a dinner of meat and potatoes sits waiting to be taken care of on the table, I slip on my boots and head out the door.

I’m usually not gone long, and husband has grown accustomed to this behavior, understanding it’s not a storm out, or a give up, or a frustrated stomp, but a ritual that his wife needs to put a flush in her cheeks and make sure she’s still alive out here where the trucks kick up dust on the pink road and the barn cats quietly wait in the rafters of the old buildings for a mouse to scatter by.

I tell him I need to go walking and he knows which trail I’ll take, down through the barnyard, past the water tank and up the face of the gumbo hill, the one that lets you look back at the house where the kitchen light glows, the one that gives you the perfect view of the barn’s silhouette tall and dark against a sky that is putting on its last show of the night as it runs out of light.

It’s a ritual that needs timing, because that sun, once it decides it’s out, goes quickly to the other side of the world. My pace is not meandering but diligent. I need to get to the top of that hill. I need to find the horses before the last of the light cools down the air sends me back to the house to tend to the dishes and slip under the covers until we meet again in the morning.

So I time it, and sometimes, if there’s enough light I head a little further east to check out how the light hits the buttes in my favorite pasture making the hills look gold and purple and so far away. Sometimes I just keep walking until dark. And sometimes the evening finds me sitting on a rock or pacing in the middle of the ancient teepee rings that still leave their mark on the flat spot on the hill. I like to stand there and imagine a world with no buildings and no lights on the horizon. I examine the fire ring, close my eyes and think about sleeping under the leather of a teepee, covered in the skins of the animals, under a sky that promised rain and wind and snow and a sunrise every morning.

The same sky that promises me these things, but it cannot promise anything else.

I think of these people, the ones who arranged these rocks, hunted these coulees, and watched the horizons and I am humbled by the mystery of the ticking thing we call time.

And I wonder what they called it.

Because I take to those hills and look back at my home and the sections of our fences that have been washed away by the melting snow, the barn that is in desperate need of a new roof, a house that has stood for fifty-plus years on a foundation that crumbles and I am reminded that time takes its toll on this land the same way it puts lines around the corners of my eyes… and there is not one thing man can make to stop it.

These thoughts, this understanding, is not what you would call comforting or nostalgic, but it is a fact. A fact that I have come accustomed to when I climb those hills. A fact that builds roads and oil wells, new houses and fences and bigger power lines stretching across a landscape I still like to consider wild.

I climb to the hilltop to see how things have changed, to catch the last of the day’s sun, and I am reminded that the progress we seek is the same progress the wild world is after as well, but the change is steady and slow. Trees grow, the creek keeps flowing and eroding its banks, the weight of the snow sends hills crumbling…flowers bloom, wither and die and just as the earth is sure all is steady, in comes a storm, a twister, a high wind or a bolt of lightening to knock down some trees, create new ravines and change things a bit.

I climb to that hill and look back at that farmstead and remember those kids we used to be, running through the haystacks and searching the barn for lost kittens. I climb to that hill and I remember my grandmother in her shorts and tank top, exposing her brown skin while she worked in the garden. I remember my first ride on a horse by myself, getting bucked off near the old shop, hunting for Easter eggs with the neighbor girls in the gumbo hills behind my grandmother’s house, branding cattle in the round pen.

From the top of the hill I could still be ten-years-old and my grandmother could be digging up potatoes. From the top of the hill my cousins could be hiding in the hay bales and my father could be waiting on the side of the barn to jump out and scare them, sending them running and laughing and screaming. From the top of the hill the neighbor girls could be pulling up in their dad’s pickup, dressed in pastels and rain boots, ready to hunt for eggs. From the top of the hill you don’t notice all of the work that needs to be done on the fences, the roof of the house, the crumbling foundation.

From the top of the hill that light in the kitchen is still glowing the same color it was when I would come in from an evening chasing cattle with my father or catching frogs with my cousins to a house filled with the smell of my grandmother’s cooking.

From the top of the hill the only thing certain to change is the sky…

and everything else is forever.

A life (couple days) without dogs…

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Some days I’m not sure why I bother. Some days I wonder why the things that are supposed to be simple, things that other human people seem to manage properly without much sweat or confusion, don’t come the same kind of easy for me. Some days I wonder how most put-together people go through most put-together days without worry or lost sleep, without poop on the floor, panicked hollers in the night, slow drives down a country road at dusk with binoculars, worried phone calls to neighbors or a wrestling match on the kitchen floor with your husband and that stupid black dog with a smooshy face and one eyeball that at one time three years ago you decided was a good idea.

No. Simple has never been a word in a vocabulary dominated by the words “where the hell are the dogs?”

Some days.

Today was one of them.

Today is the day that I ask myself what my life would be like without the two stinky fur balls who have taken over my yard, my kitchen, my couch and my life. Today is the day I ask myself who I would be without them, what I would do with the extra time I would be gifted by not having to pick off their ticks, pluck porcupine quills from their noses, rescue them from the cows and drive over to my mom and pop’s to pick them up after their daily jaunts to visit their girlfriends.

Today is the day I contemplate this scenario because, well, I was nearly granted it.

A dog-free life.

Can you imagine?!

Maybe I should start from the beginning. See, its been on my radar for a while, the idea that these dogs of mine need to lead a much more civilized life. And by civilized I mean locked up behind bars in order to keep them from going wherever they have been going to snack on something rotten enough to cause gas emulsions that force husband and I out of our own home.

So when I received a call last week from a voice on the other end of the line telling me that two overly-friendly dogs had wandered three miles up the hill to an oil drilling site I did not hesitate to believe my ears. One whistle out the door revealed there were no dogs in site, so I pulled on my muck boots over the skinny jeans I wore to work and squished a beanie on my puffy town hair and drove my pissed off ass up to that site to retrieve them.

Now, a girl in skinny jeans and oversized boots with a Bozo-esque hairstyle in giant (but glamorous) sunglasses pulling onto a rig site is not a glimpse into womanhood these hard-hat wearing men see every day…nor was it a pretty glimpse. And if the outfit didn’t label me crazy, questioning these men in the middle of their work day about the whereabouts of a wandering one-eyed pug a giant brown lab sealed the deal.

Especially since not one of them knew what the hell I was talking about.

Shit.

It wasn’t until I made my way back down the hill that I realized I should have probably checked mom and pops’ place for the dogs before subjecting myself to a situation in which I could be labeled “crazy lady” in bar room conversations. Hindsight was a clear 20/20 as I pulled into their drive to find that sure as shit they were there. And judging by the relocation of pops’ work boot collection on the front lawn, they had been there all day.

Flash forward to yesterday when I came home to discover the dogs were again missing in action.

“Typical hooligan behavior, low life, vagabond rascals, curse word, curse word, curse word,” I muttered to myself as I got back in my car and drove down the pink road to mom and pops’ to retrieve their wandering, misbehaving, rebel-dog asses. But when I pulled into the drive something seemed fishy. All of pops’ boots were in place, his two dogs were laying lazily out in the sun and my dogs? Well, they didn’t come running out of the trees to greet me.

I stopped cursing and then I said “What the hell?” (Ok, I stopped cursing for a second.)

Gone.

The dogs were gone.

Shit.

I headed back home slowly, windows open, whistling into the wind, hollering their names, squinting into the hills and the trees, waiting for them to come flying out of wherever that smelly dead thing they like so much is lying.

Nothing.

I parked in our driveway to find Husband home and soon my string of cursing blended in harmony with his.

But we weren’t worried yet. We were just pissed. There was still time for them to climb out of whatever stinky hole they had found themselves in on purpose and make an appearance.

So we had supper, whistled for them a bit more, called my pops to check the status, wandered around the yard and then went to bed.

I asked husband if I should worry. He told me it would be a waste to worry about two dogs who have stupidly escaped a life of luxury to roll around in cow shit, munch on rotting rabbits, dig giant holes, and chase innocent deer over miles of rolling landscape.

Husband told me that we could worry tomorrow if they don’t show up.

So we went to bed pissed.

And I woke up worried.

Because when I opened the door to the morning air there were no dogs waiting on my stoop. Just three hungry cats meowing for food when they should be mousing.

So I drove to work slowly with the windows open, whistling into the frosty air and stopping into mom and pops’ place just to be sure they didn’t shack up with their girlfriends’ last night.

Nope.

No dogs.

I said a little prayer for the wanderers and went to work.

And when I got home the results were the same. No dogs and a pissed husband who hadn’t started worrying yet, but decided it might be time to go looking for them.

We got in the pickup and chose a direction, the first guess being a place where a pair of mis-fit dogs might wander in search of the affection and table scraps they have so unfortunately been denied in the home we’ve created for them.

So we headed to the drilling rig site a half mile from our house, a place I was fooled into thinking they were smart enough to avoid (But this time I wore a less ridiculous outfit, and brought a man with me.) When we pulled onto the site husband rolled down the window and asked one of the men if they have happened to see a couple canines roaming around.

I held my breath, certain I was going to get the same look I got last week when I asked the same question about the same damn dogs.

But I was pleasantly surprised when the man smiled and said something like “Oh, that round little black thing and a lab? Yeah? They’re around here somewhere. They’ve been here for a couple days. We’ve been feeding them. They should be over there….”

He pointed in the direction of three men working the platform of a giant piece of drilling equipment and our eyes followed the tip of his finger and settled angrily on the two banes of our existence who were staring up at the workers, tails wagging, ears perked, waiting for one of them to drop a piece of jerky or something.

Husband called out their names.

Nothing.

He moved closer, yelling a little louder.

Their stares were affixed.

He stormed toward them whistling.

The lab turned his head in acknowledgement.

Husband screamed their names.

The pug didn’t move.

He stomped his feet and clapped his hands.

The lab turned his head back toward the anticipated jerky….

And so you understand now, I hope, why I have been daydreaming about a simpler existence. An existence where I am not responsible for Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dumb and their appetite for adventure and tasty treats, but one where I am a proud owner of the more appealing and lower maintenance goldfish, small monkey or circus elephant.

But in my self-assessment about why and how I get myself into these situations when I am certain dog ownership isn’t as much of a debacle for regular human people as it is for me, I have come up with a solution that I am certain no regular human person would come up with.

Doggie prison.

And I’m open for business if anyone needs a rehab facility for their canines. There’s two overly friendly dogs waiting there to hand them their matching orange jumpsuits.

Multiple Personality March

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Ahhh, March. You bring us one month closer to the promise of spring with your wild and unpredictable snow storms, your extreme warmth, your puddles and mud, little bit of rain, thawed out cow plops, cloudy and sunny and then cloudy again skies. All of your personalities keep us on our toes and undecided about appropriate footwear and jackets and I like that about you.

I like that you bring on the wind and the mud, the fifty-degree temperatures and the blinding blizzards, the rain and the ice.

Yes March you’re a little ambitious. You get up a little earlier and go to bed a little later. And that suits you fine, all of that light reminding us that soon we will be able to stay outside until 10 pm and wake up with you at 6.

Soon our days will be full of warm sunshine and green grass sprinkled with flowers…

I am looking forward to it, I am. But truthfully March, right now, it doesn’t appear that all of us are on the same page. You know, the page we turn to take us from hibernation, head under the covers, groggy, snugly evenings that meld into dark and lazy, robe wearing mornings spent shuffling around the kitchen with our eyes barely open to the place where we crack open our windows and let the warm breeze sing us to sleep after a day spent under the soul-refreshing spring sky only to be wakened by the sliver of sun peeking through the window in the early morning hours, prompting us to pop out of bed and greet the chirping birds and fresh green grass poking through the earth…

Nope.

Some of us are not quite there yet.

Some of us are caught in limbo, the place between holding on to our winter coats and throwing caution and our fur, to the March wind.

Some of us are still sleepy.

Some of us aren’t quite ready to trade in our flannel p.j.s for nothing but the sheets.

Some of us haven’t shaved our legs for months.

Some of us wouldn’t mind another extra hour or so to finish up that reoccurring dream about Ryan Renolds.

Some of us need three to six cups of coffee before the day can start.

So March, don’t take this the wrong way. Realize it’s still early, the pug’s still snoring and I have yet to change out of my robe. March, I appreciate the little glimmers of hope you create and I expect that whole “Lion/Lamb” thing. I appreciate your puddles and the way you warm the hilltops. I like the vibe you’re throwing this week and what you’re promising for the weekend: 50+ degrees and a chance to ride some horses.

But I know your good mood won’t last. It never does.

And that’s why I haven’t packed up my furry vest and slippers that might as well be boots.

Nope.

I don’t trust you.

And neither do these guys.

They’ve been burned before.

So we’ve come to an agreement to milk it. To call it winter and sleep in. To lay down in your sunshine and put on another pot of coffee just in case.

We love your face March. We do.

But you can’t trick us. We’ve learned and we’re going to stay tired for a while longer.

So we aren’t moving, we aren’t shaving, we aren’t opening these windows, packing up the down coats, or looking for our short sleeves until at least mid April.

Yeah…when April gets it together, maybe we will too.

Maybe

The animals of winter…

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well the wind blew winter in this weekend and I breathed in the frozen air, a kind of sigh of relief that the season didn’t skip us altogether. Nope, the snow and the cold made it just in time to keep us wondering if there will be lions or lambs trotting in for the grand opening of March.

Oh, it doesn’t really matter much anyway. Around here we can’t trust in spring until the first weeks of June no matter how easy the winter season was on us. But on Sunday morning I was reminded of how much I missed winter all of these months when it was supposed to be snowing. The months I have come to call the extended fall…the early spring…

But we had winter yesterday and I couldn’t wait to get out in it. 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.

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.

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.

I found the top of the hill and remembered that I hadn’t felt this cold for months.

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.

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 in the snow, 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.

Oh, I would 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. In fact, I wasn’t sure if my nose was still attached to my face. And my fingers? Well, I decided then as I turned my body back toward the house with a billowing chimney that there was a reason for those fingers I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep. Yes, those fingers knit sweaters and sew together blankets, our hands build fires and houses to protect us, our arms wrap around one another, our feet propel us toward shelter or sun and our brains 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 to have experienced winter, 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…

Magic frost…

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

A glorious weekend settled in here at the ranch, confirming my theory that everything’s better with frosting. So it was my delight to wake up and find that on Saturday morning everything was frosted.

Finally.

This is my favorite winter weather phenomenon, but with the unseasonably warm temperatures we’ve been enjoying I haven’t seen much of it lately. So on Saturday I couldn’t wait to get out in it. I was like a kid on Christmas, hurrying up with my chores, eating my breakfast fast, chugging down my coffee and changing out of my stretchy pants as soon as I jumped out of bed…all very unlikely activities for a lazy Saturday woman like me.

But I couldn’t help it, I went to bed in a land of gold and brown and woke up to a winter wonderland outside my window.

So I had to get out there and become that kid in the beanie with the ball on the top that you see in those classic winter paintings in museums. I felt like that kid. I looked like that kid.

I was that kid.

So I had to get a little closer, to touch it, notice its sparkle, to exist in it…

kick it off of the grass, let it fall on my head, get down close,

brush it off of the horses’ backs, see it on the cat’s whiskers,

the dogs’ noses.

Oh, it’s amazing what a little coating of white can do to a landscape. It turns an ordinary scene into a winter fairytale. It puts a little magic in the old red barn,

softening its rusty nails

and stray wires.

The old boards and windows welcome those out in this fog to peek in and explore…

come in and stay warm.

And the landscape turns mysterious as I climb to the top of the nearest hill to catch a glimpse of our new world, only to be welcomed with a limited view.

A view that turns me curious and sends me over the next hill and then the next to see what might be there…as if overnight, given the dark and the fog, the rocks took their chance to move and switch places,

the trees held hands and grew taller,

the dry brown flowers bloomed,

and the wire fences repaired themselves.

I couldn’t help it, I kept walking, because anything is possible in this kind of quiet, in this kind of weather. It’s a new season! And it could last for weeks, for days, or only a few hours. So I couldn’t wait. I needed to see what the bittersweet looked like coated in white…

And if the bull berries looked just as delicious…

And as I walked along the pink road that gently rolled into the low hanging cloud I was living under I held my breath and disappeared into the quiet calm.

With frost hanging on my eyelashes, coating the hair that had escaped from my wool cap, I let out a sigh and wished, just for a moment, that the sun would wait…

Because there was so much more to see over that hill, so much quiet to take in, so many ordinary things wearing new clothes and looking fabulous…and I wanted to stay out there and forever live in that painting.

A painting that with the warmth of the sun,