Oh January

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Oh, January you’ve changed haven’t you?
Casting long shadows
against gold, green and blue

tempting us with light jackets
and unlined walking shoes

Oh, January…what did you do?

To your silky white snow drifts
your wind frozen and wild?
You used to be reckless,
now what are you? Mild?

You’re a hot, sultry vixen
and you’re throwing us off
with your new sexy t-shirt
and your jeans? Are they cropped?

Yes, your new look it is stunning,
your kisses so warm
still I find myself watching
for the inevitable storm…


For the snowflakes to drop
and my fingers to freeze
as I lay in the gold grass
humming with the soft breeze.

Oh, I wait to despise you
like I usually do
No, I’m not sure about this
but I like it, it’s new.

But your hair does looks different
your cheeks a bit flushed
and you greet me with sunshine!
January I’m touched!

So though the I hate to admit it
or make a big fuss
January, I tell you…


I’ve never liked you this much.

This year’s story…

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The year is winding down here and it is doing so quite nicely. This morning there is a little fog that has settled in over the barnyard, coating the grass and trees with a thin layer of frost. I am waiting for the sky to lighten a bit before taking a trip into town, just as all of us up here this December are waiting, holding our breath for the snow to fall as it inevitably will. And in the hustle and bustle of our lives, the taking down of Christmas decorations, the New Year’s plans, the gift returns and holiday cleanup, my hope for you is that you are giving yourself a  moment to close your eyes and reflect on a year that was no doubt filled with achievements, heartbreak, love found or lost, adventure…all the experiences that got us safely to the cusp of a new year, a little older, a little wiser, and hopefully, a little better in spite of all of those lessons.

Lessons like when delving into a full-blown, first time in the kitchen salsa caning project at 8 pm, make sure you have the proper ingredients (like jars) and the willpower and drive to follow through into the early morning hours. Or the other lesson learned early on in the year about how to ensure you don’t ever get a visit from the Schwan’s man again in your life followed by the an over the phone tutorial on how to pull the FedEx man in a FedEx van out of your snowed in driveway in the middle of winter, in the middle of nowhere. Both lessons resulting in getting our ice-cream and our packages in town.

Yes, there was the lesson learned about what happens when 150 cows throw a party on your lawn after a big summer rain storm, the one about how to sprain your ankle jumping off a horse, the realization that I just might be too soft to be an effective 4-H judge followed by the other realization that apparently husband collects coolers, microwaves, bed frames, dressers, ice skates, thousands of unidentifiable tractor and truck parts, old lunch boxes, swallow nests, spiders, deer antlers, gears, wire, Christmas wreaths, scrap wood, a jeep and a partridge in a pear tree and keeps them piled up in our garage….and that isn’t likely to change.

Ever.

And yes, I will always blame this on him. 

And then there was the blinding lesson the pug learned about messing with porcupines when you only weigh thirty-five pounds and a good portion of your smooshy face is actually covered in two buggy eyeballs, which resulted in the following lesson on how to get by with only one buggy eyeball. And after the three trips to the vet, the giant cone he was forced to wear and a few run-ins with the wall as he turned his head to look over his shoulder, the pug has pretty much been transformed this year into something that could be referred to now as “Bad Ass.”

Bad ass like husband running out the door in the middle of the night to save us all from the raccoon dangling off of the side of the deck with, umm, nothing but a gun in his hand and a mission in his groggy head. Turns out he got to learn the lesson about wearing clothes to bed in case of midnight varmint emergencies, well, twice.

Yes, some lessons catch us off guard and find us standing butt naked on the rail of the deck in the middle of the night with a shotgun in your hands and two full moons shining in the darkness…and then others roll into your lives quietly, like the herd of elk Pops and I snuck up on this spring, reminding us that life is magical and fragile and quite frankly a masterpiece.

A masterpiece that grows the raspberries in the east pasture and finds us riding our horses in the summer sun at just the right time to stumble upon them and indulge. It’s the kind of life that gives us voices and ambition to sing out loud next to people you respect and admire  and the ability to understand that it doesn’t matter where you are, in a barnyard, around a campfire, in a smoky bar somewhere, it’s the chance to blend voices, it’s the music in you that, when it finds its moment to be heard, is the true gift.

Like the gift I was given as I watched my husband walk across the pasture in the crisp spring evening at the end of the first pleasant day of one of the harshest winters of our lives. And as I watched him scratch the ears of his favorite horse from my perch in the passenger seat of the pickup I caught my breath in the realization that this is the life we were supposed to be living and that in this world full of snow storms and breakdowns and things that might never be fixed, I married the right man. And we are in the right place. 

And so here I sit in my husband’s favorite chair in my grandmother’s house on my family’s land on the edge of the badlands in North Dakota as the wind blows through the icy trees under an overcast sky. Here I sit with my coffee cup, taking a moment to reflect on a year that was observed just as much as it was lived. And if the words I scrounged up to describe the sound of a coyote howling across the landscape haven’t moved a soul, if the photos I snapped of the breathtaking sunsets were only seen with my eyes and the music I wrote of my home in the hills was only heard in my heart, today I can say with confidence something that may not have rung true a few years ago…it would be enough for me.

See, it hasn’t come easily, but as I walked out in the summer rain and bent down to snap a photo of a wildflower drenched in the season, as I laughed out loud at the antics of my pets, helped my husband in the kitchen, strummed my guitar, playing along with a song my father was singing or climbed on the back of a horse to show my friend around the ranch, I found myself becoming an a spectator, a witness to the life I was living. With my camera to my eye I noticed how the sky formed gorgeous silhouettes, how my father’s hands folded on the saddle horn while he counted the cattle, how my sister rides horse like she lives life…on a mission.

With the idea of passing on the story, I listened a little closer at how words rolled of tongues, paid attention to the heat of the sun, the bite of the wind, the way the snow crunched under our feet…

Yesterday a new friend exclaimed that one of the three things we have control of in our lives is our time. And I know sometimes it doesn’t feel this way, sometimes it feels time has a grip on us, it passes us by, it moves too quickly when we want it to stay and drags on the minutes while we wait to move on. But if we could give ourselves one gift this new year I think it would be this: to exist and move through our lives conscious of how we are spending our minutes, aware that they are with or without purpose. And then we should give ourselves a little bit more of it so that we might observe the moon as it rises big and bright over the horizon, kiss our husbands a little longer, let ourselves lie down in the spring grass, feel the warm sun and watch the clouds move with the wind, hold our children a little tighter and linger there to smell their clean hair, to feel their soft skin under our fingers so we can remember it well, that we can get to know it all… so that we might have it in us when we need it most.

So of all of the lessons learned this year, all of the things I’ve come to know and appreciate, one of my greatest gifts has been having your ear to listen, your eyes to see what I see, your words that relate to the chaos of life here in this space we share, to tell you these things and know that someone cares. Because the stories are there, boring or humorous, observational, poetic…everyone has them. But without you I may have never  told them…

And because of you I now know they are enough.

Happy New Year to you and all of those in your story!

A Very Veeder Christmas

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A very merry first day back to work after Christmas to you all. I hope you all had a lovely time working on polishing off those sugar cookies and have packed a turkey sandwich, a leftover noodle salad, a piece of prime rib, some chocolate kisses, peanut brittle and maybe a holiday orange or two to get you through a full day away from the kitchen.

We celebrated in Veeder style out here at the ranch beginning with mimosa and husband’s famous caramel rolls in the morning and ending with our first attempt at homemade pie for dessert.

Yup, I (helped) make this

And so I would like to present to you some of the highlights of our big day in my 2nd Annual Very Veeder Christmas Re-cap.  It must be done. Because, as always, it was a holiday to remember at the ranch, filled to the brim with traditions that have warmed our souls and lifted our spirits year after year…

Traditions like the holiday themed cheeseball:

I know it's hard to believe he's edible considering how absolutely life-like he is, but it's true. And he was delicious.

The “quick, take a picture of the cat under the tree with the presents isn’t that so cuuutteee oh my gaawwdddd” photo:

The beautiful tree:

The forced, awkward holiday photo shoot, under the direction of yours truly…which never works when she who is to be directed is my annoying, shutter happy little sister:

Let's do this people...

I hope that wasn’t as painful for you as it was for me.

Let’s cleanse our pallets now with an explosion of cute…


And one of our newest and most favorite traditions yet: watching Little Man take in the holiday while Pops follows him around helping him open presents, pry into the fourteen layers of plastic packaging then disappear in a full out investigative search in the garage for the appropriate sized batteries, assemble the toys and proceed with his instructional session with the one-year-old on how to scootch a toy truck along the floor while making “vrroommminnng” noises as the rest of the family watches in anticipation of Little Man following suit…

It must be a grandpa thing.

Awww. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without adorable little children playing at your feet and… well…the annual presentation of the pug in his Santa suit…

Load him up Cowboy

Don't look at me like that...this is your Christmas duty...

Ta Da!

Nothing spreads holiday cheer like the glare of hatred coming from the one-eyed pug who refuses to move on account of the outfit.

I’m not positive, but I think might be the only one in our family who finds this type of pet humiliation utterly hilarious….

bwahahahahaaa…(tap, tap, is this thing on?)

Yes, it was a holiday to remember at our house filled with love and laughter, snuggles and eating, just the right amount of humiliation and maybe one Christmas cookie dough fight. But in all of the familiarity of the season, there are some traditions that just couldn’t be fulfilled, and this year it was snow.

Ah well, I don’t hear anyone complaining really, considering last year at this time we were trudging our way through snow drifts up over our heads to get down the road to Mom’s and Pop’s for Christmas morning.

But the lack of snow isn’t the only thing that’s changed around here since we celebrated Christmas 2010…

What a difference a year makes!

Cheers to a wonderful new one ahead, filled with beautiful memories and at least one less than embarrassing photo to match.

Or, you know, you could just go with it…

Momma’s Mouth Watering Fudge-A Christmas Gift

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The Merriest Christmas to all of you. I hope you’re reading this and looking forward to a weekend filled with friends and family and laughter and delicious food. To honor your friendship and support I am giving you a gift that has been enjoyed by many families around the countryside here Christmas after Christmas, courtesy of my Momma. You remember her? My Momma, the woman who has Santa Clause’s cell phone number on speed dial and continues to make Christmas the most magical time of the year. Every year.

There she is, buried under presents and squished between a couple other holly, jolly family members...

And one of the ways she does this is by whipping up this recipe and distributing it in fancy little green and red containers adorned with bows to every person who has touched her family’s life or made her laugh or brought her a bottle of wine at the perfect moment a bottle of wine was necessary throughout the year.

Men drool over this. Women hide it in places their families won’t find it. Kids sneak pieces of this heartfelt delicacy while their parent’s have their backs turned. It’s a little bit of heaven in your mouth.

It’s my momma’s fudge..and I’m going to give you the recipe.  A recipe that is sure to put you on the top of the “Nice” list year after year.

Make this and even the family members who’ve disowned you will be knocking at your door, apologizing for their wrong doing with a bottle of champaign begging you to forgive them…and please, can I have a piece of that fudge.

It’s that easy.

Really.

I can even make  it…all by myself!

Here’s what you need:

  • 1 12 oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 12 oz package milk chocolate chips
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla
  • 4 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 pound of butter (No worries, I’ll post my Momma’s instructional aerobic video after Christmas)
  • 1 can evaporated milk

Got it?

Ok, onward.

  • Butter an 8×12 baking dish
  • Bring sugar and evaporated milk to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue to stir and boil for 7 minutes.
  • Remove pot from heat and stir chocolate chips, vanilla and butter.

  • Stir until smooth and pour into the buttered baking dish
  • Refrigerate until set
  • Ask your hubby or the woman in your life with incredible strength to help you cut the fudge into squares
  • Serve up on a cute platter and stand back and smile as you experience that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with spreading holiday cheer.


If you’re looking for me and this fudge, we are more than likely shamefully hiding out somewhere.

Merry Christmas friends. Much love from our house to yours!

A Cowboy Christmas reminder…

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Well, it looks a little like a Charlie Brown Christmas around here, but husband and I did it. We got a tree…or something that looks like it might have come off of a tree somewhere.

Not the Rockefeller Center Tree, but at least we'll save on our electrical bill...

And it finally smells a little less like the small brown stinky present the pug left on my carpet last night and a little more like the holidays in this house.

Yes, the pug continues to hold a spot at the top of the naughty list, but we’ve gone ahead and decked the halls anyway…

Don’t worry, he’s been adequately punished…

hey, at least I sent him out in the cold with the proper gear...

And that’s all I was asking for. A little holiday cheer, a pug in a santa hat, and a tree, any tree, to put all of those presents under.

Yes, when husband came home before dark for the first time in weeks last night we decided to head out before the sun sunk down below the horizon. Despite the beautiful weather we have been experiencing this December, husband and I haven’t been out and about on the place together for a while. So we loaded up the lab and the pug in his humiliation hat and headed out to check on things.

Down the pink road and into the quickly setting sun we drove, dressed in jeans and boots and nothing but a hat, coat and gloves. As we took a turn onto a prairie trail we both marveled at the weather we’ve been having. We couldn’t believe we don’t have to wear seventeen layers beginning with underwear and ending with a wool cap over the top of a wool cap. Last year at this time we were on a snowmobile zooming over the top of ten foot snow drifts in our search for an oversized Christmas tree that would spend the rest of the month in the house poking the back of my neck as I sat at my computer desk.

Yes, last year we had a bit more ambition, a little more time, the pug had two eyeballs and we had a very white Christmas.

Last Christmas

This year? Well, Cliff the weatherman says it’s supposed to be 40 degrees.

Do you know what I am going to do on Christmas if it is 40 degrees?

Go find my horses and ride off into the tropical North Dakota December sunset, because riding horses on a warm, snow-less December day on the northern plains might be a once in a lifetime experience.

I think the horses were feeling the same thing as they came to greet us on our hunt for holiday cheer. Our pickup rolled slowly across the grassy pasture and the paints and the sorrels and the buckskin and bay, fat and happy and furry came trotting down from the horizon to sniff our pockets for treats.

I buried my nose in their fluffy coats to smell the little pieces of summer they hold in their skin. I scratched their noses and took some photos as they posed for me, black silhouettes against a darkening sky. And standing out there on the open prairie with the winter chill on my skin as those horses breathed and snorted and leaned into our hands on the cusp of Christmas, just like a shot from a gun I was flooded with a memory that set me right with the season…right in the place I needed to be…

…to Christmas morning when Pops gets up before the sun. Hours before our bare feet hit the floor to find our warm slippers, he is pulling on his wool cap, his overshoes and coveralls in preparation for the chill of the morning winter air.

If we get up early enough we might catch the tail lights of his ranch pickup as he heads out over the hill, the empty grain buckets he is intending to fill rolling around in the box as he bounces along the gravel road.

And as we walk past the sparkling tree with presents piled high, our stockings filled for the brim waiting for us, as we put our caramel rolls in the oven, brew our coffee and pull our robe tight around us to go wake the children, our little sisters or our husbands, Pops has just parked his pickup next to the grain bin and pulled out those buckets from the back. He is un-latching the creaky door to shovel the sweet smelling feed into the containers, piling it high to the top as the dust from the previous season pools in the crisp air around him.

Carefully he is loading the buckets, two at a time into the back of the pickup… and then he grabs one more and fills that one too before pulling down his cap against the cold and reaching for his handkerchief to wipe his chilly nose.

As we are pulling on our sweaters and sipping our first cup of coffee, pops is heading toward where he last saw the horses, out in the field above his house or down in the coulee between the two places.

And while we’re turning on the holiday music and buttering our caramel roll, Pops is taking a moment to scratch his buckskin between the ears, pull a few burs from the bay’s mane and give them that extra bucket of grain before heading out to check the water and then on into the yard as the sun rises slowly over the house.

When I was younger he would take me with him if I was up in time. And in those quiet moments on Christmas morning when the frost was sparkling on the trees, or the snow drifts were lurking in the shadows of the rising light. in the moments my toes might have been a little chilly and my nose a little runny I don’t remember thinking that we needed to hurry to get back. I don’t remember feeling anxious about opening my presents or checking out my stocking to see what Santa might have brought us. I don’t remember thinking about hot cocoa or Christmas cookies or the new sled I hoped I would be getting…I knew we would get there in time

The only thing I remember on those Christmas mornings when I sat next to Pops on the bench seat of the feed pickup is the lesson he may have mentioned out loud…or maybe not…

No matter the day, no matter the season or the weather, the blizzard or the warmth, no matter how many presents are waiting for you under the tree, our first responsibility is to care for the things that depend on us…

And on Christmas we always throw them a little extra.

If only some of those things that depend on us didn’t poop on our floors…

Alright, alright…I’ll take off the hat…


The list

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Christmas is right around the corner. Like, right there. I can see its sparkly ribbons and the ball on its Santa hat from here and I am finding myself a little anxious about the whole thing. I’m saying things like, I’m not ready! I have to bake something! I have to wrap the presents and find a Christmas tree and put up lights! It has to snoooowwwww! It hasn’t even really snowed yet!!!

I’ve been so wrapped up in other things this December, like planning the arrival and set-up of our new house, that Christmas and I haven’t been able to spend time together.

So this week I have  “Christmas” on my agenda. I’m not going to lie, I don’t like having to pencil it in. I much prefer when the season infiltrates into my life naturally. I like when the ground has just the right amount of sparkly snow and husband and I are able to go out and cut the tree together. I like when I have a weekend to put up the lights and replace my usual brown candles and wooden frames with red and green decorations and boughs of cedar.

I love it when the house smells like cedar. It’s one of my favorite things about Christmas at the ranch.

Last night when husband and I got in late from dinner at my big sister’s new house I walked through our entryway full of tools and living room piled to the ceiling with unwrapped presents and realized that, with Christmas just a few days away and husband working so hard on the new house, it isn’t likely we will have a tree this year. And it’s the last Christmas we’ll spend in this little house.

It made me a little sad as I crawled into bed, thinking about our first Christmas spent as a married couple in this house. I pulled  the covers up and closed my eyes to remember the first tree we cut together from the place. Our first tree as husband and wife….

We’d been married about four months and there was snow on the ground. We headed out the door in early December to drive the trail to the east pasture, the pasture on the edge of the badlands that grows the most Christmas type trees on the place,  our new puppy riding in the back of the pickup. We bumped and bounced along the rough and frozen path until we got to the top of the hill looking over one of our favorite spots. Deciding he had pushed his luck and the limits of his 4-wheel drive, we got out of the pickup to scope out the hills on foot, our little brown lab trailing in our footprints behind us.

It is one of my favorite memories, watching my new husband dressed in his wool cap and neckerchief, jeans and big boots, milling over the size and proportion of a cedar tree that we had spotted on the top of a hill together. I remember it being just before dark as the sun made its way down over the buttes as our new puppy and I watched eagerly as husband carefully sawed off the top of our chosen tree and drug it up the hill to the pickup.

We followed in his snowy footprints and walked together talking and laughing at how our puppy was jumping through the drifts, watching our breath puff in and out with our words. We reached our pickup as the sun was setting, loaded our puppy and the tree in the back and I plopped my snow-suited body down next to husband in the cab. He started the engine, put the vehicle in reverse, stepped on the gas and, well…we didn’t move..

Husband put in drive, stepped on the gas…and…ummm…we were not going that way either.

Reverse.

Drive.

Reverse.

Drive.

Stuck.

Husband got the shovel and I stepped out and sunk knee deep into the snow bank we decided to park in. I trudged around to the back of the pickup to check on the puppy who, in all of that back and forth, had lost his cookies all over in the box of the pickup…and if memory serves me right, it seemed he had indulged in a lot of cookies.

So there we were, my new husband and I, out on the prairie in the middle of winter at sunset, a good five hilly miles away from our little house with a Christmas tree and a sick puppy in the back of the pickup…two supplies we found are  pretty worthless in times like these.

But you know, I don’t remember feeling panicked or frustrated or upset in any way. I do remember being grossed out by the dog puke, but not enough to not laugh about it. I knew somewhere in that youthful and hopeful heart of mine that I married a man who was perfectly capable of getting us out of a jam like this and on down through the hills to help me drag that tree into the house and make it a Christmas to remember.

So I got behind the wheel as husband shoveled and instructed me on the technique of successfully rocking a pickup out of a snowbank that had us high-centered. He shoveled the snow, wet and sticky from the warmth of the now disappearing sun and I leaned my head out the window to hear his instructions to drive forward, then backward, then forward again.

And then, as the stars started showing their shiny faces one by one over the snowy hills, husband scootched me out of the driver’s seat to get behind the wheel, I grabbed the puppy and with one mighty rev my man drove us and our giant Christmas tree out of the snow bank and to the front door of our home in the barnyard.

I remember us laughing the entire way home with relief, thanking those stars above that we weren’t walking.

Thankful that we were there together in our own adventure…

Thankful for a Christmas together.

I fell asleep last night with this memory floating in the air above my bed, playing itself out for me. I woke up this morning while my husband of nearly five Christmases still lay sleeping beside me.

I wrapped my arms around him and lay there in that memory for another moment. And in the quiet of the farmhouse, in the still of the early morning before the sun appeared, I listened to my husband breathe.

I listened to him breathe, kissed his shoulder and rolled out of bed to find the list of things I have to do to prepare for Christmas this weekend.

And at the top, in front of wrapping presents, making fudge, cleaning the house, and writing cards I wrote in big, bold letters…

  1. “Find a Christmas Tree with Husband.”

 

 

Where are the words for this?

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You know that saying,  “When it rains it pours?” Or how about the other one, “Bad things happen in threes?” I’ve used these before to describe overwhelming events in people’s lives and in my own. I have said these phrases out loud to declare war on an unpredictable life, to show my exasperation at a world that sometimes just keeps piling on the crap…and then held my breath and watched my back for the next small catastrophe, because that’s life sometimes, you know?

But as I mill around my little home this morning, shuffling through the kitchen in my furry boots and pajama pants, listening to the pug snore and my husband’s breath move in an out as he lay, still sleeping, in the bedroom just a few steps away, in the calm of the morning of what is probably going to go down in my book as one of the bigger, most exciting days of our lives, the day our house gets set on its foundation, I am finding myself overwhelmed…but in the best way possible.

Part of our new house waits to be put on the foundation...

And do you know what’s even better? Just thirty miles away in my hometown, I imagine my big sister is having the same sort of feelings (or at least she will be when she wakes up this morning). Because today she and her husband and Little Man are going to be meeting their brand new home too…and moving in!

And just a little further east, oh, about 370 miles, my little sister is having her own moment as she prepares to welcome friends and family to her neck of the woods to celebrate four and a half years of hard work and studying and how it has paid off. Yup, she’s graduating from COLLEGE tomorrow! And I can’t wait to give her a big hug of congratulations and toast her efforts.

We have much to toast about.

But oh, it’s been a crazy week here of preparing and running and signing paperwork and getting everything in order and calling in the neighbors and family and friends to help us hammer and nail and prepare the foundation in the middle of a frozen winter and on into the night.

Husband has been dangling off of ladders busting out his “on a mission” face.

And down the road my big sister has been packing up all of Little Man’s toys and cups and putting her shoe collection in boxes, eager to finally have a larger countertop and a few more cupboards and floor space for Little Man to crawl around on.

In Fargo, Little Sister has been planning the rest of her life while planning her party and eagerly calling the ranch to check in on her mother who, in the middle of all of this, is armpit-deep in her first Christmas rush as a new retail store owner, and she’s doing great.

And Pops? Well, as a married father of three girls he’s had some practice with matters like these.  When the women in his life are reaching as far as they can reach, he makes sure he’s there too, to help give them a boost and let them step on his knee if they need to.

Yes, in the days leading up to a holiday that will find my big sister settled into her new home, my little sister a career woman, my mother with a glass of wine to toast the end of the rush and my pops leaned back in his easy chair, outside a quiet frost has been hanging over the ranch for days. It has been coating the fences and buildings and oak trees in a white sparkle, as if it is setting the stage, painting the landscape for a perfect photograph of a Christmas gift delivered to us today…


And in all of the hustle and bustle it is all I can do to not stop and lay down in its sparkle, to shake the branches and watch the frost fly, to take a quiet walk through the hills to really appreciate this mid-December weather that has held on for us to get the last-minute details done.

So as the sun is making its way up the horizon line, husband is awake now and working his way out the door, bundling up and loading tools in his pickup for a trip over the hill. Little Man is probably waking Big Sister with a giggle, Little Sister is brewing the coffee and Momma and Pops are loading up the car to go see her and celebrate. I will be on the road soon to do the same.

But right now today is the day.

Today is the day.

Because yes, life has a way of piling it on indeed, but sometimes it does so in a the best way possible.

And what do we say when that happens? Where are the words written for when dreams are coming true? Where is the phrase we use to declare our overwhelming excitement and happiness?

Where are the words for that?


Three hundred and fifty-some days a year…

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We are honing in pretty close to a new year and ringing it in by, you know, bringing in a new house. It seems to be a pattern for us, making big changes at the end of the year. Three years ago we closed on our first home and spent the next two years renovating it during any spare time we were granted. Last year, on December 30th to be exact, we signed it away, every brick, board and painstakingly varnished door and have spent the next three hundred and fifty-some days between then and now planning how we might look in our new house.

It’s funny how quickly three hundred and fifty-some days go by when you spend it with your eye on the future while still trying to be all the things you need and want to be in the present.

And in those days, in those moments, we have been many things: cooks, cowboys, fly-swatters, lawn-mowers, photographers, poets, travelers, an uncle and an aunt, friends and big mistake-makers.

We have been dreamers and planners, singers and wanderers, sun bathers and bundled up for the cold.

On the weekends we were lazy, party-goers or two people making pancakes together in the kitchen as the light streamed through the window. And sometimes we were on a mission, to tear something old down, to clean something up, to pull weeds or cut the grass…living and busting our asses in the present for a more cleaned up tomorrow.

And sometimes our only mission was one another.

The hair on our head grew, some turned gray. Our favorite jeans turned into work pants, things were lost and never found and then, to our surprise, things that we thought were gone for good were recovered.

We’ve had conversations, countless conversations, about family and life and where we might be two years, ten years, fifty years from now. We have remembered together where we once were and laughed at how different things can be in just a short three hundred and fifty some days.

We have counted our blessings.

Yes, we have had some time to prepare for this change that is right around the corner, for a move, for the plan we had all along. Three hundred and fifty-some days to build new walls and roads and move some dirt and snow and rocks and trees and old equipment out-of-the-way, fitting a little work, a little planning into the spaces of time between breakfast and dinner at night… and still we’re not quite ready. The day doesn’t hang on long enough for us to find the right place for every nail, just as it doesn’t quite hold onto the light long enough to allow us to be all of the things we want to be, all the things we can be, in a day.

In a year.

In a lifetime.

There’s never enough time, the work is never done, all the lessons will never quite be learned. And there were days in there that I didn’t want to move away from the little stream of light that peeked through the curtains of my tiny room. There were days my head was spinning with the to-d0 list and the realization that there may be dreams of ours that just won’t come true.

I keep a few of those days in my pocket to take out when I need them. Just a few.

Because I have never been one to focus on the things I cannot change, at least not for very long. Because some of those things we cannot control have been the best things…the most certain things of all.

Like how the sun always rises over the barn

and falls on the other side of the earth behind my parents house.

Every day.

Reminding us that we can build houses, and fences and plant potatoes in the earth and drive down roads we’ve built to take us to places we’ve never been and places we need to go to survive, but in the whole wide world there is nothing more important than that big wide sky and the fact that, for another day, we get to live under it as it moves and changes and puts on a show.

And as we have been counting each time it rises, marking our calendars and making plans that are bound to fail at some point, it comforts me, it lifts a little bit of weight off of my shoulders to know that the sun only has one mission, day after day…

to rise and shine and make its way across the sky…

Because, you know, we’re not that different from the sun really.

At least three hundred and fifty-some days a year…

Ever had one of those days?

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17

Ever had one of those days that starts with good intentions, a comfortable pair of jeans, a groovy hat, a cup of coffee to go and a list. You  load up the car and drive on up and out of the farmstead, with the one-eyed pug in the seat next to you shivering at the idea that he might, indeed, be going to the vet today and you’re feeling pretty happy with yourself and the day off that you have mapped out in front of you: A little grocery shopping, a stop at the thrift-store because husband finally cleaned out his closet, downsizing his collection of high school wrestling tees and wiping out any trace of  polo shirt and dorky belts. And as you zip down the gravel road, Cosmo Radio on the XM, you smiled at the thought of a cleaner closet and the light and accomplished  feeling of checking “rabies vaccination for the pug” and “shots for mom’s new and beautiful stray rescue cat” off of the list, a scent  a little funky, a little narly, enters your nostrils.

You look at the pug who looks back at you with the best “innocent” look he can give with one eyeball  and open the window a crack to let out the stench. Shame on the pug, no matter the talk we have about manners, he always seems to let one rip at the most inappropriate and confined times.

yeah...I make him wear that when we go out in public...

But to your dismay, when you open the window, the smell only seems to get worse, filling the car with a stench that is a little less pug fart and a little more cat shit.

Shit.

The cat shit.

Realizing that you are only a good ten miles into your thirty-five mile trip to the vet, you manage to hold your breath long enough to make it through the windy and weaving road of the badlands’ breaks and out the other side to an approach where you pull over, get out of the car in the 20 degree temperature, open the back hatch and assess the shit-uation that came from the beautiful wandering feline in the kennel in the back of your car.

Yup.

The cat shit.

Like, a lot.

Yeah...just because you're pretty doesn't mean your shit don't stink...

And the towel your loving mother provided to keep the new wandering, fluffy kitten comfortable on her way to get civilized was not nearly the protection the rest of the world needed from the explosion that came out of that cat’s ass on the way through the badlands.

Shit.

So, to make the best of a bad poop, you take that towel and throw it in the only stray grocery bag you have floating around your messy car and seal that thing up as tight as Jane Fonda’s abs in the seventies…and then hold your breath and plug the pug’s nose as you drive the rest of the twenty-five miles to the vet, only to realize when you get there that not only are you a half-hour late for an appointment you weren’t aware had a timeline, but they are not thrilled with you…and probably less thrilled with the shit covered cat-in-a-box sitting outside their door.

Flash forward to the next thirty miles where you reach the drop-off point for husband’s khakis and turtlenecks that never saw the light of day and mosey on over to the Wal-Mart on the other side of town. And as you are counting the amount of toilet paper rolls and frozen pizzas you will need to purchase to get you and your dearly-beloved through the rest of the month, you make the turn into the parking lot only to notice blue and red flashing lights in your rear-view mirror.

“Surely he can’t be pulling over such a law-abiding citizen like myself,” you think to yourself in a panic as you search your memory for any foul play that may have ensued on the five-minute drive across town.
Seatbelt? Check.
Blinker? Check.
Speed Limit? Check.
Complete stop at the red light? Ummmm….you must have blacked out while thinking about paper towels.

Still unsure of your offense, you pull into the parking lot and search frantically through your glovebox for the registration papers and insurance card you were certain you put in there last week, but now has somehow grown wings and flown away…maybe it escaped when you rolled down the window to let the shit-smell out.

“Tap, tap, tap,” goes the cop’s fingers on your window.

“Hello officer,” squeaks your voice from your throat.

“I pulled you over because your tags are expired,” he says politely.

“What!! Really?! Are you sure?” you say a little too passionately, a little too loudly, as you jump out of the car, paperwork in hand, to check the front license plate, only to look down and find that the yellow tags were indeed not affixed to your plates but, you know, right there on the registration card that you were just waving around in exasperation.

At a cop.

A cop who tells you to scrounge up your drivers license and that insurance card that flew out the window and get those tags on the car before he comes back from doing whatever cops do in their cars after they pull people over and humiliate them in front of their fellow Wal-Mart shoppers and he will settle with a warning.

Yes, you were warned, and just the right amount of annoyed…the perfect combination to help get you through a care-free shopping experience in the land of the inappropriately dressed with a list ten-feet long that includs everything from deodorant to light-bulbs to socks to the kitchen sink.

An hour and a half, one comment from a little lady that went something like “I wouldn’t want to be paying for your cart-load,”  a suggestion from an employee that I shouldn’t just leave my purse in the cart and go walking around the store all willy nilly like that, geesh, and a receipt long enough to wrap three times around the sun it was time for your next stop: the liquor store.

A magical place where you would make all of your husband’s dreams of stocking the top of the fridge with a variety of whiskey flavors come true. And while you were at it, your momma’s dream of a little Kahlua in her coffee. But as you explain to the nice lady who helped you carry out the three boxes of booze that, no, there was no party planned, but that you live in the middle of nowhere and it is going to be a long winter, you gasp as you open the back hatch of your car to find that the eggs that you intended to safely place on the top of your pile of goods had not so gently dropped from their perch and landed in a nice, cracky pile on the floor of your car.

You consider cracking open that bottle of Jack for the drive back to the vet to pick up the animals, but don’t think that a second run-in with that cop would be good for your record, so you opt instead for a giant bag of McDonalds and a diet coke and turn up the radio to sing along to Bruce Springsteen between cheeseburger bites as you drive down the road to face the vet you so rudely scorned with tardiness earlier that morning.

But when you arrive she has nothing but good things to say about the shitty cat and the pug who looks so bad-ass now without on of his eyes. Nothing but nice things to say to a woman who can’t get her crap together enough to get to an appointment on time or put her eggs in a safe place.

So you load up the pug and the shitty cat and drive on out toward home, thinking this day wasn’t so bad after all, thinking about frozen pizza for supper…

thinking…wait…what’s that smell…Chug?

Nope.

Shit.

The cat shit.

Again.

Ever have one of those days?

it's a damn good thing you're pretty cat...

No?

Me neither.

Meow.

Windows and doors and walls and where we will make a new home…

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13

Step one. Breathe in.

Step two. Breathe out.

In a little over a week the house we are planning to live out the rest of our lives in will be rolling down the highway and turning on the pink road to find its way to the ranch…

When I see that in writing that sounds a little more redneck than magical, but hey, that’s how it’s happening.

Anyway, we’ve been preparing for this, like really preparing for this for a good year. It’s been almost exactly a year since we sold our renovation home in Dickinson and since then we have been researching, talking, planning, making calls, comparing notes and crunching numbers to see if we could make that little dream we had brewing up in our heads to come out right on paper. We had discussions about where to put the thing, what we might need to take down, how big a hole we should dig, how many windows to put in, what color our floors might be, where we need a toilet, where we need a light fixture, where we need an outlet and a door and a piece of carpet.

These are small decisions that all pile up into one big one. A big one that changes what road we drive out of in the morning and come down in the evening for as long as we are able, where we put our Christmas tree, where we sit to watch the sunrise and drink margaritas, the way the couch faces when we snuggle down to watch John Wayne movies in the evening, where we keep the silverware and coffee cups and good dishes…where we might one day tuck our children in at night.

Husband and I have been dreaming about the day we hang the “Home Sweet Home” sign on the door of our forever home since we decided we loved one another enough to talk about a future together. We knew where we wanted to be and a little of what it looked like and then lo and behold the road to get here just happened to be filled with a little less bends and bumps than expected and we are blessed.

And I am nervous.

I don’t know why.

See, this house, my grandmother’s house, has always been a safe haven for me. It is where I came with my cousins to celebrate Christmas and get stuck in the gumbo hills looking for Easter eggs in the spring. It’s where we slept in bunk beds, dreaming big dreams and learning that Santa Clause doesn’t exist.


It’s where I came with my pops to live with my gramma when we moved back to the ranch when I was seven years old. It’s where I ate my grandmother’s kettle popped popcorn on New Year’s Eve while my parents were out. It’s where we sat on the porch and slurped on popsicles from the Schwan’s man as the hot summer sun beat down on the clay hills around us.

It was where my other grandparents moved in when my grandmother died to keep it a home, to love it and fill it with the smell of cooking…to keep the lights on.

It was my first h0me as a married woman, the threshold my new husband carried me over. It’s where we had our first Christmas tree as Mr. and Mrs., cut from the pastures that surrounded us. Where we brought home our new puppy, where we hosted our first Thanksgiving together for family, where I slept as husband fumbled around in the dark of the early mornings getting ready for work, careful not to wake me.

It’s what we saw in our rear view mirror, through tears in my eyes, as we decided on a new adventure…and where we settled a few years later when we discovered our biggest adventure yet would be here, where I learned to make homemade chokecherry jelly and along the way we found ourselves.

Home.

So this evening I am sitting in husband’s big leather chair while he makes some sketches, tallies some numbers, makes some phone calls and puts together a schedule of preparation for the next few days. He needs to build some walls, he needs to call the septic guy, I need to call the bank and the insurance company and we need to unload that giant trailer loaded with 2x8s and windows and screws and house wrap.

We have so much to do to prepare. There isn’t time to think about the memories that we will be leaving in this little house that will sit forever over the hill from us as we cook our meals under a new roof…one that holds more than one bedroom and a closet bigger than a shoebox. But in all the excitement I feel for our new big deck, stair case, hardwood floors and spacious kitchen cabinets, I can’t help but feel a little twinge of loneliness for a life I found bumping into one another in the little bathroom while brushing our teeth, the negotiating skills I acquired compromising closet space, the belly laughs and snorts that came flying out of my lungs while sitting close to family and friends around this kitchen table, the way the house heats up when the oven is turned on or how I can vacuum every carpet in the house without switching outlets.

Yes, it’s a little twinge of loneliness for a good life led cradled in the arms of my grandmother’s house,  a little bit of nerves from a woman who has lived in close quarters with the people she’s loved all her life…and a little uncertainty about what will happen when I can’t lay under the covers of my bed in the bedroom and hold conversation with husband making noodles in the kitchen.

Do you drift apart when you have the option of living out your lives in separate rooms? Will we lose our connection when we no longer bump into each other while cooking casserole together in the kitchen? What will we talk about if it isn’t that we need to downsize on our boot collection or get a better place for our coveralls?

In our new house, will we still brush our teeth together in the same bathroom? Will we choose to stay in the same room and watch the other’s TV program, complaining the entire time, but glad to be close? Will we still trip over our boots? Will everyone gather in the kitchen on the holidays, no matter the option of another room and a basement?

Because I want more space, yes. I need more walls to hang photos of the people we love, more shelves to hold books, more room for my shoes. I’m not worried about filling up our new home with stuff, but what I want more than three bathrooms and a garage for husband’s tools is to be able to fill our new home with as much warmth, comfort, hugs, laughter, family, friends, love and  memories that have always surrounded me in this little house in the buttes next to the red barn.

I hope we can do it.

I hope we do.