After Christmas Poem

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Happy New Year! It’s the kids’ first day back at school after Christmas break and I’m already behind and this is why…

Two days after Christmas

We’re two days after Christmas and all through the house
Wrapping and boxes are scattered about
And slime kits and Barbies and polymer clay
Card games and dollies and Lego all day

Except when they’re science experimenting
On the table we’ve stretched out with all of its leaves
To accommodate Christmas Eve pancakes and bacon
To kick-off ten days of school vacation

Spent inside the walls of the home that we built
And outside on sleds racing down the slick hills
Or snuggled up under the blankets we found
For moments like this when we’re home safe and sound

And I’ve been interrupted writing these lines
About ten thousand eight hundred seventy times
To open a toy or be asked to explain
Directions on how to play this new board game  

But don’t ask me to check in their rooms, please take pity
I know what I’ll find and it won’t be pretty
Because I’ve left them alone to be young and create
The magic of childhood Christmastime break

So maybe they’ll clean up or maybe they’ll play
Princesses under the fort that they made
And leave it up as a place to sleep for the night
The rules, I’ve decided, don’t have to be tight

Because there’s plenty of time for them to be grown
Now is the time for their dreams to be sown
And it might drive me mad, they might make me crazy
All the glitter and mayhem flying off my sweet babies

But time, it’s a flash when the children are young
Just when I’ve got it, that phase, it is done
Goodbye to the dollies, goodbye to the slime
Goodbye to the Lego will happen in time

I tell myself this as I step on a crayon
And scrape paint off the kitchen table again
And argue my case for brushing their teeth
And rubbing their backs to lull them to sleep

Soon enough they’ll be choosing their own Christmas trees
And packing up car trunks to come home to me
Oh that is the cusp of my every ambition
That my kids, once they’re grown, will hold tight to tradition

And remember the presents? Ok, that’s just fine
But mostly I hope they remember the time
We all spent together being fully ourselves
No store in the world holds that on its shelves

Yes, two days after Christmas, the calendar says
But holds nothing of how we should spend these sweet days
So we’ll take it slow, take a break, take our time
If you need us we’re probably making more slime…

PJS, Pancakes and Gloria

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Merry Christmas. By the time you open the paper or your web browser to see what’s happening here at the ranch, it will be smack dab in the middle of the Christmas weekend. I hope you’re feeling content with those you love either on their way or settled in. And I hope you’re in a festive getup and making plans to make good on those traditions, new and old.

At the Scofield Christmas modeling jammies from the jammie exchange. I am a crab if you’re wondering 🤣

Each Christmas Eve my family takes on the custom of pancake supper, church and opening a pair of new pajamas the night Santa arrives. This tradition comes from my mom’s side of the family and we’re happy to uphold it with some sausage, bacon, whipped cream and family pictures while we’re all dressed up by the tree. When my grandpa Bill and grandma Ginny moved to the little ranch house after retirement and after my dad’s mother died, along with helping take care of the cows and scaring us with decorations that jumped out at trick-or-treaters on Halloween, my grandma and grandpa would do Christmas Eve right at the ranch. We would eat pancakes and then make our way to one of the three small rural Lutheran churches that was hosting Christmas that year in our community. My favorite was Faith Lutheran, the smallest of them all. That was our church, just down the road a few miles, holding only five or so rows or pews with a small corner for the piano where Elsie would play, confidently guiding us through “Angels we Have Heard on High,” or “Gloria” as we liked to call it. Never had that song ever been sung in unison under the roof of that sanctuary, but boy did Elsie and June try their best to get us there.

Faith Lutheran closed shortly after I moved back to the ranch as an adult, but it holds a special place in my heart for Christmas memories in itchy tights and turning off the lights to share candle flames during “Silent Night.” Even non-believers would have a hard time not feeling something special in the soft glow of the small wax sticks in the hands of the people who chose to pause a moment in the name of something much bigger than this earthly life.

For some reason this year I’m feeling more reflective than usual, more introspective, and maybe a bit anxious. I’m only now, as I type, realizing that it very well could have to do with the ages of my children, now six and eight. When we were celebrating Christmas as a married couple trying and failing to start a family, the idea that we would have these two dynamic, charismatic girls bouncing off the walls of our small living room on Christmas morning seemed like such a far-away dream. And then when they finally arrived and they were babies and young toddlers waddling around, the memories we worked to make with them, the stockings, the jammies, the pancakes, the pictures, they were for us really. The parents who have been waiting to have children of their own on Christmas.

But six and eight-year-olds are made for Christmas, or rather, Christmas was made for them. These moments we get to create for them, the traditions, the elf in the sugar dish, the pancakes and caramel rolls, the time last week I accidentally opened the packages from my husband that were meant to be my gifts, shopping for their dad’s presents at Home of Economy in town after lunch at the diner, the pajamas they will wear, the special dress they picked out, these little things are truly for them, because they are experiences that turn into memories they can keep now that they’re old enough. 

And for all the things I’ve wrapped up to place under the tree–the Barbies and the slime kits (seriously, why?), the new shoes, books and art supplies–I think we all can agree that the pancakes and the “Silent Night” candles are our real gifts to them. And I feel as honored and excited as I am scared to mess it up and sad to know how fleeting this whole childhood thing is.

Thank God for a time like Christmas to help remind us.

Merry Christmas from the ranch. Snuggle in. Snuggle close. Love one another.

And, just for good measure, sing “Gloria” at the top of your lungs.

Baby Blue

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Fun news! The kids are feeling better, most of the presents are wrapped, the Christmas fudge is made and the opening track, “Baby Blue,” off the new album is all yours if you pre-add “Yellow Roses” on iTunes TODAY!
PLUS preview all 12 tracks.

Pre-save here

Enjoy this acoustic version of “Baby Blue” and a little about the blizzard that inspired the song.
Thanks for the support!

Yellow Roses Album Early Sale!

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GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO STILL HAVE A CD PLAYER! Because it’s Christmas, and I have a limited run of actual CDs in hand now, I’ve put them in the store! The full album won’t be available on all streaming platform until January 11, 2024. But if you’re cool enough to be old school, you can hear it first on CD.

Featuring generational stories of rural living and rootsy instrumentation from some of Nashville’s best session players, the new album, “Yellow Roses” is a blend of stories and imagery featuring the rugged landscape of middle America and the people who call it home, come hell or high winds. Recorded in the historical OmniSound studios on music row in Nashville in May, we’ve pulled out all the stops to breathe life into music I wrote on prairie trails, behind the wheel on county roads and late nights when the kids were asleep. I’m so proud of this album because its one I didn’t know I still had in me. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY TO GET IT BY CHRISTMAS
🎄🎅🎸
 Use code HOLDAYS to get 15% off of all CDs, books, music and t-shirts.

Click here to Shop

Listen to the two singles off the album on all streaming platforms!

Listen to Whiskey in the Winter
Listen to If You Were a Cowboy

The Magic of Christmas

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Greetings from under the giant Christmas tree where Rosie and the Elf on the Shelf are laying because both got the three-day flu for Rosie’s sixth birthday and I’m feeling the impeding sense of doom that comes with knowing I’m probably next.

My husband just walked in from hauling hay in the balmy 50+ degree December weather and I know I’m supposed to feel grateful, especially this time of year, but I am also feeling a bit overwhelmed. I told him, after spending my entire morning moving between promoting a new music release, meeting a deadline and trying to decide if I should take my daughter to the doctor, that my creative energy is running low.

And I’m feeling like I’m falling a foot or two short at about everything I’m working at right now. And he said, “Well, why don’t you write about that?”

So then, because I was in an honest mood, I confessed that two nights ago I might have wrecked the spirit of Christmas for our oldest when she caught me scrolling through “Elf on the Shelf Ideas for Parents” on my Pinterest feed.

“Mom,” she piped up timidly, surprising me in the quiet. “Does the elf move itself or is it the parents?”

Oh no…oh no…oh no.

“What do you think?” I asked softly.

“Well, I saw what you were looking at on your phone. Now I think it’s the parents.”

Oh no again.

In my defense I thought the child was already asleep while I scrolled and snuggled in the dark of her room. And also I forget that she can read now. She is eight but I forget that sometimes too. Because it all goes so fast and in my mind she’s still three and pudgy and twirling in that oversized quilted blue dress she wouldn’t take off for a year.

Eight? Is that an age where a kid might stop believing? She has been skeptical of this Christmas magic Santa thing since she could express it. She’s a practical kid and the details of a man who delivers presents to every child in the world in a flying sleigh pulled by an animal that doesn’t even fly in real life just doesn’t line up with the things she’s come to know about how the world works. And so that’s why we told her that to believe is part of the magic.

And so that’s what I told her the night I got caught planning that felt elf’s next move. I told her I think she could still choose to believe. And then I added something stupid trying to explain the Pinterest feed, like the pictures were of other families’ elves that moms share for fun. And the kid, bless her, I think she just pretended to buy it.

Now that I think of it, it was the same way I pretended to buy it was I was about her age, old enough to know better, but aware of what it meant to choose reality over magic. To me it seemed too close to the fire of adulthood, and I was still young enough to know I wasn’t ready for that yet.

So that night I tiptoed out of Edie’s room and moved the elf to the windowsill, wrapped her in a little washcloth and propped her up against a bottle of cough syrup in solidarity with the youngest member of the family who hadn’t lifted her head off the couch for 24 hours.

On the long list of things to worry about, the idea that my oldest daughter might become wise and ruin the magic for our youngest didn’t occur to me until it was time to locate that sickly little elf in the morning. But Edie woke up surprised and happy to see the elf and Rosie was still sick and I had a deadline and appointments to reschedule so I could stay home and care for her, and my husband had a calf to find and hay to haul and Edie had a computer test she was worried about and it was just another day in reality, the way the days come at all of us regardless of the season, the traditions or the size of your Christmas tree. Except on Christmas especially, it’s nice to have a little magic help us along. Hopefully that magic is currently working as a disinfectant…

Stay healthy out there!

Listen to the new single “Whiskey in the Winter. New full length album out everywhere January 11!

Oh, Christmas Tree

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Thanksgiving weekend we completed the great Christmas Tree hunt tradition at the ranch. Nature melted the snow away but held on to its cold and wind and so we thought we better get out in the hills before we needed to borrow the neighbor’s snowmobile. So we bundled up the troops and headed out to a spot in the home pasture where we spotted a cedar we thought might work on one of our rides this fall.

It didn’t take long to find it again out there stretching toward the sky among the scrub brush and thistle, the bottom three feet of its trunk rubbed bare by the deer.

Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a potential Christmas tree out in the wild is not the same size as a potential Christmas tree in the house. My daughters, standing under the boughs of the 12-foot tree standing in its natural habitat declared the tree “tiny” before helping running up a tall butte after their cousins and sliding down on their butts.

I’ve been in this same situation for years now, so I knew to save my argument about it being too big to fit in the door. And I didn’t say a thing about how it will take up our entire living room. And not a word was spoken about how we need to work on getting the house addition done just to display this tree. It’s not worth it and it doesn’t matter to my husband anyway. If he thinks the tree will fit the tree will fit.

And so, with the help of my dad and the tarp straps that my husband always magically seems to have in every nook and cranny of every vehicle and every pocket of every jacket he’s ever owned, we strapped the world’s-most-perfect-Christmas-Tree on to the back (and top) of our ATV and puttered on home to the house where we nearly pulled the front door off its hinges dragging it into the entryway to thaw out.

But, alas, the hinges stayed put and the neighborhood (a.k.a my parents and my little sister’s family) filed in a few minutes later to get in on the spectacle of getting that thing through the house, propped up in the tree stand and screwed to the wall without any of us, tree included, losing any limbs.

And yes, you heard it right, after all these years as adults who cut wild Christmas trees from the wild prairies, and one year where the tree nearly took out my oldest daughter while she spun innocently in her Elsa dress in the living room, we have learned to skip past the hazard and just screw the tree to the wall right away. 

Is it weird that our giant Christmas tree ritual has become a spectator sport for the rest of my family, complete with bloody marys and snacks? I don’t know what’s normal anymore.

At any rate, the tree is up and it smells beautiful, the way a cedar tree should and not like wild cat pee like that one unfortunate year we only speak of when we have the tree thawed out inside and can guarantee it hasn’t happened again. These types of issues don’t occur with the plastic tree sane people take out of storage year after year says my mother over her first sip of bloody mary. Since her kids have been out of the house for years, she’s been basking in the Martha Stewart Magazine tree that she’s always wanted. Tinsel, coyote pee and abandoned bird nest not welcome.

Also, kittens. Kittens are not welcome, which is a problem because we happen to have one and that was stupid timing and also another good reason to put a few more screws in the boards connected the tree trunk to the wall.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. I hope your traditions are bringing you as much joy as they are hassle. If you need me I’ll be looking for that dang elf…

New Music: Whiskey in the Winter

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Happy release day to a song that has been waiting for its time for eight years. It was this song that compelled me to work on creating another album from this chapter in my life of full-on, unfiltered, unsympathetic adulthood where life is messy and the curtains have been pulled back to let the light and the dark in.

Thank you for continuing to support my efforts to tell the story of the people up here, the soft and the rough edges.

Get “Whiskey in the Winter” here and wherever you get music.

November at the Ranch

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November is a busy month at the ranch. Not only are we getting ready for the impending (or continuing) winter, but November is the month for roundup, working and checking our cattle and selling our calves. It’s one of my favorite times of the year because it’s one of the rare times that I allow myself to drop everything and focus on the ranch.

One of my jobs is to make sure that the people (who also drop everything to help) get fed. And that there is hot coffee and cookies out in the pens so we all have an excuse to take a few minutes to break between tasks. This is about as important to me as anything because it forces a slowdown during a moment in time that makes everyone who owns these cattle a little anxious. Because a day like shipping day is the culmination of all the work the family has put into caring for these animals–rolling out hay in the winter, fixing water tanks and fences in the spring, watching for and tending to trouble during calving season and keeping them on the best grass in the summer, free of hoof rot and pink eye.

This year we lucked out with a couple nice weather days where you could only see your breath until about noon and then we could take off a layer or two. My sister and I keep our daughters   home from school on the day we ship and sell calves so they can be a part of the grand finale. They ride along to the sale barn with a bag full of coloring sheets and snacks to sit next to Papa and our old neighbor and watch our calves go through the ring. I wonder what they’ll remember more, the sale or eating the pizza buffet and playing in the arcade in the big town after?

Unfortunately, for Rosie and everyone around her who she scared to death, it will be falling off her pony during roundup, an unpredictable incident that left me questioning all my parenting decisions. Things like this don’t happen to kids who live in the suburbs. And kids in the suburbs don’t go to the arcade smelling like the sale barn.

Maybe all we’re doing when we bring them along is solidifying the idea that marrying or becoming a professional YouTuber or a computer programmer is a safer life choice. Because is there a YouTuber or computer programmer in the history of the world who makes small talk with the community vet for two hours while he puts his arm down the backside of 120-some cattle to confirm they’re bred and then invites him over for lunch only to discover that your new kitten has somehow got herself stuck INSIDE THE WALLS OF YOUR HOUSE!!!??

Not a good look for that specific house guest.

But seriously. Anyone ever had to cut open a wall in your house to retrieve a live animal? I don’t want to admit this, but in the history of my life on this ranch, it wasn’t the first time.

Turns out that kitten was just after the dead, rotting mouse that had somehow also discovered the secret wall portal. When I tell you that feline stunk, I cannot stress it enough. And when I tell you that squirmy little barn cats don’t like baths, I also, cannot stress it enough.  

Yes, life on the ranch is messy and volatile and this time of year can make us as grateful for it as we are anxious about it. Because we can control the calf market about as much as we can control the weather and that pony trotting across the field with his reigns dragging…

What are we doing here? Well, all I can say is we’re doing our best, and learning plenty of lessons along the way.

Next up? December and keeping that kitten off the Christmas tree.

The Outfit

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It probably won’t come as a surprise to you considering you’ve heard about my mother, the lady who owns a clothing store in my hometown, that in my life I have always been very aware of “the outfit.”

I mean, my mom was raised in a family of four girls and then went on to raise three herself, so it goes without saying that there have been countless hours spent filling and flinging clothes to and from closets, discussing what to wear for Christmas, for Thanksgiving, for a date, to a concert, to a wedding, to my wedding, to your wedding, to the beach, to the bar, to a baptism and everything in between.

There have been arguments and tantrums over denim skirts and borrowed shoes, a great deal of philosophy spent on the concept of accessories and where to get the right purse and plenty of time wondering why the hell my fashion forward mother let me wear leotards and tights for the majority of 1986.

So I won’t even mention the hair bows and that one moment in time where girls and women were really into the “Pirate shirt.”

As women we spend a lot of time standing in front of our closets, scratching our heads trying to piece together items in our wardrobe that will serve our purpose for who we need to be on that particular day.

Because in our daily lives, just as like our outfits, we rarely are asked to serve one purpose.

Like, some days you need to be a fairy…

And while I can assume we can all appreciate fashion phases, I think even more than that women can appreciate clothes that actually work for them, not against them.

Anyway, these self-imposed trends exist to remind us of the process we’ve gone through to grow on up into ourselves and find a way to present that self to the world. These are the types of conversations I’ve had with my mother anyway, and conversations I’m already having with my own daughters.

The conversations with my dad? Well, they have always gone something like this:

“It’s cold out, you better wear layers, because when we get out there you can take things off, but you can’t put more on.”

And by out there, he meant, of course, wherever it was we were chasing cows or fixing fence or breaking down that day.

As a girl, and now a woman, out on the ranch, function trumps fashion, no questions asked. Even my mother appreciates this, although she’s been known to stand in shoes blistering her feet all night in the name of looking cute. And I can’t judge, because I’ve been there too, but I can blame her for the blisters…

Anyway on the ranch if your feet ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy. Same goes with ears and hands. These are lessons learned through a few wrong choices made before an all-day roundup in the chill of the fall air where there is nothing you can do about it but shut up and ride and take note that next time and every time you get your ass back out there you will wear:

1) Good gloves
2) Proper boots
3) A decent, weather appropriate hat
4) And, for the love of Martha Stewart, the right pants…

This is not a proper example…

Which reminds me of one of the most embarrassing moments of my life–the time I blew through not one, but TWO pairs of jeans on the first day of a two-day ride in the badlands with the world renowned horse trainer, Craig Cameron and his good buddy the-professional-bull-rider-with-the-smallest-waist-I’ve-ever-seen. Did I ever tell you this one? Oh gawd, after I ripped through my second pair before supper on the first day, the tiny waisted bull rider offered me his extra pair of pants as if I wasn’t a 19-year-old college student who spent the last two years eating late-night chicken Alfredo from the campus cafeteria. I had to decline his offer because there was no way my upper thighs stood a chance. But Craig Cameron’s Wranglers? Well, turns out they fit just right…

That’s been over 20 years now and I still cringe at the memory…

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about proper dress these days because it’s the season of bundling up for fall work at the ranch, and so I’ve pulled out all the neckerchiefs, chaps and long underwear I could find. The amount of Carhart we have strewn across the entryway floor, you’d think they’d give me some sort of endorsement deal or something… Anyway, all these years later I hear the advice I got from my dad shoot right out my own mouth to my daughters, who seem to be already scheming on ways to make their warm clothes more fashionable. It’s a trait they get from their grandmother, I thought as I watched my oldest limp across the room the other day after wearing really cute shoes that were one size too small to a recent 4-H meeting. Fashion over function or function over fashion? If only we didn’t have to choose…

Anyway, if you need me I’ll be sorting gloves and wool socks and shopping for the most impractically adorable Christmas dresses I can find because ‘tis the season of the outfit!

What’s in an hour

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I remember when moving the clocks back meant moving the hand on an actual clock. I look around my house and I realize I don’t have an actual clock anywhere. Our clocks blink blue numbers on stove tops and microwaves, on telephones and digital temperature gauges and cellphones, computers and iPads that are smarter than us. They don’t need a human hand to remind them to change, they already know.

They do the same when we cross the river into Mountain time, switching swiftly and we gain an hour. Switching back and we’ve lost it.

I’ve spent that last few days looking at those clocks, the one on my phone and the one on the stove I haven’t managed to change yet, and saying ridiculous things like:

“What time is it really?”

“So, it’s 9 o’clock but it’s really 10 ‘o’clock?”

“It’s 6 am but it’s really 7 am?”

“Man, it gets dark early.”

“Man I am tired.”

“Man, I miss that extra hour of light at the end of the day.”

But what’s in an hour anyway? It’s not as if the changing of the clock changes time. There are still 24 hours in the day and the sun still does what it will do up here where the earth is stripping down and getting ready for winter.

Daylight Savings Time, moving the clocks, adjusting the time, is just a human’s way to control things a bit. Moving time forward in the spring months means daylight until nearly 11 pm. Moving the clocks backwards in the fall means we drive to work in the light and get home in the dark.

It means a 5 pm sunset and a carb-loaded dinner at 6. It means more conversation against the dark of the windows, more time to plan for the things we might get done on the weekends in the light.

It means I went to bed last night at 9 o’clock and said something ridiculous like “It’s really 10.”

But it wasn’t. It was 9.

Because we’ve changed things. (Although I still haven’t changed that stove top clock).

I lay there under the covers and thought about 24 hours in a day.

10 hours of early-November daylight.

If I closed my eyes now, I thought, I would get 8 good hours of sleep.

I wondered about that hour and what I could do with 60 more minutes. A 25 hour day? What would it mean?

Would it mean we could all slow down, take a few more minutes for the things we rush through as we move into the next hour?

Five more minutes to linger in bed, to wake each other up with sweet words and kisses, to talk about the day and when we’ll meet back at the house again.

Three more minutes to stir cream into our coffees, take a sip and stand in front of the window and watch the sun creep in. A couple seconds to say, “What a sight, what a world, what a morning…”

An extra moment or two for the dogs and the cats, for a head pat or a scratch to go along with breakfast.

Four more minutes in the shower to rinse away the night.

Two more moments to brush my daughters’ long hair, to make it style just right while they wipe the night from their sleepy eyes..

Six more minutes on my drive to town singing with them while trailing a big rig without cussing or complaint. What’s six more minutes to me now?

Fifteen more minutes for lunch with a friend, a friend I could call for lunch because I have sixty more minutes now and the work can wait.

Five minutes more for a stranger on the street who asks for directions to a restaurant and then I ask her where she’s from and she makes a joke about the weather and we laugh together, a little less like strangers then.

Then, when I get home, eight more minutes on my walk to the top of the hill, to go a little further maybe just sit on that rock up there and watch it get darker.

Four extra minutes to spice up the supper roast or stir and taste the soup.

One more minute to hold on to that welcome home hug.

Three more minutes to eat, for another biscuit, to listen to a story about their day.

And four more minutes to say goodnight. To lay there under the blankets again, under the roof, under the stars that appeared and to say thankful prayers for the extra time.

So what’s in an hour really? Moments spent breathing and thinking and learning. Words spilling out that you should have said, or should have kept, or that really don’t matter, it’s just talking.

Sips on hot coffee cooling fast.

Frustration at dust while you wipe it away, songs hummed while scrubbing the dishes or washing your hair.

Broken nails, tracked in mud, a decision to wear your best dress tonight.

Laughter and sighing and tapping your fingers on your desk while you wait.

Line-standing, hand-shaking and smooches on friends’ babies as you pass at the grocery store.

Big plans to build things. Small plans for tomorrow.  

It’s not much, but the moments are ours to pass. And those moments, they move on regardless of the clock and the hour in which it’s ticking.

Although not many people have clocks that tick anymore. I suppose that’s just one of the many things time can change…