Sunday Column: Small Houses/Big Love

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Since baby Edie arrived, it seems we have a house full of company more often. She sure draws a crowd, and it’s taking me back…

cousins 3

Sunday Column: Small houses feel big to kids who fill them with love
by Jessie Veeder
5-1-16
Forum Communications

The first few years my husband and I were married, we lived in the house where my dad was raised. Gramma’s house stood modestly next to the red barn on the end of a scoria road.

In my memories, the house was huge, big enough for my aunts and uncles, five cousins, Gramma, the five of us, the cat and a Christmas tree in the corner. We had more than enough room to have a slumber party in the room with the bunk beds in the basement. I’m not sure where our parents slept, but we don’t remember hearing them complain when we all gathered for presents in the morning, a late lunch in the afternoon and an evening holiday concert in the living room put on by the kids, complete with Santa hats and at least one of us playing “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder.

That was just one string of memories I had attached to the house, but they all sort of looked like that, a piece of the good life attached to a pile of cousins gathered at Gramma’s.

Veeder House

My sister Lindsay, me and my cousin in the Veeder house on Easter morning.

The Veeder cousins with Grandma Edie during Easter at the Veeder House. I’m directly next to my grandma in the adorable striped jumpsuit, always a good choice in the early 90s.

It was my favorite thing in the whole world to meet up with these people who sorta looked like me. They were the only ones in my life who understood that the hay bales covered in snow stacked by the barn were really Frosted Mini Wheats and we were shrunken kids trying to escape the giant spoon. The short, bald gumbo hills in the pasture actually formed a mansion, and we were the fabulous people who lived there. The scoria road that wound up the hill to the grain bins was actually the Yellow Brick Road and, after a long discussion about who was who, we would link arms, sing at the top of our lungs and dance our way to the Emerald City.

Country Cousins

That was the thing about Gramma’s house. We could be anything we wanted because we were at the perfect age to imagine it all to be so. The red carpet in the basement was hot lava. The hallway was a wedding aisle. The closets were secret passageways, and the deep freeze was full of ice cream sandwiches.

When I moved to that little brown house with my new husband all of those years later, I couldn’t believe we fit that much possibility and so many big suppers into 1,200 square feet. I was having a hard time finding enough space for my shoes.

Every time I walked through that door and took my boots off on the hot-lava carpet, I was transported back to standing in bare feet next to my cousins while Gramma handed us each an orange Schwan’s push-up pop.

The plan was never to stay living in that little house. Time and weather took its toll on the structure, and we needed more space. So here we are, over the hill in a new house of our own.

Last weekend, the cousins came to visit with their mom and Gramma and Grampa. The kids spent the day changing Edie’s clothes, baking banana bread, feeding the bottle calf, tracking in mud and indulging the littlest ones in make-believe games.

There was a point when I was crammed into our modest bathroom giving Edie a bath with four of her cousins as assistants. I was sweating, she was splashing, the three sisters were bossing and laughing, and my nephew was tossing bath toys in the little basketball hoop suction-cupped to the shower wall.

This house that we built is not huge by design, and the basement isn’t finished, so we all bumped into one another plenty of times as we squeezed in on chairs, couches and floors eating hamburgers and helping put batteries into the remote-controlled toys.

At one point, my nephew came down to the basement with me, a construction zone filled with tools and dust, and he asked about plans for the space. When I told him where the walls will go, he threw his hands out and declared this is “the biggest house in the world!”

I laughed and thought of the little brown house and hoped that this one was at least small enough to hold as many good memories for Edie and her cousins.

Cousins

Sunday Column: The plans we make…

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

In this week’s column I was trying to convey my appreciation for the things in life that go as planned. I’m not sure I successfully got to the meat of the point I was trying to make in the morning fog I was in after a sleepless night with the baby trying to meet my deadline while she took her typical 20 minute morning nap.

Re-reading it now it’s funny that the little baby that was our plan has finally made her way into our life, throwing every other plan we’ve ever had upside down or out the window.

Like sleep. Or ever getting work done. Or having a conversation that doesn’t involve her ever again. Or getting anywhere on time (like I was ever good at that in the first place, but now I can blame her…)

Today I’m thankful for the rain and this baby and the husband who helps me raise her and the work I will get to later and this body that stays healthy enough to make it all so…because sometimes those things don’t go as planned.

And then, sometimes they do.

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Sunday Column: Noticing the everyday moments of life, routine and frustrating
by Jessie Veeder
4-24-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Outside my window a mist has settled in heavy and has been busy soaking this thirsty landscape for days, turning the grass green. We’re all breathing a sigh of relief before going back to holding our breath, because we needed the moisture but we’re worried about calves being born in this weather.

That’s the way it is out here. Even when it tries its best, the weather never fully satisfies us.

Inside this house, I’m pressing my nose to the glass. The wiggly baby in my arms does the same, her eyes transfixed on something she finds interesting out there in the big wide world.

When I’m done writing this, I will fill up a big bottle with warm water and powder milk, put a little beanie and snowsuit on my daughter, and we will go feed the baby calf in the barn. I will set Edie in her seat on the floor and she will watch the calf suck the milk from that big bottle, listen to the squishy noises it makes and smell the must of the straw and the breath of the animal.

She won’t look back on her life and remember these daily rituals we kept when she was so young, but I know she’s learning something here. And already she knows what she likes and what she wants.

As it turns out, she likes to be in that big wide world we see outside the glass.

So I take her out there. Because I want to and because some days I have no choice. She sits beside us when we feed the cows and check for babies, the bumpy trails combined with the way we bundle her up and the heat and the closeness lulls her to sleep.

Someday soon she’ll be telling us that the cows say “moo” and the sky is blue and that no, she doesn’t want to wear her snow boots and it will be another ceremony entirely getting this girl out the door.

But these days, when my husband gets home from work in the late afternoon he’ll find me sitting in the chair feeding his daughter. I’ll say hello and he’ll set his thermos on the counter along with the mail he picked up on his way home and we’ll say something about supper and I’ll fill him in on his daughter’s state of affairs that day (she was fussy or she rolled around everywhere or she took a full hour nap), and then I’ll lift her up to him and she’ll smile, eyes bright and wide at the face of the familiar man she knows.

And he’ll scoop her up and say, “Hey, baby girl,” and I’ll say, “Let’s go check on the cows.”

There are dozens of other moments in every 24 hours together as a family that are difficult or frustrating or go so incredibly awry and off the rails, the kinds of moments that you don’t see in the musical montage of the life you’re planning when you’re young and in love and certain it will all turn out like a romantic comedy. By now, you all know us well enough to understand that nothing about the horse poop in the yard, the four-year unfinished home construction project or the middle-of-the-night meltdowns willing this baby we waited seven years to meet to please, for the love of blankies, fall asleep, indicate that it all went as planned.

But we also didn’t plan for my husband to come into the bathroom with a towel ready to wrap up his daughter every night after her bath. We couldn’t have, because we didn’t know how great that little ordinary and predictable part would be.

And we didn’t plan on her light hair or blue eyes or feisty little attitude sprouting as early as her first two teeth.

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But watching my husband bundle up his smiley baby girl, getting her ready to ride down a bumpy trail, all three of us together and close and out looking at our world at the end of a long day, I can’t help but take a breath and take notice.

Because we might not have planned on waiting so long, but this, we planned on this.

While I rock the baby: Confessions of a new mom

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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These days I don’t know where the weeks go. They fly by me as I sit rocking this teething baby who just started to notice when I enter and exit the room, making sure to voice her distaste at the whole exiting part.

I’m trying to work from home and take care of her at the same time, so I spend a lot of time thinking I should be doing another thing while I’m doing what I’m doing.

Like, I’m rocking this baby, but I have a pile of emails I need to respond to.

Or, I’m working on this column, but I should be rocking the baby.

Or, maybe when the emails are answered and the baby’s fed and napped we can take the dogs for a walk.

But I should really do the dishes.

Or return that phone call…oh, look, she just pooped up her back. Guess I’ll change her outfit for the third time today. Oh, is it 4:00 already? I should probably think about supper…

I knew it was going to look a lot like this as I tried my hand mixing what I was doing before I was a mom into my life as a mom. I knew my days would look a lot like a juggling act and that I would have to bust out my best multi-tasking skills. I knew it was going to be a challenge, so I’m trying to cut myself a little slack as I work on figuring it out.

And by cutting myself some slack I mean letting some things slip. Like my own personal hygiene for one, which was pretty predictable considering the amount of days I sometimes went without a shower before an infant arrived. I mean, if I didn’t have to go to town and see people, what was the point?

Anyway, turns out Edie’s morning nap is a good time to squeeze some work in, so I’ve learned I can sacrifice the shower…my husband can see me with my hair fixed when I get home from a meeting or something.

I haven’t shaved my legs for days.

And so this is my Friday night confession. It’s 10 o’clock and the baby’s in her crib at the foot of our bed. The lights are off and I’m tired as hell. Last night was one of the first times I left Edie with Husband to go out and do something that wasn’t work. I went to a movie with Little Sister and ate too much popcorn and worried the whole time that I didn’t leave enough milk for her.

They were fine.

When I got home she was sleeping and Husband shushed me when I started asking questions in a whisper.

I fell asleep just in time for the baby to wake up at midnight and then again at 4 and then again at 6 and I’m sorta holding my breath right now wondering if she’s really down for the night or if she’s just playing me like usual.

And so this is what it’s like now to be me. It’s me + 1. Me + the worry. Me + that little thread that ties me to that tiny person that is learning something new every day.

Me, half wishing time to slow down because she’s growing so fast while the other half is so excited to see what she’s going to become.

Me, a little lonesome for the great outdoors, cursing the cool spring wind that keeps me from taking this baby on a walk.

Me, a little lonesome for a husband I haven’t really been alone with in months.

Me, who used to have a lot more time for the slow pace of nature. Me who can’t remember what I used to do all day before her.

Me, who, even after 5 months, can’t believe this baby is mine forever, God willing.

Me, so grateful and humbled by what it actually means to be a mother while wondering at the same time if I’m really cut out for this.

Me, who meant to write something here on Wednesday about the cows or the budding trees or how thankful I am for the rain, but those thoughts were thoughts I thought I should be thinking while I was rocking the baby.

So thankful to be rocking the baby.

Jessie and Edie 2

Sunday Column: The Red Guitar

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

A couple weeks ago at a show, I met a man who suggested that I write a few columns about my guitars. He is in a band himself and had seen me play a few times, and had taken notice of my different guitars, and being a musician he knew there was likely a story behind them.

So this week I took him up on that suggestion (it was a good suggestion) and wrote about one of the most important guitars in my life.

Coming Home: From first memory to now, guitars hold an elusive sway
by Jessie Veeder
4-10-16
Forum Communications

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I love guitars. I love the way they look sitting in the corner of a house. I love how they feel in my hands; the new ones shiny with promise of the music that is to come, the old ones worn from years of picking.

I love how they transport me to a place so full of heart or loneliness, home or heartache. Places we all have in us.

Because you know how everyone has a first memory? That moment you look back on where you were the youngest version of yourself you knew. Maybe it’s only a few moments in time, but it was so powerful that you hang onto it hard and forever, whether you want to or not.

That memory is a guitar to me, dancing in the basement of our old house while my dad played his red Guild and sang a song I don’t remember. But I do remember the brown shag carpet and how he wore his hair a little too long and how his wide, leathery fingers eclipsed the strings at the neck as he swayed back and forth and tapped his foot, just a little bit off of the rhythm of the song he was singing and picking — the same way he does today. And I remember wanting him to let me pluck the strings on my own, so I could make the music come from that mysterious instrument.

That red guitar.

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The guitar still remains a mystery to me, how six strings touched the right way can produce sounds that make you laugh and cry and tap your toes or sing words you didn’t even know you had in you.

It’s amazing that the sounds coming out of a body made of wood can be so different depending on who’s touching it. I’m in awe that a guitar can transform a campfire, a living room or a makeshift stage into a world where love is lost and found, real cowboys still exist, summer always stays.

Yes, the guitar remains elusive to me even though every person in my family, as a sort of right of passage, owns their own version of the instrument, tucked away in basements or propped up next to the piano or the living room couch. It’s a necessity. Whether or not you ever learn to play it, you need it there next to you in case you or a guest are ever so inclined.

I’ve had in my possession a number of guitars in my life, all given to me by my dad based on his judgment on what would be the best fit for me. From the old Taylor I play today to the green Takamine I got when I convinced my parents that the guitar was more my instrument than the saxophone I played in band class, so we traded it in, as my dad does with guitars and horses.

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I found out later that’s what happened with the red Guild. I showed interest in taking up an instrument for band class in fourth grade and so dad traded it for a saxophone.

Oh, if guitars could talk! I suppose I could say that for instruments of all kind, but I’m partial to the guitar. I think they’d have the best stories.

That red Guild found its way back to the ranch eventually, another of dad’s trades of an amp or a banjo, so that he could pass that guitar along to my little sister when she went to college. I liked to imagine her sitting behind it, so far away from the buttes of the ranch, closing her eyes, plucking the strings and hearing the sounds of home.

That Guild sits in its case propped up in the corner of the house she now shares with her husband, holding in it stories about her dad playing in bar bands and coffeehouses before she was born and memories of three little girls twirling, laughing and singing along in the basement of a little old house.

Yes, all of the guitars I’ve possessed have given me something — confidence, my first song, a stronger voice. But it’s the one I never owned, the one that gave me my first chord and let loose the music inside of me, that has been my greatest gift.

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In the spring season…

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

It’s that time of year. The in between phase, where it can’t decide if it’s winter or spring so it rains then it shines then it snows then it freezes then it shines again and the crocuses come up and the trees work on blooming and then the wind blows in some weather and it starts all over again.

And I can’t help but feel like the seasons. Four months ago when we first brought Edie home the world was sleepy, resting for a few months, waiting peacefully under the snow and cold for its time to wake up and start growing things. I sort of felt the same. We were in the resting period before the growing period. Snuggled up and sleepy and wondering what the next few months might bring.

Most winters around here feel like they last forever. I press my nose up against the glass of the windows and doors and whine about freezing. But this year I can’t decide if it all went by so fast or if it was the longest winter of my life.

On one hand I’m not convinced it’s spring, because I feel like I missed winter all together (due to the haze I was in from feeding, burping, diaper changing and watching this baby’s cheeks get chubbier) and on the other hand the complete change of life, the 180 I experienced from late fall to early spring makes me feel like December was a lifetime away.

As I watch the spring wind whip and bend the trees outside the house I feel as conflicted as the weather. We need the rain and snow, but not when the calves are being born. So I pray for rain to help green up the grass, but please Lord, let it be warm rain. My prayers and hopes have stipulations.

As if I can control anything.

I know better.

But the grass is getting greener despite an unusually dry year and although I haven’t seen one for myself yet, I heard the crocuses are sprouting on the hilltops, reaching up to the warm sun and blue sky, opening their petals. The newborn calves are running, jumping, kicking up their heels in the wind, happy to be here. The birds have come home to perch on my deck and look in the window. The two geese float on the damn like they do every year right besides the mallard couple, getting ready to start their family.

And we are watching here, commenting, taking it all in in awe like we do when we get our spring back.

I look at my little girl kicking her legs, reaching for noses and hands and the world she sees before her. She’s rolling over now. She’s already sprouted two teeth for cryin’ out loud! She’s looking out the window. She sees things and her eyes fixate. I think she’s wondering. I think she’s learning. She laughs with intention, like full on belly laughs that light up her body, and she smiles like the sun on those crocuses on the hill.

I can’t help but look at her now and think that she’s truly waking up to this world. If we were winter the first three months she was born, resting and feeding and getting ready for a change in weather, this little baby is wide awake. She’s spring embodied.

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And just how we feel compelled to take in every moment of the beautiful weather we’re granted, in all its indecision and change, soaking in and learning about this baby’s personality–keeping her safe, rocked, fed, entertained and maybe sleeping some day–is marvelous and exhausting and a down right miracle.

And it’s my favorite. My favorite time of year…

Sunday Column: A Very Ranchy Easter

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

And now for a recap of Easter/Edie’s Baptism weekend where everything went as planned, including the part where our deep freeze went out on Saturday night with a house full of company, forcing my husband, dad and father-in-law to unload a chest freezer full of hamburger, frozen pizzas and elk meat into every other available frozen space on the ranch at 11 pm…

Because it’s not a holiday around here until we experience a few mild crises.

Did I ever tell you about the time my mom lit a kitchen towel on fire while hosting my friends for a Junior prom supper?

No? Well, we’ll talk about that another time…

Coming Home: Easter weekend at the ranch a thing of beauty, in spite of the wrinkles
by Jessie Veeder
4-3-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

We had a beautiful Easter weekend at the ranch. The family on both sides gathered to celebrate baby Edie’s baptism. We all dressed in our Sunday best and even got out the door early enough to get the church pews of our choice.

And despite my worries, the baby’s chubby arms fit into her 100-year-old heirloom baptism gown and she only sorta cried in church, but only after the pastor tried to give her back to me, which really looked good in front of Jesus and the congregation. That’s why we rehearsed it.

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I’m feeling so good about it all I decided to leave out the part where I nearly divorced my husband in front of that same Jesus and congregation when, during the church welcome, the baby started squirming and he informed me that he remembered to pack the milk, but failed to pack the bottle.

Apparently I declared, “That bottle was going to get us through this!” loudly and angrily enough that my sister-in-law two pews behind us started to worry for our family status. But all I could think of at the time was the dress I flung on in my frenzied attempt to get out the door in time wasn’t made for a woman with my, er, baby-feeding lifestyle. Which meant, during communion, you could find me sitting on a folding chair in the bathroom with that dress hiked up to my neck feeding my squirmy baby, desperately trying not to soil or rip that heirloom gown. Because we still needed to get pictures.

Back at the ranch, we all gathered together, looking forward to cake and homemade kuchen, ham, beans and two types of cheesy potatoes. The weather was beautiful, we were going to dye eggs and snuggle the baby.

But first, the annual Easter egg hunt.

Crap. In my distracted attempt to make the house presentable by eradicating the dust bunnies and dead spring flies on the windowsills, I forgot about the Easter egg hunt.

Which means I didn’t notice that the Christmas tree was still sitting on the deck, one lonesome red bulb left dangling from a bottom branch. We went out to take a family photo and my husband, suddenly inspired to do some spring cleaning, removed it from the stand and flung it off the deck and onto the lawn where piles of horse poop and a fine assortment of sticks and bones that the dogs have been collecting all winter waited.

My yard, still a nice shade of early spring brown, looked like the before photo from one of those yard renovation shows on HGTV, only worse because I doubt anyone would dare send in a photo of a pink Easter egg hiding underneath an old deer leg the dogs drug up from the coulee.

And only in my world, on this ranch, would my brother-in-law/Easter Bunny find it hilarious to hide an egg in the middle of one of those piles of road apples.

And only in my family would the kids be completely unfazed by picking up their plastic, candy-filled egg from a pile of poop.

And only in my column will you read about so much poop.

Needless to say I was horrified, but no one was surprised. I might have forgotten to landscape for the big day (and by landscaping I mean throwing all those bones, sticks and shovels full of poop over the fence and into the trees where they belong), but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. In two hours, those dogs would have located their loot and brought it all home again.

There are just some things out here that aren’t worth trying to control.

Because in the mess there are moments. Moments after the perfect ham is carved, the cake cut, the dishes piled up and our bellies filled where the chaos sounds like laughter, feels like a baby strapped to the carrier on my chest and looks like fun and freedom and love attached to aunts and uncles, grammas and grampas on the end of kites running up the road trying to catch the wind.

And when you’re looking at something like that, the wrinkles, the forgotten things, the mud and the road apples just blend right in to create a beautiful weekend at the ranch.

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Sunday Column: The thread that ties us together

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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We baptized baby Edie yesterday. We have a happy, healthy baby girl surrounded by the love of a great big family who all showed up for her.

That’s all anyone can ask for in this life, to have something so precious tied to you.

I have known in my life that this isn’t a gift granted to everyone, but when you’re wrapped up in the challenge and goodness of it all, sometimes you’re given a moment that reminds us again to be grateful and humble and happy in the gifts we’re given.

This week’s column is on one of those moments and the thread that winds and unwinds between us….

Coming Home: Feeling the strong yet fragile thread that ties child, parent
by Jessie Veeder
3-27-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

It was one of those little scenes that would play out in the movie version of your life, one that offers comic relief to a series of tense emotions, an argument or a confession: a pile of little kids stacked up on a battery-operated toy pickup, driving back and forth in front of the stage where I played with the band last Saturday, and one little boy, dressed in boots and a Wrangler butt pointed in our direction as he rolled by, bent over the side revealing to us a tiny full-moon.

An adorable plumber’s crack.

An oblivious drive-by.

In the middle of a song I was singing about being strong and holding on, I looked over at my bass player to make sure I wasn’t the only one witnessing the cutest and most hilarious thing in the world. He looked back at me with a big grin, and I finished the song through stifled giggles.

So much for keeping it together.

But it was a welcome scene. On one of the first nights I spent on a stage away from my baby, we were singing to a crowd of kids, families and bouncy houses at an event raising money to grant wishes for children with cancer.

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Up on that stage, you get a bird’s-eye view of a community coming together to help ease the burden on families who have been sentenced to watch their babies suffer. From up there, it was hard to tell which children were sick, which were healthy and who had overcome so much in their short lives.

Take a step down and it might become a bit clearer, but from where I stood they were all just kids busting out their best break-dancing moves, giving smaller kids rides on the horse on wheels, requesting that we play the chicken dance and working to break their sugar quota for the year.

Watching their enthusiasm for being let loose at an event designed for them used to remind me of what it was like to be a kid with boundless energy oblivious to the worries of the world.

Now I look out over those dancing, laughing, bouncing children and every single one of them is Edie.

Edie who loves music. Edie who, in just a few short months, might be dancing to it. Edie who would love that toy horse on wheels.

Edie, who was likely fighting off sleep in her dad’s arms. Edie, happy and healthy and so fresh to a world where anything can happen.

Some days having a baby feels like having a tiny little anchor tied to your ankle. I say this with love and honesty as I try to put into words what all you parents out there have experienced tenfold already.

It’s similar to the “heart outside your chest” analogy I suppose, except to me that always sounded so raw and terrifying. Ever since Edie was born, I haven’t felt ripped open as much as I feel like I have been walking around with a thread spooling and unspooling, connecting me to her.

That night I was 60 miles away from my daughter, standing on that stage, and I imagined that thread stretching out along the highway, through the badlands and over the river to where she was breathing, happy and healthy and loved.

Looking out in that crowd of children dancing, I imagined a spider web of threads connecting those tiny souls to the souls sitting on folding chairs, visiting and laughing and keeping one eye out for the little heartbeat they created.

I could say here now how I can’t imagine what I would do if little Edie got sick enough to be granted her wish to ride a rollercoaster or pet a giraffe in Africa, but does it need to be said?

Until the last four months I didn’t know about the thread. And last weekend I was reminded that the thread is as fragile as it is strong.

I opened my eyes in the dark of the early hours of this morning. In the quiet I thought about the little girl in the princess costume being granted a trip to Disneyland. And then about that little boy on the tractor.

I smiled. My baby stirred. The thread pulled tight.

Sunday Column: The boy on the hill

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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Longtime blog readers might remember this story. I stumbled across it in the archives last week while I was revisiting some of my writing as I contemplate putting together a book.

Yes. A book. Because I’m not sleeping anyway, so I might as well start another project.

Anyway, in those archives there’s lots about the weather and family and what the landscape looks like as it goes on changing every day.

And then there are little snippets of conversations, glimpses into our lives, past and present. These are my favorites.

Sunday Column: Family lore lingers around Sunday dinner table
by Jessie Veeder
3-20-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Most Sundays we get together with Mom and Dad for dinner. After a week of work and crazy schedules, one of us decides that someone should cook a decent meal, pour some wine and make us all sit down.

There’s something special about being in a room with people whom you know the best in the world and still being able to learn something about them. After talking about work and weather, usually we pick out the good memories to tell and retell.

Recently, Dad shared a story about his childhood that I’m sure I’ve heard dozens of times before. But it doesn’t matter.

I want to exist in this 10-minute vignette of my father that somehow sums up everything he became here on this landscape.

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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 he might catch a glimpse of that little boy, 4 years old with curly black hair riding bareback on a paint pony alongside his father. He throws his head back, squeezes his eyes shut and laughs.

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 7-mile one-way cross-country trip. He thinks now that it might have been a little extreme, but ask him then and it was all he wanted to do. Leave him behind? He would have tried to follow.

The pastures out east, even today, 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. The oak groves, bordered by thorny bull berry brush and thistle, begin to blend into one another and look the same.

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

“Don’t move,” his father said as he made plans to check the tricky creek bottoms for cattle. “I’ll come back for you.”

So my father waited on his pony, wind flopping his hat and moving fluffy clouds over the buttes.

Dad searches for more recollection in his coffee cup and then rests his chin on his fist. He remembers he didn’t move, he just scanned the hills and squinted into the oak trees. And while he was peering into that horizon, holding the reins of his pony, someone did come over that hill. But it wasn’t his father. It was a girl with long black hair and legs dangling on each side of her bare-backed horse.

“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 10 or 11 years old.

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.

So she stayed with that little boy with curly hair on that hilltop, likely joining him in holding her breath and scanning the horizon for any sign of a cowboy hat.

He doesn’t remember how long she sat with him. When you’re 4 years old, 10 minutes can seem like hours.

But it doesn’t matter. She stayed until that little boy had an escort through the valleys and over the creeks, back west to the barnyard and to his mother waiting with canned meat, biscuits and a report of the day’s events.

So he told his mother his adventure, and for years to come this would be one of their family’s stories shared over and over again at Sunday meals, about a little boy who found a girlfriend out east on the hilltop.

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

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Taxes, Netflix and what I learned this week…

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Every day with a baby in the house comes with a little life lesson.

That, for example, is one of those lessons. That there’s always a lesson.

And just when you think you have it figured out, you are reminded at 1 am when that baby is lying wide awake in her crib practicing her new pterodactyl noises, that you don’t.

And you will never have a full night’s sleep again.

Right now though, I’m holding out hope that just like her recent waking up every two hours in the night has thrown me for a loop, so soon will her sleeping through the night.

“Soon” being the word that I’m hanging on to by a thread.

Anyway, it’s Friday. As if that means anything to a mom who stays at home with the baby, except that, besides the gig I have on Saturday night, during the weekend I don’t have to try to work too.

Or do taxes.

Yup . This week was the week of the taxes. And lest I have mislead you to believe I am organized (which I’m pretty positive I haven’t) taxes, when you own a small business that sends you working in different venues across the state all year, mean you have to keep track of things like hotels, meals, miles, contract help and dozens of 1099s, and I suck at it.

I wish I lived in a world where I didn’t need to know what a 1099 is. But I don’t.

If only I had the self-discipline to stay on top of what I need to stay on top of to make taxes easier on myself. My system looks less like Quick Books and more like “put all the receipts and contracts and paperwork in a folder and sort through them the week before your tax appointment.”

I mean, I don’t even have my shit together enough to buy Quick Books. I need to get my shit together enough to buy Quick Books.

That was one realization I had this week.

Another? I eat way too many burgers while I’m on the road.

Like lots and lots of burgers.

Anyway, aside from the lessons my taxes tried to teach me this week, I also learned that baby Edie is one wiggle away from taking off out the door to college.

She can’t be trusted alone on any surface, so we all prefer the floor.

And so I’ve learned I need to sweep more.

And mop once in a while.

And maybe use my burger money to hire a housekeeper…or maybe just tape a Swiffer pad to the baby and get her started early on chores.

Anyway, aside from taxes, this week also found me in town at my Little Sister’s waiting on the shop to get done fixing my car, which also had a flat tire and three inches of prairie mud stuck to its finish, not that that’s anything new.

Little Sister has high speed Internet and Netflix, a luxury we apparently aren’t afforded if we choose to live in the boonies. And so I irresponsibly decided to use that Internet, not to get work done, but to watch whatever the hell I wanted. Because when you have access to high speed Internet, you can watch whatever the hell you want.

But it turns out I can’t handle that kind of power. I just hold the baby and flip through the choices and never make a decision. I become a channel flipping, time sucking zombie.

I can’t handle the pressure.

And so maybe our lack of basic Netflix/Amazon Prime/Internet good enough that I could at least watch a YouTube clip, is a blessing in disguise.

I mean, how would I ever get my taxes done knowing that every season of the 1980s hit television show “The Wonder Years” is just waiting for me in that black box?

So there was another realization.

And the wind and the snow outside this week reminded us all that it’s not spring yet.

And this morning, as Edie’s eyes are about to pop wide open after her typical 10-minutes-or-less nap, I am reminded that I should use those ten minutes to fry and egg or something because I’m starving and might have missed my breakfast window.

Which reminds me that I need to get eggs.

At the grocery store.

Shit. I need to go to the grocery store.

And the post office.

Because, well, taxes…

With a little help from the best…

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

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Edie’s getting a new perspective on the world these days.

The weather has been warmer and I’ve scheduled a few appearances out of town, so that means road time, restaurant time, hotel time, shopping time and the best part, auntie and gramma time.

They are the only reasons there is even a prayer for me to continue to travel and sing with a baby in tow.

And last weekend they earned their keep as they endured loading all four of us and our suitcases, a guitar, a giant stroller, a car seat and thirty-seven changes of clothes for the baby into Husband’s giant pickup because the tire was low on my car. They held their pee without complaint for the three hour drive because the baby was sleeping and we didn’t want to disrupt a good thing only to have to pull off the interstate to feed her twenty miles from our destination just like I predicted.

Because a screaming baby can test even the most loving aunt, gramma and mother…

It’s a small price to pay to have the little cherub along though. Because 90% of the time she’s a drooly dream who makes everything harder and more fun. We got the hotel and just stared at her on the bed, hanging out in her diaper practicing rolling over.

And leave it to Edie to wait until I’m gone to bust out her big tricks. While I was waiting to go on air at the North Dakota Today show the next morning, my little sister was texting me video from the hotel room of the little turkey rolling all over the bed.

Apparently she needs a bigger audience.

And after one live TV appearance, one terrifying trip through the carwash with the giant pickup, one equally terrifying trip through the narrow Starbucks drive through, lunch, a nursing/puking/outfit changing session in the parking lot of the liquor store while my mom and sister shopped the buy one/get one sale…

and a meltdown in the car seat from one end of town to another, we finally made it to the mall where we promised ourselves a quick trip.

Mom just needed to exchange some things. Little Sister just needed to look at some boots. I just needed a couple new shirts and ingredients to make some bars for the Fireman’s fundraiser the next day…

But also I needed makeup. And mom needed a giant pack of paper towels for the store and an equally giant box of toilet paper. And speaking of boxes, she might as well pick up that plastic box for the deck so Pops can store his grilling tools out of the weather. He just leaves them outside you know…

Oh, and I guess she also needed a bucket and a mop. Apparently it’s spring cleaning at the store…

And while she was trying to fit that all in the cart I figured I should pick up some more socks for Edie. And then pick up Edie out of the stroller. Because the stroller is a little too much like the carseat and, well, she has a short tolerance for such confinement.

So you can about picture it. Three women, one pushing an overflowing cart full of cleaning supplies, one pulling a stroller full of purses and coats instead of a baby like God intended and the other one wandering around aimlessly, a burp rag over her shoulder, holding the baby in one hand and a cell phone in the other, texting to locate the other two women she arrived with.

I swear, we passed two moms strolling tiny twin babies in the mall that day who both looked like they just arrived from a spa vacation compared to the hot mess we had going on.

And that was before we attempted to sort all our treasures in the checkout line and fit them into the pickup.

Really. Only the Veeder women could fill a one-ton, long box pickup to the brim after one overnight stay in the big town.

It’s like we never get off the ranch.

So that was Friday.

Saturday mom came with me to take care of Edie while I sang at an event that evening, and Edie only screamed once for no apparent reason and didn’t require an outfit change, so that was good.

I however, emerged from a back room feeding to sign CDs with my dress hiked up past my hips, puke on my shoulder and my bra unlatched.

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