10 Painting Tips from a Woman who always learns everything the hard way and should have never picked up a paint brush in the first place…

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So I spent the weekend elbows-deep in the never ending, house finishing project. Funny how a task with the word “finish” in the title has become never-ending.

But we have a deadline, and deadlines have endings don’t they? Please, someone tell me this will end.

For those of you just joining us here at the ranch, (and there are a quite a few these days, thankyouverymuchforstoppingby!) Husband and I have been working on finishing a house that was delivered to us here in a little oak grove at the ranch last December.

We’re nearing the finish line, and if I wasn’t insane before, after fifty-five trips to the Menards 150 miles away to pick up things like doors, toilets, floors, lights, vents, electrical wires, cement, tile, nails, glue, the weird and delicious peanut-butter stuffed pretzels they have in the checkout aisle and the dreadful and marriage-testing trip for plumbing parts in torrential rains, lightning storms, forty-mile-an-hour winds, blinding blizzards and the most recent ice-covered roads

I am definitely, fully, insane now.

And insane is not the best quality to have when your house is covered in sheet rock dust, there’s an air compressor hose dangling from the loft right next to the 12 foot cedar boards leaned up your wall cutting your living space in half and you decide that while husband is working on building you a giant closet to make up for the months of chaos his handyman ideals have created, you are quickly going to paint the laundry room/entry way.

It shouldn’t take too long. It’s a small space. You’ll just need a little assistance in moving that washer and dryer full of clothes you forgot about out of the way…

Now, I could tell you how the painting project went and you could draw your own lessons and conclusions from the series of events that unfolded, but I think I will save you the analyzation and just cut to the chase. Because I figure I have enough home improvement under my belt to offer some tips to those of you who are confident and delusional enough to think that putting new knobs on your cabinets, tiling the bathroom, or painting a damn wall for crying out loud is, like, just going to take a day or two.

“We’ll get this done in no time!” we tell ourselves…

Yes, I could write a book on the many reasons not to wear short-shorts while attempting a tiling project, how to get out of helping to lay a hardwood floor by hammering your thumbprint off and what not to say to your husband as he’s dangling off a ladder twenty feet in the air.

It would be a best seller for sure, but I don’t have the time today. Because today I have to finish the damn painting project I was supposed to finish yesterday afternoon.

So in an attempt to stay focused, I give you:

10 Painting Tips from a Woman who always learns everything the hard way and should have never picked up a paint brush in the first place:

Tip #1: Finish your house before you move you, your husband, your two dogs and all your shit into it. And don’t add a cat to the mix. But if you do, definitely don’t let that barn cat in too.

Tip #2: 7.5 minutes.

This is the time you will spend on your project before you convince yourself you need a Cheeto break.

Tip #3: You can try to fool yourself into thinking that painting a laundry room/entry way will be a quick and painless project, despite the thirty-seven angles, outlets, doorways, cabinets, utility sink with exposed plumbing, trim boards and mud splatters you have to work around. Approach the task with confidence, but assume it’s going to suck. This will save you the shock of postponing breakfast, lunch, dinner and the shower you meant to take before meeting up with friends for a drink. Speaking of drinks…

Tip #4: Pour yourself one. And then put alcohol in it. Oh, and if you don’t particularly enjoy the taste of paint, use a cup with a lid.

Tip #5: Don’t wear your favorite Steve Earl t-shirt. No matter how carefully and quickly you think this project is going to go, you will get paint on that t-shirt you forgot you were wearing. You will grow tired and careless as you reach the end of your rope and you will let your guard down. You will lean into the wall while reaching for a final touch and you will get paint in places that will amuse your husband.

And your husband will express his amusement by pointing and laughing and shaking his head.

You too will shake your head while your entire body droops at the thought of throwing your favorite Steve Earl t-shirt into the pile with the other cute and innocent garments inadvertently turned into construction day clothes.

Tip #6: Make enough weird and agonizing noises (aka: grunting, moaning, saying “ohnoohnoohno” or “shit,” really loud, whining, weeping, or all around screeching) loud enough to catch the attention of your husband working with power tools on the second floor.

Follow those sounds with well-timed moments of silence and he will eventually find an excuse to come down stairs to see if you’re still alive…which brings me to what I think should be the next tip…

Tip #7: While he’s downstairs and you’re standing on the washing machine leaned over with your head dangerously close to getting stuck in that small gap between the cabinet and the wall, kindly ask him to re-dip your paintbrush and while he’s at it, refill your paint tray. If you’ve picked out the right painting pants and lean over at the right angle, your husband might suddenly become invested in the project, offering to pick up a paint brush to help go over the spots you’ve missed and, well, now you’ve got help.

Tip #8: Be prepared to hate the color you chose. You will never want to see it again for as long as you live but you will vow that you will just close your eyes when you attempt to do laundry or put on your boots to walk out the door because no matter how much you hate this color and the fact that it is now likely going to be in your hair and on the back part of your elbow you can’t see or reach for a few days, you sure as hell are not going to paint this damn room again. Ever.

And when your husband informs you that it will likely need another coat, take off that paint covered Steve Earl shirt before taking a running face plant to cry on the bed.

Tip #9: Sell your prized collection of Troll Dolls or Precious Moments collection, the pug or the cat or whatever it takes to be able to hire someone to paint whatever else needs to be painted for the rest of your life. But for the love of Lucchese, never, never, never sell your boot collection. If you remember anything, remember this.

Tip #10: Now, I’m not sure because I’ve never birthed anything, but I think painting and other home improvement projects might be like childbirth. Like, you might forget how painful it was while you happily thumb through Better Homes and Gardens and find that Martha Stewart has a really pretty shade of lavender that would look stunning in the sun room that you’ve been suggesting your husband build for you this summer.

I’ll tell you agin, if you really need a sun room, sell your car so you can pay someone else to do it.

If you really like that lavender color, call me. I’ll read my tips out loud and with a stern and convincing tone that will help you with the whole clarity thing.

If you’ll excuse me, now that I’ve finished this, I’ve got to go and find about two or three other tasks to occupy my time while I procrastinate that second coat.

Happy Home Improving you crazies…

Winter crazy.

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I know I’ve been talking about the weather a lot lately, trudging through the snow, climbing to the top of it, bundling up and taking it on by looking for the beauty in 30 below.

Well, we’re at the end of January now so I would like to take this opportunity, in the midst of another dangerous wind-chill advisory, to say ‘good riddance’ to the hardest and most brutal month of the year up here in the great white north.

Yup, that’s a little negative sign right there next to the 20. This is before the windchill. But hey, the sun is shining so what the hell, let’s just call it a beautiful day.

I think we made it through just fine admiring the sundogs,

and the fluffy puppy,

eating egg rolls, throwing sledding parties

and climbing the frosted badlands.

But I feel now it’s time to confess the fact that all of those things did their best to distract me from going crazy in this cooped up state, but they did not succeed entirely.

No.

I am afraid I might have hung on to a bit of that inevitable winter insanity.

But please, don’t judge me. Let me remind you that I’m still a woman living in an unfinished house, sharing my winter space with a good number of power tools and using a shop vac to complete the majority of my cleaning. And in a situation like this, unexpected additions to the decor and atmosphere pop up unexpectedly.

I mean, you try staying sane when you can be jolted from your sleep at any given moment by the excruciating and terrifying gun-shot like sound of the air-compressor shaking the house as it recharges in the loft.

You try remembering to unplug that thing when the only time it makes itself apparent is at 2 am! The dogs wake up and start a barking frenzy right before one of them pukes on the floor. The cats in the basement cling to the ceiling and you shake your husband, telling him that this time, you’re sure it’s a robber.

Or an alien.

You try keeping your cool as your knight in shining armor rolls over and falls back to sleep.

I mean, I always swear I”ll unplug that thing first thing in the morning. But in the morning all I can think of is coffee, and so the cycle continues as I make my way from the coffee pot my favorite chair, but not before I trip over that stack of cedar my husband decided to place in my path, sending me flailing forward as my coffee splays across the floor and I invent thirty-seven new curse words.

And those words are in addition to the ones I invented yesterday when I tripped over that same stack of wood three times.

I’m serious. It blends in. I get comfortable in my environment and I don ‘t find it necessary to look down. It’s a defect that I blame for the multiple times I’ve stepped the wrong way off of our front step and into the pit that will become our garage in the spring.

These types of outcomes are precisely the reason I’ve never been a furniture rearranging kind of person. Because I strongly believe that if you put something in its place, it should stay there.

Forever.

My life, limbs and coffee, depend on it.

Anyway, I am blaming those miseries on my husband. But I will tell you, I’ve created plenty of my own this winter, starting with allowing our one and only barn cat to take up residence in our basement. I mean, it’s so damn cold out there and now that we’re not in the barnyard I felt she needed to be close by, you know, to take the pressure off of the dogs to keep wild cat occupied while keeping her diet in check by batting her away with a vengeance if she dares get too close to the food.

I’ve been questioning this arrangement, but it seems it’s too late. Last weekend I attempted to put that barn cat outside to enjoy the 40 degree day and before I even opened the door she managed to claw her way out of my grip and up to my shoulder before flinging her body off the top of my head and running for cover.

And so I’ve been warned. There’s no way in hell that cat is every leaving my basement–rain, snow, forty below or 80 above.

Shit.

Allowing another animal into this house is not the weirdest mistake I’ve made this winter. No. A few days ago in my attempt to reach Husband I dialed the wrong number and asked a complete stranger if he planned to come home tonight. The man on the other end of the line sounded a lot like my husband, and, well, I didn’t appreciate his tone.

Turns out he didn’t appreciate mine either.

And then there was that time my car was making weird noises as I drove through the neighboring town, forcing me to pull over in the parking lot of Runnings where it became evident that when I put the thing in park it was going to ignore me and just kept rolling…and when I put it in reverse it sounded like it was going to blow up.

So I sat there with my foot on the brake for a half an hour while I waited for a tow truck to bring me to the mechanic and for Pops to come and save me and take me grocery shopping before bringing me 60 miles back home. I waited, car-less through the holiday season, only to get a call informing me they couldn’t find anything wrong with the vehicle, except, well, you know the thirty-seven rock chips in the windshield.

Yup, that really happened. It was an annoying Christmas miracle and I have spent every day since driving that car just waiting for it to blow up or something.

Oh, I know we all have little mishaps and results of poor judgement in our lives, I just think the annoyance is multiplied out here by the fact that we’re also cooped up and freezing. So I guess I decided to share them so we could laugh about while we dream about summer.

But I’ll I make sure to roll my eyes first.

And sometimes I might hollar “Really?! Really!” so don’t be alarmed.

Happy last day of January. I hope you made it through with your sanity.

If you need me, I’ll be looking for mine…

Goodbye Summer

An inflatable Christmas miracle.

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

winter

Well folks, the countdown to Christmas is on and I have to say my Christmas spirit has been looking a little less like Santas and snowflakes and snowmen and a little more like procrastination.

I have approximately ten days before Chris Kringle comes down my fake chimney and I haven’t so much as hung a stocking.

I had the best of intentions last weekend. I swept up the floor, moved the remnants of the tiling project out of the way, cleared the table of the leftover Thanksgiving decorative gourds and had a long talk with my wild cat about leaving the Christmas tree alone or else.

I even had the husband bring in the three boxes of Tupperware totes filled with all of my holiday cheer.

I was ready for a tree. I was ready for the lights. I was ready for Christmas to throw up all over this house.

I was ready to put the pug in the Santa Suit.

I even unwrapped a decorative dish.

And then I got distracted by a holiday prank that has been years in the making. And I’m telling you that it may go down as the only way to properly celebrate the holiday.

I’m not sure my mother would agree.

Ok, so here’s the deal. My mother is the Christmas queen. We’ve talked about this before. She decks the halls with boughs of holly, beautiful wreathes, hand-made wooden cowboy Santas,twinkling white lights, matching Christmas bulbs, beaded garland and a tree that stands upright, symmetrical and perfect in the corner of a family room glowing in the light of the subtle cinnamon candles flickering and highlighting the decor neatly placed on every surface.

My mother loves Christmas indeed. But it’s her own kind of Christmas. It’s a Christmas that blends in nicely with the season surrounding her outside. It’s kind of like how she only takes one bite of a fun-sized Snickers bar and wraps the other half back up and puts it in the fridge for later.

The woman has the self-control necessary to understand when enough is just perfect enough. She’s classy and soft and graceful and delicate and beautiful and she likes her Christmases that way.

Visit her house on the holidays and you will find fudge cut in perfectly bite sized squares on a simple red platter.

You will see white lights wrapped neatly along the cedar rail fence outside.

You will see mini pine trees lining her walkway and a wreathe on the door. You will hear Mannheim Steamroller music coming from within.

You will see and smell and taste all of these things and it will feel like Christmas. My mother’s Christmas.

And there won’t be an inflatable Santa in sight.

Because for as much love as my mother has for her holiday, she has an equal amount of passionate hate for Christmas decorations with faces that blow up and glow and wave and eclipse the perfectly lit and perfectly beautiful house behind them.

I mean, the woman can’t drive by an adorable puffy, air-filled Frosty without the uncontrollable urge to smack the thing across the face.

Or pop it with her keys.

Or shoot it with her nonexistent B.B. Gun.

Photo courtesy of karlfrankowski on Flickr, because I’m too busy dealing with my mother’s reaction to inflatables to take my own photo.

Seriously. Once we were strolling along a street in a quaint and peaceful small town, admiring the lights and feeling warm and fuzzy about the season and we came across a giant snow globe blowing air and styrofoam over an inflatable baby Jesus sleeping peacefully inside and I had to hold the woman back.

Her hatred is palpable and hilarious and a constant topic of holiday dinnertime discussion.

So as her loving family who have endured years of helping our dear mother trim the immaculate tree of her dreams while being denied tinsel, colored lights, battery operated ornaments and the Chipmunks Christmas album, we decided it was time to rebel.

But don’t blame me. No, don’t you dare. I’ve had the idea, but never the guts to put in place. Blame my Little Big Sister and her prankster husband. Blame their trip to the big town and the adorable, inflatable and giant cow wearing a Santa hat sitting next to the adorable, inflatable and giant pig wearing a Santa hat they found in one of those big box stores.

It had to be done.

And so it was. On December, 8 2012 the four of us put a plan into place that would finally give the inflatables a chance and leave my mother helpless to stop it.

Step 1: Get mom out of the house. Tell her you’re making chicken noodle soup. Tell her Big Little Sister, her husband and Little Man will be there. Tell her it will be fun.

Step 2: Distract the woman with wine and cheese and food and the grandkid.

Step 3: Make up a story about how the guys have to go out to the quonset to get the rest of your Big Little Sister’s Christmas decorations, a task that anyone who has ever seen the quonset knows could take up to one to thirty-seven hours, depending on the location of the desired item in the towering pile of junk that’s accumulated in there over the years.

Step 4: Try to keep a straight face as the boys put on their winter gear and head to your mother’s house to place that inflatable, adorable and giant cow wearing a Santa hat next to the adorable, inflatable and giant pig wearing a Santa hat on the roof of your mother’s house.

Step 5: Try to keep a straight face as the boys return, say it’s time to go and your Big Little Sister makes up an excuse to stop over at her mother’s house on the way out so that she might catch a glimpse of her reaction to this prank.

Step 6: Wait until she leaves the driveway to follow them out so that you might catch it too.

Step 7: Laugh your ass off as you witness your Christmas Queen mother get out of the pickup, put her fists in the air and yell to the heaven’s “Whhyyy?! Whyyyyy?! Wwwhhhyyyyyy!?” before she turns toward your husband and brother-in-law and runs after them with those fists.

Step 8: Bwwwaahahahahahaha!

photo courtesy of Pops’ camera phone…

Step 9: Make no offer to remove them (and hide all the guns).

Hmm. Perhaps I have a little holiday spirit in me this year after all, but I guess that will happen when you witness a Christmas miracle.

Happy holidays. I hope your Christmas is shaping up to be exactly how you like, inflatable or no-inflatables.

But I hope there’s inflatables.

And a pug in a Santa suit.

A half-built house and how not to get unstuck

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Once upon a time in a land far away and frozen a cozy couple lived in a half-built cabin in the oak trees.

The couple loved the life they spent together surrounded by sawdust, pink sunrises, furry horses, cow plops and misbehaving dogs. On cold winter Saturdays they would spend the mornings drinking coffee and procrastinating the work they needed to get done. They refilled their mugs and fried some bacon while they ignored the unfinished steps, the untrimmed windows and the dangling loose wires. Saturdays were the best for waking up slowly.

Saturdays were the best for long breakfasts and watching the snow fall. If the cozy couple had their way they would spend every Saturday wrapped up in fluffy blankets and drowning things in syrup.

But they knew it couldn’t be. They also knew that as soon as they ran out of coffee, pulled on those coveralls and muck boots, wool caps and shoveling gloves, things had the potential to get slippery.

They did it anyway. Because the only way to get things finished was to start, even if it was nearly noon and they had to hitch up the horse trailer in a blizzard to make the 120 mile trip to the big town for lumber, tiles, decorative rocks, light bulbs, thirty seven socket fittings, plumping stuff, and a toilet.

So together they made a list with little boxes they could check off with the wife’s red pen and got to work.

The first task? Unhooking the pickup from the camper that for some reason was parked in the most inconvenient spot in the world and decidedly not moved in a more convenient season.

So the husband got to work scraping the windshield of his fancy, prized pickup outside while the wife stayed in the cabin for a bit to work on fitting her unruly hair underneath her cap and search for something presentable to wear for the trip to town.

Fifteen minutes into the hair-taming, clothes-searching extravaganza the husband opened the door of the unfinished cabin, letting the snow swoosh in with the wind as he stomped it off of his boots and declared he had a bit of an extravaganza of his own—the pickup was stuck in the frozen icy tundra of a landscape they called a front yard and he needed his wife’s help pull it out.

“It’s just a little stuck,” the husband reassured his kind-of frazzled looking wife. “It shouldn’t take much.”

Always willing to lend a hand or a scrawny arm, the wife quickly finished dressing, pulled another pair of pants over the ones she already had on (because that’s what you do in the frozen icy tundra) and followed her husband out the door and to the scene.

The husband laid out the plan nice and clear, aware that his wife often only hears about a quarter of the words that come out of his mouth.

He explained that she was going to be in charge of the stuck pickup that was attached to the stuck camper while he used an un-stuck pickup to pull the stuck pickup attached to the stuck camper out of its stuck situation.

He even turned the wheel in the direction the stuck pickup attached to the stuck camper needed to go once it was unstuck.

“All you have to do is press on the gas a bit until the tires spin and follow me out,” said the husband. “It shouldn’t take much.”

The wife understood that she needed to pay attention, but she was distracted. She worried about where she might have misplaced her favorite scarf, when she was going to find time to put up the Christmas tree, what type of tile to put in the bathroom and if this hat looked stupid with her wild hair escaping out by her ears.

She looked at her husband’s face as he gave her directions from outside of the stuck pickup attached to the stuck camper. She heard him say, “Press the gas” and admired the stubble on his perfectly square jawline as he reached over her bundled up body to turn the wheel. At times like these the wife thought her husband was the most handsome. She was happy to help. She was perfectly capable of this.

Press the gas.

Turn the wheel.

Follow him out.

She was thinking she would follow him anywhere as he bent over to attach the two vehicles together with a giant rope and walked toward the unstuck pickup and put it in drive.

The tires on the unstuck pickup spun as the rope tightened. The wife recalled her directions, pressed on the gas and turned the wheel, waiting for her brave and handsome husband to pull them out of this slippery situation so she could get out her red pen and check something off of their list already.

She was certain the wheels beneath her were giving it a go. She knew this truck had some oomph, but that pickup attached to the camper didn’t move an inch.

Geesh. It must be more stuck than her husband anticipated.

So the husband tried again, backing up and pulling the rope tight between them, this time kind of slipping sideways a bit as he gave it all he had.

The wife did the same, pressing on the gas pedal a bit more this time, revving the engine like she’s witnessed many a stuck man do in her lifetime. The approach was more vigorous, her confidence a bit shaken, but the outcome was the same.

She was really stuck.

The husband opened the door to his pickup and looked back at his wife, who peered at him from underneath a wool beanie behind the cracked windshield of his very prized and still just kinda stuck pickup, assessing the situation, appearing to have a few scenarios running through his problem-solving mind.

He shrugged his shoulders and got back in, shut the door and tried one last time.

He tugged and jerked on the other end of that giant rope. He kicked up snow and then ice and then earth with his tires. The wife pushed on the gas and pushed on the gas and pushed on the gas, using the only directions she was given and thinking that the next step was to get the damn tractor, wondering how the hell a man can get a pickup attached to a camper so unbelievably stuck out here. Wondering why in the hell they didn’t move this damn thing in the fall before the snow came. Wondering why her husband always procrastinates things like these, annoyed that it was taking so long, worried that they wouldn’t get to the lumber yard before it closed, wondering what the hell happened to her scarf and…

“Hey, heeeyyy! Heeeeyyyyyyy!” she heard her husband hollering from the open door of the unstuck pickup.

“Did you put the pickup in drive?”

The wife looked down, appalled at the accusation, but knowing it to be true as she found the little orange dot on the console pointing at “P.”

“P” for park.

“D” for drive.

The wife didn’t remember hearing that part of the instructions.

“Shit,” whispered the wife as she moved that orange dot to “D” and pressed on the gas while the slack between the two vehicles tightened and moved them across the yard.

“Shit,” laughed the husband, shaking his head and unhooking the ropes.

“Shit,” said the wife again as she trudged back toward the unfinished cabin to look for her scarf and her red pen, thinking that Saturdays are the best for long breakfasts and watching the snow fall.

Thinking she should still be sleeping.

Thinking that a half-finished house in a land far away and frozen might be good enough for the rest of her life if it meant she might ever hear the end of this.

Knowing that wasn’t likely.

Dammit Cat.

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

This cat is driving nuts.

Here she is pretending to sleep right before she woke up and flung her body toward my nose.

And here she is doing something else she’s not supposed to be doing.

I’d shoo her away but she just turns on me, ears back ready to attack my hand….wait…oh, yeah, here she is on my desk.

She’s not supposed to be doing this either. I mean I don’t want her wafting her stinky butt all over my paperwork.

Yeah, this cat farts. Like a lot.

Loud, squeaky ones.

I didn’t even know cats could fart.

I mean, I’ve never met an animal like this. She wakes up in the morning on a mission to annoy the hell out me. The first stop? Hiding under my bed while I get dressed so she can attack my feet.

Man that pisses me off.

But it’s not just the feet. I walk into the kitchen and she follows me like a blur, leaping up toward my body in an attempt to dangle from my bellybutton. I know it’s only a matter of time before it’s my ear.

I sit at my computer and she tries to murder my mouse in cold blood.

I fall asleep on the couch and she goes for my eyes.

I open a piece of candy and she snatches it out of my hands like a thief in the night.

I wear a hooded sweatshirt and she tries to strangle me with the strings.

I move and she’s lurking in the corner somewhere waiting to leap.

She terrifies me.

And she steals my socks. She grabs them out of the laundry and attacks them with a hot fury before dragging them off somewhere in the house to murder them and bury their remains. She’s got a taste for cotton, the fabric of our lives, she salivates for wool and has an insatiable hunger for nylon.

And I am left bare-footed.

In addition, I cannot find the string to my robe, which I’ve witnessed this animal harassing hundreds of times. I imagine she’s gone and buried it with the socks, leaving me to walk around all morning exposing parts of my pasty winter flesh to a world not quite ready for things like that.

Oh, it’s not just me who’s fed up. Big Brown Dog and his Big Brown Tail have suffered ninja-like assaults for months without the permission or the heart to fight back.

Even the pug, the world’s only canine cat whisperer, has expressed his frustrations at the surprise and unapproved cat piggyback rides with an eye roll and what I thought sounded a little like a growl.

The only two creatures in this house who seem to be satisfied with this little feline terrorist situation are the damn cat and the damn husband.

Because the damn cat was the damn husband’s idea.

And I think she knows it. I mean, I swear I saw her smirk at me while she was snuggling up next to him on the couch last night, so innocent and fluffy, full of purrs and kitten goodness.

“See,” said my damn husband. “She’s nice.”

But she’s not nice.

She farts.

She claws at my walls.

She climbs on the table.

She bites my favorite dog’s tail and is working really hard to take care of the pug’s only remaining eye.

And if that happens, well, we have a situation.

Oh, and you know what else is weird? The cat’s litter box is by the door. Every time someone enters through that door the wierdo races to her litter box and proceeds to take a shit, a sort of “look what I can do move” while she makes these really weird pushing noises.

I don’t understand? Does she save these shit’s for company? Can she shit on cue?

Seriously. That’s a real thing.

I would videotape it but I already feel awkward enough having just written that sentence.

Am I really talking about cat-shitting here?

Damn you cat! What have I become?

If you need me I’ll be looking for my socks.

Uncontrollable urges.

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

I had two Thanksgivings.

Which means I had approximately seven helpings of turkey, five helpings of mashed potatoes, ten spoonfuls of broccoli salad, three turkey shaped sugar cookies, a half of a turkey shaped cheese ball, a slice of pumpkin pie, another slice of pumpkin pie, a pint of cookie salad, four days of leftovers and no hope of fitting into my skinny jeans for the rest of my life.

But this story isn’t about me and my uncontrollable urges.

It’s about the pug and his.

Because besides making a few dozen ridiculous and unnecessary choices involving doughnut cake and thirds of everything, I also made the ridiculous and unnecessary choice to bring Chug the damn pug to Thanksgiving at my in-laws’.

I had good intentions. I mean, my nieces like him. And so does my Mother-in-Law. She thinks he’s hilarious.

Also, I knew if I left the little shit at the ranch for the weekend the dog would hitchhike his ass up to the nearest oil site on the hunt for a lonely oil field worker who would let him in his camper, feed him the other half of his steak before inviting the little weasel to snuggle down on the couch with him for the night.

So I loaded him up in the backseat of the pickup between the wine bottles and my bag full of stretchy pants and off we went to hug and visit and play ping pong and Barbies and board games and drink wine and wait patiently for the meal I could smell wafting from the house before we even pulled into the drive.

And all was going well. It was. The pug was behaving himself, sniffing the butts of the other family dogs, making friends, cleaning up crumbs from the kitchen floor, sneaking up on laps, licking faces…

and winking on command.

And then, four minutes before the meal was set to be served, that lovable, crowd-working dog lifted his leg and pissed on the floor smack dab in the middle of the living room and right before my eyes, sending me screaming and chasing the one-eyed monster out of the room and barreling through the kitchen before sliding to a stop in the dining room where I scooped him up and snapped out of my blind rage only to find we had landed ourselves in the midst of a crowd of relatives who had just received news of my cousin’s engagement.

I’m pretty sure my swearing, screaming and all the fur flying was just the atmosphere they were looking for in that moment.

And now the pug’s for giveaway.

Again.

Happy Hunting

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

Well, as promised, it’s looking pretty white and chilly out there this morning. But I have a feeling there’s no amount of snow and cold that can keep some burly men and brave women from celebrating North Dakota’s unofficial holiday–Deer Hunting Season.

The kids are off school, the coffee has been on since before the crack of dawn, the poker chips have been located, there’s Busch Light in the fridge and some women are preparing to be left behind for camo caps, jerky lunches and long, lonely walks in the wilderness.

Now some of you ladies are probably ok with fourteen or so days of watching what you want to watch, cooking (or not cooking) what you want to cook and a break from discussions about your online shopping addiction.

But for those of you who are curious about those long walks in the wilderness, I would like to invite you to revisit a little public service announcement I compiled a few seasons back (under the guidance of some of the most serious sportsmen in the county) to help make your first hunting attempt with your man a success.

The Ten Commandments for the Hunting Widow

And if you’re skeptical, here’s a little evidence that I’m qualified to deliver this advice.

Yup, that’s me, that’s my deer, that’s my man, that’s my denim jacket and that’s my neckerchief.

Read up and thank me when you bring home the big one!

Peace, love and venison!

Jessie

This costume idea brought to you by breakfast.

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well, Halloween’s officially here, though we already celebrated the shit out of it last Saturday at a house party down the road.

This costume idea brought to you by Saturday’s breakfast. It’s sort of an educational effort, a farm to plate demonstration if you will.

Just doing what we can to promote the agriculture industry, working hard to keep it as realistic as possible.

And, although it’s hard to believe, I’d like to tell you that not a stitch of sewing went into any of these creations. I mean, you wouldn’t guess it, the way those wings look like they could just take a floppy, chicken flight at any moment.

And that egg? Looks so edible, so delicious.

If there’s an award for a series of costumes put together entirely of staples, rubber cement and zip ties, I will gladly accept it.

Halloween. We take it pretty seriously around here.

So I’d really like to know who the hell spiked the punch?

Peace, Love, Bacon and a Happy Halloween!

The difference between us.

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I convinced Husband to accompany me on a ride after work on Tuesday. The weatherman warned me it might be one of the last nice autumn days for a while and I felt the need to take advantage of it.

Plus, I dreamed the night before that I was riding a fast horse like the wind through the tall grasses in endless pastures and I suddenly felt the urge to make that dream come true.

An evening ride wasn’t a hard thing to convince my dearly beloved to participate in. Especially if it meant he could pretend he was looking for cows and actually getting work done. So off we went, the two of us, seeking the only kind of marriage therapy that works for us–a little ride together through our world.

The breeze and the light were perfect and my horse was just the right amount of lazy.

Suddenly I felt a wave of creativity as the sun crept down toward the edge of the earth.

So I asked Husband if he would be opposed to a little “sunset photo shoot” along the horizon, you know, because he has always made such a nice silhouette.

As usual, he humored me and I quickly planned out a method of capturing the romantic vision I had of my husband riding his bay horse at full speed across the landscape.

I got off my horse and crouched down among the grass as my husband followed my directions to “run your horse back and forth in front of me for a while until I say stop.”

So he did.

Thrilled with the results of that handsome man and his handsome horse romantically frozen in a moment of speed and power inside of my camera, I hollered at him “Go faster!”

So he went faster, back and forth, working on his horse, going nowhere in particular, just back and forth across the sky.

But from behind my camera they could be going anywhere, that man and that horse.

I felt like an artist with the power to freeze time, the gift of my camera allowing me to catch that horse’s mane as it reached toward the sky and his feet as they gathered beneath him.

“Go faster!” I hollered from my spot behind the camera.

So Husband made that horse go faster.

Watching them move across that landscape was beautiful and romantic and rugged and western and kind of like a John Wayne movie scene…all of the things Husband can be to me sometimes.

“Stop. Come back. Come here!” I yelled, suddenly struck with another idea.

The idea that if my husband could be all those things as a silhouette, I wanted a shot at what I could be as a dark, mysterious woman on a horse against the backdrop of a setting sun.

Husband stopped his horse in front of me and I handed him my camera.

“Can you take some pictures of me now?” I asked as I climbed up on my horse who was lazily munching on the tall yellow grass. “I’m going to go really fast. See if you can get my hair blowing in the wind as I ride off into the sunset.”

Husband took my camera and snapped away as I worked to channel the dream from the night before, the one where I leaned into the neck of my horse and kicked him gently as his hooves moved faster and faster across the landscape, gaining speed, pushing forward, becoming one fast blur as our hair whipped together in the wind.

Only, it seemed my horse didn’t have the same dream.

Nope.

His dream involved less running through endless pastures and more grazing through them.

And about half-way through our second pass across the photo shoot area, Husband yelled “Faster!” and the horse between my legs, the one I envisioned behaving like Black Beauty as I channeled my inner rodeo queen, began to behave more like the mule in that John Wayne movie with the nun.

And in one swift jump and kick, that horse demonstrated the major, glaring difference between me and my dearly beloved:

Silhouette or not, you are who you are.

And I am not a sexy silhouette.

Weird.

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Life out here is beautiful.

Life out here is peaceful and dirty and busy and windy and full of long “to-do” lists staring us in the face.

And life out here can be weird.

My first example: Last Sunday night when we arrived home from a trip to see Husband’s family, I was working on unloading the groceries and figuring out the jig-saw puzzle that has become my refrigerator while talking to a friend on the phone when my dearly beloved husband sauntered into the kitchen with a hammer in his hand and declared:

“There was a bat in the bedroom.” And then he nonchalantly walked over to the fridge to free up some space by grabbing a beer.

My mouth dropped and so did the package of celery that was working it’s way into a nook of drawer space as I screamed into the phone:

“HERE! In the NEW house! Why? How? Whyyyy?”

Husband cracked open his beer and walked over to the cupboard in the entryway to replace the hammer.

I stood there with my mouth open, looking up, over my shoulders, scanning the walls and then up at the ceiling again, scoping out any signs of additional intruders as he walked over to me, took a sip and said,

“Don’t worry. I got him with the hammer.”

What?

I have combined this little episode with the fact that I’ve had a golfball sized crack in the driver’s side of my windshield since the beginning of May and a companion chip that showed up around mid June. I’m worried that we might soon be getting a call to pose for the cover of the “Rednecks of America” magazine because I refuse to fix them. Because out here when you have a thirty mile drive to town behind gravel trucks and pickups that go too fast, I have convinced myself that installing a new windshield is like asking for another giant rock chip.

And so I will not take the risk. Instead, I’m somehow comforted knowing that I already have two giant rock chips and am okay with watching my world fly by this way. Because I know they’re there. Apparently I’m not comfortable with the invented and preconceived rock chip that is certain to appear once I spend money on my already ruined windshield.

That is ridiculous.

Which reminds me of another behavior that I cannot explain and certainly have no laid out plans to change. The dogs. When left to their own devices they continue to flee to the nearest drilling rig in search of leftover lunches, t-bone steaks, enchiladas and a rig hand willing to play fetch for hours and let them sleep in their camper. Each time we decide to trust the hooligans to be on their own unsupervised in the great outdoors we find ourselves scouring the countryside for the misguided pets only to find them miles away in doggy heaven.

And each time we go and look for them.

We can’t seem to take a hint. Feed them t-bones, let them sleep in our bed and keep them forever.

Dry dog food and a spot on the floor? When will we realize that ain’t cutting it?

And when will we get it together and build a damn fence already?

Which leads me to the weirdest thing of all. With all of the trouble we have keeping the dogs we have raised and fed for their entire canine lives at home, we have now discovered that a stray puppy is living in our grain bins and seeking refuge in the culvert underneath our road. We have tried and failed to capture the little guy, who is more like a wild coyote now than a dog, skeptical and resourceful, but a bit intrigued by the humans who poke their heads in on him to fill his food bowl. And now our dinner conversations have been centered around how that poor pup got their in the first place.

And how we might tame him.

That stray puppy is strange and intriguing and sad mixed in with a twinge of that feeling of childhood wonder and hope that we might save this thing…

Yes, out here, no matter how predictable we think our lives have become, whether or not we expect the daily visit from the cattle to graze and shit in the short grass outside our unfenced yard despite the fact that there are acres to shit upon, we seem to always be a little in awe…

About how the dogs always run away and how we never learn. By the sudden startle of a horse, a swarm of unwelcome wasps, and this pan that has been sitting on this hill for longer than I have been alive and I have no idea why.