Tag Archives: humor

Memories in the closet

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My husband and I spent an entire Sunday cleaning out the closets and drawers and nooks and crannies of our bedroom in our loft in an effort to officially move into the new bedroom he built for us on the main floor of the house. This room was part of a home addition project that went on longer than…well…let’s just say babies have been born and have had their first day of school in the time it took us to finally paint the walls.

But the fact that I won’t have to climb the stairs to our bedroom with my laundry when I’m 90 and my knees are bad is something I will thank us for when I’m 90 and my knees are bad.

For over ten years we’ve been working on and living in a house that we have no plans to ever move from. And so, unlike other families, we haven’t had the whole “moving house” excuse to force us to sort through my husband’s 30-year t-shirt collection or deal with my need to have two or three pairs of boots in every color. I think the last time we tackled that project was when we moved into this house over ten years ago.

Anyway, since it should be obvious that absolutely none of my boots need to be given or thrown away, let’s talk about my husband’s inherited traits that beckon him to save things like tiny little washers and screws, bits of wire, one thousand stray plumbing parts, non-working batteries and every feed store and oil company ball cap he was ever gifted throughout his entire adulthood. The instincts he has to fight when presented with the idea that maybe he isn’t a polo-shirt kind of guy even though he owns four to five perfectly good polo shirts is distressing.

Dear Husband, you never wear these. Well, ok, maybe that one time we went on a cruise fifteen years ago. But maybe it’s time to let them go. They have collected literal dust while hanging in this closet. Maybe give the shirts to someone who spends his weekends golfing instead of fixing fences, water tanks and tractors. You are more of a snap-shirt kind of guy. Which is a good thing, because you currently own 325 of them.

Anyway, when it comes time for a great-closet-clean-out, I have implemented a system to help the poor, tortured soul. And it basically looks like me pulling out shirts and jeans so worn you can practically see through them, holding each item up so he can get a good view, giving him a beat to process his attachment, and then forcing him into a decision. Keep? Give? Toss? It’s easier if I’m the one with the garbage bags. And I don’t give him any pushback if he says keep. I have to remain an ally.

But truly, I must hand it to the man. He is as loyal as they come in the world, and that loyalty applies everywhere –even t-shirts. Which you can argue is a result of his low-key sentimentality, especially when you realize that he still has the one I bought him for his sixteenth birthday. Ask me someday about the pair of underwear he kept for long enough that the holes finally connected to turn them into a skirt.

Sentimental to the core. And a bit superstitious? Maybe.

Chad and the cat he doesn’t like

Anyway, lately my husband and I don’t spend long stretches of time together. With both of us working two to three jobs and running after our rapidly growing daughters, our idea of a date has turned into me riding along in the side-by-side to check water tanks without the kids.

And last Sunday, on a perfectly beautiful fall day, one of the last things I wanted to do was sort through piles of decisions and problems of our own making. But I caught my husband in a weak moment where he thought cleaning out the bedroom was a better option than cleaning out 85 years of stuff that has accumulated in the ranch shop, and so he joined me up there in my pursuit of a normal, tidy life.

And who knew moving dressers, throwing away three generations of cell phone boxes, flipping through half-read books and, eventually, piles and piles of t-shirts, would turn out to be a fun little exercise in reminiscing. We excavated that weird and worn “bear with the antlers” shirt he got from a thrift store in 1999 and suddenly we were back driving backroads in his Thunderbird. Two vintage camo-t-shirts that were his dad’s and he was twelve, bored in a hunting blind, waiting on a deer to walk by. Even I couldn’t let him part with those. Oh, there were plenty of plain ‘ol shirts in the pile, but when we came across one from a music festival or a band we loved, or a trip we took, we both agreed to keep those shirts, and we remembered to be grateful for it, this little mess of our own making…

Does this mean closet-cleaning qualifies as a date? In our world, probably.

Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be tackling the bathroom closet, for the rest of my life…

Serenity now…

Tangled.

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This week I revisit a little predicament I found myself in back when we were working on landscaping our new home…

Happy Hay Hauling and Fly Swatting Season. Happy September!

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Out here on the ranch there are people and animals and machinery and water and buildings and growing things and plans thought out but maybe not discussed with one another…

When you combine all the moving parts sometimes things can go kinda weird, get tangled up so to speak.

Like last week I came home from something or other to Husband pushing dirt on the Bobcat, just like every other dry summer day. We have been working on landscaping and planning for a fence to keep the cows out of yard, so getting the dirt in the right places has been the longest and first step in the process.

Anyway, so I get home and I drop my bags, shuffle the mail pile on the counter and look out the window at the hill where the horses generally graze, and then down at the plum patch on the edge of what will be our fenced in yard one day.

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Then I notice a piece of wire or string or something stretched across the edge of the yard, from the plum patch, across the open toward the dam, with no end that I could see…

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With Pops and Husband involved in this place, a few scenarios run through my mind about the existence of this piece of wire or string or whatever.

1) Maybe Husband is staking out where the fence will go, which is good, because I think he’s right on in the placement.

2) Could Husband have strung a piece of electric fence or wire or something to temporarily keep the cows off his dirt moving masterpiece?

3) But it sorta looks like a piece of twine, and Pops was out here on the 4-wheeler the other day driving up the hill to check on things. I bet a peice got stuck to the back of his machine and he drug it a ways…that’s probably it…

4) Who the hell knows…these boys never tell me anything…I gotta call Pops, I’m too lazy to try to catch Husband on that Bobcat right now…

I dial…it rings…he answers.

“Hello.”

“Hi, it’s me. Yeah, did you like, string some twine across our yard, or like, maybe drag a piece on your 4-wheeler when you went by the other day…”

“No. No I didn’t. I noticed it too. It was there when I drove past…piece of twine, goes all the way up to the dam as far as I can tell…a cow musta drug it I think…”

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“Well that’s a theory…really? Weird…I wonder how far it goes?”

“Yeah, I don’t know…”

“Well, ok, just checking…I guess I’ll go investigate…wrap it up…”

“Yeah, ok bye.”

I hung up.

Wonder where a cow picked up all that twine? Wonder where it got hooked? On her foot? On her ear? On a tooth or something?

How did she pull it all that way without a snag or a snap?

I headed down to the plum patch, which seemed to be the middle of her destination, twine strung up in the thorns and heading toward the dam in one direction, to oblivion in the other…

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I grabbed it and followed it along the cow path that lead to the dam…
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To the edge of the dam where she grabbed a drink…

IMG_4185and then literally into the dam where she must have hung out to cool off.

IMG_4187And then turned around IMG_4188Then turned around to head to the shade of the trees up by the fence…

IMG_4190Where it looked like she might have taken and a nap and detached from it…

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But that was only the beginning. because there I stood with a pretty substantial roll of twine around my arm looking for the end, which seemed to be trailing back toward my house again, up the hill and toward the barnyard, with no end in sight.

I backtracked, to find the source, coiling as I went…

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It was going to be a long trip…

Back past the plum patch, up along the cow trail that turns into the road on the top of the hill. Past the old machinery and the broken down three-wheeler and lawn mower that we need to move for crying out loud. I have to get on that.

Then down toward the shop where the cow seemed to have gone back and forth, back and forth, zigzagging in front of the old tractor and little yellow boat. IMG_4217Then up to the old combine to scratch her back or something…

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Then back up to the top of the hill, across the road, to the scoria pile we’re saving for a literal rainy day, then back down through the brush on the side hill toward the old combine again, tangling up in the thorns of the prairie rose patch somehow…

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Then over toward the barn yard…wait, turn around, not yet…back in front of the shop, hooking on every stray weed and grass along the way, but never coming undone…no…where the hell did she pick this up?

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Why did we leave a big-ass roll of twine just laying around for some creature without opposable thumbs to go dragging for miles and miles across the countryside?

Why can’t we get our shit together around here?

How long is this damn roll? How long is this going to take?

Do you know how long this is going to take!!!

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And how does this even happen?

Where did it even…

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Begin? …

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Fly Swatting Season

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We’re officially in the fly-swatting era of summer at the ranch. That goes along with the haying and the weed pulling and the sprinkler running and the contemplating fixing fence era, which goes along with sweating. Lots of sweating. Welcome everyone.

Last week my little sister texted to let me know that her girls had set up a lemonade stand in their yard and were looking for customers. Their timing was perfect because I just gave my husband a ride to bring his pickup home from the hay field. It seemed, by the grace of the equipment gods, that they finished up baling and lemonade sounded pretty good to the guys of the Veeder Ranch about then. Even better? They only had to pay in compliments…

Except Rosie. She likes a chance to grab her pink wallet and spend. Unfortunately her cousins’ stand didn’t take Trampoline Park Cards, but luckily she had some tooth fairy cash, which the small business gladly welcomed.

Is there anything cuter than a lemonade stand? Honestly. It might be the most Americana experience you can find. But country kids, they have to go about it a bit differently. When I was a kid I the early 90s, we used to set up shop up on the highway and wait for the sound of a pickup in the distance. We would have waited until 2010 without a real customer if it wasn’t for our moms, who I now realize were making some calls to the neighbors. I think we cleared about three generous dollars those days, but I’d have to ask my friend, the accountant. I’ve always been in the marketing department…

Anyway, these days there’s a real risk of your lemonade getting blown away by the big oil rigs zooming by, so a successful stand still requires a bit of mom-power. And never mind the random kittens sniffing at the product periodically. Or the chickens dusting themselves in the driveway. This is summer in the country, and the lemonade tastes about as strong as the coffee they sip in the basement of our Lutheran church. It’s perfectly fine and made with love.

Yes, we’re deep enough into the heat of the season that we dare complain about it up here in the North, mostly because it’s not the heat really, it’s the humidity. Could really use a breeze.

And also, are we the only family that has one favorite fly swatter that we swear works better than any other fly swatter ever invented and it’s the puke yellow fly swatter that hung in your grandma’s old farmhouse your entire life until she died and somehow, miraculously, it was left to you? And even though it exists in your house like a fossil, when you go to reach for it it’s never left in the spot you think it was left in and you can only find the stupid, souvenir flyswatter you brought from Nashville because it was shaped like a guitar and you thought it was funny after a couple drinks, but it can’t kill a fly to save a life?

Anyone?

Oh, Gramma’s puke yellow fly swatter and her bright pink lipstick, some of my greatest earthly possessions.

And summer, you’re here now in all your glory and I’m sweating but you’re so many of the things I love about being alive.

Alive and hot and watching the tomatoes and my mosquito bites get red. So you can’t leave yet, we’re still thinking about fencing….

A little suffering makes the dessert taste better

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And now for a story I shared a few years back before we put nice gate latches on all the new gates thus releasing me from the gate-closing-rage I experienced as a young woman on this ranch…now if we could just do something about the wood ticks.

Recently I went on a walk to close some gates in our home pasture and check a couple juneberry patches.

Juneberries are a special treat around here. Like wild mini-blueberries, if they show up, they show up around this time to much fanfare for those of us who know people who make pies.

Juneberries make the best pies in the world. Probably because getting to them before the frost kills them or the birds eat them up is so rare, and the entire task of picking enough of the little purple berries sends you to the most mosquito and tick infested, hot, thorny, itchiest places in the free world, so finally making and tasting a Juneberry pie is like completing some prairie, culinary, ironman marathon.

Only better and more gratifying, because, well, pie.

Anyway, my little stroll before sunset was only mildly successful. The gates on this place were made to be shut only by Thor himself. Or the Hulk. Or some hybrid of a bear-man. By the time I grunted and groaned, used my entire body weight trying to push the two posts together to maybe, possibly, for the love of Dolly Parton, stretch the three wires tight enough to get the little wire loop over the top of the scrawny post, I was sweating, cussing, bleeding and wondering how I missed the yeti that we apparently hired to fix the gates on this place.

I called Husband on my cell phone (who was inside the house with the baby, like twenty yards away) and told him there’s no way in hell I’m ever getting that gate shut and that shutting the gates was his job from now on who do you think I am what is this all about who in their right mind makes gates that tight good gawd sweet mercy Martha Stewart.

And, if you’re wondering, the gate on the other side of that pasture went about the same way…

Anyway, on my way I did in fact locate a big ‘ol juneberry patch. But the best berries, of course, were hanging out about fifteen feet above my head at the very tops of the bushes. And to get to them I had to wade through thorny bushes up to my armpits. But some of those thorny bushes had raspberries growing on them, so that was a win.

I proceeded to eat every ripe red berry I could find, even the one with the worm on it, which I discovered after I put it in my mouth and crunched.

So that was a loss.

Yes, the raspberries, worms and all, were within my reach. The juneberries, not so much. But tonight I’m going to see if my husband might want to come with me to back our old pickup up to that bush, stand in the box, brave the mosquitos and pick us some berries.

Because, well…pie.

Anyway, when I got home I discovered that apparently wading up to my armpits in thorny brush to pick raspberries was not only a good way to accidentally eat a worm, but, even better, it’s a great way to acquire 500 wood ticks.

I came home and picked off a good fifteen or so. Stripped down to my undies, checked myself out in the mirror, sat down on the chair and proceeded to pick off at least five more.

After a shower, when I crawled into bed I wondered out loud to Husband what time of night I would wake up to a tick crawling across my face. He made a guess. I made a guess.

But we were both wrong.

At about 12:30 am, just as I had drifted into a nice slumber, I was indeed awoken by a tick, but it wasn’t crawling across my face. No.

It was crawling toward my butt crack.

Thank good gawd sweet mercy Martha Stewart, I cut him off at the pass!

I guess, if we need a moral of the story, dessert tastes better when you truly suffer for it…

One of those days…

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After a long hiatus, we’re back on the podcast now that we’ve cleared the power tools off the kitchen table. And so we pick right back up at the things that are most pressing–Chad’s latest weird injury, coaching 2nd grade soccer and Rosie’s Tooth Fairy Shenanigans. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Have you ever had one of those days where the sun is shining, there’s nothing pressing on your schedule, your family is safe and home and together and the possibilities on how to spend  your waking hours are endlessly sweet and yet you can’t shake a foul mood. Like, yes, the sun is shining, but it’s shining through your smudgy windows and illuminating the dusty construction footprints on the floor and you’re hungry but you don’t want eggs until your husband makes eggs and then you do want eggs but you told him you didn’t twenty minutes ago so he didn’t make you eggs and the thought of making your own eggs is entirely too overwhelming for some reason and so you walk upstairs to faceplant on your bed and notice and grunt at the laundry that needs to be put away and resent the chores because you feel guilty about tending to them because you’d rather be outside because it’s a beautiful day and the sun is shining?

Ever had one of those days?

Maybe it was just me last weekend. I think, when I break it down, it might just be the consequence of overwhelm, or burn out, as I have been, as so many of us do, juggling about ten different pressing issues at once for the past three months and all of them have been covered in sheet rock dust.

And even when you think you have it all under control, these moods, they can sneak up on you sometimes. I was in great spirits the evening before when my husband waited for me after a work event so that we could take the kids’ horses out on their first ride of the season to make sure there were no kinks under their rapidly shedding winter coats. I chose to ride Cheerio, our little short-tailed, spotted-butt pony and Chad rode my trusty palomino, Gizmo, who Edie loves and who’s only real issue has ever been indifference to the entire human race in general. And so the girls hung with their grandparents and we took our mounts out to check on the new calves and the grass situation. And while Gizmo plodded along the way Gizmo always does, Cheerio, he was in full pony form that evening, prancing a bit, looking around, feeling sort of agitated by all the sites and a little annoyed he couldn’t stop and eat or run back to the barn at will. I laughed about it that night and enjoyed the ride, then let my husband have a turn with him before we beat the sunset home to unsaddle and tuck in for the night.

But then the morning came and I woke up a little like that pony—agitated, huffy and sorta annoying to anyone who crossed my path. The only plan I was sure of that day was to take our daughters and their cousins for their first ride in the arena. But let me tell you, in case you haven’t had to get four horses, four saddles, four bridles and four girls under the age of eight dressed and gathered and matched up and mounted for a ride, it’s far from a Zen experience.

But it turns out it was exactly what I needed even though it looked like driving four girls to gramma’s house, picking up a saddle and driving that over to the barnyard, saddling up three horses and riding them a mile to the arena, unsaddling three horses and then resaddling two horses and catching and saddling two more horses and fitting stirrups and telling four little girls to try not to run and don’t squeal and yes you can ride Gizmo and yes you can ride Cuss and yes you get Harmony and no you can’t ride Papa’s horse and ok just get off to pee in the weeds and no you can’t run at full speed around the barrel pattern right away and oh good job, you’re doing great, and look how Cheerio’s calmed down, look at him lope these perfect circles, what a good boy and look at those smiles, look at my smile, I feel like my face is breaking, what a nice day for a ride, it’s so warm, the sun is shining just right off manes and tails and ponytail fly-aways, aren’t we lucky, aren’t we lucky, what a beautiful day…

“Don’t Duck” and other rules for sports

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My 7th grade basketball photo. It only went south from there…

Listen. There is not an athletically gifted bone in my body. My entire childhood, my cousins called me “Tuck and Roll,” because I spent plenty of time falling off horses and breaking bones. I had to try hard to be considered for the C Squad when it came to my short-lived basketball career. My now-sister-in-law was my junior high volleyball coach and she likes to recall, at family dinners, how scared I was of the ball. Apparently ducking when someone hits a volleyball your way is not in the play-book. Also, having your boyfriend’s sister as your volleyball coach is not embarrassing at all, especially when you’re only there for the social scene…

Ask my husband the kind of team member I was during our one-season stint as a curling team and he will tell you I was more into visiting than sweeping…

Recently, when Edie wanted to play soccer through Parks and Recreation and they were looking for parents to help with all eight 2nd and 3rd grade teams, it was my husband I had in mind for the task. Even though he hadn’t played or watched a real soccer game a day in his life, unlike me, the man has excelled in sports in his lifetime.
And he’s coached.

Me? Once I volunteered to help with a 4-H STEAM program and accidentally swore in front of all the 4th graders. And when they called me out on it, I did the mature thing and denied it to all their innocent faces. They were confused, I was ill-equipped and so it’s my husband who signed up to coach Edie’s soccer team.

But, you know, I am who I am, so I said I would help. And by help, I meant I would do the communicating with parents and the remembering of names and the organizing of lines and treats and photo taking. Basically, I would do the admin. And so they put my name as coach under Chad’s on the roster and here I am. Coach Jessie. And let me put some generous quotations around the word “coach” for all the aforementioned reasons.

My dear husband knew about these generous quotations and yet, the first ten minutes of our first practice, he asked me to help him demonstrate a drill to the kids, by running and kicking the ball to him. Excuse me sir?  2nd and 3rd graders are not a forgiving audience. I am here for the paperwork and let me tell you, it showed.

Fast forward to the first game last week and more problems started to surface with this arrangement. Because I might not be a competitive player, but I am a competitive cheerer-on-er, much to the dismay of my daughter. Squealing “Ope, good try!” when they miss a goal is not necessarily helpful. Also, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but when we told the kids we were going to take the first game slow to help teach positions and the mechanics of the game, I tried to reassure our little team by telling them “It’s not about winning, it’s about learning!” which was met with blank stares and a correction from my husband. “Uh, we can try to win while we learn.”

Ok. Point taken. On to the reason I was there, to run the timer and sub kids in. Which I thought I could handle until chaos started to ensue on the field and my husband dared ask which kids belonged to which positions.

To which he was met with a blank stare of my own.

“I have no idea, but I finally got their names right! I just replaced Autumn with Calvin.”

And then, the ultimate question: “Coach Jessie, what’s the score?”

“I. Have. No. Idea. Aren’t we here to have fun?”

If you need me I’ll be watching soccer YouTube videos and wondering if I can change my entire personality at 40. Maybe, in the name of youth sports.

Peace, love and, in volleyball as in soccer, don’t duck.

Playing sports in 50MPH winds is the way we do it in ND

Tooth Troubles

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Ok, here’s a legitimate parenting question. When your kid finds a tiny box full of her baby teeth because you sent her upstairs to your jewelry box to look for a pearl earrings for her granny costume, what do you do?

Also, what state of parenthood sentimentality possessed me to save those baby teeth in the first place? I sure don’t possess it anymore, given I completely forgot I had that tiny box containing tiny chompers until my second born reminded me with a very concerned look on her face.

When I tell you that I took a moment to collect myself in the middle of cooking supper and packing for a five day trip away from the ranch…and a work phone call and my husband deep into painting the ceiling of the new addition and collecting  items for Rosie’s 100th day of school costume…I mean I sat there on the floor of my room staring into that box for a good five minutes while my daughter asked all the questions.

Five minutes seems like a week when the truth will pop the Fairy Tale Tooth Fairy myth right in the middle of the part of childhood where the kid with questions is losing all her teeth.

First the Elf on the Shelf and now this?! Where was this in the parenting book?!

And then I remembered that when I was a weird little kid losing teeth I wrote a letter to The Fairy asking her if I could keep my tooth and still collect on the money. And so with that realization I did what any panicked and frazzled mother would do and I lied. I told her those teeth were not her teeth. They were mine. From when I was a little kid. Because I wrote a note. Because I wanted to keep my teeth for reasons I could not explain.

“But you didn’t live in this house when you were a kid!” Rose replied.

And so I said I’ve traveled with them. My baby teeth meant that much that I’ve brought them into adulthood with me.

My six-year-old daughter looked at me like I was a crazy person, which I deserved. Because I am, clearly. And then she said, “Well that makes sense. I counted the teeth and there aren’t eight. I’ve lost eight teeth, so they can’t be mine.”

And then, over a dinner of leftover pizza, Rosie made sure to inform her dad and her big sister that “Mom saved her baby teeth.”

“Gross,” yelled Edie.

My husband didn’t even flinch. Nothing phases him at this point. But Oh Lord. What have I done?

Traumatized her is what my sister decided.

“She’s going to be haunted by that for the rest of her life,” she texted after I confessed to her immediately via text the way I do all my parenting mishaps.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Like, who invented the Tooth Fairy and how did the whole nation of parents from across the generations just jump on board with the concept? Like, yeah, that seems reasonable. Money for teeth. Sounds fun.

It surely always goes wrong as much as it goes right for parents, especially the ones who are on the struggle bus with me. Like last time Rosie lost a tooth, I asked Chad, who puts her to bed every night, to handle the switch. And then when I woke up at 5 am thinking surely he fell asleep too soon and forgot, I walked downstairs and slipped five dollars under her pillow and the next morning Rosie woke up to sixteen dollars and fifty cents. Which really angered my sister. Because, well, that’s a pretty steep precedent to set in the neighborhood.  

Help.

One nail at a time…

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I’m not positive, but judging from the evidence, my husband’s New Year’s resolution is to get his entire 2024 to-do list done by then end of the month. By the time you’re reading this he will have a total of five days or so to finish up an 800 square foot addition on our house that has been in the works since 2020, because when we have an idea we like to make it nearly impossible and seriously expensive. Unless, of course, we do it ourselves. Then it’s just nearly impossible and only pretty expensive.

While I type, my husband is currently underneath the floor of the house with the sleeping snakes, spiders, centipedes and the cat that somehow found its way into the duct work to scare the pants off of him, rewiring and rerouting things to make the lights and the heat work in the new space. Which is better than where he was this weekend, standing with both feet on the top of the post of our staircase with a saw between his legs and his head in the rafters. It’s like we don’t own a ladder. But we do. We own several. My daughters were looking for one the other day to get something off the ceiling in Rosie’s room, that, according to her, wasn’t slime. 

But oh, it was slime. A lot of slime. Slime she and her sister attempted to remove from the ceiling by throwing more slime at the ceiling. And, honestly if that isn’t a metaphor for how I’m handling life these days. Getting to be too much? Throw more at it to see how it lands and then find yourself home late on a Wednesday night surrounded by slime covered in saw dust rolled up in dirty laundry wondering what’s for supper. 

Yeah, what should we have for supper? I asked my husband who poked his head up from the opening of the floor in the middle of the house, covered in dust and insulation, and then, for some reason, I just lost it laughing. What an absurd view. And, also, what an amazing guy. I can barely figure out how to use all the features on the dishwasher and here he’s been just going about his business calculating how to tie a new living room, fireplace, bathroom, bedroom and roofline into an existing structure, complete with plumping, heating, wiring and dealing with a wife who can’t decide on tile colors. And slime on the ceiling.

When he finally opened up our living room wall last weekend revealing the almost doubled amount of square footage in the living space and about ten thousand separate tasks to complete, I wondered what twenty-seven-year-old me would say now. Because, if you don’t recall, we were able to invest in this house because of the crazy idea my husband had to completely renovate a repossessed house complete with a hot tub in the living room and carpet on the walls. And that’s where we lived for two or three (or a hundred years? What is time in these situations?) pulling up nails and carpet, ripping wallpaper off the walls, cleaning, tiling and refinishing cabinets in the free time we had between our full-time jobs. 

Statistically speaking our marriage shouldn’t have lasted past the first tiling project, but here we are. It can’t be helped, none of it. Just like the wires in the walls my husband just pulled out of our house, our marriage is tangled up in the drive to keep building things. And because I’ve known this guy for so long, I’m having a hard time deciding if I would have turned out like this without him. Like, if I married a chiropractor and we lived in a finished house in the suburbs would I have dared suggest that we turn our garage into an entryway and just, you know, pop out that wall to extend our living room and while we’re at it add a master bedroom on the main floor because we’re going to get old someday and the steps up to our current bedroom are already annoying?

I’d like to say I didn’t know what I was getting into, but like, I did…

Because never in the history of our relationship living together have we been under a roof that we didn’t put under construction. I used to blame it on him, but at this point I think we just do this to each other.  

And right now, the guy is on a roll. Me? Well I’ve been yelling “careful” a lot, because my plan for January turned from thrive to survive and that just has to be ok for now. 

See you all in February, hopefully hanging out with my sanity. 

Deep calming breaths…

P.S. We’re heading to Elko, NV on Wednesday for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. One of my favorite events of the year. I’m taking this new song with me, about a guy who’s hard on equipment and hard on the heart. Enjoy this living room session where the tear in the headrest of my chair is very noticeable and I am singing facing a room full of settled sheet rock dust.

Stream “Hard on Things” and the new album “Yellow Roses” everywhere, or get a signed copy at www.jessieveedermusic.com

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…

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!