Tag Archives: life

An inflatable Christmas miracle.

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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!

Inflatable prank

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

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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.

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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.

What we’re made for.

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I don’t think we’re meant to sit on chairs all day.

I don’t think we’re meant for these screens and these lights and the noise that comes from all of it.  Sometimes it’s so much, we’re told too much. We know too much. We see it all, but we don’t see what’s right in front of us.

Beside us.

I’ve been working a lot lately. It’s a busy time for me and I feel incredibly blessed or lucky or whatever it is that helps get us to the places we’re going. My head is spinning with to-do lists that get me through the day and a few steps closer to some of my goals. My house is a mess, my desk unrecognizable as a piece of furniture  and most days I add more to that list than I check off.

I’m happy and exhausted and it’s December and I haven’t even thought about Christmas.

I love Christmas.

But I’m a human. And as a human I want things. I don’t know where it started or how to stop it, but don’t try to argue with me, I know it’s true for you too. If it’s not a physical luxury, it is the luxury of time. If it’s not time, we want more love or more quiet, more food to put on the table, more money to buy us nice things, more children to teach, more land to cultivate, more music to hear and mores space for dancing.

I try not to think about the things I want. I try to focus on what I have while I run frantically from one appointment I set up for myself to the next.

And then I wonder what the hell I’m doing when the only thing I really want is to sit under the tree by the dam and watch the water freeze over.

I was tired today and disappointed in myself because I have let slip the one thing I promised I wouldn’t let slip when I moved back here–my connection to the sky.

So I stood up from my twelve-hour computer perch this afternoon, oblivious to the fact that I’d had enough until I looked out the window at the sun turning the sky pink and realized I hadn’t looked outside since it made its first appearance this morning.

Suddenly I was struck with the urge to go chase that sunset down, to catch it and hold it and marvel at it before it sunk below the horizon, as if it were the last sunset on earth.

I don’t know what got into me. For two weeks I’ve been on an agenda that had nothing to do with the sun.

Perhaps I was lonesome for it.

So I pulled on my muck boots and my winter coat, grabbed my camera and raced down the steps and up to the hill.

The sunset out here can be breathtaking when it feels like it. And the beauty is that it doesn’t last long. If you watch closely, turning your head to take it all in, you will see it move and swell and change like a painting, colors splashed across the sky in hues that don’t exist anywhere else in the world but up above.

Sometimes I try to be so many things that I feel like I can’t do my best at anything.

Sometimes I think I might do it on purpose.

But the sun is the sun and it was made to move across the sky.

And I don’t know much about much tonight, but I know I was not made to sit in chairs all day.

Uncontrollable urges.

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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.

How seasons change.

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We’re right in the middle of a season change, and while it’s technically not winter yet, it kind of feels like it out there. I spend so much of my time documenting my world, watching the leaves fall from the trees and bend under the weight of ice and snow only to come out of hibernation a few months later in all of their green glory.

In North Dakota the four seasons cannot be mistaken. They don’t blend in to one another, they have their own distinct looks, smell and feel, changing everything under the skyT.

And because I am out there in it all year round, taking photographs so as not to miss a thing, today I’d like to share with you how drastically a spinning earth can change our world in this northern state.

Outside my door…


On the branches…


In the grass…


And the thorns…


In the sky…


Outside the barn…



And me.



Happy almost winter everyone. And don’t worry, spring always keeps her promise.

Life and Waffles

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It’s not too often that the threat of a being snowed in at the ranch for a couple days doesn’t mess with a series of laid out plans to make the 30 miles drive to work, move some cows, see a concert, put on an event or catch a plane out of this arctic tundra.

For Little Sister the freezing rain and blowing snow turned a four and a half hour drive to the Black Hills in South Dakota into something more like ten.

For my parents on a mission to see Bruce Springsteen perform in Minneapolis last night, it meant leaving early and timing their departure so the storm followed them, ensuring they had a chance to miss the snow, but not The Boss.

There was no way they were missing The Boss.

For others it meant a day off work, a day in the ditch, or a night spent sleeping in a hotel room when all you really wanted was to be home with your family snuggled up on the couch with something cooking on the stove.

For us it meant lighting the fireplace, rounding up the power tools and getting some shit done around here.

But ever since the first snow flake fell a few weeks ago I’ve been starving. So in preparation for the storm and the scheduled house construction project I stopped by the grocery store on my way out of town on Thursday to stock up on the essentials I would need to finally make some of those mouth-watering recipes I’ve been scoping out on Pinterest since last December.

Because I had no weekend gambling or concert plans and I was alright with watching the storm settle in nicely over our little cabin in the oaks, as long as I had the necessary ingredients to feed us.

Because I’m starving.

So as the freezing rain coated my world with ice on Friday and dumped a pile of snow on the whole mess on Saturday morning, I pulled on my wool socks and rummaged around in my cupboards for the flour and sugar and other baking type things…because today was the day I was going to attempt these: Homemade cinnamon roll waffles

I’ve had my eye on these little breakfast shaped pieces of heaven since last winter’s recipe pinning marathon. So on Saturday, I was determined that they come to life in my kitchen.

Now, I have to tell you that I am not a cook. Or a baker. Or a domestic diva. But the thought of these waffles sitting on my breakfast table waiting for a hot, buttery cinnamon drizzle followed by a sweet and sugary cream cheese frosting must have provided me with a sort of Betty Crocker out-of-body-experience.

Nothing was going to stop me from serving these babies up hot to me and my Carpenter Cowboy–not an overflowing waffle iron, not a microwave butter explosion, not a kitchen prepped to be torn apart for the impending tile project and certainly not my lack of culinary skills. I was going to make these things.

From scratch.

And I was going to eat as many as I wanted.

Because it was a snow day and this is what you do on snow days.

And I was starving.

So I did. And I’m telling you here because I was so damn proud of myself, the same way I am when I manage to accomplish anything worth eating in the kitchen. And I was wishing someone, besides Husband, was snowed in in this house to help me eat them and tell me how ass-kickingly domestic I’ve become…because there is only so much cooking-compliment-fishing the man can handle, no matter how much he likes the waffles.

Because the man can make his own damn waffles, so he’s not that impressed.

But I was. So to go along with our crock pot roast dinner, I made this.

Hasselback Garlic Cheesy Bread

Yup.

Ok, so it doesn’t look as mouth-watering as the photo attached to the original recipe, but, c’mon, I made this from freakin’ scratch people. Me. I did that.

Home. Made. Bread.

And when I say homemade, I mean it. Yup, the successful homemade waffles gave me the little nudge of confidence necessary to tackle the things you need to make bread from scratch– like yeast and Husband’s Kitchenaid Mixer.

So as my dearly beloved braved the weather to work on shoveling and checking the horses and other man-type things, I was inside trying to figure out how the hell to use the mixer, waiting for the bread to rise, rolling it out, putting it on a pan and waiting for it to rise some more.  I concocted my own garlic butter, used that pastry brush thingy that I shoved in the back of my drawer and brushed the top of the loaves, baking them until they turned a perfect golden brown. And when Husband came in from the cold, there I stood covered in flour with hands on my hips, content and proud at my delicious accomplishment, wishing again, that someone else was there to taste it, because surely they wouldn’t believe me.

Or him.

I mean really, for all of the things my husband is to me, he seems to lacks the enthusiasm gene.

Anyway, the snow fell and the weekend moved from Saturday into Sunday and we worked on transforming this house into the home we dreamed of.

I stained doors and we put up the backsplash in the kitchen.


Husband made sawdust and I swept the floor,  poured us a couple cups of coffee and then a couple glasses of wine. I braved the weather to snap some photos and he laughed when I came in covered in snow with frozen fingers.

We didn’t look at the clock, we just paid attention to the way the light fought its way through the clouds and into the house that smelled like breakfast bacon and cedar.

I didn’t fix my hair or put on makeup and for two days the only other souls we encountered had four legs and fur and were sleeping on our floor.

This is the way I imagined our winters in this house. And it isn’t often that those imagined things play out the way you thought them up. Especially when it comes to cooking and home construction. And I don’t know why it happened to work out this particular weekend. I don’t know why I didn’t have plans to play music, or to catch a party or a concert or gamble down in Vegas, except that I didn’t.

And neither did Husband.

Because more than anything in the world I think the two of us, whether or not we will admit it, really only want to be here, eating each other’s cooking, cleaning up after one another, following our plans and building our life nail by nail, board by board and tile by tile.

From scratch.

Like the waffles, which turned out pretty good, against all odds.

Happy Hunting

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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

Once I was a mermaid.

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We are preparing for a weekend winter storm here and as I make a checklist of the things I should pick up for supper and plan for the things we can get done around  the house while we’re stranded, I’m feeling grateful for this unfinished home and worried about the families on the east coast braving winter weather after enduring such a devastating storm.

Sometimes we feel so safe here in the middle of the world, landlocked and grounded under familiar skies that promise nothing less than snow and wind and lightning and rain and winds that we lean into.

Winds that hold us up some days.

Sometimes that sky swirls and rages and touches the ground, scaring us, but not surprising us.

Because out here that sky is predictably unpredictable, but never has an ocean wave washed over our homes. Never has a river swallowed us up.

Never have I been forced to run from a storm.

And I can’t imagine it. I cannot imagine the ocean, a world so mysterious to this prairie girl, deep and powerful and dangerous and magical, splashing over my neighborhood, remodeling city streets, breaking down buildings, rearranging houses and changing my world.

When I was a young girl I used to sit on the granite rocks on the top of the hill beside my grandmother’s house and pretend that I was a mermaid swimming in the sea. I imagined those rocks were coves at the bottom of the ocean, the biggest stretching so high that the tip jutted out of the water, allowing my mermaid self to sit at the surface and look out at the mysterious landscape of the shore.

I don’t know why I wanted to be a mermaid. At that point in my life I had never touched the ocean, never felt the sand under my toes or tasted the salt of the water. In my mind the ocean was warm and clear and as fresh as the lake I swam in on hot summer days. I imagined the waves gentle and calm. I imagined whales making grand appearances on the surface. I imagined big ships and sailboats gently rocking between waves. I imagined diving with colorful sea creatures–giant turtles, yellow fish and orange sea horses. I imagined myself with long flowing hair and a sparkling tail, breathing under water in a world so colorful and crystal clear. So different from my own.

It never occurred to me that I could become seasick on my first boat ride across and ocean bay when I was seventeen.

I never dreamed the power of the waves could knock me down and roll me across the sandy ocean floor. I didn’t understand the sting of the salt on my skin or the bitter taste it could leave on my tongue.

I never thought my first encounter with a dolphin in the wild would find me as a grown woman on my hands and knees under the breakfast table of the cruise ship, nose pressed to the porthole glass, crying with excitement and wonder as the creature jumped and splashed and swam alongside our giant boat.

Our world is so big.
Our world is so big.
Our world is so big.

I see it on television, snippets of elation and suffering, misunderstanding and sacrifice, disagreements and hopefulness on the faces of people on top of mountains, inside skyscrapers, under the heat of a desert sun, along suburban streets and next to the ocean.

And I am landlocked and tied to a place that’s tied to me, under a sky that’s spitting out snow and threatening to blanket us in white for days on end. But I am not scared of the snow. The snow is my ocean and I feel like that mermaid I used to pretend to be, sitting out on a rock far away from the rest of the world that looks so small and mysterious from the unchangeable distance.

And as I say a quiet prayer of thanks to the prairie, I add a reminder to not hide too safely in the familiarity of this place that I dismiss the power of the ocean and the people who love the shore.

Because once I was a mermaid.

Lonely weather

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Today it’s gray. Today the snow that fell on Friday turned to fog then rain then ice then water and now to mud stuck to the bottom of my boots.

We made breakfast for an old friend who was passing through town. He spent the night on our couch and stood next to Husband at his usual place next to the windows, watching as a few deer came in to water at the dam.

He said he forgot how beautiful it can be out here when the snow falls. Our friend doesn’t come home much when it’s white like this. He sipped his coffee and laughed and talked about cattle and his little girl while Husband fried the bacon and I cracked eggs for omelets.

This house is not finished, the stairs have no treads, the trim is not up and the basement is nothing but dirt and chill, but we have served breakfast in this house four weekends in a row, ever since the sky decided to cool us down and get us sitting closer together, pulling on more sweaters and searching for our wool socks.

I put out the place mats and our white wedding dishes, the butter and some blackberry jam and thought it might be ok if we waited on hanging the closet doors for the day.

I brewed another pot of coffee and decided if I never get a beautiful staircase or a bedroom in the loft, at least I have this kitchen and my grandmother’s old table surrounded by windows looking out on a frozen world slowly thawing.

And so I suppose it’s winter now. The clocks have fallen back and it will get dark soon. Our friend started up his pickup and checked the road report before backing out of our muddy drive and pulling out of our lives and into his own. I feel sleepy and chilled and about as colorful as this landscape.

The winter makes me feel lonesome for something and I don’t understand it. But  it’s familiar and comforting and it’s alright.

The cold settles in and all of the reasons I wanted to be a tree or a bird or a wildflower in the summer melt away like a snowflake hitting my tongue and I just want to be me, in my kitchen, serving coffee,  putting off chores and thinking about dinner.

I just want to be me, looking out the window of this unfinished house, listening to the people I’ve loved for years talk about the weather and Husband’s perfect omelets.

Me.

A little bit lonely, a little bit cold with a little bit of time on a Sunday to be alright with a gray world just the way it is for now.