Tag Archives: Love

A little about Little Man

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Check out my date for the day:

Yup, he’s a handsome catch.

Don’t judge me ok. But when I get a chance to hang with my baby nephew, the first thing I do (after getting a smile and a hug) is dress him as a mini version of an adult character, like a cowboy or a hunter or an extreme athlete who wears Under Armor gear and then head outside.

Yeah, there may be some past evidence of this tendency….

Anyway, Little Man loves it outside. And with the unseasonably warm temperatures this week the little guy didn’t even need a puffy coat to enjoy the sunshine, barn animals and a big boy ride on the 4-wheeler.

Which reminds me, I need to get him a pair of goggles to go with that flapper hat. I think it would really complete the outfit don’t you?

Other than that, we’ve been busy you know. So busy that the kid is currently snoring, exhausted from a morning of growing teeth, making his aunt gag with the giant surprise he left in his pants: twice, and you know, working on the walking thing.

Yup, today Little Man discovered how to stand up without any aid from a piece of furniture and  propel himself forward on his feet. You know, a little thing we refer to as walking. And if I ever had doubt about why parents get so insane over things like children pooping on the potty and saying “DaDa” or “Shoe” (which not surprisingly, was my first word) I will never question it again.

Because when this little phenomenon occurred (one I have been nagging him about for months) this morning in my momma’s kitchen, I nearly spontaneously combusted with pride. When the reoccurring single step he usually takes from the standing position turned into two and then three, the look on that Little Man’s face was priceless. I screamed. I clapped. I did a back flip.

I called President Obama.

Hearing the commotion from shower stall, my momma came rushing in from the bathroom in her towel, and, well, she did the same thing, joining me in crazy company.

And then she called Oprah and asked her if she would like the exclusive interview with this wondrous kid.

It was magic.

And it hasn’t happened again for a good three hours, despite all of my coaxing.

Ah, well.

And ah, to be a toddler.

Watching Little Man discover the world, grab the cat by the tail, and snuggle into his gramma’s lap opens up a whole new world for us here on the ranch. One that has been plumb full of adult wisdom and responsibilities for years. But when Little Man comes down the road backward in his car seat and reaches his arms up to us, his way of asking to be pulled out, to be shown something, to be held and bounced and kissed and hugged, I cant help but wish I had still had some of those memories with me.


I wish I could recall what it was like to taste the world for the first time, or the adventure of never knowing if it’s milk or juice in that sippy cup. I wish I could remember that thrill of my first step and the faces that were there cheering me on. I wish I could reach back in the depths of my mind to hear the lullabies sung and the stories told, to hear my mother’s young voice, my grandmother’s whistle. I wish I could feel the thrill of being tossed in the air with full confidence that my grandfather would be there to catch me.

I wish he could remember how happy he is making everyone around here. How he melts his grandmother’s worries away as soon as she see’s his face. How he makes everything else in his grandfather’s world disappear when he see’s his toothy smile.

I wish he could remember how his aunt loses all inhibitions in attempts to make him laugh and  how everything’s right in his uncle’s world when he comes home from work and finds Little Man’s arms stretched out for a hug.

I know these particular events won’t stick in his little memory, but I know he will understand how important he is to our world.

Oh, and I will tell him.

Certain things.

Like how I did my first and only backflip when she saw him walk and how his gram called Oprah about the whole thing…

I probably won’t tell him about all the times he’s peed on me. Or how I repeatedly put his diapers on backwards.

Or how much he used to poop his pants.

Some memories are meant to be repressed.

Have a great weekend everyone. If you need me, I’ll be napping too.

Love,

Aunty Jessie

This year’s story…

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The year is winding down here and it is doing so quite nicely. This morning there is a little fog that has settled in over the barnyard, coating the grass and trees with a thin layer of frost. I am waiting for the sky to lighten a bit before taking a trip into town, just as all of us up here this December are waiting, holding our breath for the snow to fall as it inevitably will. And in the hustle and bustle of our lives, the taking down of Christmas decorations, the New Year’s plans, the gift returns and holiday cleanup, my hope for you is that you are giving yourself a  moment to close your eyes and reflect on a year that was no doubt filled with achievements, heartbreak, love found or lost, adventure…all the experiences that got us safely to the cusp of a new year, a little older, a little wiser, and hopefully, a little better in spite of all of those lessons.

Lessons like when delving into a full-blown, first time in the kitchen salsa caning project at 8 pm, make sure you have the proper ingredients (like jars) and the willpower and drive to follow through into the early morning hours. Or the other lesson learned early on in the year about how to ensure you don’t ever get a visit from the Schwan’s man again in your life followed by the an over the phone tutorial on how to pull the FedEx man in a FedEx van out of your snowed in driveway in the middle of winter, in the middle of nowhere. Both lessons resulting in getting our ice-cream and our packages in town.

Yes, there was the lesson learned about what happens when 150 cows throw a party on your lawn after a big summer rain storm, the one about how to sprain your ankle jumping off a horse, the realization that I just might be too soft to be an effective 4-H judge followed by the other realization that apparently husband collects coolers, microwaves, bed frames, dressers, ice skates, thousands of unidentifiable tractor and truck parts, old lunch boxes, swallow nests, spiders, deer antlers, gears, wire, Christmas wreaths, scrap wood, a jeep and a partridge in a pear tree and keeps them piled up in our garage….and that isn’t likely to change.

Ever.

And yes, I will always blame this on him. 

And then there was the blinding lesson the pug learned about messing with porcupines when you only weigh thirty-five pounds and a good portion of your smooshy face is actually covered in two buggy eyeballs, which resulted in the following lesson on how to get by with only one buggy eyeball. And after the three trips to the vet, the giant cone he was forced to wear and a few run-ins with the wall as he turned his head to look over his shoulder, the pug has pretty much been transformed this year into something that could be referred to now as “Bad Ass.”

Bad ass like husband running out the door in the middle of the night to save us all from the raccoon dangling off of the side of the deck with, umm, nothing but a gun in his hand and a mission in his groggy head. Turns out he got to learn the lesson about wearing clothes to bed in case of midnight varmint emergencies, well, twice.

Yes, some lessons catch us off guard and find us standing butt naked on the rail of the deck in the middle of the night with a shotgun in your hands and two full moons shining in the darkness…and then others roll into your lives quietly, like the herd of elk Pops and I snuck up on this spring, reminding us that life is magical and fragile and quite frankly a masterpiece.

A masterpiece that grows the raspberries in the east pasture and finds us riding our horses in the summer sun at just the right time to stumble upon them and indulge. It’s the kind of life that gives us voices and ambition to sing out loud next to people you respect and admire  and the ability to understand that it doesn’t matter where you are, in a barnyard, around a campfire, in a smoky bar somewhere, it’s the chance to blend voices, it’s the music in you that, when it finds its moment to be heard, is the true gift.

Like the gift I was given as I watched my husband walk across the pasture in the crisp spring evening at the end of the first pleasant day of one of the harshest winters of our lives. And as I watched him scratch the ears of his favorite horse from my perch in the passenger seat of the pickup I caught my breath in the realization that this is the life we were supposed to be living and that in this world full of snow storms and breakdowns and things that might never be fixed, I married the right man. And we are in the right place. 

And so here I sit in my husband’s favorite chair in my grandmother’s house on my family’s land on the edge of the badlands in North Dakota as the wind blows through the icy trees under an overcast sky. Here I sit with my coffee cup, taking a moment to reflect on a year that was observed just as much as it was lived. And if the words I scrounged up to describe the sound of a coyote howling across the landscape haven’t moved a soul, if the photos I snapped of the breathtaking sunsets were only seen with my eyes and the music I wrote of my home in the hills was only heard in my heart, today I can say with confidence something that may not have rung true a few years ago…it would be enough for me.

See, it hasn’t come easily, but as I walked out in the summer rain and bent down to snap a photo of a wildflower drenched in the season, as I laughed out loud at the antics of my pets, helped my husband in the kitchen, strummed my guitar, playing along with a song my father was singing or climbed on the back of a horse to show my friend around the ranch, I found myself becoming an a spectator, a witness to the life I was living. With my camera to my eye I noticed how the sky formed gorgeous silhouettes, how my father’s hands folded on the saddle horn while he counted the cattle, how my sister rides horse like she lives life…on a mission.

With the idea of passing on the story, I listened a little closer at how words rolled of tongues, paid attention to the heat of the sun, the bite of the wind, the way the snow crunched under our feet…

Yesterday a new friend exclaimed that one of the three things we have control of in our lives is our time. And I know sometimes it doesn’t feel this way, sometimes it feels time has a grip on us, it passes us by, it moves too quickly when we want it to stay and drags on the minutes while we wait to move on. But if we could give ourselves one gift this new year I think it would be this: to exist and move through our lives conscious of how we are spending our minutes, aware that they are with or without purpose. And then we should give ourselves a little bit more of it so that we might observe the moon as it rises big and bright over the horizon, kiss our husbands a little longer, let ourselves lie down in the spring grass, feel the warm sun and watch the clouds move with the wind, hold our children a little tighter and linger there to smell their clean hair, to feel their soft skin under our fingers so we can remember it well, that we can get to know it all… so that we might have it in us when we need it most.

So of all of the lessons learned this year, all of the things I’ve come to know and appreciate, one of my greatest gifts has been having your ear to listen, your eyes to see what I see, your words that relate to the chaos of life here in this space we share, to tell you these things and know that someone cares. Because the stories are there, boring or humorous, observational, poetic…everyone has them. But without you I may have never  told them…

And because of you I now know they are enough.

Happy New Year to you and all of those in your story!

A Very Veeder Christmas

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A very merry first day back to work after Christmas to you all. I hope you all had a lovely time working on polishing off those sugar cookies and have packed a turkey sandwich, a leftover noodle salad, a piece of prime rib, some chocolate kisses, peanut brittle and maybe a holiday orange or two to get you through a full day away from the kitchen.

We celebrated in Veeder style out here at the ranch beginning with mimosa and husband’s famous caramel rolls in the morning and ending with our first attempt at homemade pie for dessert.

Yup, I (helped) make this

And so I would like to present to you some of the highlights of our big day in my 2nd Annual Very Veeder Christmas Re-cap.  It must be done. Because, as always, it was a holiday to remember at the ranch, filled to the brim with traditions that have warmed our souls and lifted our spirits year after year…

Traditions like the holiday themed cheeseball:

I know it's hard to believe he's edible considering how absolutely life-like he is, but it's true. And he was delicious.

The “quick, take a picture of the cat under the tree with the presents isn’t that so cuuutteee oh my gaawwdddd” photo:

The beautiful tree:

The forced, awkward holiday photo shoot, under the direction of yours truly…which never works when she who is to be directed is my annoying, shutter happy little sister:

Let's do this people...

I hope that wasn’t as painful for you as it was for me.

Let’s cleanse our pallets now with an explosion of cute…


And one of our newest and most favorite traditions yet: watching Little Man take in the holiday while Pops follows him around helping him open presents, pry into the fourteen layers of plastic packaging then disappear in a full out investigative search in the garage for the appropriate sized batteries, assemble the toys and proceed with his instructional session with the one-year-old on how to scootch a toy truck along the floor while making “vrroommminnng” noises as the rest of the family watches in anticipation of Little Man following suit…

It must be a grandpa thing.

Awww. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without adorable little children playing at your feet and… well…the annual presentation of the pug in his Santa suit…

Load him up Cowboy

Don't look at me like that...this is your Christmas duty...

Ta Da!

Nothing spreads holiday cheer like the glare of hatred coming from the one-eyed pug who refuses to move on account of the outfit.

I’m not positive, but I think might be the only one in our family who finds this type of pet humiliation utterly hilarious….

bwahahahahaaa…(tap, tap, is this thing on?)

Yes, it was a holiday to remember at our house filled with love and laughter, snuggles and eating, just the right amount of humiliation and maybe one Christmas cookie dough fight. But in all of the familiarity of the season, there are some traditions that just couldn’t be fulfilled, and this year it was snow.

Ah well, I don’t hear anyone complaining really, considering last year at this time we were trudging our way through snow drifts up over our heads to get down the road to Mom’s and Pop’s for Christmas morning.

But the lack of snow isn’t the only thing that’s changed around here since we celebrated Christmas 2010…

What a difference a year makes!

Cheers to a wonderful new one ahead, filled with beautiful memories and at least one less than embarrassing photo to match.

Or, you know, you could just go with it…

Momma’s Mouth Watering Fudge-A Christmas Gift

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The Merriest Christmas to all of you. I hope you’re reading this and looking forward to a weekend filled with friends and family and laughter and delicious food. To honor your friendship and support I am giving you a gift that has been enjoyed by many families around the countryside here Christmas after Christmas, courtesy of my Momma. You remember her? My Momma, the woman who has Santa Clause’s cell phone number on speed dial and continues to make Christmas the most magical time of the year. Every year.

There she is, buried under presents and squished between a couple other holly, jolly family members...

And one of the ways she does this is by whipping up this recipe and distributing it in fancy little green and red containers adorned with bows to every person who has touched her family’s life or made her laugh or brought her a bottle of wine at the perfect moment a bottle of wine was necessary throughout the year.

Men drool over this. Women hide it in places their families won’t find it. Kids sneak pieces of this heartfelt delicacy while their parent’s have their backs turned. It’s a little bit of heaven in your mouth.

It’s my momma’s fudge..and I’m going to give you the recipe.  A recipe that is sure to put you on the top of the “Nice” list year after year.

Make this and even the family members who’ve disowned you will be knocking at your door, apologizing for their wrong doing with a bottle of champaign begging you to forgive them…and please, can I have a piece of that fudge.

It’s that easy.

Really.

I can even make  it…all by myself!

Here’s what you need:

  • 1 12 oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 12 oz package milk chocolate chips
  • 3 teaspoons vanilla
  • 4 1/2 cups of sugar
  • 1 pound of butter (No worries, I’ll post my Momma’s instructional aerobic video after Christmas)
  • 1 can evaporated milk

Got it?

Ok, onward.

  • Butter an 8×12 baking dish
  • Bring sugar and evaporated milk to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue to stir and boil for 7 minutes.
  • Remove pot from heat and stir chocolate chips, vanilla and butter.

  • Stir until smooth and pour into the buttered baking dish
  • Refrigerate until set
  • Ask your hubby or the woman in your life with incredible strength to help you cut the fudge into squares
  • Serve up on a cute platter and stand back and smile as you experience that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with spreading holiday cheer.


If you’re looking for me and this fudge, we are more than likely shamefully hiding out somewhere.

Merry Christmas friends. Much love from our house to yours!

The list

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Christmas is right around the corner. Like, right there. I can see its sparkly ribbons and the ball on its Santa hat from here and I am finding myself a little anxious about the whole thing. I’m saying things like, I’m not ready! I have to bake something! I have to wrap the presents and find a Christmas tree and put up lights! It has to snoooowwwww! It hasn’t even really snowed yet!!!

I’ve been so wrapped up in other things this December, like planning the arrival and set-up of our new house, that Christmas and I haven’t been able to spend time together.

So this week I have  “Christmas” on my agenda. I’m not going to lie, I don’t like having to pencil it in. I much prefer when the season infiltrates into my life naturally. I like when the ground has just the right amount of sparkly snow and husband and I are able to go out and cut the tree together. I like when I have a weekend to put up the lights and replace my usual brown candles and wooden frames with red and green decorations and boughs of cedar.

I love it when the house smells like cedar. It’s one of my favorite things about Christmas at the ranch.

Last night when husband and I got in late from dinner at my big sister’s new house I walked through our entryway full of tools and living room piled to the ceiling with unwrapped presents and realized that, with Christmas just a few days away and husband working so hard on the new house, it isn’t likely we will have a tree this year. And it’s the last Christmas we’ll spend in this little house.

It made me a little sad as I crawled into bed, thinking about our first Christmas spent as a married couple in this house. I pulled  the covers up and closed my eyes to remember the first tree we cut together from the place. Our first tree as husband and wife….

We’d been married about four months and there was snow on the ground. We headed out the door in early December to drive the trail to the east pasture, the pasture on the edge of the badlands that grows the most Christmas type trees on the place,  our new puppy riding in the back of the pickup. We bumped and bounced along the rough and frozen path until we got to the top of the hill looking over one of our favorite spots. Deciding he had pushed his luck and the limits of his 4-wheel drive, we got out of the pickup to scope out the hills on foot, our little brown lab trailing in our footprints behind us.

It is one of my favorite memories, watching my new husband dressed in his wool cap and neckerchief, jeans and big boots, milling over the size and proportion of a cedar tree that we had spotted on the top of a hill together. I remember it being just before dark as the sun made its way down over the buttes as our new puppy and I watched eagerly as husband carefully sawed off the top of our chosen tree and drug it up the hill to the pickup.

We followed in his snowy footprints and walked together talking and laughing at how our puppy was jumping through the drifts, watching our breath puff in and out with our words. We reached our pickup as the sun was setting, loaded our puppy and the tree in the back and I plopped my snow-suited body down next to husband in the cab. He started the engine, put the vehicle in reverse, stepped on the gas and, well…we didn’t move..

Husband put in drive, stepped on the gas…and…ummm…we were not going that way either.

Reverse.

Drive.

Reverse.

Drive.

Stuck.

Husband got the shovel and I stepped out and sunk knee deep into the snow bank we decided to park in. I trudged around to the back of the pickup to check on the puppy who, in all of that back and forth, had lost his cookies all over in the box of the pickup…and if memory serves me right, it seemed he had indulged in a lot of cookies.

So there we were, my new husband and I, out on the prairie in the middle of winter at sunset, a good five hilly miles away from our little house with a Christmas tree and a sick puppy in the back of the pickup…two supplies we found are  pretty worthless in times like these.

But you know, I don’t remember feeling panicked or frustrated or upset in any way. I do remember being grossed out by the dog puke, but not enough to not laugh about it. I knew somewhere in that youthful and hopeful heart of mine that I married a man who was perfectly capable of getting us out of a jam like this and on down through the hills to help me drag that tree into the house and make it a Christmas to remember.

So I got behind the wheel as husband shoveled and instructed me on the technique of successfully rocking a pickup out of a snowbank that had us high-centered. He shoveled the snow, wet and sticky from the warmth of the now disappearing sun and I leaned my head out the window to hear his instructions to drive forward, then backward, then forward again.

And then, as the stars started showing their shiny faces one by one over the snowy hills, husband scootched me out of the driver’s seat to get behind the wheel, I grabbed the puppy and with one mighty rev my man drove us and our giant Christmas tree out of the snow bank and to the front door of our home in the barnyard.

I remember us laughing the entire way home with relief, thanking those stars above that we weren’t walking.

Thankful that we were there together in our own adventure…

Thankful for a Christmas together.

I fell asleep last night with this memory floating in the air above my bed, playing itself out for me. I woke up this morning while my husband of nearly five Christmases still lay sleeping beside me.

I wrapped my arms around him and lay there in that memory for another moment. And in the quiet of the farmhouse, in the still of the early morning before the sun appeared, I listened to my husband breathe.

I listened to him breathe, kissed his shoulder and rolled out of bed to find the list of things I have to do to prepare for Christmas this weekend.

And at the top, in front of wrapping presents, making fudge, cleaning the house, and writing cards I wrote in big, bold letters…

  1. “Find a Christmas Tree with Husband.”

 

 

Where are the words for this?

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You know that saying,  “When it rains it pours?” Or how about the other one, “Bad things happen in threes?” I’ve used these before to describe overwhelming events in people’s lives and in my own. I have said these phrases out loud to declare war on an unpredictable life, to show my exasperation at a world that sometimes just keeps piling on the crap…and then held my breath and watched my back for the next small catastrophe, because that’s life sometimes, you know?

But as I mill around my little home this morning, shuffling through the kitchen in my furry boots and pajama pants, listening to the pug snore and my husband’s breath move in an out as he lay, still sleeping, in the bedroom just a few steps away, in the calm of the morning of what is probably going to go down in my book as one of the bigger, most exciting days of our lives, the day our house gets set on its foundation, I am finding myself overwhelmed…but in the best way possible.

Part of our new house waits to be put on the foundation...

And do you know what’s even better? Just thirty miles away in my hometown, I imagine my big sister is having the same sort of feelings (or at least she will be when she wakes up this morning). Because today she and her husband and Little Man are going to be meeting their brand new home too…and moving in!

And just a little further east, oh, about 370 miles, my little sister is having her own moment as she prepares to welcome friends and family to her neck of the woods to celebrate four and a half years of hard work and studying and how it has paid off. Yup, she’s graduating from COLLEGE tomorrow! And I can’t wait to give her a big hug of congratulations and toast her efforts.

We have much to toast about.

But oh, it’s been a crazy week here of preparing and running and signing paperwork and getting everything in order and calling in the neighbors and family and friends to help us hammer and nail and prepare the foundation in the middle of a frozen winter and on into the night.

Husband has been dangling off of ladders busting out his “on a mission” face.

And down the road my big sister has been packing up all of Little Man’s toys and cups and putting her shoe collection in boxes, eager to finally have a larger countertop and a few more cupboards and floor space for Little Man to crawl around on.

In Fargo, Little Sister has been planning the rest of her life while planning her party and eagerly calling the ranch to check in on her mother who, in the middle of all of this, is armpit-deep in her first Christmas rush as a new retail store owner, and she’s doing great.

And Pops? Well, as a married father of three girls he’s had some practice with matters like these.  When the women in his life are reaching as far as they can reach, he makes sure he’s there too, to help give them a boost and let them step on his knee if they need to.

Yes, in the days leading up to a holiday that will find my big sister settled into her new home, my little sister a career woman, my mother with a glass of wine to toast the end of the rush and my pops leaned back in his easy chair, outside a quiet frost has been hanging over the ranch for days. It has been coating the fences and buildings and oak trees in a white sparkle, as if it is setting the stage, painting the landscape for a perfect photograph of a Christmas gift delivered to us today…


And in all of the hustle and bustle it is all I can do to not stop and lay down in its sparkle, to shake the branches and watch the frost fly, to take a quiet walk through the hills to really appreciate this mid-December weather that has held on for us to get the last-minute details done.

So as the sun is making its way up the horizon line, husband is awake now and working his way out the door, bundling up and loading tools in his pickup for a trip over the hill. Little Man is probably waking Big Sister with a giggle, Little Sister is brewing the coffee and Momma and Pops are loading up the car to go see her and celebrate. I will be on the road soon to do the same.

But right now today is the day.

Today is the day.

Because yes, life has a way of piling it on indeed, but sometimes it does so in a the best way possible.

And what do we say when that happens? Where are the words written for when dreams are coming true? Where is the phrase we use to declare our overwhelming excitement and happiness?

Where are the words for that?


Windows and doors and walls and where we will make a new home…

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Step one. Breathe in.

Step two. Breathe out.

In a little over a week the house we are planning to live out the rest of our lives in will be rolling down the highway and turning on the pink road to find its way to the ranch…

When I see that in writing that sounds a little more redneck than magical, but hey, that’s how it’s happening.

Anyway, we’ve been preparing for this, like really preparing for this for a good year. It’s been almost exactly a year since we sold our renovation home in Dickinson and since then we have been researching, talking, planning, making calls, comparing notes and crunching numbers to see if we could make that little dream we had brewing up in our heads to come out right on paper. We had discussions about where to put the thing, what we might need to take down, how big a hole we should dig, how many windows to put in, what color our floors might be, where we need a toilet, where we need a light fixture, where we need an outlet and a door and a piece of carpet.

These are small decisions that all pile up into one big one. A big one that changes what road we drive out of in the morning and come down in the evening for as long as we are able, where we put our Christmas tree, where we sit to watch the sunrise and drink margaritas, the way the couch faces when we snuggle down to watch John Wayne movies in the evening, where we keep the silverware and coffee cups and good dishes…where we might one day tuck our children in at night.

Husband and I have been dreaming about the day we hang the “Home Sweet Home” sign on the door of our forever home since we decided we loved one another enough to talk about a future together. We knew where we wanted to be and a little of what it looked like and then lo and behold the road to get here just happened to be filled with a little less bends and bumps than expected and we are blessed.

And I am nervous.

I don’t know why.

See, this house, my grandmother’s house, has always been a safe haven for me. It is where I came with my cousins to celebrate Christmas and get stuck in the gumbo hills looking for Easter eggs in the spring. It’s where we slept in bunk beds, dreaming big dreams and learning that Santa Clause doesn’t exist.


It’s where I came with my pops to live with my gramma when we moved back to the ranch when I was seven years old. It’s where I ate my grandmother’s kettle popped popcorn on New Year’s Eve while my parents were out. It’s where we sat on the porch and slurped on popsicles from the Schwan’s man as the hot summer sun beat down on the clay hills around us.

It was where my other grandparents moved in when my grandmother died to keep it a home, to love it and fill it with the smell of cooking…to keep the lights on.

It was my first h0me as a married woman, the threshold my new husband carried me over. It’s where we had our first Christmas tree as Mr. and Mrs., cut from the pastures that surrounded us. Where we brought home our new puppy, where we hosted our first Thanksgiving together for family, where I slept as husband fumbled around in the dark of the early mornings getting ready for work, careful not to wake me.

It’s what we saw in our rear view mirror, through tears in my eyes, as we decided on a new adventure…and where we settled a few years later when we discovered our biggest adventure yet would be here, where I learned to make homemade chokecherry jelly and along the way we found ourselves.

Home.

So this evening I am sitting in husband’s big leather chair while he makes some sketches, tallies some numbers, makes some phone calls and puts together a schedule of preparation for the next few days. He needs to build some walls, he needs to call the septic guy, I need to call the bank and the insurance company and we need to unload that giant trailer loaded with 2x8s and windows and screws and house wrap.

We have so much to do to prepare. There isn’t time to think about the memories that we will be leaving in this little house that will sit forever over the hill from us as we cook our meals under a new roof…one that holds more than one bedroom and a closet bigger than a shoebox. But in all the excitement I feel for our new big deck, stair case, hardwood floors and spacious kitchen cabinets, I can’t help but feel a little twinge of loneliness for a life I found bumping into one another in the little bathroom while brushing our teeth, the negotiating skills I acquired compromising closet space, the belly laughs and snorts that came flying out of my lungs while sitting close to family and friends around this kitchen table, the way the house heats up when the oven is turned on or how I can vacuum every carpet in the house without switching outlets.

Yes, it’s a little twinge of loneliness for a good life led cradled in the arms of my grandmother’s house,  a little bit of nerves from a woman who has lived in close quarters with the people she’s loved all her life…and a little uncertainty about what will happen when I can’t lay under the covers of my bed in the bedroom and hold conversation with husband making noodles in the kitchen.

Do you drift apart when you have the option of living out your lives in separate rooms? Will we lose our connection when we no longer bump into each other while cooking casserole together in the kitchen? What will we talk about if it isn’t that we need to downsize on our boot collection or get a better place for our coveralls?

In our new house, will we still brush our teeth together in the same bathroom? Will we choose to stay in the same room and watch the other’s TV program, complaining the entire time, but glad to be close? Will we still trip over our boots? Will everyone gather in the kitchen on the holidays, no matter the option of another room and a basement?

Because I want more space, yes. I need more walls to hang photos of the people we love, more shelves to hold books, more room for my shoes. I’m not worried about filling up our new home with stuff, but what I want more than three bathrooms and a garage for husband’s tools is to be able to fill our new home with as much warmth, comfort, hugs, laughter, family, friends, love and  memories that have always surrounded me in this little house in the buttes next to the red barn.

I hope we can do it.

I hope we do.

 

Turkey, ping pong, a cheeseball and memories…

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12



I hope the holiday weekend was good to everyone. I hope the sun rose bright and warm and flooded your kitchen with streams of light while you or your momma or your gramma or pops or sister or mother-in-law basted the turkey and rolled up their sleeves, saying something like “whew, it’s warm in here isn’t it?” as you cracked the window open, letting the crisp fall air billow in from outside.

I hope you helped make something wonderful to eat, like a cheesecake or pie or a cookie salad (yes, such thing exists). I hope you played games, took a walk, laughed really hard, maybe even danced a little before dessert.

I hope there was ping-pong or a game of spoons or maybe even a friendly round of poker on your list of things to do.

I hope there was a cheeseball. I really do.

Because these are traditions aren’t they? The ping-pong? The kitchen hot flashes? The cheeseball? Every family has them, the things that are constant in an ever-changing and unpredictable life. It’s my favorite thing about the holidays, to know that I will be in a kitchen somewhere with my mother and that there will always be turkey and pie…that I won’t be judged on this day for unbuttoning the top button of my pants…

Yes, some things remain constant…but some things sneak up on us. While we’re busy with that extra slice of cobbler things are tweaking and evolving and changing the world we know little by little until suddenly you find gray hair mixed in with the black ones and you look around to find that those who used to sit with you at the kids table now have kids of their own.

How the hell did that happen?

My handsome nephew

And as the family tree branches out, so do the holidays, turning aunts into grammas, grandma’s into great ones, best friends into uncles and cousins into mommas who are now wearing aprons and hosting their own Thanksgiving meals hundreds of miles away.

So our lives change taking with them some of our traditions. When I was growing up Thanksgiving was always held at my aunt K’s in South Dakota. It was one of my favorite holidays because it meant that we got to see my cousins and run in the hay bales, sing songs we made up and put on ridiculous plays about pilgrims and how the first Thanksgiving may have gone down in our naive and theatrical heads. One year we put my little sister and cousin in ridiculous hats, built them a homemade ship out of a cardboard box and sent them sailing over the living room as we subjected the rest of the family to our version of the story of how our great land was settled as I stood on one leg (the other was in a cast) waiting for the “pilgrims” to make it to shore.

That was one activity that thankfully never made it to “tradition” status.

I miss those days and my ugly sweaters. I miss my aunt’s cheesy potatoes and how watching her work in the kitchen made me feel like my grandmother was in the room . I miss listening to my brilliant cousins whine and moan while their dad requested one more song on the piano. I miss that music.

But now the turkey is in my cousin’s oven and she is the momma proudly requesting a performance from her gifted children and I am miles away with my nieces and nephews opening the window for my mother-in-law before scooping her gravy onto the hot turkey she’d been cooking since the early morning hours.

And I smile to myself because my mother-by-marriage reminds me a little of my aunt K. They way she effortlessly pulls it all together. The way she never loses her sweet and calm nature even when it’s 87 degrees in the kitchen and there are thirteen kids scrambling at her feet, the way her cheeks flush after her first glass of wine…

the way she forgot the sweet potatoes in the microwave until 10 pm….

Because even as time changes our circumstance, taking people we love from us, bringing into the world new little ones to adore,  making us brave enough to try new recipes, to host our own Thanksgivings, to introduce someone to the family, even when weather snows us in, throwing us a sledding party after dessert, or gives us the gift of a 50 degree day in November, I love knowing there are a few things we can count on during this holiday:

One of them is turkey…

and the other is memories.

I hope you made some good ones this holiday.

Next year, the memories are at our house…

our new house.

And get ready, because the cheeseball will be epic.

P.S. It looks like our photography show may have to become a “day after Thanksgiving” tradition. If you missed it, no worries, our things are up all week at the Visitors Center in Watford City, so stop on by take a look and maybe, you know, finish your Christmas shopping 🙂

The waking up

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18

“I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time.” – Emily Dickinson

It’s early morning here at the ranch and I feel, for some reason, like talking about it.

Because this time of day, the beginning, the space when the sun has not quite risen, where the coffee is brewing, Husband is searching for his socks and the dogs are still sleeping on the floor at the foot of our bed are some of the most underrated, serene and precious moments in my life.

It’s not as if I’ve ever claimed to be a morning person.  Husband can attest to this as he rises around 5:30 am after the snooze button has been hit for the third time only to find I am buried fully and completely under the covers with at least two pillows over my head. He has to dig to find me for a sleepy kiss good-morning which I rarely remember in my waking hours.

I’ve  been known to say a few things to him in that quiet moment after he’s taken the time to dig me out of my blanket cave to tell me it’s time to “wake up, wake up put on your hair and makeup…” things like “noooo, not yet…” and “I’m up, I’m a zzzzz…” or “where did you put the pineapple?” as I reach for those pillows and roll over.

It isn’t pretty, the fight I have with the morning hours (and the other battle I have with my hair once I do finally decide to emerge from my cocoon). Never in my adult life had I figured out a way to change my sleepy-head mentality, and depending on where I have been in the course of my life: my dorm room in college, my first apartment, my duplex at the foot of the mountains or our first house, my relationship with the mornings have always been the same: dread.

But something changed when I moved back to the ranch over a year ago.  I am not sure when it officially happened, but somewhere between the mud-sliding, the cow chasing, the cooking, singing,  cat farming and story telling, my mornings have become my therapy and refuge. After the coffee is brewed, the animals are fed, the bed is made and husband’s socks and pants and shirt and scarf and vest are on and he’s out the door, I find myself in my favorite space as the sun rises slowly over the hill behind the red barn.

And rarely during the week do I miss that sunrise. I wait for it.  I wander around the house cleaning up dishes from the night before, filling my coffee cup and taming my hair,  stopping by each small window to take a peek at how the horizon decided to make an appearance today.

Sometimes it comes dancing in wearing ravishing bright pinks and golds and purples with streaks of fluffy clouds reflecting its light.

Sometimes its quiet against a clear sky turning the crisp grass silver and making the frost on the trees glisten.


And other times it simply provides enough light to silhouette the barn just right, making a subdued but dramatic entrance.

And sometimes it is hidden under a blanket of rain clouds or comes up with the snow that has been falling all night.

But it doesn’t matter, I always look, bending down slightly as I walk past the sink, watching the horses in the pasture below me as I brush my teeth in the bathroom or, in the summer, on the other side of my bedroom window as I roll over and open my eyes. In those moments, when it wakes me and the green grass and the blossoming trees like that, my first site a gorgeous pink sky, I catch myself in a smile I put on without an effort, without even being fully awake, without even thinking about the time or my agenda for the day…without even remembering my name.

And if I sleep in and miss it’s show, I find I am a bit disappointed, no matter how much that extra hour or two was needed.

Yes, I don’t know how it happened, or why, but my mornings have transformed from a time where I used to rush, groggy eyed, to get to the shower and out the door with a cup of coffee and slice of toast in my hand into a time where I can take a moment to actually greet the sun, have my coffee on my favorite chair and take a few more moments to reflect, to write, to relax and be myself before moving on with my day.

These were how my mornings were growing up. As country kids who lived miles and miles from our school we had to wake up early…way before the sun. Pops would knock on our doors and swing them open to say to us gently “it’s time to wake up girls.” And as I would roll over, my little sister across the hall would bounce up, always prepared, always on time, not willing to sacrifice a moment and eager to get to the last bowl of Frosted Flakes.

After a few minutes pops would knock on my door for the second round of wake-up and I would swing my legs groggily over the side of my bed to prove to him that this was it, I was up, the day was happening.  And somewhere between waiting on the bathroom (can you say “three girls?”), pulling on my favorite Levis, fixing my ponytail,  shuffling to the kitchen for my turn at the Frosted Flakes while my mom sat on the other side of the counter chatting quietly and sipping her coffee,  I got used to the idea of a new day as the sun slowly lit up the trails beneath the dark oak trees that surrounded our house.

It was in those mornings at the ranch waking one another gently, getting ready for the day together, waiting our turn for the bathroom that we were our best family. We knew for certain that morning after morning pops would be there to open the door to our bedroom and let the light from the hallway flood in, we knew mom would have our cereal or bagel or waffle out on the counter waiting for us, we knew when the small yellow bus would come bouncing down the road and we knew who would be saving us a seat when we boarded. And when we were older and pops drove us to town, we knew he would make us laugh by making up ridiculous words to Bon Jovi songs on the radio and we knew he would be there to pick us up after school was out or practice was done. We knew he would drive us home to our place in the trees in the evening and we would have a chance to do it all over again when another morning came around.

What we didn’t know was what was going to happen in the between-hours as the sun made her way to the horizon, up over our heads and back down again. We didn’t know what we might learn about the English Language or the history of our country, or what or who might come into our lives unannounced . We didn’t know how our hearts might ache that day or how tears might form as we were sure we failed that test or lost the game because we missed that shot. We didn’t know when an opportunity might arise or that a love might be blossoming day after day in the hallways of our schools.


But we walked through the day with the memory of that morning, the sound of our father’s voice rising us from our dreams, the taste of sugared cereal on our lips, the smell of our mother’s coffee and we knew, that no matter how the day turned on us, the sun would rise and we could start again from a peaceful and safe place.

We will be moving into our new house over the hill in a few months. That house will have large windows facing the east where the sun rises every morning and I look forward to this more than a larger space for my shoes, a kitchen with adequate cupboard space and even an extra bathroom. I picture myself sitting with my morning coffee out on the porch or on my favorite chair taking in the show on a big screen, basking in the pink light and energizing myself for the day.

But the way the sun peeked through the windows of this little house morning after morning, following me around from tiny room to tiny room, waking me up to what is important, reminding me to take a moment, kissing my cheeks and calling me to look, to listen to, fall in love with life again will be a memory I will hold in my pocket like the sound of my little sister’s door swinging open to greet the day…

reminding me that, around here, the waking up has always been worth it.

My husband is the only thing that makes me cool…

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26

Well it’s been pretty quiet here at the ranch. The sun has been shining giving us some beautiful days to work with, but it gets up a little later and goes to bed a little earlier.

Just like me during this time of year, hunkering down and getting ready for the cold.

Yes, we’ve swooped into November free and clear of snowfall and biting temperatures, a gift from above for the late spring we were given. But I’ve heard rumors that we should expect snow and wind in the next few days, which would be pretty typical for these parts…

yeah, you heard me...

I guess the fact that it’s typical doesn’t make it any more fun for some of the creatures around here

Yeah, during this time of year more than the weather and sun make changes to their attitude and behavior at the ranch. The cows stay a little closer to home and the horses hang out by the hay stack, happy for the reprieve from the bugs and heat and happy to work on growing their shaggy coats. The pug snores a little louder for a little longer as he snuggles a little further into the blankets on the couch, the lab whines at the door and the herd of cats come running out from the out buildings at any sound that resembles the shaking of their food bag.

And me? Well, I acquire the qualities of all of these animals put together:  the big fluffy clothes, the munching constantly on carbohydrates, the whining and shivering at the door, the sleeping really, really hard and snuggling down with the passion of the pug.

Now I’d like to think all of these behaviors are acceptable in moderation, you know, if there’s someone around to notice that you’ve worn the same fleece pants six days in a row, to tell you to save a few noodles for the next guy, and to give you a reason to get your ass up in the morning before the sun.

But that has not been the case at the ranch this week. Nope, not at all. On Monday morning husband got up wwwayyyy before the sun and hopped a plane down to Texas for work. And while he’s been hanging out in khaki pants in corporate offices in Houston, eating at fine restaurants and experiencing valet parking,  I have been here in my fleece pants, alone with the animals, eating party pizzas and what’s left of the less than delicious noodle casserole I made on Sunday evening. And I tell you what, I have NOT been experiencing valet parking.

This is as close as it gets around here...

Yes, we’ve entered into the time of year when you need to start your car a few minutes to warm up the frost on the windshield before you get in and drive away. I’ve tried my damnedest to train the pug to do this for me, but I can’t wake him up before 10 am. So I’ve been left rushing out, robe flapping in the cold morning breeze to turn the key on my vehicle only to come storming back inside panting and rubbing my hands together, while the pug snores softly on my favorite blanket.

Oh, if only you had opposable thumbs...

Anyway, it’s day four of husband’s business trip and his absence has got me thinking about what I might be like as a single woman…and I am not convinced the outcome would be the best for me.

See, I’ve known husband since I was eleven years old. He’s been my best friend starting somewhere around fifteen when he was old enough to get his drivers license and drive out to the ranch to visit me, talk guns and horses with Pops, and teach my little sister to play chess. We went to college together, we got married, we’ve moved six times. He’s been the person in my life that unclogs the shower drain, keeps my wardrobe in check (whether I appreciate it at the time or not) and the sole reason I am not watching television on my dorm room sized TV, movies on VHS and talking on a Zach Morris era cell phone.

Here we are, Seniors at our Future Farmers of America banquet. I guess no one is really cool in a corduroy blue jacket...

Now husband and I have spent time apart, don’t get me wrong. When we were dating in college, he went back home to work and I stayed put. But in the course of our relationship it has generally been me who leaves on business trips, music gigs, and Vegas vacations with the ladies for weeks on end.

Yes, you heard me. I usually leave him at home to tend to the cats and train the pug and fend for himself. He’s good at it, you know, with his cooking skills and all. Usually by the time I come home from wherever I had been the pug is doing flips on command, there are six different gormet meals in the fridge left over from husband’s cooking experimentations, only one fork, one knife, one plate and one cup have been used the entire duration of my absence, the bed is made because he’s been sleeping on the couch, the cows are not in the yard, the garbage is taken out and he is handsome as ever…

am I right ladies?

What happens when husband leaves me?

Well, I found out a few weeks ago when he was off on his first business trip…and truth be told, it ain’t pretty.

Nope.

I retreat. I get into my projects, projects that I get distracted from when husband’s around reminding me that we need to cook and that he’s out of underwear so I should probably do laundry. Five days of husband’s absence and I turn into a complete recluse, cat woman who leaves her crafting projects on the table for days on end and eats nothing but peanut butter and jelly toast for breakfast and frozen meals for one at night. And when it’s time to turn in for the evening, I let a smelly little dog sleep in my bed with me while the big dog snores on the floor of my room with the idea that somehow these furry creatures will protect me if I happen to have an intruder…(which turns out is a bunch of shit because last night when I heard something rubbing against the side of the house outside my bedroom window those dogs didn’t move a muscle. I was left to fend for myself against the aliens with my biggest, pointiest high heeled boot in hand only to find out it was a cow munching on my lawn. Damn you cows! Now, if it’d been a raccoon,  it’d be a different story…so I’d like to think the same if it were an alien…) anyway…

My watch dog

When I am home alone I don’t call anyone, because I talk to my dogs. I don’t clean anything because I am too busy crafting,  I don’t listen to music because I am singing to myself…out loud, I don’t get anywhere on time because there is no one there to tell me to get my ass moving, I don’t do the laundry because I have extra underwear thankyouverymuch and I don’t take the garbage out because that is hubby’s job.

Yes, it’s a scary realty, me being in a house to fend for myself. And when husband left again this week, I fell into the same routines, proving that there was a reason the good Lord didn’t allow me to be single…no matter the man-repelling qualities I possessed…

Yup, that's me as a teenager...

So in day number four of living my life as a single woman, I’ve come to this conclusion (and I can’t believe I didn’t realize this much earlier): The man that I call husband, Cowboy, dearly beloved,  is the only thing that stands between me and the label “crazy cat lady.”  It’s been this way since I rolled into town school as a frizzy haired 7th grader in a kitten applique sweatshirt.

Just one look at this laid back, cute, trouble making boy gave me the wake up call I needed to pay a bit more attention to the details and, well, take some risks already…something he’s been teaching me since I first saw him throw spit balls in band class and get away with it.

Yes, husband makes me cooler. He always has.

The evidence is right here:

Without prom date....

With prom date (by the grace of God)

Maybe not a huge improvement, but at least I got that hair under control…

Yup, husband’s been the reason I found myself at parties with the cool kids in high school where I might have otherwise stayed home at the ranch to puffy paint another cat sweatshirt, the big reason I decided to experiment with a hairstyle other than a ponytail and the one who grabbed my heart by taking me on the roof of his parent’s house to look at the stars.

Reason number thirty-thousand I needed to ditch the scrunchies and find a way to keep this guy…

Who knows how many pet lizards, hamsters, puppies and pot bellied pigs I would have if I didn’t have someone across the table sorting through the consequences of such family additions? I would have found out how long that Chevy Lumina I was driving in high school would have lasted with 200,000 + miles on it had I not had someone rational there to tell me that normal people trade in their cars?  I would be watching my tiny TV with binoculars and writing this blog with dial-up internet on the refurbished 1999 version of the leftover computer from my momma’s office.

I would still be dressing like this:

Garth Brooks western shirt buttoned up to the top and a scrunchie on top of my head...yeah, that's what you're seeing here...

Don’t get me wrong here though, it’s not that husband pushes to make me a different person or tells me who I am is not good enough. In fact, I know he would love me should I ever decide to pull out that kitten sweatshirt again, which I fully intend on doing once I hit that age where I’m allowed to wear purple and red hats. No, this is what it is. Husband is the calm, cool, collected to my hyper, nerdy, scattered. He is the dog person to my cat, lizard, goldfish, pet parakeet person. He’s the “knows the right thing to say” to my “say a whole bunch of words and hope something is right,” the muscle to my Olive Oyl arms, the Drano to my drain clogged with frizzy hair.

He watches out for me so that I don’t need to rely on the pug to save me from the aliens. And I do the same for him, making sure that his hair doesn’t grow past his shoulders, fluffing the pillows and tucking the sheets in on the bed he slept in last night and by listening when he tells me he needs clean underwear…

When he’s not here I’m myself, yes. My scattered, nerdy, pet-cuddling, drain clogging, laundry avoiding self…just a little less balanced…

I can't help it, I was born this way...

And and a lot more starving…

Hunny, please come home soon, the leftover casserole is getting moldy…