Sunday Column: A letter to this baby…

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Last weekend Husband finally got a chance to get off the ranch and out of the basement building project to load up the pickup and head to the big town so that he could participate in the very exciting/horrifying/intense process of learning all about the birthing process in a class we took through our hospital.

Now I’m not going to be what you might call a young mother, and lately I’ve started to realize my extra years of experience in this world has made me increasingly aware of reality…i.e. the older you get the more you realize that shit can go wrong and shit does go wrong and if it doesn’t go wrong it isn’t always easy so it’s best to be prepared.

In my younger days my ignorance was my bliss. But I guess those days are gone. Because I know just enough to worry, and not enough to feel prepared, I decided it was a good idea to take this class and take some notes.

And so off we went. My husband and me and this baby bump of ours on what will likely be one of the last overnight outings we take together before this baby makes his or her arrival.

Seven hours of lessons and questions and video examples and breathing and I am holding on to my initial idea that it’s nothing short of a miracle that anyone survives the process of being born.

We walked down the street to grab lunch and said “I can’t believe we’ve arrived here. I can’t believe we’re at a frickin’ birthing class. I don’t even feel like us.”

“I know,” was all he could say back.

We felt like normal people there. Like a normal couple having a normal baby and having the normal questions and normal worries.

We weren’t the couple with the infertility problems. The couple who have been fighting to be parents for almost 8 years. The couple who lost six pregnancies before this.

No. Now we’re the couple preparing for the birth of our first born. And my back hurts. Oh shit my back hurts. And after walking around Menards for three hours yesterday before we heading home with supplies for the basement and the nursery, my ankle bones are stiff and creaky. I take a bite of a granola bar and my heart burns up to my throat. I’m having crazy dreams. I get up to pee about every fifteen minutes…you know, all the things that happen to a woman when she’s busy growing a healthy baby. All the miserable things I’m happy to be experiencing.

Because at the end of all that pushing and breathing and contracting we learned about last weekend, at the end of my waddling stage, my nesting stage, my stretchy pants stage, we will get the greatest gift of all. And if I learned anything in the years that I’ve settled into adulthood it’s that sometimes the fighting and the suffering and the worry and the wait make the best things better.

We can’t wait to find out.

Coming Home: Dreaming of baby and all she could be…
by Jessie Veeder
10-4-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

Dear Baby,

Last night I dreamed you were born. A girl with a thick head of dark hair, tiny and perfect. As I held you, the hospital room filled with grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors, all the people who love you already.

I opened my eyes to the dim light streaming through the tops of the autumn trees, stretched my arms above my head and felt you move inside my belly.

You’re not born yet, Baby.

You have two more months to grow.

We have two more months to wait before we get to know you.

Baby, you’re making my back ache and my ankles creak with the physical weight of your impending arrival. I walk around the house in your dad’s flannel shirts, and he laughs at the sight of his wife groaning as I bend over to pick out a pan for supper or put my hands on my no-longer-existent hips to ask him what’s so funny.

But he’s not laughing because anything’s funny. He’s beaming. He can’t help it. The thought of you growing healthy and strong out in this world seems to put actual light in his eyes.

I guess that’s the twinkle they talk about.

Because you’re such a beautiful mystery, a journey we only dreamed to travel. A wish we hold our breath for.

And now, after seven years of hoping, in two months when you draw your first breath in this world, we will finally be able to let ours go.

And still we’re not ready. This house on the ranch we’ll bring you home to is still only half finished. The basement is covered in sawdust as your dad scrambles to put up walls and wrap up loose ends for your arrival.

I have your crib and a chair to rock you still sitting in unopened boxes next to the tools in the garage.

Your nursery is still my office, with papers and guitars sharing the space with a box of your bottles and a dresser full of outfits and blankets your grammas and aunties already bought for you.

You’ll learn that about us, Baby. That we we’re not the most organized people, but we have big plans, and our big plans make messes. You’ll find as you grow up in this house with us that the dishes will wait in the sink if the day is too beautiful to spend behind closed doors.

You’ll find that some days we track in more dirt than we sweep away, and that our work and commitment out here on this ranch will keep us from long vacations and big fancy toys because we want to take care of this land so that you can grow up with mud on your boots and fresh air on your face while you learn all you’re capable of.

But in the midst of all the challenge and heartbreak that you’ll find in this life with us, I hope you’ll find that I play more than I vacuum, sing more than I holler, hug more than I scold and through it all we can laugh, even on the messiest days.

And I hope you grow to like our cooking and that there might be some things we can teach you, because believe me, Baby, we know you have endless lessons to teach us.

And, Baby, I want you to know that I’ve loved your dad since I was much too young for things like that. And so you can imagine the fun we have picturing you and how our qualities might combine to make up the person you’ll become. For all the time spent in my belly behind my guitar, he wonders if you’ll come out singing.

I worry you’ll be wild like him, turning my hair gray with your affinity to drive too fast or climb too high.

Boy or girl? Blond hair? Brown eyes? For years we have dreamed you a thousand times, a thousand different ways, but none of it matters. You’ll be perfectly flawed, perfectly imperfect, like us and unlike us in so many ways, the only person in this world we love before we’ve even been introduced.

And we can’t wait to be introduced.

In between seasons

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

“You should have seen it out in the east pasture,” Husband told me when he got in from searching for stray bulls last week. “It was so colorful, like God dropped a bag of Skittles from the sky.”

It was an adorable statement coming from the scruffy, sorta smelly man sitting next to me.

And I was immediately jealous.

Although I can see it from outside my windows and on my slow strolls on the trails there’s nothing like experiencing fall on the back of a horse.

So Monday I did the next best thing and convinced Husband to take a little 4-wheeler drive with me to our favorite pasture so I could take photos from the tops of the hills and feel like I got my fix of it.

He never says no to ideas like this. It means that he doesn’t have to be cooped up in the basement putting up walls and wiring and things like that. It means that he can spend a little more time behind those binoculars looking for elk or deer or coyotes or mountain lions or whatever a man hopes to find on the other side of the glass.

I never hope to find a mountain lion.

That’s one difference between the two of us I guess.

Now a 4-wheeler these days isn’t my preferred mode of transportation. Every bump and wiggle sort of bounces me and this baby I’m cooking the wrong way, although she doesn’t seem to mind, because when we’re moving is the only time she’s sitting still.

And that’s terrifying and reassuring all at the same time.

But all that bumping around sends me popping a squat behind a bullberry bush at least once before I make it back to our front door.

If I need help initiating labor, I tell you, I know every stubble field and bumpy trail we can ride across to move it along. Let’ s hope that it doesn’t come to that.

But oh, it was worth it to take the trip back there. Everything is so gold it’s almost unreal. I kept checking my camera to make sure it was on the right setting, as if my eyes were lying to me.

But they weren’t. It’s just plain beautiful out here in this prolonged fall we’ve been given. Usually by now we might have already had a dusting of snow or a couple pretty chilly days, but not this year. This year my garden’s still growing, the sun is still shining a nice and comfortable 70+ degrees and the flies are still somehow finding their annoying way in to this house through some mysterious crack somewhere so they can die on the tallest and hardest to clean window ledge in the entire place.

Ah, it’s country living at its finest.

When the sun started to cast long shadows and darken the valleys we headed toward home in the rapidly dropping temperature. That’s the thing about fall, it goes from 39 degrees, to 70 and back to 39 in a short 12 hour period. I was starting to wish for my mittens when Husband stopped his 4-wheeler by the place we cut our first Christmas tree as a married couple.

And got the pickup stuck to the floorboards in the snow.

And rocked and pushed and spun so much that our poor new puppy Hondo got sick and shit all over the pickup.

“Remember this spot?” he asked.

“I sure do,” I said.

“There’s a tree right there,” he said as he pointed to a 20 foot cedar, big enough to bring to Times Square.

“There will be no Charley Brown, spindly Christmas tree this year. Not for this kid’s first Christmas,” he said.

I shook my head and we bounced along our merry way, in between seasons, in the weather and in our lives.

In the calm before the storm, the warm before the cool down,

The wait before everything changes…

Watch my “Work (Girl)” Music Video
off my new Nashville album “Northern Lights”

Sunday Column: Staying young and dancing…

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Today I have another trip to the big town to visit the doctor, hear the baby’s heartbeat and make sure things are moving along in all the right ways.

Yesterday was the official transition into the third trimester, and I’ll tell ya, things are getting real…and so is the heartburn.

And while we wait to welcome the new arrival into the family, our family just keeps growing as both my little sister and Husband’s little brother got married this summer.

We celebrated my brother in law’s wedding a few weeks ago and after getting stuck in the bridesmaid’s dress a few weeks back in an attempt to make sure the thing fit, I found myself a seamstress and things seemed to zip up alright…with not much room to spare.

But that wasn’t the only thing we needed to do to prepare for this wedding. No. Me fitting my belly into the dang dress was the easy part. Because my nieces had an idea…a flash mob family choreographed routine to interrupt the mother-son dance, and they had been working on the steps all summer.

And so we were charged with doing the same.

So that’s what this week’s column is about. How the whole family joined in to follow these girls’ lead in the name of fun and how these nieces of mine continue to remind me of what it was like when I was young and the world was my stage.

I can only hope this little one of ours has as much spark and spirit as these three blondies…

Coming Home: Dancing nieces delight mom to be
by Jessie Veeder
9-6-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

When Pops came into the house on a hot Sunday afternoon in July, he didn’t find the typical scene of my husband and I fixing lunch, tinkering with a project in the basement, folding laundry or sweeping floors.

No.

Instead, he heard Bruno Mars blasting from the speakers, turned the corner in the hallway to find the living room furniture pushed up against the walls and three little blonde girls leading their gramma, grampa, mom, aunt and uncle in a dance they had been busy choreographing all summer.

Pops stood in the hallway and grinned watching his pregnant daughter and her husband navigate some version of a step-touch, hip shake, turn combination while the 12-year-old, my oldest niece, called out orders to her grampa to “video this so they can practice it!”

It was all part of a master plan my three nieces devised to surprise my brother-in-law, their uncle, at his upcoming wedding with a sort of “flash mob dance” that consisted of the entire family (who, by the way, don’t have any semblance of rhythm or dance gene in our bodies).

When the music stopped and we realized we had a witness to our rehearsal, my husband shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, this probably won’t be the weirdest thing you’ll walk in on over here.”

But Pops didn’t need an explanation. Having raised three daughters, it wasn’t the first surprise dance party he’s witnessed.

Because with kids in the picture, life becomes one big fun, messy idea after another.

I’ve learned that with these nieces of mine, the first one coming into our lives while we were still in college, reminding us that we weren’t ready to raise one of our own, but we were more than ready to love the heck out of this drooling, smiling, beautiful little miracle, draw pictures of princesses on demand and allow her to perform full makeovers on both of us. In return we promised to teach her how to ride horses, how to keep calm when she steps in cow poop with her new pink boots and attend as many dance recitals as our schedules will allow.

And when her younger sisters came along, the same rules applied to them.

That’s the fun part about being an aunt or uncle before you become a mom or dad yourself. You get a relationship with these tiny people from the start and the benefit of learning about what it means to raise them from the person you were raised alongside.

I’ve been an aunt for 12 years (three of them before I officially joined the family) and I can honestly say there hasn’t been a day I haven’t been proud that I belonged to these twirling, cartwheeling, funny, smart girls because they keep reminding me what it was like to be young and full of ideas, the world my stage.

And last weekend when my husband’s little brother said his vows to his new bride, we officially welcomed a new sister and new nephew to the family, and my nieces celebrated the occasion in style with hours of preparation put into hairdo research, dress shopping, shoe swapping and, of course, making sure gramma, grampa, aunt, uncle, mom and dad were all prepared for their big dance debut.

I stood in my unassuming position off of the dance floor by the DJ, clutching my sunglasses prop and watching as the girls took the floor in formation and the music began to play. After months of practice their big moment had arrived, and with all eyes (and a spotlight) on them, they moved through the steps and two by two the rest of the family joined in, taking their lead the way they had planned.

Cameras flashed, family and friends cheered, my husband and I fumbled through the step-touch, hip-shake, turn combination, the surprised groom wiped tears from his eyes, and my three little nieces soaked in every moment, taking the stage to grow up gracefully in front of an audience that simply adores them.

I can’t wait to be a mom if only to have a chance to be a witness to more big, fun, messy, glamorous ideas my nieces continue to remind me still exist in the world.

Bravo sweet girls, may we never stop dancing.

Sunday Column: On love and rotten egg bakes…

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Love is in the air this August. Husband and I will celebrate our 9th anniversary likely with brats on the grill and a drive to check the cows (because we’re romantic like that) and at the end of the month, his little brother will say “I do” to his new bride.

This weekend I attended her bridal shower, assured her that I will be able to zip up my bridesmaid’s dress and then picked up an ice cream cone for the drive home.

Because after the cake, I guess I was still hungry…

And delusional.

But being in the middle of this summer filled with vows and love celebration and right on the cusp of my life with my husband changing forever, I’ve been thinking about what it really means to make a life together.

I think every wedding brings this up for me. Because we start it all out with a party, and, well, somewhere between the champaign toast and death do us part comes the really good stuff, the really juicy stuff, the really tough stuff, and sweet stuff,

and funny stuff and gross stuff and stuff you’d rather not mention.

After nine years now I think I can confidently say that love and respect is the only common denominator that runs through our wedded veins day after day. The rest? Well the rest is a crap shoot.

And so in honor of the month I thought I might resurrect and rehash an old post for the newspaper column, the one where my husband lovingly left me a surprise three week old egg bake in the cooler in the heat of the summer…and I contemplated packing up and moving to a fort in the trees.

Because love and marriage is a weird, messy, lovely, frustrating journey…one I’m glad to be on with a man who is strong, handy, playful and forgetful with the best of intentions…one who makes mistakes and tolerates mine.

Coming Home: Love endures, even when it’s hard to like each other
by Jessie Veeder
8-9-15
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com

It all starts with the best intentions. Most housekeeping tasks around here do. Unfortunately, they generally also end with me questioning the meaning of life, love and why I don’t just live by myself in a fort by the creek like I planned when I was 10 years old.

Because inside the houses we share with the people we promised to have and hold till death do us part, there lies unexpected secrets just waiting to jump out and remind us that marriage is not always the romantic snugglefest those bridal magazines told us it would be.

No.

Because sometimes your husband leaves an uncooked egg bake from a camping trip he took three weeks ago floating in a cooler filled with beer and warm, mushy, cloudy, curdled water, and you get the privilege of being the first to get a whiff.

Nothing says love like pulling on your muck boots, turning on the hose and testing how long you can hold your breath.

I love my husband every day. I just don’t like him every minute.

I know for a fact that he feels the same way about me.

I’m telling this story now because in a few days we’ll celebrate our nine-year wedding anniversary. And as my belly grows and our future together teeters on the edge of uncharted territory, I can’t help but reflect on the life we’re having between those “I do’s” and the whole “death parting us” thing.

So far it looks like a combined force of mistakes and small tragedies, goofiness and bad ideas, opinions, forgetfulness and big plans in the works.

But that’s what you get when you’re in it together. You get a witness and a built-in dinner date who sometimes is really late to dinner.

You get a man who takes off his work boots and stinks up the entire house, but you also get a man who will drive around the countryside for hours every day looking for your missing dog, not because he particularly likes him but because you do. And that quiet gesture makes up tenfold for the stinky socks. And the late-to-dinner thing.

But forget the even score because from what I’ve learned, there is no even score. I work late and ruin his fishing plans. He takes out the garbage and I forget to get groceries until we’re both eating saltines and wondering when the new Chinese food restaurant will start delivering to the ranch. I unload the dishwasher, he never remembers where I put the spatulas. I am thankful I married a man who uses a spatula.

No, the chores are never equal because life might be a balancing act, but it sure as heck isn’t balanced (except when it comes to dog puke on the floor. In that instance, I keep score).

That’s why we’ve got each other.

Because life is so annoying sometimes, but I tell you what’s also annoying, that pickle jar that I can never open myself or the flat tire he’s out there fixing on the side of the road in the middle of a blizzard, proving that regardless of our shortcomings, life is easier with him around.

I hope he can say the same for me.

And then I think we’d both say that love doesn’t mean you will ever agree on the arrangement of the furniture, but love went a long way in laughing it off when he backed into my car and forgot to tell me, leaving me wondering when I had a car accident I couldn’t remember.

And initially, love sent him running when he heard me scream in the other room, but there came a time when he started to wait for a follow-up noise because love has made the man mistake a stray spider for a bloody mangled limb too many times.

And, just for the record, sometimes love is not patient. Sometimes it needs to get to town and I’m trying on my third dress of the evening.

And sometimes love is not as kind as it should be. Because love is human.

And no human is perfect. Not individually and surely not together.

Because humans leave egg bakes in coolers in basements for three weeks.

Pregnancy: a slow transition into becoming Homer Simpson

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So that happened this week. My sweet mother making a mockery of a situation that had my husband reaching into his pocket for his leatherman to see if he could make headway on a stuck zipper that split in half the minute it was coaxed, leaving me with no way out of a lacy, delicate, meant-for-a-more-formal-occasion bridesmaids dress and a Husband who followed me around the bedroom tugging up and yanking down with pure determination while I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe and almost peed myself, which would have added an entire new level to the amount of damage control needed to rectify the dress situation before my brother-in-law’s August 29th wedding.

When I finally caught my breath enough to stop wiggling the two of us looked at each other and decided that, well, …..RRRIIIIPPPP….

Because sometimes a pregnant lady’s zipper needs a man’s touch.

And in this case, if I didn’t want to wear it until I was wheeled into labor and delivery, it was our only option.

And that is just one lesson I have learned from five months spent watching this belly grow.

The other new discoveries? My mom has a new found knack for comedy and I have made friends with a new seamstress in the big town.

Because shit is getting real I tell you. And no one is more thrilled to see my shirts getting tighter or hear about my baby-bladder-kicking woes than my family.

Oh, your pants don’t fit? Harah!

Heartburn? Goodie!

I guess that’s what I get for keeping them all waiting for seven years.

And my handyman, dress altering Husband hasn’t found his sympathy card either, despite my sweet reminders that it is his job as the father of this tiny, bladder squeezing human we created together.

But he has been nice about letting me wear his clothes. In fact, I’m positive he got great joy out of getting me into his overalls to go out and check the cows upon the harsh realization that there was no way in hell any of my work jeans would ever fit over my gut again.

Ever.

He even suggested that I wear his favorite purple polo shirt, the one I despise, and while I stood in the closet in my bra and underwear contemplating wearing the tent my mother suggested, he slipped it over my head, turned me around, took a picture and then made his third or fourth Homer Simpson reference…

You know, because of my ass to belly ratio.

Which is what it’s come down to now. Me, popping Tums, falling asleep in the easy chair as soon as I sit down, snoring like I’ve never snored before, putting bacon on everything, burping, pulling over on the side of the road to pee, wearing men’s work clothes and avoiding bending over at all costs.

Yup. Homer Simpson…

Give me four more months and I might take you up on that call to tent and awning sweet, hilarious mother.

In the meantime I’ll take another BLT please…

Peace, Love and potty breaks,

Jessie & the Bump

What we never thought we’d know…

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So yesterday, we saw our baby…Or a little fuzzy silhouette of it anyway, a snapshot of what I’ve been working so hard on growing the last few months of my life.

There is the hand that I swear pushes on my bladder every five minutes…

And there’s the foot I can feel poking and fluttering on all sides of my belly button at all hours of the day.

I’m surprised we could get any pictures at all considering this kid never holds still.

Trouble already.

I can’t believe this is happening.

This picture, this sonogram, looks like every other sonogram I’ve every seen really. It’s a little smudge of a baby the size of a mango, but this time the little smudge of a baby the size of a mango is ours.

It was a date I’ve been looking forward to since we decided to put a family together all those years ago. I imagined what it would be like to make plans to head to the Doctor’s office together where I would lay on the table in a dark room with Husband at my side, staring at the screen where our little one would be the star of the show.

I wondered what it would feel like. I wondered what I would think. I wondered if I would cry or just hold my breath. I wondered if Husband would hold my hand or just put them in his pockets the way he does when he’s concentrating on something. I wondered how he would act. I wondered what he would say…

I found out yesterday.

He said “Oh, look there, I think I see a mustache.”

And so that’s how that went.

And it was wonderful.

We were normal people with a normal pregnancy doing normal things that normal couples get to do when they have a baby on the way.

And then they printed off a reel of photos of little white smudges of feet and ears, a belly and bended knees a whole world and life forming under my skin and we listened to the heart beat and Husband put the number in his memory and we walked on air out of there to sit at a table at a restaurant and order anything we wanted, to sit as long as we wanted, to say whatever we wanted about this moment as we lived it…

Because we never thought we’d really live it…no matter how our friends and family willed it to be or reassured us it would all come together…that they’d been praying.

How do you ever know.

I didn’t.

And if I would have known how it might all turn out in that moment I’d been wondering about, it wouldn’t have mattered as much when we finally lived it.

And it mattered so much. That day, yesterday, with my Husband clutching the reel of our first baby’s photos, practically skipping out into that hot, humid air blazing on his pickup in the parking lot in a town that took us a three hour car ride to reach, was simply one of the most ordinary, extraordinary moments of my life, one I never thought I could give him… give us.

And there we were, eating lunch in the summer sun together talking about strollers and cribs and how much tiny camouflage he plans on purchasing in the next few months.

There we were, two planning on three. Just like that, like we’ve never had our hearts broken time after time. Like we never had a moment of thinking otherwise. Like there was never a doubt we’d ever arrive here.

What can I say about this except that sometimes when you hold out hope, hope gives in.

Some would call that faith.

I don’t know what I call it except maybe a gift, just like every other life that exists here. After all of our trouble and worry and struggle, how it happens at all is a true and utter miracle.

We spent the rest of the afternoon milling around furniture stores, trying out couches and opening drawers on bedroom sets. Husband picked up some jeans and I tried on dresses. We bought a first aid kid and bathroom supplies and wandered through the baby aisle confusing ourselves.

I had a feeling that if I would have asked for the moon that day, my Husband would have set out building a ladder tall enough to let him wrap his arms around it and bring it down.

But I don’t need the moon…no.

Just a scoop or two of ice cream for the way home at the end of a day we never thought we’d know…

Sunday Column: The Rules of Fencing

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Happy July everyone. My favorite month of the year. I rung it in in family tradition by heading east to my grandparent’s lake cabin in Minnesota to hang with the relatives and do lake things.

And while the rest of the ranch and me were out in Minnesota last weekend frolicking in the water, eating summer sausage sandwiches, lounging in the sun, taking in the fireworks displays, DSCN3433

and trying to balance two Veeder girls and a baby bump on a paddle board…

Husband had to stay home to work and take care of the cows.

Now, don’t feel too bad. In the summer, with the tall green grass and plenty pasture land, taking care of the cows really just means making sure they don’t get into the neighbors field.

And that’s pretty much it.

I was feeling guilty a little bit, except that I know the man is fine with the responsibility, especially since his recent purchase…the two-wheeled cow checker–for when you’re pretty sure the cows are in, but just want to zip around to make sure so you probably don’t need to go through all the trouble of getting the horses in and saddling up.

It’s the perfect tool for a man who has the heart and spirit of a twelve year old…

And so that’s what Husband did this weekend. He mowed the grass and worked on wiring the garage and finishing the basement and he checked the cows.

And, not surprisingly, a few were out.

So he got them in. With the dog and a dirt bike.

And then, as it would tend to go, while he went back to check the fences for the undiscoverable holes, he looked behind him to witness one feisty and athletic old bovine, the one he just put back in her place, making a leap back to the other side, like a 1,500 pound mule deer.

Because sometimes even the best cowboys with the best dogs, the best forms of transportation and the best fences cannot tame a cow convinced that the grass is greener…

Coming Home: Rules of fencing, the never-ending chore, are never forgotten
by Jessie Veeder
7-5-15
Forum Communications

There are jobs at the ranch that are truly enjoyable at times. Fencing is generally not one of them.

Fencing at the ranch involves wood ticks, nasty brush, a kazillion horse flies, barbed wire, pliers and a lot of bending over.

And if that doesn’t sound pleasing enough, ranchers get a little extra comfort when they pull on their flannel jammies at night knowing that they are never at a loss for work as long as they have barbed wire fences.

Some of my earliest memories as a ranch kid are of hopping in the pickup on a hot July day with my dad to go check fences.

I remember leaning against the stick shift of the old truck as my dad drove slowly down the fence line, stopping every few moments to get out, grab a staple or new fence post and make a repair. I remember eating warm ham sandwiches, sweating and swatting the buzzing bugs that multiplied in the thorny brush patches where the fence was always down, the poke of the barbs and the hum of the Clint Black song coming through the am radio of the old work pickup.

But mostly I remember being hot.

And so as long as I live, I will never forget the 10 (or was it 11) basic rules of fencing the Veeder Ranch, because monumental and never-ending tasks like these leave an impression on a kid.

1) Choose to take your trip in the heat of the day. It’s not a smart option, but the only option for procrastinators who like to have coffee, bacon and eggs, and then another helping while they catch the end of CBS Sunday Morning.

2) Intend to apply a thick mist of Deep Woods OFF to ward off the hawk-sized bugs, and then forget to bring it along as you head miles into the wilderness. Because how else would you be able to really test how much buzzing and biting a human sauna can endure?

3) If you think you may need five to seven steel fence posts to get the job done, be sure to only locate one to take along. Because a man needs a challenge, and figuring out how to re-stretch a half-mile of wire using a rusty plier, reused fencing staples from 1918, a pocket knife and one measly fence post is the type of feat only a real Renaissance/MacGyver-type specimen can handle. Which brings me to the staples …

4) Forget them in the shop.

5) But for the love of Martha, don’t forget the dog. I mean, running for 3 to 4 miles at top speed behind the four-wheeler to a location void of water or an adequate breeze is the perfect death-defying act for a cow dog. Go ahead, just try to leave him behind, but don’t be alarmed when he pops up over the hill and makes a beeline to the tiny bit of shade the midday sun provides off of your small ATV.

And while you’re at it…

6) Forget to bring your good leather gloves. Instead, pull on the pair with the hole where your right pointer finger is located. Because the No. 7 rule of fencing just happens to be …

7) Bleed. You’re not fencing until you’re itchy, poked, stabbed, bruised and bleeding.

8 ) So make sure to bring company. Because if a man cusses in the pasture and there’s no one there to hear it, is he really even angry?

And if you’re cussing anyway, you might as well …

9) Sweat. Sweat out all that water that you forgot to pack. Sweat so you must roll up your sleeves just enough to expose your flesh to the thorns you must reach into to yank up trampled fence.

10) And then bleed again, cuss louder, sweat a little more, turn around to find that your companion has disappeared over the hill to pick wildflowers, decide that only a really smart and athletic cow could maneuver through your fence repairs, head home for lunch with every intention of returning after the meal only to revisit the site the next morning to find those extra plump, extra lazy cows are in the field again.

11) Repeat until the ground freezes.

Peace, Love and Fence Posts,

Jessie

So it goes with love, land and family…

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well, it’s finally here!

Wedding week at the ranch. The relatives are starting to roll in, (and helping to mow the yards), the fences are painted, the decorations are in a pile somewhere waiting for their places, we’ve got the burs out of most of our horses so they’re ready for company and we are watching the ever-changing North Dakota weather forecast to be reassured that it isn’t going to rain on our big parade.

Oh, and I vacuumed and scrubbed my floors, so things are getting serious around here.

To say it’s been a busy spring around here would be an understatement. When we’re all working together for the common goal of beautifying this old place, every minute between work and sleep has a plan in place. And while there’s plenty of work left to do out here, it has been amazing to me how a love declared and a date set can get things in motion the way that it has. Weddings, for all of the hub bub and money spent, details agonized over and tiny bows tied, really become something special in the end for the way they bring the people we love from all corners of the country to celebrate a new family being formed.

I mean, how many times in your life do you get your aunt and uncle from Omaha in the same place as your mom’s family from the east coast and your cousins from Texas?

As the first round of relatives arrive, I can’t help but think that this wedding is extra special to our family in a lot of ways. For one, the baby of our little family has found someone weird, kind and patient enough for a forever future together.

But also because that future is set to begin on the dirt that holds our family’s history, where our great grandfather homesteaded before he went off to war, where he brought his new wife home, where they raised cattle and crops and five children. Where she planted yellow roses that still bloom in the bushes below the cabin. Where he lost her when she was only thirty-six and their youngest son, our grandpa, was only eight.

And on the very dirt where my sister will stand in a white dress waiting for her groom, our grampa grew up to be a hardworking, dedicated cowboy who didn’t ride the rodeo or buy up thousands of acres, but carried on in his father’s footsteps and kept a steady and growing business of crops and cattle through tough times while raising kids, our dad one of them, who fell in love with the landscape and the idea of taking care of it, an important outcome for a man who dreamed of the future of his ranch with his family on it.

And so on Saturday my little sister will stand in front of that barn as the fourth generation to chose to stick around her home. Before she walks down the isle with our dad on her arm, our ring bearer nephew and our flower girl cousin will proceed her dressed in thier best and representing another generation of kids to know and love this place.

Then my little sister will declare her love for a man who followed her west to this place and they will continue the story 100 years after our great grampa Eddie staked his claim and put up his homestead shack next to that barn.

My big sister and I will stand next to her and I will hold her flowers as they kiss.

Then I’ll look over at my husband standing across the aisle and we will smile at the thought of the baby in my belly, due to come into this world at the end of November, at the beginning of a long winter and of a new and long-awaited chapter in the story of lives lived, families grown and dreams fought for out here on the Veeder Ranch.

And so it goes with love and land and family…it holds the past, the present and the ever evolving and unpredictable future…

Sunday Column: Marriage, beyond the celebration

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Well, I survived planning and executing Little Sister’s Bachelorette party.

As you can see, I made sure it was epically ridiculous by suggesting we all raid our mom’s and grandma’s closets, the thrift store or the costume shops to find the ugliest bridesmaids dresses possible.

FYI, Little Sister is now the proud owner of this gem of a bridal gown right here, in case she changes her mind about her real wedding dress…

As for my bridesmaid’s dress? Well it was so beautiful I was only allowed to rent, you know, to give others a chance at such beauty…

Anyway, Little Sister has cool and fun friends who are game for anything, so they obliged in full force, I made some tacos and margaritas, called the party bus and we were off for a night on the town.

We danced, we drank a few cocktails, we twirled around in our pretty gowns and we confused a lot of people.

And of course, it would be just my luck to be recognized by a loyal reader of my column at the Lonesome Dove while I was dressed as an 80’s prom queen.

But what’s life without a little good, clean, ridiculous fun…and a ridiculous outfit worn in public every once in a while.

And now I’m home this Monday rested up, getting ready for a round of CD release parties across the state and thinking about love and marriage beyond the celebration…

So that’s what this week’s column is about.

Coming Home: Fruits of marriage easy seen amid wedding preparations
by Jessie Veeder
5-31-15
Forum Communications

Peace, Love and Wedding Season,

Low expectations=happy marriage?

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Last night over dinner Husband and I got to talking about marriage expectations. I’m sure I brought it up, because I’m always contemplating things out loud with no real direction. I think it stemmed from my idea for steaks, lobster and champaign on Valentines day and his luke warm reaction to my brilliant and sweet idea that I felt deserved something of an enthusiastic reaction.

But really, Husband’s never been known for over-enthusiasm. I know better, but you know, sometimes I fish.

“Well, there are certain expectations aren’t there, about Valentines day?” I asked.

And then somewhere between his reaction to that statement and my rebuttal, I said something like, “There’s expectations in a marriage too. I mean, you have expectations for me don’t you?”

And he said, “No. Not really. I mean, I expect you not to leave me.”

“Well that’s an easy one,” I laughed.

“And, I guess I expect you not be be a stripper.”

“Good Lord.”

“Yeah, so if you get down to it,” he finished. “I guess I expect you not to leave me to become a stripper.”