Sometimes life is just so unexpected, like the thirteenth rock flying into my windshield on my way home from town.
Those uncertainties make me nervous–I come up with worst case scenarios. Like now, for example. I got home from work this evening to say hello to Husband who also just got home from work only to turn around and walk out the door to go back to work again. I don’t think it was an emergency, but it was something important that sent him out there in the dark on the same scary road that throws rocks at windshields unexpectedly.
I worry.
So now I’m sitting here with the cat on my lap and the pug at my feet breaking all of the rules about pets on the furniture while I come up with a list of things I know for certain to help deal with that nagging little feeling of terror that at a moment it can all fall apart.
And that other worry about the aliens.
So here it is, my list of ten or eleven or twelve or however many things that I know for sure on a perfectly calm Thursday night in February.
I will always worry
The pug, when left unattended and to his own devices, will always shit on the floor. Sometimes he will puke, but always he will shit.
I could eat guacamole with every meal. I should have guacamole with every meal. Avocados are a vegetable. It can’t possibly be a bad choice.(No photo available because I ate all the guacamole)
A climb to a good hilltop cures me. Every time, it cures me.
Spring will come. Spring always comes.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
It’s not the singing, it’s not the words, the guitar, the harmonies or the harmonica. It’s everything. Music. It’s just everything.
One day I will have pigs, I don’t care what you say.(no photo available because I don’t have a pig. Yet.)
If you call me I will have to call you back, because I never put the phone back on the hook, therefore I can never find the phone when you call. It’s a sick cycle that I am unable to break.(no photo available because I can’t find the damn phone. Again.)
This cat is crazy.
This puppy is cute.
So is this kid.
I am grateful every day to call this home.
It will probably, most definitely, very likely, I mean, I’m pretty sure, almost positive everything’s gonna turn out alright in the end.
Now you know what I know, what do you know for sure? Let it fly party people, I promise it will make you feel better.
So you watched the Super Bowl. You saw the game, you saw Beyonce shake it, you saw the lights go out and, among the flashy messages, the advertisements for M&Ms and beer and phones and underwear and cologne, you saw this:
Another ad for another product, yes. But one that had a message attached to it that has sent my world into a humming since it aired.
Now it’s possible you missed it. It’s possible you didn’t hear it tucked in there among the baby Clydesdale and the elderly escaping the nursing home for a night at Taco Bell. It didn’t make the top ten commercials and didn’t get nearly as much buzz in other parts of the country, but it sure is buzzing here.
I don’t usually comment on pop culture or what ‘s happening on T.V. or in sports here because I’ve made it my mission to talk about different things: the way the sun shines on the back of a horse, how the wind blows snow across the prairie and what it’s like to be a woman connected to a place, but as a girl who grew up feeding cattle alongside her father in the coldest winter nights, someone who watched him doctor horses, bring new-born and frozen calves into the basement of the house and nurse them back to life, as a former FFA president and the 4th generation on my family’s ranch, I have to talk about this.
I have to tell you why people like me have been so inclined to share this advertisement, to watch it over and over again, to shout its praises from the rooftops and, well, post it on every social media networking site they can link up to out here in the boonies.
Because finally, among the hype of sports, the glitzy glam of pop culture, the humor and the ruckus and the fight to be the winner, right there in the most prime real-estate of prime-time television someone out there felt it might be important enough to slow it down and tell our story.
Now, I wasn’t at every Super Bowl party in middle America during the 2.5 minutes Paul Harvey’s message was pumped into millions of homes across the country, but I was at one, and as soon as that familiar voice spoke the first word, the room fell silent.
We held our breath in that moment we were certain we were looking at an image from our backyards: a black baldie cow near a barbed wire fence in a barren, snow-covered prairie.
We were quiet because we saw our church standing tall and worn beside a country road,
we saw our grandfather with callused hands and a face wrinkled and weathered from the long days spent in the elements.
We shushed our voices and choked back a tear for the colt our father couldn’t save, laughed a little because we’ve ridden a horse using a head stall made out of hay wire and smiled at the memory of our father’s stopping the tractor to move a nest of newborn rabbits out of harm’s way.
We saw ourselves standing in those fields, our grandmother’s eyes under that hat, our mother holding our hand, our father holding on hope.
We saw our children in the steady cadence of comforting words and a familiar voice that we’ve heard coming through the static on our old tractor radio for years.
The rest of the story.
Our story.
Some days I feel like we’re moving further and further from our connection to the land and the understanding of the dirt from which that potato was plowed. Farmers, ranchers and agriculturalists are not known to stand at the pulpit and tell their stories to the masses. No. Many spend long days working alone in the combine, on the back of a horse checking cattle or working fencing pliers in the deep brush.We share our stories by living them alongside our elders, hoping to learn something, dreaming that one day we might be fortunate enough to try our hand at tending the land.
I know my grandfather’s story. I see the old equipment that couldn’t be repaired breaking the wind from the hilltops on this place. I find little pieces of wire, old engines, scraps of leather, worn coveralls and other little pieces of a life spent scraping and saving and getting by in the old out buildings, in the 100 year old barn, in the fences that need to be repaired. My father keeps the same collection, adding to it at will in case he might need to patch something up.
I know my father’ s story. I know that on Sunday mornings he will knock on the door of my house like he does every weekend for a cup of coffee and a chat between chores. I know he will take off his boots, un-do his silk scarf and leave his wool cap on his head. I know he will keep his Carhart jacket on because he won’t stay long, just long enough to wonder out loud what might be wrong with the old tractor this time and discuss some plans about buying cattle, fixing the corrals in the spring and making things work better out here.
I know that tractor’s story. It’s been on this place for decades, bought used when my father left for college in the 70s. I know the only thing wrong with that tractor is that you can’t stop time, and we could not afford to buy a new one.
Each day my father has been the caretaker of the family’s ranch it has been an adventure to get that tractor up and running.
Every day it has been worth it.
Somewhere along the line a company like Dodge took notice of the kinds of people buying those trucks they were selling, not for the paint job or the heated seat, but for the horsepower and the muscle that it takes to haul a trailer full of bulls to the sale barn, a couple of priceless horses and a teenage daughter to her first high school rodeo, or through a snowy trail as your grandfather scoops grain for the cattle in the winter.
Somewhere in their marketing plan Dodge thought it might be a good idea to mention those farmers and ranchers out there throwing bales and feeding the country, because quite frankly, they have helped keep them in business.
So they declared it the “Year of the Farmer” and are working their marketing plan so that spreading the word means supporting the FFA.
That moment a company like Dodge took to tell our story while they had the world’s attention gave us–the farmers, the ranchers, the corn growers, bottle feeders, chicken-coop cleaners, post-hole-diggers, pig-sloppers, 5 a.m. cow milkers, –a little reminder that ours might not be a glamorous story, but it is one worth living.
Click here to watch an interview with the Montana ranchers featured in the commercial.
I know I’ve been talking about the weather a lot lately, trudging through the snow, climbing to the top of it, bundling up and taking it on by looking for the beauty in 30 below.
Well, we’re at the end of January now so I would like to take this opportunity, in the midst of another dangerous wind-chill advisory, to say ‘good riddance’ to the hardest and most brutal month of the year up here in the great white north.
Yup, that’s a little negative sign right there next to the 20. This is before the windchill. But hey, the sun is shining so what the hell, let’s just call it a beautiful day.
I think we made it through just fine admiring the sundogs,
But I feel now it’s time to confess the fact that all of those things did their best to distract me from going crazy in this cooped up state, but they did not succeed entirely.
No.
I am afraid I might have hung on to a bit of that inevitable winter insanity.
But please, don’t judge me. Let me remind you that I’m still a woman living in an unfinished house, sharing my winter space with a good number of power tools and using a shop vac to complete the majority of my cleaning. And in a situation like this, unexpected additions to the decor and atmosphere pop up unexpectedly.
I mean, you try staying sane when you can be jolted from your sleep at any given moment by the excruciating and terrifying gun-shot like sound of the air-compressor shaking the house as it recharges in the loft.
You try remembering to unplug that thing when the only time it makes itself apparent is at 2 am! The dogs wake up and start a barking frenzy right before one of them pukes on the floor. The cats in the basement cling to the ceiling and you shake your husband, telling him that this time, you’re sure it’s a robber.
Or an alien.
You try keeping your cool as your knight in shining armor rolls over and falls back to sleep.
I mean, I always swear I”ll unplug that thing first thing in the morning. But in the morning all I can think of is coffee, and so the cycle continues as I make my way from the coffee pot my favorite chair, but not before I trip over that stack of cedar my husband decided to place in my path, sending me flailing forward as my coffee splays across the floor and I invent thirty-seven new curse words.
And those words are in addition to the ones I invented yesterday when I tripped over that same stack of wood three times.
I’m serious. It blends in. I get comfortable in my environment and I don ‘t find it necessary to look down. It’s a defect that I blame for the multiple times I’ve stepped the wrong way off of our front step and into the pit that will become our garage in the spring.
These types of outcomes are precisely the reason I’ve never been a furniture rearranging kind of person. Because I strongly believe that if you put something in its place, it should stay there.
Forever.
My life, limbs and coffee, depend on it.
Anyway, I am blaming those miseries on my husband. But I will tell you, I’ve created plenty of my own this winter, starting with allowing our one and only barn cat to take up residence in our basement. I mean, it’s so damn cold out there and now that we’re not in the barnyard I felt she needed to be close by, you know, to take the pressure off of the dogs to keep wild cat occupied while keeping her diet in check by batting her away with a vengeance if she dares get too close to the food.
I’ve been questioning this arrangement, but it seems it’s too late. Last weekend I attempted to put that barn cat outside to enjoy the 40 degree day and before I even opened the door she managed to claw her way out of my grip and up to my shoulder before flinging her body off the top of my head and running for cover.
And so I’ve been warned. There’s no way in hell that cat is every leaving my basement–rain, snow, forty below or 80 above.
Shit.
Allowing another animal into this house is not the weirdest mistake I’ve made this winter. No. A few days ago in my attempt to reach Husband I dialed the wrong number and asked a complete stranger if he planned to come home tonight. The man on the other end of the line sounded a lot like my husband, and, well, I didn’t appreciate his tone.
Turns out he didn’t appreciate mine either.
And then there was that time my car was making weird noises as I drove through the neighboring town, forcing me to pull over in the parking lot of Runnings where it became evident that when I put the thing in park it was going to ignore me and just kept rolling…and when I put it in reverse it sounded like it was going to blow up.
So I sat there with my foot on the brake for a half an hour while I waited for a tow truck to bring me to the mechanic and for Pops to come and save me and take me grocery shopping before bringing me 60 miles back home. I waited, car-less through the holiday season, only to get a call informing me they couldn’t find anything wrong with the vehicle, except, well, you know the thirty-seven rock chips in the windshield.
Yup, that really happened. It was an annoying Christmas miracle and I have spent every day since driving that car just waiting for it to blow up or something.
Oh, I know we all have little mishaps and results of poor judgement in our lives, I just think the annoyance is multiplied out here by the fact that we’re also cooped up and freezing. So I guess I decided to share them so we could laugh about while we dream about summer.
But I’ll I make sure to roll my eyes first.
And sometimes I might hollar “Really?! Really!” so don’t be alarmed.
Happy last day of January. I hope you made it through with your sanity.
We’re finding our way to the end of January, and around these parts that’s a huge relief. I’ve been keeping busy playing music, writing and eating carbohydrates, and after a Friday evening spent singing to a full house, I was thawing out and happy with the way life gives you gifts, like 40 degrees on a January weekend.
Funny how a little warm up can turn an attitude around. Suddenly I was in love with winter again and while Husband worked on hammering and nailing and putting up walls in our master bedroom, I worked on ways I could sneak out the door unnoticed.
Because I decided it was of utmost importance that I load up little Juno and give her a tour of her new home turf.
Because we needed to check on things, ensure the gears were grinding right, the snowbanks weren’t too deep and the view was still as beautiful.
We needed to make sure those weird clouds weren’t storm clouds above us.
We needed to introduce her to the horses.
We needed to play…
and run…
And do whatever Tucker was doing here…
That looked like fun.
See, around here, if we chose to look, we can see things like this every day.
And although winter gets long, it’s one of those seasons that changes the landscape constantly. And so I suppose I’ve made it my mission here to keep tabs on the way the horses grow beards to ward off the chill…
The way the clouds roll and shift and change directions and colors…
How the light hits the grass and makes it sparkle…
How the horses settle lethargically into a pile of grain…
and how their noses feel under our hands.
I watch it all because I don’t want to miss it.
Because I like the way a puppy kiss looks.
And the sound of snow melting under a blue sky.
And the tree rows planted all those years ago? I like that they’re scraggly but standing still under a slow to rise winter sun.
I like the idea that this all will be green again, but first it has to be blue and white and brown.
I like that I’m here for all of that changing.
And I like the feeling, that like Juno, I’m hearing it all, seeing it all, discovering it all for the first time…on a 40 degree weekend at the end of January.
I miss my summer horses. I miss the way their coats lather up under the saddle after an evening ride to the east pasture.
I miss the way that smells and the way it feels to see them grazing on the green grass of the season–admiration and beauty and peace and home all wrapped up in their breathing and munching, snorting and fly swatting.
I even miss those damn burs I pull out of their mangled manes every evening.
I miss my summer horses because they have turned into winter horses, wild and free in the big pastures chewing on hay bales and hiding from the wind in the coulees at night.
We don’t ride much in the winters, the ground’s too hard, the wind too bitter, the hills too slick, so we give our working animals a much needed break during the coldest months and in no time they turn into a sort of wild and wooly that always amazes me.
On the coldest days they find their way to the barnyard and I bury my face in their thick coats where they keep the summer,
feed them grain from the buckets in the tack room and watch as they argue over the first and last bites.
You have to have respect for the animals that bear the burden of this extreme weather on their backs. I know the white tale deer that bed down on frozen hillsides or in a bull berry patch, the grouse roosting in tree tops and the wild elk competing for the same domestic feed as our horses are built for endurance with instincts that save them, but I still wonder if their noses get cold.
On frozen days like this I go looking for them, as if catching a glimpse of how they’re surviving this season might help shed some light on how I might do the same.
There are bison that live on the land next ours. I catch a glimpse of them when I’m on the highway, stopping to watch as the young ones run and the old ones nuzzle the ground for grass. Frost forms on their muzzles where they breathe in the cold air and on days the ice settles in on our world those creatures wear it, unassuming, as just one more layer of their being.
I wear my sweaters like the bison wear the weather. I cannot grow a wooly coat, so I wrap a scarf around my neck and lean into the cold.
I wonder if those bison miss the summer grass.
I wonder if those deer bedded down in the oaks behind this house notice the lights in the bedroom and dream of coming in from the cold.
I wonder if they know I would let them if I could. I would let them all in to warm by the fire if animals were meant for houses.
But I’ve said it before. Houses are for people and this big wide world is meant for deer in the bull berry brush, grouse in the tree tops, elk in the hay bales and horses in their wool coats waiting for a girl who’s waiting on summer to come and drop them some grain.
It’s no secret, winters in North Dakota are long and cold. We always know they’re coming, but still they surprise us as we lean into November with brave faces and feed our bodies with soup and turkey and hot dishes (that’s Lutheran for casserole). We wait for the snow as we prepare our Thanksgiving meals and watch it fall as we wrap up presents, bring in Christmas trees, snuggle our families and ring in the New Year with champaign and a bit of dread, not necessarily about the year ahead, but the month we’re staring down.
No, the initial blast of holiday cheer can’t trick North Dakotans into thinking that winter is a party.
Oh no.
No.
Because we still have January. And January is just the beginning really, marching in on us promising unpredictable, below zero temperatures, blinding blizzards, snow drifts, icy roads, and then usually a nice little thaw to tease us before it starts all over again.
January scares me. It always has. And I know it’s coming, I do, but for some reason I find myself worrying that I might not come out of the deep freeze with the rest of the furry animals tucked away tight for the winter.
I worry I’ll start eating hot dishes (Lutheran for casserole) and never stop.
I worry I’ll grow too comfortable with the extra padding on my rear-end and the bulky sweaters and the scarves that hug me and hide me from the elements and I will decide not to emerge with the warm sun.
I worry I might just turn into a hibernating bear-like creature who never shaves her legs or takes off her beanie and walks all hunched over and shivery if she ever decides to move at all.
This kind of paranoia is not healthy. Fear is not a good place to be. So this January, instead of bidding farewell to the holidays, packing out the gigantic Christmas tree and pulling on the wool socks with no intentions of removal, we decided to keep the party going.
We decided to leave the Christmas tree up. We decided to buy more groceries, turn on the oven, pull out the crock pots and paper plates and keep on eating.
We decided to dig out the schnapps.
And the snow pants.
We decided to call our friends and neighbors to see if they’d like to join us as we flung our bodies down the giant hill outside our window.
We decided to clear off the stock dam and turn it into a curling rink.
We decided to use icicles as stir sticks,
drink hot chocolate, sit close together on the couch,
play some games, tell some stories and sing a little.
I decided to make a chocolate cake.
From scratch.
We decided to build a fire and stand around it and then head inside to eat some more.
We decided to laugh in winter’s face.
Take that winter.
And that.
And this.
And this.
And that.
And…
Ummm…
Well…
ooooo…
I think winter won there.
But I’m not scared anymore.
I just forgot for a moment what it is that really gets us through life in one piece. And it’s not just the special occasions that are put on a calendar reminding us to love one another, to be thankful and to celebrate.
No, it’s the every day and the way we chose to live it.
It’s the phone calls that we make that turn into plans to sit next to one another and eat dip and chocolate cake. It’s the way we bundle up against the cold and scream as we push each other down hills, remembering what it’s like to forget everything but the world you just climbed to the top of and flew down.
It’s remembering that sometimes we need someone to pull us up there.
It’s clearing a space for games and music.
It’s the invitation into one another’s homes, into our lives, to sleep on the couch or on the air mattress in the next bedroom and wake up for bacon and coffee and a recap of how someone nearly killed the pug in a sledding rollover.
Because we are made for so many things–work and worry, fear and bravery, singing and listening. Our lungs are made for breathing, yes, but they also work for screaming as snow sprays you in the face while you fly 25 miles per hour down a hill in a sled with your father and your friend.
How else would you find out a brain freeze can start on the outside of your head?
And our fingers are made for working and typing and pointing out things that are wrong with the world, but they also fit really nicely in mittens, as you pull each other up.
I mean, sure, it’s damn cold out there, but our legs are made for walking, hiking, climbing, jumping and standing on the top of things, we might as well use them properly.
See that’s the thing about us northerners. It’s not that we have found a spot in our hearts for the blinding snows of winters, the icy wind or temperatures that dip so far below zero that I don’t even want to mention it. It’s not that we ever get used to the deep freeze.
It’s just that we know, in the deepest of winters, on the coldest of January days, what to do to warm up.
Note: Only four sleds and two skinny little butts were injured in the making of this blog post.
It’s been a hell of a year at the Veeder Ranch and it looks like it’s going to go out with quite the chill in the air. I’ll tell you in advance, if you can’t find me after midnight tonight it’s because I’ll be laying face down in a carpeted corner somewhere, exhausted and finally giving in after a wonderful week spent wrapping and unwrapping, decorating and celebrating, laughing and baking and eating everything, driving and visiting friends, singing for my supper and trying every holiday cocktail concoction possible.
Staring down a new year has always been bittersweet for me. I get a little panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s directly correlated to the tasks I thought I might get done and the potential of a brand new chance to get things right.
See I try to be a person who looks back only occasionally to catch a good memory, remember a lesson learned or laugh at something that was damn hilarious.
I’ve been known to leave the awkward, tough and uncomfortable situations that occurred throughout my life in the dust where I think they belong, but the anticipation of January 1st always has me looking back on the little things that I could have done better; like taking deep breaths whenever I found my husband on a tall ladder,
Breathing, sometimes in this life that’s all we can do.
Sometimes that’s all I want to do as I sit on the hilltops on the back of my horse and watch as the wind bends the grasses, rustles the trees and tangles my hair, but in all of the moments I’ve set up for myself throughout the year sometimes breathing is the hardest.
This year I was scared. Really nervous. This year I did it anyway.
This year I made dessert for breakfast, mistakes that looked like reasons and music that sounded a little more like me.
This year I rode a little harder I think. I drank too much coffee and too much tequila, ate too much pasta and maybe didn’t make as much time for that breathing thing as I should have.
Or sit-ups.
But I laughed. A lot. I got my oxygen that way I think. I laughed hard as I rode off into the sunset on a horse working his hardest to get rid of me.
I laughed as our whole life was strung out on the lawn outside of my parents house. I laughed at the idea that we had all of this stuff, all of this space and no place to put it.
I laughed at the annoying things–the twisted ankles, the slippery roads, the runaway dogs and messes I never get around to cleaning up–I laughed because we were all still alive and loving each other, knowing that those things are a long way from our hearts.
Because this year I helped build us a house, jumped out of a damn plane, landed safely on the ground and ate the best fish taco I’ve ever had in my life next to the best friends they make.
This year the ranch, my home got, clean, fresh, bought and paid for water, I got a newspaper column, finished that album,
kept some promises and saw my world from the clouds.
This year I loved as much as I possibly could.
And next year I intend on opening that heart up even more.
I do.
Next year I will learn all of the words to Rocky Top. I’ll get practicing tomorrow.
Next year I will master meal planning, organization and the mandolin.
Next year I will play the harmonica on my new deck next to my garden busy growing tomatoes and basil and pumpkins I think.
Next year I will be 30.
Next year I’ll be ok with that.
Next year I’ll do sit-ups. And maybe some lunges.
Next year I’ll bake more bread, visit more friends, spend more time listening and saying the things that need to be said.
Next year I’ll walk to more hilltops just to sit for a while.
Next year I’ll drink too much coffee and red wine. Next year I’ll still love peanut butter
I’ll still love this.
And I’ll still love him.
I’ll always love him.
And at the end of any day, at the end of any year, that’s the most important thing anyway, no matter who’s climbing ladders, what catches fire or how many wild dreams (or wild dogs) we are chasing.
Thanks for hanging in there with us. Cheers to an adventure filled 2013.
I don’t think we’re meant to sit on chairs all day.
I don’t think we’re meant for these screens and these lights and the noise that comes from all of it. Sometimes it’s so much, we’re told too much. We know too much. We see it all, but we don’t see what’s right in front of us.
Beside us.
I’ve been working a lot lately. It’s a busy time for me and I feel incredibly blessed or lucky or whatever it is that helps get us to the places we’re going. My head is spinning with to-do lists that get me through the day and a few steps closer to some of my goals. My house is a mess, my desk unrecognizable as a piece of furniture and most days I add more to that list than I check off.
I’m happy and exhausted and it’s December and I haven’t even thought about Christmas.
I love Christmas.
But I’m a human. And as a human I want things. I don’t know where it started or how to stop it, but don’t try to argue with me, I know it’s true for you too. If it’s not a physical luxury, it is the luxury of time. If it’s not time, we want more love or more quiet, more food to put on the table, more money to buy us nice things, more children to teach, more land to cultivate, more music to hear and mores space for dancing.
I try not to think about the things I want. I try to focus on what I have while I run frantically from one appointment I set up for myself to the next.
And then I wonder what the hell I’m doing when the only thing I really want is to sit under the tree by the dam and watch the water freeze over.
I was tired today and disappointed in myself because I have let slip the one thing I promised I wouldn’t let slip when I moved back here–my connection to the sky.
So I stood up from my twelve-hour computer perch this afternoon, oblivious to the fact that I’d had enough until I looked out the window at the sun turning the sky pink and realized I hadn’t looked outside since it made its first appearance this morning.
Suddenly I was struck with the urge to go chase that sunset down, to catch it and hold it and marvel at it before it sunk below the horizon, as if it were the last sunset on earth.
I don’t know what got into me. For two weeks I’ve been on an agenda that had nothing to do with the sun.
Perhaps I was lonesome for it.
So I pulled on my muck boots and my winter coat, grabbed my camera and raced down the steps and up to the hill.
The sunset out here can be breathtaking when it feels like it. And the beauty is that it doesn’t last long. If you watch closely, turning your head to take it all in, you will see it move and swell and change like a painting, colors splashed across the sky in hues that don’t exist anywhere else in the world but up above.
Sometimes I try to be so many things that I feel like I can’t do my best at anything.
Sometimes I think I might do it on purpose.
But the sun is the sun and it was made to move across the sky.
And I don’t know much about much tonight, but I know I was not made to sit in chairs all day.
Today it’s gray. Today the snow that fell on Friday turned to fog then rain then ice then water and now to mud stuck to the bottom of my boots.
We made breakfast for an old friend who was passing through town. He spent the night on our couch and stood next to Husband at his usual place next to the windows, watching as a few deer came in to water at the dam.
He said he forgot how beautiful it can be out here when the snow falls. Our friend doesn’t come home much when it’s white like this. He sipped his coffee and laughed and talked about cattle and his little girl while Husband fried the bacon and I cracked eggs for omelets.
This house is not finished, the stairs have no treads, the trim is not up and the basement is nothing but dirt and chill, but we have served breakfast in this house four weekends in a row, ever since the sky decided to cool us down and get us sitting closer together, pulling on more sweaters and searching for our wool socks.
I put out the place mats and our white wedding dishes, the butter and some blackberry jam and thought it might be ok if we waited on hanging the closet doors for the day.
I brewed another pot of coffee and decided if I never get a beautiful staircase or a bedroom in the loft, at least I have this kitchen and my grandmother’s old table surrounded by windows looking out on a frozen world slowly thawing.
And so I suppose it’s winter now. The clocks have fallen back and it will get dark soon. Our friend started up his pickup and checked the road report before backing out of our muddy drive and pulling out of our lives and into his own. I feel sleepy and chilled and about as colorful as this landscape.
The winter makes me feel lonesome for something and I don’t understand it. But it’s familiar and comforting and it’s alright.
The cold settles in and all of the reasons I wanted to be a tree or a bird or a wildflower in the summer melt away like a snowflake hitting my tongue and I just want to be me, in my kitchen, serving coffee, putting off chores and thinking about dinner.
I just want to be me, looking out the window of this unfinished house, listening to the people I’ve loved for years talk about the weather and Husband’s perfect omelets.
Me.
A little bit lonely, a little bit cold with a little bit of time on a Sunday to be alright with a gray world just the way it is for now.
Sometimes life is just so unexpected, like the thirteenth rock flying into my windshield on my way home from town.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 
