The sun sets on the end of July.
The end of July
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The sun sets on the end of July.
Tag Archives: Ranch Life
When the mist lifts off the doubt of motherhood
Coming Home: Mist lifts off the doubt new mom feels
by Jessie Veeder
Forum Communications
http://www.inforum.com
It’s morning. The mist has settled in the valleys of this countryside like a heavy, cool blanket that promises to dissolve in the sun. Dad just sent me a photo from the hayfield, a canvas of pink, gold and green poking up from the fog as he bales up the grass and alfalfa nice and tight for the winter.
I didn’t know that about motherhood. I didn’t realize how fragmented and scattered a day can become, a little paradoxical considering 100 percent of that day is dedicated to keeping a tiny person content and alive.
The other 90 percent is spent bending over to pick stuff up.
Which leaves no time left for math and just a few slivers here and there to get work done. Or wash a dish. Or take care of the gray roots coming from my 3-month-old dye job.
And this is where I am now. Looking for the balance in being a work-from-home mom, quickly realizing that the word “balance” should not have been invented, because it does not exist, not in the way we all dream it anyway.
Last week I had a performance in a small town in the middle of the week. My husband has been arriving home from his full-time job in the evening to help Dad get the hay crop put up between rain storms and broken down equipment, so I loaded up the baby, my niece and my guitar in the big pickup, leaving his evening free for work, because turns out dads are searching for that balance-myth, too.
I stood up there behind that microphone and in front of a small crowd that gathered for hamburgers and music on a Wednesday night, telling stories and singing songs while my niece tried to shush our baby who was babbling and screeching happily in her arms. I looked over at her while I sang words written long before she was born and was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that this is my life now.
And then, in between songs, I found myself explaining the fear I had about it all.
Because, if you remember, I had a lot of time—time to convince myself I was ready, and time, when it didn’t work out, to talk myself out of the whole motherhood thing entirely.
Because I was worried about that balance thing. I was worried I couldn’t be me and be a mom, too. I was worried I wouldn’t have the energy for music or writing or bigger aspirations should I feel so motivated.
And in a way I was right. I am not who I was before this child became mine. Because before her I didn’t know what it meant to be frazzled and content at the same time.
Like in the two hours I’ve been working on this piece I’ve changed her diaper, gotten her dressed, fed her milk, snuggled her, kissed her, watched her play, fed her avocados, snuggled her again, changed her again and put her down to play while working sentence by sentence and wishing I would have woken up at 5 a.m. like I planned last night.
I likely won’t finish this until she goes down for her mid-morning nap.
Before the baby, leaving something undone would have driven me crazy. These days most things are left to be finished later. I didn’t know I could be fine with that.
And there are about a million more examples like that, most of them involving the common denominator named time. Because I’m no longer carefree with it, not in the way that I was before Edie.
To be away from her better be worth it.
Sometimes it is.
And sometimes the best part is taking her along, looking out into the crowd and seeing her there, fitting snug and happy in the life that I built, arms outstretched, head turned up and laughing, the mist lifting off the doubt, revealing more colors than I could have dreamed.
A Friday update…
Here’s a quick update from the ranch while the baby is sleeping.
- Edie’s getting sassier every day and I’m declaring now that I’m in big trouble. Good Lord she has me wrapped around her finger and also who knew 8 month-olds had agendas for the day.
Here she is chilling’ with her post bath mohawk, drinking from her sippy cup and eating puffs. She only really likes to feed herself. Unless she sees me attempting to eat a plate full of food, then she wants what I’m having, and spoon-feeding is allowed.
- Also, the girl will crawl. But only to get to the cereal puff I put just out of her reach. And I think I can relate. Like, I will run, but only if means a burger when it’s all over.
- The guys have been trying to get the hay crop in for weeks. It’s not going well. Between the rain and equipment that breaks I think we’ll have to feed the cows lettuce from the grocery store this winter. In the meantime, they are getting their fill in Pops’ garden. Yesterday would mark the third trip they’ve made to the Veeder Backyard buffet in the last two weeks. At first I laughed an evil laugh about it all, but then I took a look for myself and realized that even with cow sabotage, dad currently still has more vegetables growing in his garden than me. But I’m not worried. I found enough spinach to make a couple salads. And some radishes. And look! Tomatoes. It’s only a matter of time he’ll be knocking on my door asking for some samples.
- Seems like even when things are going shitty, Pops still sees the beauty in this life we’re leading. Here’s a photo he sent me earlier this week from hayfield probably like five minutes before he broke down. Looks like heaven.
- And here’s a rare photo of all of my dogs in the same frame. Dolly is a sweet thing but the girl can’t sit still. It’s in her genes. Seems like her and Edie have that in common, but out of all three dogs Gus is Edie’s I would say. When I bring her out in the yard he doesn’t get too far from her. It’s sweet and unexpected from the high energy beast.
- We got my parent’s hand-me-down hot tub and now I feel really fancy when I put the baby to bed and head down there with my plastic cup full of wine, my raggedy swim suit and flippy floppies. Hot tub trips have replaced date night for Husband and I, because we haven’t had an official one since the baby’s first month on earth. I just realized that last night and it made me one part disappointed in us and one part amazed that time has gone that fast. Maybe we’ll have a date next month when we celebrate our ten-year anniversary.
- Ten years already?!!! Didn’t we just get home from our Junior prom?
- We went over to the neighbors’ last week. I opened the cooler and found this scene.
Yesterday Husband was sitting at the counter eating, looked up from his plate and informed me that “there’s a nipple under the dishwasher.” A phrase and a scene that wouldn’t have existed in our old life
- I started writing this yesterday afternoon and now it is morning today. The baby woke up from her nap and the rest is history. The whole baby thing combined with the fact that we haven’t had good Internet out here since we moved and haven’t had Internet at all since Edie was born has made this website and work from home thing nearly impossible. Husband and I are looking forward to doing things the real world gets to do, like streaming cat videos on YouTube and checking out what all the hype is about this whole Netflix thing. Someday. Someday…For now we’re just using the shit out of our cell phone hotspot and depleting Edie’s college fund.
- Here’s a photo of Edie on our walk the other day, as a storm rolled in all around us.
I don’t think they’ll ever make a stroller meant for the trails I roll the poor girl across. A few trip sup the prairie road to the fields and back and the thing’s sort of worse for the wear. But all that bouncing can be worth something…
and also the reason I almost always put the baby in the pack.
- But oh shit, my back is killing me.
- We’ve made up for our lack of snow this winter with an abundance of rain this summer. It’s almost August and it’s green as can be. Here are a couple photos of wildflowers to prove it.
- I forgot to water my garden last night. But maybe that’s the key to success. Just do what I did last year, like hardly pay attention to the thing at all, and maybe I’ll reap giant carrots and buckets of beans again. That math seems to add up.
- Have a great weekend. I plan on hanging at the ranch, gearing up for an August that will find me away from the ranch more than at home. Because if I thought things would slow down with the birth of this wild child, well, it’s safe to say it’s kicked back in high gear again.
North Dakota readers, click here to see if I’ll be performing in your area in August
- The baby’s awake…if you’re reading this, I’ve kept her busy long enough to hit “publish.”
Peace, Love and Huggies,
Jessie and her sidekick
Building good days.
Coming Home: Building good days a gift in this unpredictable life
by Jessie Veeder
7-24-16
InForum
http://www.inforum.com
Bad days.
Good days.
Out here on the ranch, for some reason, I like to define them.
And there are about a million criteria for the qualifications of both, which, I guess, is a good thing and a bad thing, respectively.
And of course I like to say a bad day out here is better than a good day almost any place else in the world.
Except for the time I got my finger smashed between a metal bar and a post by a 2,000-pound bull. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad day, I mean, things were going pretty good up until the emergency room visit that resulted in a cast on my middle finger that sent me out of the hospital flipping off the world.
But it could have been worse.
It could always be worse.
Funny, we say that a lot around here.
Get bucked off your horse and land in a cactus patch? Well, at least it wasn’t your head smashed on that big rock over there.
Couldn’t get the swather running after six hours of tinkering in the field under the hot sun? Well, at least you didn’t have to be in a conference room meeting all day.
Get your four-wheeler stuck up to its belly in the creek again because you tend to think you’re magic when you’re on that thing (Dad)? Perfect. Now I have some material.
When I think about it now, maybe that’s why I found my way back here. Because of the optimism that was somehow always generated even after the day had gone completely haywire. It’s a trait that could only occur in people who truly love what they’re doing. Who wouldn’t be drawn back to that?
Through the years, we’ve had plenty of opportunity for bad days, for long walks home after the pickup quit, for lessons learned about polyester shirts and welding torches, for doctoring a herd of cattle with pinkeye well after the sun went down, saying to one another, “Well, at least the nail you stepped on didn’t go all the way through your big toe,” or “Would have been so much harder without all your help.”
But now that I think about it, it’s sort of telling that we continue to say, “Well, it could be worse,” and skip over the entire concept that in times of tractor breakdowns, man-chasing momma cows and an incident with an exploding motor that almost started the entire barnyard on fire, it could always be better, too.
But just yesterday as I strapped the baby to my chest and took off hiking across the home pasture with my niece chatting happily beside me on a quest to fill my cap with enough wild raspberries to make some sort of dessert, I couldn’t help but label that moment “one that could not be better.”
Even with the flies and the thorns.
We woke up that Sunday morning to a smiling baby and a hankering for blueberry muffins. So we made them. Because, what luck! Blueberries were on sale and I had some in the fridge. So we cooked them up, along with eggs and bacon, and had ourselves a regular, fancy brunch.
And that evening, after stripping the baby down and watching her play and splash in the baby pool on the deck while the sun shone gold on the hilltops outside, after feeding her bananas as she sat in her robe and tiny socks, we tucked her sleepily into bed and ate a supper of grilled brats and beans together around the table outside. My husband put his feet up after a day of fixing equipment, and my niece and I saddled up the two lazy horses in the barnyard and took off together, walking slowly across those hills dotted with wildflowers and berries and we just kept saying, “Well, it’s so beautiful out here isn’t it?”
So peaceful.
It just couldn’t be better.
And while I know there are plenty of ways to define the bad days, the days that are out of your control, I couldn’t help but think in that moment how wonderful it is to know that you can build your own good ones.
How to make wild raspberry dessert
How to make wild raspberry dessert
Step 1:
Wake up in the morning to a happy husband, a well-rested niece and a smiling baby. Snuggle the baby. Play and roll around with her on the floor. Put her in her high chair so she can feed herself blueberry puffs. Hear your husband say, “Man, it would be nice to have a blueberry muffin right now.” Remember you have blueberries in the fridge.
Step 2:
Locate a blueberry muffin recipe with the help of your niece. Preheat the oven and read the directions while your niece mixes up the ingredients. Think that maybe bacon and eggs would go good with fresh blueberry muffins. Because you always have bacon in the house.
Step 3:
Proceed with the bacon cooking while blueberry muffins bake.
Step 4:
Crack and fry some perfectly over easy eggs. Find a double yolker. Declare it good luck.
Step 5:
Pour some orange juice, put the baby in her high chair, make a plate and gather around the table. Declare that Martha Stewart has nothing on you.
Step 7:
Hear Pops say something about all the raspberries out in the pasture. Decide that they can’t all go to the birds.
Step 6:
Put the dishes in the sink pull on your jeans and boots. Strap the baby to your chest, douse skin in bug spray and sunscreen and head out the door with your niece and the dogs. Declare it a beautiful morning. Declare that it’s sort of hot though.
Step 7:
Peel your eyes for raspberries. Locate raspberries in the thorny brush below where the juneberries, bullberries and chokecherries grow. Watch the dogs disappear in and out of the brush patches chasing phantom rabbits and birds and taking a break from the heat. Find it funny.
(Chicken dinner for you if you can spot Dolly down there…)
Step 8:
Send the niece in to the deep brush to get the fat berries.
Check your back pocket for the baggie you brought along. Realize you dropped it somewhere. Take off your hat. Decide that will do.
Step 9:
Pick a berry. Eat a berry. Put a berry in the hat. Swat a fly. Pull a thorn. Pick a berry. Eat a Berry. Put a berry in the hat.
Step 10:
Repeat Step 9 like a hundred or so times.
Step 11:
Check to make sure the baby strapped to your chest isn’t eating the berries too. Pick up the toy she dropped in the thick brush for the third time.
Step 12:
Wipe the sweat. Pick a thorn out of the niece’s hand. Eat a berry. Check your stash. Wonder if that’s enough to make anything. Declare it officially hot out now. Eat a berry. Climb the hill to the teepee rings to catch some breeze.
Step 13:
Realize the baby dropped the toy again and now it’s out in the wild pasture to be found 100 years from now, along with all Pops’ missing gloves and tools.
Step 14:
Head back to the house, noticing the beautiful wildflowers along the way.
Step 15:
Strip off your clothes and check for ticks. Strip off the baby’s clothes and check for ticks. Put her on the floor to play.
Step 16:
Rinse the berries.
Step 17:
Eat a few more
Step 18:
Look up some recipes online for raspberry dessert, trying for the perfect concoction that doesn’t interfere with the integrity of the raspberry.
Step 19:
Eat a couple more raspberries.
Step 20:
Deny every suggested recipe found…
Step 20:
Decide that there is no dessert you can make that tastes as good as a wild raspberry itself.
Step 21:
Eat more raspberries
Step 22:
Have lunch. Put the baby down for a nap. Putz around the house. Wait for Husband to get home..
Step 23:
Give the baby a bath. Put her in her robe. Decide she looks like an adorable old man. Feed her something yummy. Rock her to sleep.
Step 24:
Grill brats. Eat on the deck.
Step 25:
Leave the dishes for the husband.
Step 26:
Go Riding
Step 27:
Declare it a beautiful night.
Step 28:
Listen to your niece tell you stories and wonder where the time went and when she grew up so quickly.
Step 29:
Head back to the barn. Let the horses out. Walk to the house. Strip down. Check for ticks.
Step 26:
Eat some raspberries.
Step 27:
Declare it a good day.
Step 28:
Sleep tight. Good night.
Garden Wars…
I’m having gardener’s remorse.
Up until now I didn’t know that was a thing, but it’s a thing.
My big fat mouth got me in trouble last year when I went around waving my giant carrots and perfect, beautiful green beans around like I was Queen of the Prairie and I opened up a can of worms that’s too full now to close.
Yup, you probably remember it from last year. I dared say “My garden’s better than your garden” to Pops and now he’s throwing down the gauntlet.
And it’s not looking good for me.
In fact, at this point, I think I’ll be lucky to get a radish, seeing how, after ten trips to the garden (and ten back inside to soothe a fussy baby) I finally got the thing in a few weeks ago and now, no matter how I squint, I am pretty certain my peas are not coming up.
And neither is the spinach.
But even if they did decide to make an appearance, it would have only been to face the magic cow who somehow got by the dogs and the fence to take a little stroll through the beans and a stomp on the cucumbers, the only vegetation in the entire plot that showed promise, besides the thistle.
Meanwhile, down the road, Pops, who’s typically a pretty laid back horticulturalist, went to a special store and bought sheep poop for crying out loud!
I saw it in bags on his driveway in April and I knew shit was about to get real, in more ways than one you know…
And, before he had to endure last year’s episode of coming over to ask for tomatoes because his had contracted some unsightly spots, Pops would have shared this useful little gardening tip with me.
But not now. Nope. Because I guess I was a little too cocky about my endless supply of cucumbers and those spotless tomatoes, and, well, he’s just not having it.
Not this year.
This year he bought sheep poop.
And I’m not positive, but I think he let that cow in my yard…
Coming Home: Reaping what I sowed with garden boasting
6-26-16
by Jessie Veeder
InForum
http://www.inforum.com
Lord, it’s good to be humble.
It’s a lesson I’ve implemented in my daily life since discovering, at a young age, just as soon as I think things are moving along swimmingly is about the exact time I fall on my face.
Unless it comes to mini golf. Or bowling. Or board games … you know, all the things that matter most in life.
Yeah, give me a tiny golf club and I’ll ride it around the mini-golf course, galloping and whooping at my (lucky) hole-in-one. My team guesses my spot-on impression of Cher during a heated game of charades, and I am queen of the living room.
Get a strike in bowling, and the entire alley gets to witness my shopping cart/running man/stir-the-butter victory moves.
It’s obnoxious. People stare. And unless they’re on my team in charades, it makes my family roll their eyes.
But I’m afraid I’ve stepped out of my boasting comfort zone, taking that happy dance from the safety of the bowling alley and into a place where I might require a little more skill and a little less booze.
A place where talent and knowledge has been honed and passed on through the centuries by the masters of the craft.
A place that has been feeding men, women, children and the wily bunny for ages — the family garden.
I blame it on last summer’s pregnancy hormones. I think they made me overconfident in my ability to successfully grow things, and maybe those hormones had something to do with the big fat tomatoes, the giant carrots and the never-ending supply of beans that appeared in full force despite the fact that I didn’t get a thing planted until late June.
Or maybe it was the magic in the soil my husband dug from in front of the old barn where cows have been pooping for a million years, but oh Lord, did I have a great garden.
And Lord, did I ever brag about it.
Check the newspaper archives for August 2015. You’ll see the evidence.
And when Dad, the man who has been growing things since he was still growing himself, decided not to plant beans or peas because of the wily deer who sneaks in the fence for a snack every night and then found that his tomato plants turned up with spots, when he humphed about his garden looking a little shabby, well, I took it as an invitation to make sure my biggest carrots and most perfect tomatoes were on the table when he came over.
And then I sent him home with a plastic bag full of peas and an “I’m sure sorry about your garden” comment through the smirk on my face.
But now I’m in trouble.
Because apparently an arrogant horticulturalist doesn’t sit well with him, especially when he taught that arrogant horticulturalist everything she knows about planting carrot seeds and on her first attempt she’s somehow outdone him.
The man has found the whole thing entirely annoying, and now I’m afraid he’s stepping up his game in retaliation.
I sensed this might happen. There have been comments. Snide remarks. Sideways looks.
But it became pretty evident when I went over to his place earlier this spring to find 10 big bags of sheep manure waiting to be spread on that garden plot of his, a sign that he’s determined to put actual effort into a task that typically comes naturally to him and his green thumb.
And now I have a competition on my hands with the guy whom I rely on to water my garden when we’re out of town.
A competition that I’m currently losing because, with a baby in tow, it took me a good 10 attempts to get my garden in last week.
Dad? Well, his has been in since Memorial Day, just like the books tell you.
He’s in the zone, and I’m obsessively checking to see if the radishes have at least come up.
I think I better spend more time watering and less time on my victory dance.
Because, Lord, it’s good to be humble.
But, Dad, the growing season’s still young …
What it takes to be a dad
I’ve always said that men can’t multi-task. This weekend Husband proved me wrong.
Apparently it just depends on the task.
This is fatherhood.
I’ve wondered a long time how it would look on him.
On Sunday mornings when we don’t have to rush off to some big chore right away, it looks like this.
And on nights when things are rough (like when she’s cutting top and bottom teeth at the same time and mom had nothing but a granola bar and guacamole for breakfast, lunch and supper) it looks like this.
And while there’s no question that there is plenty of sacrifice in being a mother, I think sometimes we’re guilty of skipping over the dad part.
Like, we just got in from a beautiful summer evening, an evening Husband could have used to fix fence or ride through the cattle or go fishing or drink beer on the deck, pretty much anything else in the world, but he didn’t. Instead he spent it in his fancy shirt carting the baby around the hills and smiling for a photographer so we could get those family photos I’ve been talking about for weeks.
And while I will admit that I’ve complained plenty during my six + months of being a momma (knowing full well I should just shut my mouth and be grateful after all we’ve gone through to get to this point but sometimes I’m tired and sometimes it’s hard) but I will tell you the truth here, the man I married hasn’t complained one moment about his role as a dad.
Not one moment.
Even when I leave for the night and she only wants mom and lets him know it loudly and for a long time.
Even when she poops through her pants and on to his.
Even when he has to leave his perfectly cooked steak at the table to bounce her on his knee.
Even when he has to take part of the day off work to give me the chance to do my work.
Even when she cries in her carseat the whole hour drive home, and so do I.
And what great qualities to find in a man, the ones that aren’t written about in the Cosmo Magazine articles about dating and finding a perfect match, the ones that will make him a good father to the kids you may one day have together. The most important ones.
Turns out, in the end, it isn’t his six pack abs or his high paying power career or his kick ass karaoke skills that really matter when you find yourself at your wits end because you can’t get the damn carseat installed or you need someone you can count on to get home from work when he says he’ll be home from work because you have a deadline or somewhere you have to be. No. All those things are fun and the karaoke skills may come in handy for the lullabies, but it’s the steadiness, the strength of character, the reliability that matters the most when you need it the most. Because turns out the task of raising a human just might be the most terrifying and wonderful and most important part of your relationship. And so you should pick accordingly.
Not something you really think of when he put a ring on it.
But it’s true.
And after a long day with a teething baby where I only had granola and guacamole for breakfast, lunch and supper, I am glad to be in the trenches with a man who was built for this stuff.
And I’m so glad to know that I did something right, picking him to be Edie’s dad.
Happy Father’s Day to you and to all the good ones out there.
Love,
Your girls
This not-so-glamourous life…
A photographer came to visit the ranch and I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t pretty people. We spent the day before working an art event in town that I had been planning for months and didn’t get home until after eleven. It was the last event in a week with a full schedule. I was tired. I had to gather the troops. I sorta forgot to take a shower and fix my hair. I didn’t make even a remotely healthy lunch for my niece and I (because when you’re tired you much prefer Doritos to salad). I didn’t put pants on the baby. I didn’t get the horses in ahead of time to prepare them and de-bur them so that they were photo ready. And I didn’t mention in the newspaper column below the part where the baby stuck her finger up my horses’s snotty nose, which was bleeding a bit because of a fresh little cut.
That was horrifying. And there was a man from Minneapolis with a big camera to witness my disgust.
So this is my confession published in newspapers across the state, in case you might get the wrong idea when you see the photos and article in the magazine that we have our shit together out here.
Because we don’t.
But I think you all knew that already…
Coming Home: Glossy pages don’t reflect our not-so-glamourous life
by Jessie Veeder
6-5-16
Forum Communications
http://www.inform.com
This morning a big yellow screwdriver sits next to a half-eaten pan of cinnamon rolls (the kind out of the freezer section, not out of my KitchenAid mixer) and that sits next to a couple baby books about farm life that feature a perfect red barn against green rolling hills dotted with smiling black and white cows.
Today as I reflect on the last couple weeks, I’m wondering if I should even read those little farm books to poor Edie. Maybe I should just toss them in the trash and keep her from asking some hard-hitting questions about this place.
Like, why don’t the horses in the books have cockleburs in their manes? Aren’t horses born with them?
And momma, why don’t you wear an apron like the mommas in the books? And where is that fresh-baked pie that’s supposed to be sitting on the windowsill to cool?
Yes, follow us around for a day and you would see that clearly the authors of these children’s farm books didn’t base them off of our life.
No.
And while Edie’s not old enough to start asking questions (sigh of relief) I did have a reporter call me a few weeks ago with some questions of her own. Like, what’s life like on the family ranch for two people who got to move back to it? What does a typical day look like?
I couldn’t think of an interesting or straightforward way to answer that. When she called my husband just got home from work and he was rocking the baby, trying to keep her happy so I could have an uninterrupted conversation. When that was over, he was going to go to his next job of taking care of this place. And when he returned we would have leftover lasagna for the third night in a row because I got distracted by a writing deadline when I should have been doing laundry because I’m out of clean underwear, for crying out loud.
And so they sent out a photographer to see for himself. A photographer who likely had a hope of capturing what I’m sure he envisioned as some picturesque scenes of a family of three working side by side and meeting up for a picnic meal with the grandparents who live down the road.
But this was an agricultural magazine so I hope they knew better. And while I was raised in an environment where both my parents worked, ran a ranching operation and managed to keep three kids alive, I’m learning what that really means as an adult. And I’m not sure we’re exactly killing it.
I mean, when a photographer shows up, completely announced and expected, a balanced and together woman would have had pants on the baby. Or combed her hair.
Or at least cleared the evidence of her recent Dorito and Oreo lunch from the counter.
And when the request for a photo of my husband and I riding side by side through a herd of calm cattle sent me down to the barnyard attempting to lure uninterested horses in with a bucket of grain before resorting to leading one with the shirt I was planning on wearing tied around his neck so that I could spend the next half hour before my husband arrived home currying the tangle of burs out of their manes and tails so I wouldn’t embarrass the long line of Veeders who once called this place home, I began to question if we were really worthy of the press.
But at least he got authentic. Authentic sweat. And authentic cussing as my husband and I attempted the impossible task of moving a herd of cattle toward a man with a camera standing in an open pasture.
Needless to say, none of it was picture perfect.
Because around here burs stick to horses while they fill up on green grass that makes them fat and sassy on the hilltop behind the barn that needs painting. And inside, where the books might write in the apple pie, we have a screwdriver instead. Or a calf tagger. Or a hammer.
And it might not be glamorous, and it might not be easy, but that’s why they make frozen cinnamon rolls.
An old story
Pops turned 60 on Tuesday.
A few weeks ago we had a big birthday party for him, complete with noodle salads and dessert, music on the porch, BYOB and a big board of embarrassing photos his sister drug out of the archives and presented.
My Aunt K. is the family historian. And now that she’s newly retired, she has the time to dedicated to embarrassing her brother just like in the olden days.
Anyway, this week his brother is up from Texas and they are fixing fences, riding through cows and catching up.
I love it when family comes to the ranch. I especially love it when we’re around the supper table or chatting over drinks on the deck and old stories come up about the time when they were kids and their dad had a load of bulls on the truck in a cattle rack and forgot to latch the dump chain, successfully delivering the entire load of Charolais bulls on their butts in the yard.
“It was a pile of white bovine flesh,”* said Uncle W.
“And dad got out of the truck and started swearing and kicking at the chickens,” said Pops.
“And mom probly saw the whole thing from the kitchen window, but there was a back door on that house and she probly hightailed it outside to the garden…”
And there’s a million more where that came from.
But here’s one that Aunt K. told the night of the party about my dad as a little boy. I can’t remember how old now, but I imagine him seven or so, brown hair, brown skin, chubby cheeks and husky jeans.
He was riding in the car on the highway with his dad and spotted a road kill raccoon likely on its way to resembling a furry pancake due to its high traffic position on the road.
And he made his dad pull over so that the little seven-year-old version of my dad could scoop up that poor flattened soul and put it in a plastic bag.
“I know that animals get hit out here,” he explained to his father. “But it just isn’t right to let people keep running over him like that.”
And so his dad drove the tiny savior and the poor varmint his son scraped up back to the ranch where he received a proper burial.
And if that story doesn’t sum up what type of man he is, well then, I don’t know what else to tell you about the guy.
Except happy 60th dad. We love you.
*the Bulls were fine 🙂
The sweet spot of the season
Coming Home: In the sweet spot of summer, motherhood
by Jessie Veeder
5-30-16
http://www.inforum.com
The cows are milling by the dam and grazing on the short, neon green grass that’s growing just on the edge of my fenced-in yard, sending the dogs into a routine of nervous little ticks.
Speaking of ticks, those are out in full force too, of course. And not one author of a parenting magazine, blog or book has mentioned how unnerving and annoying it is to find one of the buggers crawling up the tiny pant leg of your baby as you walk across the pastures with her strapped to your chest so she can look up and learn about how the sun lights the tips of the trees and makes them sparkle.She doesn’t seem to mind the creepy parts of summer as much as I do. Babies haven’t yet learned to be bothered by such things. But I’m not about to let some little pest keep us inside for my favorite time of year.
Because I have things to show this baby. Today she’s officially half a year old. It feels like a lifetime ago that we drove her across the cattle guard to the ranch for the first time, drive-thru Thanksgiving dinner in the console of the pickup.
And I guess it was. It was her whole lifetime ago …
I keep saying it’s crazy how fast and slow it all goes at the same time.
A baby calf is born and it immediately and instinctively wobbles to its shaky legs. In a few days you can find him bucking and leaping across the pastures, kicking his heels up to the sky, testing out what it means to have four hooves and a snout.
On the deck this morning our barn cat sits by the door, looking at me through the screen, waiting for a pat on the head or a bowl of milk.
Out in the barnyard somewhere she’s hidden a fresh batch of kittens. Last night my husband took my 12-year-old niece out to look for them, to listen for the whimpers and cries of their tiny new lives so that we might catch them and tame them before they open their eyes and grow wild.
Last weekend I sat on the floor of my living room and sorted through piles of hand-me-down baby clothes my sister-in-law sent for Edie. There were sun hats and swimming suits, shorts and sweaters, snow pants and pink socks. In one bin I pulled out a tiny green and red plaid Christmas dress, one that I recognized from a holiday spent with their family when that 12-year-old niece was small — small enough to fit in that frilly little dress.
This morning as I type she’s downstairs playing peekaboo with Edie. She’s come for a week to help out, to babysit, ride horses, tell me stories about her friends and look for baby kittens.
Wasn’t I just playing peekaboo with her? I swear it was just yesterday but maybe it was a lifetime ago.
Well it was. Her lifetime.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up and Edie will be almost 13, too.
But today as we roll into the sweet spot of summer, where everything is fresh and new, the calves are kicking, the frogs are croaking, and the turkeys are gobbling outside my window.
I can’t help but relate to this season. Because I feel like I’m in the sweet spot of new motherhood, navigating a fresh and fleeting time where the world is so new to her and so completely changed to me that it might as well be a new life all together.
Except for the ticks. I remember the ticks from my other life.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 