Tag Archives: writing

Words and music and getting it down

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When I was ten years old Pops gave me a hard covered journal that he pulled out of the basement of his parent’s house. He retrieved it from a bookshelf and  handed it to his middle daughter, the one who would scribble poems about dogs and horses and big prairie skies on notebook paper. He flipped through the blank pages of the journal, inspecting it for forgotten words, and then handed it to me. And told me to write.

I imagine the book was something my Pops picked up at a gift shop or got for Christmas from a family member, an object that could have been tossed or used for grocery lists, but instead sat stored away in that basement for years waiting for me.

I have a memory of when he handed that book over to me, one I’m not certain I didn’t make up in a dream or something. It’s a memory that is full of inspiration and imagination and possibilities.  It was as if my father had handed me potential–blank pages that smelled of must and mothballs waiting for someone to write something brilliant and touching and moving.

Waiting for me to be brilliant.

I had those pages filled before my twelfth birthday with poems about the creek behind my house, rodeos, horses, wildflowers and not wanting to grow up. My handwriting was neat and loopy, slanting diagonally across the unlined pages, sentences about the colors in rainbows and wishes trailing right out of my adolescent head and down the center of the pages.

I didn’t know it at the time but that book is where my music career started. Those words I wrote turned to melodies when I picked up a guitar for the first time, practicing other people’s music, but spending most of my time creating my own. I would play with my words, ramble with the lines and phrasing for nobody’s ears but my own. And because I was the only one listening, I could say what I meant or make no sense at all.

It didn’t matter.

It was for me.


As I got older my dad convinced me to perform that music in public. And so I strummed my green guitar alongside him, a dorky, gangly girl in a Garth Brooks inspired western shirt baring her soul.

Besides my little sister who was sleeping with her door half-open across the hallway from my bedroom, my dad’s ears were always the first to hear my music.


I’m  thinking about this today because I am in the middle of recording a new album.  It’s an album of music I’ve been writing since I moved back to the place I grew up…back to the place where that ten-year-old tomboy scraped her knees and caught frogs and wrote it all down. I’ve done this studio thing before and I’ll tell you, it isn’t easy to introduce music that you’ve written on lazy Sundays, in the middle of the night or pulled over sitting in your car on the side of the road to a room full of musicians you respect and admire. Performing songs for the first time that only the walls and dogs have heard have been some of the most intimidating and emotional experiences in my life.

Because I believe in it. I know what I’m trying to say.

Or at least I think I do.

And when I make the decision to share it, to record it, to perform it, to get in the studio at long last,  I second guess that decision about seventy to eighty times before I make the trip down the interstate with my Pops and our guitars.


See in a project like this you could work through logistics all day long. You could share ideas and swap stories and talk about music you like, your vision and who’s on board until the sun goes down.

But it comes down to one thing in the end.

The songs.

And the songs are mine. Soul-baringly mine. So eventually I’ve got to play them. It’s kinda the whole point.

So I start by plucking my guitar, closing my eyes tight and leaning in against the microphone, wondering if it’s possible to hold my breath and sing at the same time. The first note rings out and then the first verse and it’s just me exposed waiting for my father to pick up his guitar and add a rhythm, my dear and talented friend to lean over his dobro and fill in with a haunting lick, the bass to kick in a long lonesome note…the drums to find the heart beat.

And soon my song becomes their song and the room is filled with it. The guys I’ve trusted with the notes have given it a pulse and the music I wrote on my living room floor lends itself to a harmonica part, a guitar breath…a long pause.

And sometimes it happens that I’m in that studio, two days into laying down tracks about the landscape, my home, my love and maybe even a quirky song about a dog, and things are going well. I think I’ve almost made it through the hard part, if only I could skip through the song that scares me the most.

Because it’s the one that is so personal I am certain no one is going to understand. It’s the one that makes me cry big sobs before I reach the end.

The one that they are telling me to try. Just try it out.

It’s ok.

And so I take a deep breath and work to come down off a bouncy song I wrote about being happy and living in the moment.

I suppose living in the moment counts for hard stuff too, so I take my own advice…

play the notes on my guitar…and sing…

“I dreamed you on the prairie,
on mountain tops and oceans wide…”

I hear my voice waiver through my headphones but I’m ok. I decide I might get through it…until I hit the second breath and the sweet sound of my friend’s guitar part fills in the quiet spaces the exact way I have heard it in my head…if only I could play that way…

“I loved you before I met you…”

My voice cracks and it’s over before it started…but my band keeps playing, coming in with a low bass part and a quiet whisper of a drum.

So I keep singing and sniffling because the music’s just too beautiful to give in to an emotion I’ve pushed down so long that it became fed up.

I decide that if it’s time for this I might as well capture it. Isn’t this what music is about?

So the guitar lead pulls me into the chorus and I whimper the words behind the glass of my isolation booth. I wonder if the guys can see the  tears streaming down my face behind the shield of the microphone…

The sound coming out of their instruments makes me feel less alone though, which touches me so deeply that more tears roll and no words come out.

But the guys keep playing, taking me through the bridge of my song as I sing it like I’m collapsing in on myself.

I close my eyes and breathe in the rhythm they have found for me as I gather myself for the ending note, the note that I squeak out but they let hang subtly and quietly in the air of the studio.

I wipe my eyes and apologize as I put down my guitar to step out of the room only to find the two men who have been the background to my music my entire life: my father and the sweet talented dobro man, with eyes red and teary too.

Supporting me.

Feeling for me.

Playing my music like it is their own.

So I’ll tell you this today as I sit in the middle of this music project and reflect on the weekend I spent lost in the music. When I moved back to the ranch as a grown woman with plans to make plans I wasn’t prepared to run into my ten-year-old self again. I wasn’t prepared to fall in love like her, to get the same flush in my cheeks, to embrace loneliness, celebrate life and morn losses the way I used to when I was so young and vulnerable and completely honest.

I didn’t expect that she would grab my hand, take me on walks, sit with me on hilltops and quietly push me to fill up some blank pages again…and then sing those songs out loud to the prairie sky.

But she did. And I open her book today and find poetry and stories that are innocent and awful and embarrassing. But I’ll tell you if I had to save something in a fire it would be that book. It has sat on my nightstand next to my lamp for nearly twenty years, a reminder of the girl who chose to fill it up with the stories about her world and everything that was inside of her.

And the only way I can think to thank her is to keep doing what she has done…

Curious about the new music coming from the red dirt roads?
Listen to me  talk about life in oil country as I play my new song “Boomtown” live from my momma’s kitchen

Jessie Veeder’s Boomtown 

Follow the progress of my new album at www.jessieveedermusic.com 

Recording at Makoche Recording Company in downtown, Bismarck, ND

To live with passion.

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11

Last night husband came home to the little ranch house in the buttes to find a woman hunched over, knees to her chest, pointing and clicking and squinting behind a giant computer screen.

He thought he heard her mumbling, so he said hello back, in case she might be attempting to greet him.

She wasn’t. She was talking to herself as she marveled at how she had somehow secured approval from herself and her dearly beloved to purchase this new machine with a screen the size of a television.

She was even more impressed she could fit it in the 3×3 cubby behind the recliner she likes to refer to as an office. But there was no time to really marvel, she had a big project and this spaceship of a computer was meant to help her accomplish this.

So there she sat with her coffee cup at 7 am learning how to scroll on a fancy mouse. At noon she opened the window when she noticed the temperature was climbing, inside & out.

She switched from coffee to Diet Coke at 1:00.

She got up to pee at 2:00.

She ate a cracker at 3:00.

But the hours between 3 and whenever her husband’s pickup pulled into the drive seemed to have slipped her mind as she got lost in photo edits, emails, music and words.

It wasn’t until her husband stepped through the door and said her name that she looked down to realize she had yet to change out of the tank top and shorts she slept in the night before.

And she couldn’t remember if she brushed her teeth, but could only assume that she skipped that essential step, as well as the hair brushing and shower and, uh, was that peanut butter on her shirt? Did she even have peanut butter today?

Does my hair really look like this?

It’s been close to two years since I moved back to the ranch with no job and a vague plan that included figuring out what it was I wanted to do here for the rest of my life. After the initial panic and a few weeks of manic cleaning and organization, I decided it would best serve me to strive to have the experiences I had as a child growing up in this wild place. I would climb the buttes, explore the coulees, ride horses, sing at the top of my lungs, spend time with my family and love with my arms wide open.

The way life was meant to be lived…

But between the mud sliding, dog chasing, berry picking, sledding, cooking, and a full on attempt at avoiding the laundry at all costs, life has found me two years later at a point where I need to say no to some things. Because it’s practical. And someone needs to make supper.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. It means that I’m busy. It means that I am engaged. Sitting at the computer and losing myself in the hours actually means that I am working, and I do not take that for granted, especially these days.

But yesterday after I snapped out of my frenzy to catch a deadline that I realized no one had made for me except me, I found I was a bit disappointed in myself.

It was nearly 85 degrees on a perfectly absurd April day and I did not take a moment to  really feel it on my skin. When husband got home he was giddy from a day driving with the windows open, the warm breeze pushing on his work shirt. He rushed in hoping to find a wife eager to get out in it, but instead he found her babbling to herself.

And possibly drooling.

He took one look at my outfit and the space around me cluttered with half-filled cups, napkins, papers and pencils and he high-tailed it out the door.

I think I might have heard him utter, “you’re a mess…” but I chose to believe that was a figment of my imagination.

Although it was a true statement.

I was a mess. I am a mess.

Always have been.

But those of you who have been following this little journey understand that this is not the place you go for house organization advice, but where you might land if you want to feel better about your sweeping schedule. I am not equipped to give tips on sifting flour, changing a car tire or how to make a man fall in love with you (come to think of it, following my lead with irregular grooming habits and a tendency to wander off into the hills and you might find yourself with the opposite results.) No, I can’t give you tips on parenting or how to impress at a party, unless of course your idea of breaking the ice is leading with a story about how you once got your head stuck in a ladder or how your dog peed in your husband’s boot. But if it is, and it worked, call me. I want to be in your group of friends.

Anyway, if I learned anything in the last few years about myself it’s that I’m not a real expert in anything. In the past several months I have been asked to speak at conferences, talk to students, sing and tell my story at various events. And each time I prepare for these appearances I am forced to evaluate what it is I am doing here out in the hills in the middle of my family’s history, in the middle of oil country.

And I can’t come up with anything to say except that I don’t know everything about anything and I don’t know the answer to most questions, but I know that to live a life with passion is the only way I know how to do it.

I am passionate.

Annoyingly passionate.

Like squeeze the puke out of a kitten because you love it so much passionate.

I was born this way.

Because my family’s this way.

And I blame them for the fact that I didn’t move my ass from that chair all day long yesterday because I was so engrossed in my work.

But I also blame them for the fact that my sister rolls her eyes when I  point out every wildflower sprouting from the earth on a ride together or on a drive to town.

And the fact that I don’t get too worked up about her annoyance at my behavior, because she lives the same way…

Because we were raised with a father who couldn’t wait for the first warm spring day to climb to the top of a hill and find a sunny, dry spot and lay down. A man who would stop in the middle a cattle drive so he could get off his horse and retrieve a turkey feather for his daughter who collects them, or pick some wild raspberries because they are on his top ten list of favorite things in the universe.

We were loved by a mother who rarely takes a day off work, but when she does, throws the best damn party, makes the best appetizers,  laughs the most and stays on the dance floor the longest.

With my parents there was never a question about who they were because I always knew what they loved.

So I’ve been compelled lately to reevaluate my situation, to make a ten-year plan, to focus my work and interests that swim out there randomly from a desire to study photography to an obsession with bright fingernail polish and all of the fluffy animals and wildflowers and music in between.

I can’t narrow it down and I just can’t give any of it up to create more space for the laundry or at least brushing my teeth.

Yet I can’t shake the feeling of being under some sort of pressure to accomplish something beyond squeezing kittens, canning vegetables, singing out loud and then telling someone about it.

And when I go to bed at night sometimes that little voice speaks to me quietly and asks me “What are you doing girl? Prepare for tomorrow. Tomorrow is coming. What are you going to do?”

I don’t know anything except to whisper back to her “Tomorrow is not certain.”

And it’s that thought that keeps me awake, that keeps me working, keeps me climbing those buttes, writing songs, making french toast for my husband on Sunday mornings and wishing for more hours in the day.

It’s that quite voice that pushes me to live for today, whatever that day has on the agenda.

And so I suppose I can’t be so hard on myself if that day requires sitting for hours in front of the computer screen, as long as what I am doing is backed in passion, I suppose I can find comfort in the fact that I am being true to myself.

Flannel shirts and wild plum blossoms

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When I grow up I want to be the kind of woman who lets her hair grow long and wild and silver. When I’m grown I hope I remember to keep my flannel shirts draped over chairs, hanging in the entryway and sitting on the seat of the pickup where they are ready and waiting for me to pull them on and take off somewhere, the scent of horse hair on the well-worn sleeve.

When I grow up I want to remember every spring with the smell of the first buds blooming on the wild plum trees what this season means to me. When I grow up I pray I don’t forget to follow that smell down into the draws where the air falls cooler the closer you get to the creek, where the wind is calm.

When I grow up I hope I don’t find I have become offended by a bit of mud  tracked from my boots onto the kitchen floor. I hope I keep the windows open on the best summer evenings with no regard for the air conditioning or the dust…because a woman can only be so concerned with messes that can be cleaned another day, especially when she needs to get the crocuses in some water.

When I am older and my memory is filled to the brim, I hope that the smell of damp hay will still remind me of feeding cows with my father on the first warm day of spring when the sun had warmed the snow enough to cause small rivers to run on our once frozen trail. I hope it reminds me how alive I felt wading in that stream while my dad rolled out the bale and I tested the limits of the rubber on my boots.

And when my hair turns silver I hope I remember that my favorite colors are the colors of the seasons changing from brown to white to green to gold and back again. I pray I never curse the rain, that I don’t forget the rain is my favorite color of them all.

Yes, when I am an old woman and my knees don’t bend the way they need to bend to get me on the back of a horse, I hope I am still able to bury my face in her mane, to run my hands across her back and lean on her body while I remember the way my spirits lifted as she carried me and my worries away to the hilltops.

I hope I recall how the first ride of spring made my legs stiff, my back creak and my backside sore, even as a young woman with muscles and tall boots.

Yes, boots! When I am an old woman I hope I will wear my red wedding boots every once in a while and recall how I stood alone in them out in the cow pasture at 22-years-old waiting for the horse-drawn wagon to come over the hill and take me to the oak tree where my friends and family gathered and the man I loved was waiting to marry me.

My red boots will remind me, so in all of the shuffle and lost things that become our lives, I hope I remember to save them.

And as I watch the lines form on my husband’s face, little wrinkles around his eyes from work and worry and laughter, I hope I remember to say something funny, to tease him a bit, so I might be reminded again how he got the most important ones…the ones that run the deepest.

Yes, when I am old and my hair is silver and long and wild, I hope I feel it was all worth it.

But more than anything I hope that those things that made me– the dirt under my fingernails; mud on my boots; a good man’s laughter; the strong back of a horse; the rain that falls on the north buttes and the scent of summer rolled up in a hay bale at the end of a long winter–I hope they remain here on this place so that another spirit living along this pink road might one day find herself in flannel shirts and wild plum blossoms.

Search: Delinquent Pug Therapy/Rehabilitation Program

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10

Yesterday I awoke at 6 am from my usual spot nestled underneath a stack of pillows to the sounds of cursing, heavy sighing, a constant stream of “Whhhyyy?! Whhhyyy?” and other sounds of disbelief coming from the entryway of our little house, about thirty feet away from where I was dreaming about falling out of airplanes.

“Are you ok?” I whimpered, poking my head out from under the covers, holding my breath for a reply from my dearly beloved. “What is going on?”

To which dearly beloved replied with a stream of curse word combinations that I am quite sure had never been used together up until that morning.

“#@$%$, #$#@@!, #$#@! Whhhyy?! WWhhhyy? %*#&@!”

Well, 6 am is pretty damn early and as I stretched out and rolled over underneath the covers I took a quick inventory of the situation, trying to decide if it would be worth sacrificing the last half-hour I was allowed in blissful sleep to get my butt out of bed and check on the poor man I promised to have and hold until death due us part.

Surely he wasn’t dying.  But after husband got it together enough to utter the answer to the sounds of misery coming from his body as he attempted to lace up his boots for a work day, I decided that perhaps the best choice for the planet would be to pull those pillows back over my head…maybe just until I heard his pickup door slam and pull out of the drive.

Maybe forever.

Because I might need a while to figure out the question I am going to pose for you today. I have been contemplating it for a good full day and haven’t come up with the answer yet.

I am not sure I ever will.

But if I can find an answer, a solution, a good therapist, or even a decent excuse, it might mean that the pug will be allowed to live to see another day.

And so I ask you, what turns a (relatively) good dog bad?

What switch flips in the mind of a perfectly innocent animal that converts a lazy, grunting, face-licking pet into an all out delinquent?

What traumatizing experience knocks the already crooked halo off of the dog’s head to make way for the devil horns that have sprouted between his floppy ears?

I can’t pin-point the event that turned my lovable clown dog into a deviant werwolf, but I think yesterday morning made it official: he’s acting out.

I should have seen this coming, I should have sent him to the rehabilitation center before it came to this, but I thought I could handle it. I thought I could keep him from running away to the oil location behind our house. Or if I couldn’t keep him home, at least I could understand that a dog follows his nose, and you can’t blame him if his nose smelled beef jerky and Gatorade.  But I could have saved myself dozens of trips to retrieve him if only I would have called the pet therapist when he first packed his bag and ditched us.

But no. I had a solution. More food, comfortable kennel lockdown and long walks at night.

I love my dog. Surly he would behave and stick around on this program.

But I’m beginning to think he doesn’t love us in the same way…

 

Oh, I know we all have our quirks. We all make mistakes. And although I have not quite forgiven his runaway antics, I have full intentions of reconciliation after he has decided to discontinue the reckless and disrespectful behavior he has recently displayed.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

And neither has his affinity for digging in the garbage when my back is turned, shitting on my floor at 4 am after his one meek attempt at waking us has failed, consuming and digesting my pens and the heel of my favorite black pumps, and jumping  on the forbidden couch and hiding under husband’s favorite blanket as soon as he leaves the room.

The pug. He’s slippery and slimy and knows exactly how to use that look (you know, the one that Puss N Boots gives on Shrek?) to his advantage. Only the pug’s look is even more pathetic, because, well, he only has one eye.

But I am working on forgiving him because he’s part of the family.  He’s pretty much good for nothing, but I admit, he makes us laugh.

But nobody was laughing yesterday morning when he committed the most heinous, disrespectful, criminal act of his short (and I fear,  nearly complete) life.

Nobody was laughing when husband got showered and dressed for the day, combed his hair, filled up his coffee thermos, pulled on his nice new socks and stepped right into a sopping wet puddle that had somehow formed on the inside of his work boot.

“WWWHHHATTT THEE HELLLL?!!!” (I think that’s the part that woke me up from my terrifying skydiving dream…right before I hit the ground…)

And after much pacing and more cursing and arm waving, husband assessed the situation and the stale odor that had wafted its way up to his nostrils.

He came to only one conclusion.

Nope, no one was laughing...except this guy...

And now again, for my question: What would posses a pug to piss in the boot of the one man on the planet who could destroy him, make his life miserable, keep him off the couch indefinitely and ensure that he spends the rest of his days in that dreadful Santa suit and trapper hat?

Are you ready for a long and tortured future in this outfit pug? I don't think you are...

And most importantly, how can a wife, a wife who had the brilliant idea of bringing a pug puppy home to the family in the first place, the same wife who has been similarly tortured by her pet throughout the years, find a way to adequately channel her anger while stifling her hysterical laughter at the despair and contempt laced with curse words flying out of her husband’s mouth?

I mean, I will eventually have to come out from under those pillows and deal with the situation…

But you have to admit, that $#!t’s funny…

Anyone know of any pug rehabilitation centers?

Inside Old Houses

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We live on gravel roads that stretch like ribbons along pasture land dotted with black cattle and a patchwork quilt of grasses and crops. As we kick up dust beneath our pickup tires heading out to a chore or to meet up with a neighbor, we take for granted how these roads were built. Why there are here in the first place.

These days we are in a rush aren’t we? Aren’t we headed somewhere on a deadline?  So we drive faster than we should on these roads beat up from years of wear by our rubber tires, and now, by the new-found rush of a booming industry.

I remember a time when these roads were quiet. It was where my cousins and I could skip like characters from “The Wizard of Oz” down the middle of the pink road without a care in the world. The only vehicle that was certain to meet us was carrying our great uncle driving with his windows down, checking fences and out for coffee with the neighbors; or my mother  looking to borrow some sugar. If we were lucky it would be the Schwann’s Man hauling the promise of orange push-up pops in the back of his truck and we would put the game on time-out and sit on the front porch trying to get to the bottom of the treat before it melted and dripped down our fingers.

We didn’t know that  there would ever be anything here at the end of this road besides imagination and our grandmother’s cookies. We didn’t know that anything but our  boots and agriculture would kick up dust on the road.

I spent Friday afternoon with a reporter from the cities. He came to visit me on the ranch to talk about the landscape, ranch life, my music and what’s happening here in the booming oil field we have in Western North Dakota. I agreed to have the conversation and then gave him the requested directions he needed to find me.

  • Head east out-of-town until you hit the school.
  • Turn right and follow the pavement.
  • Cross a cattle guard, but only one. If you hit the second  you’ve gone too far.
  • Turn left on the red scoria road until you see the small red barn.

Because we’re in the middle of all of this activity, all of this national press, the #3 oil-producing state in the nation, but we are not on the GPS.

I am not sure if it was my very rural directions or the wrong number provided for the county road, but my reporter friend didn’t quite make it to me, so he found the top of a hill (because we don’t have cell service either) and called.

I got in my pickup and found him on the pink road where I used to pretend I was Dorothy, waiting with his hazard lights on for me to show up and tell him what I do, what I think and what it means to me to live here right now.

What I do is ride horses and chase the pug and take pictures and sing and tell stories.

What I think is that every day we work  to live a good and true life as we build a house on my family’s land that once was the middle of  nowhere and has now suddenly become the middle of something that is so much bigger than the sound of Pops’ tractor coming over the hill.

What it means?

The truth is I haven’t put my thumb on the black or the white, because between the past and the future there are so many colors here.

So I sent him on his way with a story and a new-found love for the pug and grabbed my camera to follow that pink road to meet my neighbor, a friend who is absolutely intrigued by the idea of what this place was in another time. We had plans to take our country roads and explore the little pieces left behind by the generations that came before us. My friend knows where every buried treasure lies. Her eyes are open to it, our history and tumbling down memories that scatter across our landscape in the form of old houses and churches and schools.

My friend moved to this area from Montana with her husband almost two years ago, but you would never know she is new to the place. Ask her about the stone house across from her approach or the old Sandstone school and she will tell you a story about it. She will tell you who built the house and what he did for a living, who taught in the school and where you can find photos of the students. My roots are planted here and I’m sure I have heard bits and pieces of these stories as I grew up, but hearing her tell about the families who homesteaded near her new home, watching her put the pieces together as she peers inside the windows of old houses, seeing her wonder and excitement as she unearths an old book from an abandoned house or admires the green paint on an antique table, makes me wonder too.

It makes me wonder what memories were held in the hearts of those prairie people who have long ago returned to the earth. What would they think if they saw us driving down this road in our fancy cars to get to houses for two that quadruple the size of where they raised 12 children?

How far away I feel from that life some days…

And then I talk with my friend I am reminded that our goals were the same.

To make a living, to raise our families. To have a good life.

Just as the family that inhabited that old house with the broken windows and remnants of a life I will never lead, we are existing in a changing landscape where trees grow and fall, baby calves are born and sold, ground is tilled for crops and minds are inventing ways to make the living easier.

Inside those old houses they ate, they prayed, they laughed and worried, just as we do in our own homes with too many television screens and not enough vegetables.

So what does this mean?

The washed out fences and boarded up school-house doors remind us, like the newly paved roads and constant wind that blows across our prairie, tangling our hair and knocking on our windows, that this place, this land, is not ours solely and rightfully and individually. One day we will abandon these houses in decision or death and there will be a new generations searching these roads for our story.

So we should tell it now, honest and true and leave to them what they will need.

If I weren’t these things…

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I sit on the love seat in the back room of my parent’s house. It’s 9:30 on a Wednesday evening. I’ve finished my slice of pizza. My mother brought it home from town. I’ve had my glass of wine and we’ve had our visit about the weather and the traffic and the pizza and the fact that my little sister is back home tonight on her pursuit for a job here.

My little sister might be moving back home.

I close my eyes at the thought as her shoulder touches my shoulder. This love seat is small, so my other shoulder is not free either. It’s smashed up against my husband’s leg as he leans back, sprawled out on the arm of this overstuffed piece of furniture.

The three of us, we are a sandwich, and I am the lettuce, the cheese, the pickle, mayo and turkey. They are the bread and we are everything you need for a good bite.

We close our eyes and listen to Pops blow the air from his lungs through the harmonica he wears around his neck. We hear a lonesome sound, one that is familiar and sad and haunting and beautiful and home. We lean in closer…to one another. To him.

We taste his words…

I live back in the woods you see 
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me...

We don’t say it, but it seems those words might have been written for this man sitting in front of us, his hair more silver than it was yesterday, his fingers callused, his voice ringing with those pieces of gravel that dug their way in from years of playing songs like this in bar rooms.

I’ve got a shotgun a rifle 
and a four wheel drive…

It’s quiet tonight. The dogs are asleep and the trucks have taken a different route or maybe they finally called it quits for the day.

I know the stars are out.

And a country boy can survive 
Country folks can survive…

In the kitchen the warm scent of brownies my mother is frosting fresh from the oven drifts back to us smooshed together, the sandwich, on the love seat. I can’t see her from my position as the lettuce, the cheese, the pickle and mayo and turkey, but I know my mother is sipping wine and running her long fingers along the pages of a new magazine.

We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine…


Everything I ever knew for certain is filling my lungs and my ears, touching my shoulders and swaying along to all of the things I am on the inside.

And a country boy can survive


I am his lungs and heart and pieces of his gravely voice.

I am her fingers and worries and holidays.

I am his goodnights and kisses. His battles and wishes.

I am her blood, her memories…her shoulder.

Country folks can survive…

We breathe in the air of this house, the air Pops uses to push through the next verse, and I think that if I were not these things,  I might not exist at all…

*Lyrics from “A Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank Williams Jr. 

Falling out of the sky…

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So you might have noticed there hasn’t been much news from the ranch lately and I have some explaining to do. See, in the last week the world has kept turning out here, the steers have been grazing, the trees have been budding, the crocuses have been blooming and the dogs have been running away…and so have we. All the way to South Padre Island to meet up with some of my favorite people on the planet.

Sometimes after months of dangling from ladders, chasing the damn dogs, climbing around in the hills, cooking casseroles, trudging through the mud in muck boots and  waiting for spring you just have to throw your hands in the air and go find a place where summer never leaves.

So we closed up the house and pointed our car toward the plane that would take us to South Padre Island, TX. A place where the ocean crashes on white sand,  the air is just the right type of damp, leaving my hair in that scary place between chia pet and Bride of Frankenstein, and our friends were waiting for us with open arms and giant glasses full of tequila.

I have been planning this trip for months, looking forward to the warm sunshine and an ocean swim, but mostly anxious to wrap my arms around this group of friends who squeezed their way into my heart six years ago with their crazy sense of humor, open-minds, open arms, and just the right amount of grace and intelligence mixed in with a willingness to look and act absolutely ridiculous for the sake of a good belly laugh.

The truth is, I could go anywhere with these people, we could do anything, from scaling the tallest mountains to grinding out paperwork in a cubicle, and we have always have fun…as long as someone has the sense to provide appropriate hats.

And on this agenda we would need them because our days were filled with things like ocean swimming,


cocktail sipping,


pool floating, hot tub soaking, fishing for our supper,

sunset sailing, beach walking…


lawn chair lounging,

 and skydiving.


Yup. You heard me.

Sky. Dive. Ing.

This landlocked woman from the prairie who gets woozy from looking over the edge of an anthill, who just a week ago was hyperventilating about her husband’s location on the top of a ladder signed up for an activity that sent me flinging my body out of a questionable airplane and plummeting to my inevitable death at 150 miles per hour strapped to a laid back man with bad-ass tattoos and even more bad-ass dreadlocks.

I don’t know what was going through my mind when I responded “Yes, Yes, Yes!” to my friend’s email request for company as he attempted this death-defying activity. I am not sure what compelled me to make the decision to be his companion on this adventure except I couldn’t think of anyone else I would rather jump out of an airplane with. This friend, he’s always made me feel like I could do anything. And I believe him.

So we greeted one another with hugs and tequila and made our plan to face death.

Friday at noon.

It only took a nod of my head to get husband on board with the idea. Skydiving? Why the hell not?

And so we were off. I contemplated my outfit carefully that morning, wondering what would look best on me as a flattened corpse on the beaches of the island. Wondering what would be less appetizing to the sharks if I were to land in the ocean. I chose a pair of blue shorts and an unassuming black tank top. A classic and easy look for someone looking death in the face, and all of the paperwork that goes with it.

It turns out though, that when you are harnessed up and huddled at the back of an airplane that reminds you of a really loud VW bus, the last thing you are thinking about is your wardrobe.

No. As you stare into the face of the adventurous friend who got you into this predicament just moments before he launches his body out of the buzzing and bouncing aircraft, you wonder if maybe you should have peed first.

And as the VW plane reaches the inevitable 11,000 feet, you think about your husband who just moments before you was sent spirling through the air. You think how pissed you will be if he became a sand pancake…you wonder who will unclog the drain and finish fixing the deck…

then you think of how pissed his momma will be when you explain to her whose idea this was…

Your mind snaps back to your immediate situation when your instructor pulls you toward his lap, the plane bouncing well above the fluffy clouds. You notice that you can see the curvature of the earth. You think you might be able to see the ranch from here. You wonder if you’ve gone crazy. You remember that you belong down there, on the prairie, with the animals that graze the grass, the ones who don’t swim or fly or launch themselves out of the sky.

As your traveling companion latches up and secures your body to his own, connecting the two of you together by only a few, in your opinion, inadequate straps and hooks, the thought enters your mind that this man’s instructions to arch your back and lift your arms could be the last voice you will ever hear. Then you ask him if maybe you should have had dinner or coffee first…you know, to get to know one another…

But it’s too late, he laughs as the door of the plane flies open and a rush of air hits you like a slap across the face. He feels your body tense up and tremble as you watch your most adventurous and lovely friend swing his legs over the side of the plane and then drop out of sight.

You wonder if you’ll ever see him again.

You wonder if you ever told him that you liked his new haircut.

You hope he peed before he got in the plane.

You wish again, that you would have done the same…

Then suddenly the man who strapped himself to you is moving toward that very same door and you discover you are moving too. You think, “Wait, I don’t even know your last name!” but before you can ask what it is, or what his tattoos mean, or what his father does for a living, where he’s from, what is his favorite food, animal, plant, color, he is sitting in the doorway of the plane at 11,000 fricking feet above the tiny strip of island surrounded by ocean and really tall, sharp buildings and he is telling you to put your left leg out there on the ledge. And because you’re strapped to this man and your life is literally in his hands dangling out of an airplane you are compelled to listen. The air coming into the open door of the plane is so strong that you have to help your leg move with your hand.

You think about this for a second, about how the universe might be telling you something, that maybe, maybe…may…

And then…

I supposed you guessed the outcome, that I survived and so did my two companions. I have never been so happy to feel the sand between my toes, to hear the cheers of my best friends in the world screaming my name, to see the sparkling ocean and finally catch my damn breath already.

And I’ve never been in love with another man, but I think I might now be in love with this guy, the dreadlocked, tattooed, hero from South Padre Island that nearly killed me and saved my life all in the matter of ten minutes.

When they asked me about my favorite part of jumping out of a plane, I am pretty sure I said “when it was over.”

And then I breathed “I’m alive!” and ran into the arms of my friends, the friends who make me feel more alive in their presence, more capable, more free and loved and hilarious and beautiful than I will ever feel jumping from a plane.

But  I wouldn’t have anyone else there waiting for my crazy ass to touch down. And for them I would jump out of a plane, climb a cactus, sing in an opera, climb Mt. Everest, run a marathon, swim with the sharks, dance like Lady Gaga, backflip off a cliff, and grow wings and fly…because they make me believe it’s possible.

Peace and love from the solid ground of the ranch!

*All photos from Skydive South Padre Island. Thanks for the adventure guys! And thanks for bringing us safely to earth!

The boy on the hill…

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Most Sundays we get together with mom and pops for dinner. After a week of work and crazy schedules followed by a weekend of chores and projects or travel, one of us decides that someone should cook a decent meal, pour some wine in a glass and make us all sit down.

I admit, with the house and my weird schedule, it has been momma making the meals lately.

But it’s one of the things I think we both look forward to, and now that the sun stays out a little longer and there’s no snow in sight, I pull on my shoes, whistle for the dogs and follow the winding creek to my parent’s house over three big hills, nestled in the oak groves. Husband, usually busy putting in the last nail for the day, meets me over there in his pickup and soon we’re settled the kind of easy talk that comes only with the people you’re closest to.

We complement my mother’s cooking, tease her about her bottomless wine supply, talk about work and weather and my stupid dogs. Usually I whip out a story that requires use of an accent and pops laughs and squeezes his eyes tight as he throws his head back. It’s my favorite look on him for so many reasons…

But my favorite is when we start talking memories. It usually always comes to this, a story about my father’s childhood in the very spot we’re building a house. A revelation about how my mom was forced to run track by her cheerleading coach, so she did it…in ballet slippers. Husband’s confessions about the punishment dealt out after fighting with his brother that included holding hands with him on the couch for as long as his father saw fit.

There’s something about being a room with people who you know the best in this world, people who know you in the same way, and still being able to learn something about them. And it doesn’t matter if we’ve heard the same story a few times, there is always something to add, a question to ask that reveals more character, more memory, sheds a different light on this person.

Last night pops shared a story about his childhood that I’m sure I’ve heard before, possibly dozens of times. But it doesn’t matter, I could hear it a thousand times and be transported.

I want to exist in this story, in this ten minute vignette of my father at four years old that somehow sums up everything he became here on this landscape as a child, growing into a man with white hair and a wife who he transplanted from city sidewalks and dance studios to a house at the end of a dirt road in the coulee with party-line phones and a bull snake in the shed.

I love the way he tells it, sitting at the end of the table, plate pushed forward, arms folded, coffee brewing for dessert. He looks to the ceiling as if up there he might catch a glimpse of that little boy, four-years-old with curly black hair riding bareback on a paint pony alongside his father. It’s fall or summer, he can’t remember. But I imagine the leaves were just starting to turn as the pair trotted out of the barnyard, the little boy on his father’s trail moving east toward the reservation where the cattle graze in the summer.


He’s not sure why his father took him along for an almost seven-mile-one-way cross-country trip. At four-years-old, he thinks now that it might have been a little extreme for such a youngster. But ask him then and it was all he wanted to do. Leave him behind? He would have tried to follow anyway.

The pastures out east, even today with an increase in activity, are some of the most isolated and untouched places out here. The rolling buttes rise and fall for miles between fences into creek bottoms with black mud and cattails, creeks that are difficult to cross with a horse, even in the late summer. The oak groves, bordered by thorny bull berry brush and thistle, begin to blend into one another and look the same. I’ve seen them play tricks on even the most familiar cowboy, getting him mixed up on what draw he’s in or where he is when he emerges from ducking and cutting through the narrow cattle trails along the banks.

So there he was, a little boy, clinging tight to that pony as it jumped over the creek and raced up the side hills to keep up with the big horse. And it was at the top of one of those rocky hills that his father told him to stay and wait.

“Don’t move,” his father said as he made plans to check the creek bottoms, to find cows that have been milling in there to stay cool and get away from the flies. “I will come back and get you.”

So on top of that hill sat my father on his pony. He shakes his head now and laughs as he tells it and we take a sip of our coffee, shift in our seats and imagine him as a little boy, wind flopping his hat and moving fluffy clouds that made shadows on the buttes.


He can’t remember if he was scared or nervous now. He searches for a recollection of that feeling in his coffee cup and then rests his chin on his fist. All he can remember is that he was told not to move and so he didn’t. He didn’t move as he scanned the hills and squinted into the oak trees for any sign that his father might be on his way back to him.

And while he was peering into the horizon, holding his breath and the reigns of his pony, someone did come over that hill. But it wasn’t his father in his saddle and cowboy hat, but a Native American girl with long black hair and legs dangling on each side of her bare backed horse under the late summer sky.

“Can you imagine what she thought,” my father chuckles at the memory of this girl, who he recalls was a teenager, but was probably only about ten or eleven years old, so young herself. “Here she found this little boy on a pony all by himself out there on the hill.”

He goes on then to tell us the part of the story we remember from last time it was told here at this kitchen table. He recalls how she asked him if he was ok and if he was lost. He told her that he wasn’t supposed to leave this spot. That his dad was coming back for him.

My father doesn’t remember many of the details of conversation, what she looked like, what they said, but he remembers she stayed with him, she stayed with that little boy with curly hair and a hat flopping in the prairie wind, on that hilltop, more than likely holding her breath and scanning the horizon for any sign of a cowboy coming back.

Now he pulls at his napkin and says though he doesn’t remember how long she sat with him, but when you’re four years old ten minutes can seem like hours. And I can relate, remembering my own time spent on hilltops waiting for this father of mine to come back for me. It could have been hours. It could have been minutes. But she stayed until that little boy had an escort through the valleys and over the creeks, back west to the barnyard and to his momma and big sister waiting with canned meat and biscuits and for a report of the day’s events.
And so he told it to his mother, the story about the girl. And for years to come around their dinner table this would be one of their family’s stories, one of the memories they would share over Sunday meals about a little boy who was my father who had found a girlfriend out east in the hilltop.
And as my father protested, they would throw back their heads and close their eyes and laugh…

The dangerous life of a Handyman’s wife…

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So we’re in the middle of finishing that house that came down the road to our little valley at the end of December. And by finishing, I mean, we’re the ones responsible for the little things…like a floor, doors, steps, a master bedroom/bathroom and, well, a ceiling…pretty much all the basics that one might need to actually LIVE in a house.

No big deal right? I mean, I should have known when I said “I do” to a man who was raised with a father who had a collection of lawnmowers/washers and dryers/stoves/boats/kitchen sinks in his back yard in case he needed a part for the one that was currently in use in the house.

I should have known when my own washing machine went out that the options were not “get a new one,” but “call dad and see if he has any extra motors laying around.”

He did.

Four of them.

And I think three of them might still be in the basement.

"You know, in case we need 'em"

 Anyway, that’s how things are around here. If you want something done and still want to be able to afford to buy Cheerios for breakfast, we do it ourselves.I’ve come to terms with this concept after completing a full out, strip down, shag carpet, hot-tub in the living room remodel that brought a 1974 Brady Bunch house up to the times of hardwood flooring and, well, no hot tubs in the living room. Yup, 200 hours of staining and varnishing, three hundred less brain cells and one head stuck in a ladder later, I was convinced.

I am the wife of a handyman. 

And this is our project...forever...

So I went into it with a combination of confidence and dread. I mean, I knew my love in a tool belt (and oh how I love him in a tool belt) could get us living in a beautiful home designed by our two brains. I knew that under his direction I would hand him tools, saw a few boards, make lumber-yard runs, choose the paint colors, try to avoid my thumbs with the hammer, deliver sandwiches and beer and keep the music on the iPod flowing with motivational tunes. I had that covered. There are some things I can handle.

And really, it has been going good so far. If you ask my brave and fearlessly confident husband, he’s got this under control. Take out the minor incident where my three-year-old niece came to visit, decided she had to try out our new potty and plopped a little poopie in our unplumbed bathroom, and I’d say it’s been down right Bob Vila-esque around here.

Don't worry, we're still friends...

So why have I spent that last month fighting off night terrors you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya. Some genius decided to build a house with 20 foot ceilings. And that genius, knowing full well who would be praying to Jesus, Mary and Joseph while trembling on an 8 foot ladder on top of 10 foot scaffolding with her arms above her head, fears heights the same way most people fear plummeting to a bone-crushing, back-breaking, neck-wrenching, bloody, mangled death.

Yup.

shit

That’s what I pictured each and every time I walked across that homemade scaffolding, boards creaking and bending, the sound of someone hyperventilating in my attempt to bring a nail-gun (the one I am always sure is going to go off randomly, shooting a 2 inch nail through the top of my foot without warning) to my dearly beloved who somehow thinks positioning his ladder on the tippy-toe edge of the ledge, standing at the very top rung and then leaning out into the abyss of death that is one day going to be our living room, is an acceptable risk to take just to ensure that a board is secure.

I scream “screw the board, save yourselves,” fling the nail gun and run to the corner of the house, the corner far away from any ledge and plummeting death.

It’s ridiculous, I’m aware. And I feel sorry for husband who is just trying to make our vision for a beautiful cedar ceiling a reality. I feel sorry for him because I come by it naturally. It’s a hereditary condition spawned from my roots of prairie people who passed up the terrifying mountains to come to live in houses with one floor, low ceilings and a basement.

One of the first Veeder ranch dwellings. You see where I'm coming from?

I feel sorry for him because the only help he’s had at his disposal for this sky-scaping, death-defying, circus-act of a job is the two prairie people with the worst case of vertigo in the family.

Yours truly, and her father.

Yup. Pops has it bad too, and frankly, I blame him for all of these undesirable qualities I’ve inherited. The big nose, the fuzzy hair, the tendency to ramble AND the crippling fear of high places. All him.

I might just blame my unhealthy obsession with four legged creatures on him too...

But the difference between Pops and me is this. I avoid, complain, sob, tremble, look away and repeatedly tell my significant other to “be careful, watch where you step, hold on, hold on, don’t lean…I’ve got the ladder…shit…don’t fall…don’t fall…don’t fall…you’re killing me…”

But Pops, he just sucks it up, wipes the sweat that forms uncontrollably on his brow, suffers in silence as his son in law dangles with one arm from the rafters while he leans over the ledge, and then goes home to have vivid nightmares about people falling off skyscrapers.

Which brings me to last weekend where, after weeks of this type of torture, the end of this dreaded ceiling project was in sight. I was feeling pretty good about the fact that we had managed to nail approximately thirty -thousand boards to the rafters without anyone losing a limb, shooting an eyeball with the nail gun, cutting a finger off, or, you know, plummeting to a gruesome death.

But we weren’t out of the woods yet. Nope. We still had one giant task that included raising and nailing a 15 foot beam to the very, tippy-top, peak of our the ceiling of our new home. This was to complete the job, make it look finished, give us a place to hang our chandelier and get us moving on to the next task that required shorter ladders.

So I suggested calling the National Guard.

Husband took the phone from my hand and told me to go find my pops.

I cried.

And then did what I was told, because in the end practicality always wins over drama in my life.

Although you would never guess it by the looks of this outfit...but that was in my pre-husband era...

I found Pops in the shop, on solid ground, working on his beloved 4-wheeler. He followed me to the house to find husband waiting for us on the damned, creaky scaffolding equipped with two ladders and a nail gun.

The task? Hold the beam up to the top of the 20 foot ceiling while husband climbs and dangles and runs and jumps and back flips to get the damn thing to hold.

I trembled and felt a little of that morning’s eggs hit my throat. I held my breath and as Pops held the beam on one ladder I stayed on the scaffolding holding a 10 foot 2×4 against the middle part of the beam.

And there we stood, the two of us conjuring up new nightmares and worst-case scenarios as my Bob Villa Ninja went from one near death position to the next. Pops told me not to watch as husband stretched his ladder across the stairway and stood with nothing but a thin board between him and a 15 foot fall.

So I didn’t watch. And neither did Pops.

We held it together, the two of us. We only hollered “be careful up there!” and “don’t fall!” like fifty-five times during the course of fifteen minutes (although I would have been more comfortable with a number in the hundreds.) And we thought we were out of the woods, everybody’s head in tact, when husband climbed down from the ladder and put his hands on his hips.

“Looks good,” he said.

“YES! IT DOES. GOOD WORK,” shrieked Pops and I.

“I just need to nail one more spot,” husband said scratching his head. “I wonder how the hell I’m going to get to it?”

We followed his eyes to where they rested on a piece of the beam that towered past the edge of the scaffolding, too high for a regular ladder to reach. 20 feet up there, un-reachable unless you had wings.

Pops used our best material to try and convince Husband that a nail in that particular location was not necessary. We suggested putting more nails in other places to make up for it. But Ninja Bob Villa wouldn’t have it and before we knew it he had his ladder on the ledge of the scaffolding, his feet on the top rung, his back bent at a 90 degree angle out over the stair case with a nail gun in his hand reaching for the ceiling.

And it seems we lost it.

I whimpered and squeezed back the tears as I grabbed the ladder. And while I was saying fifty prayers to Jesus, Pops threw down his tools and grabbed on to his son-in-law’s belt buckle as my husband leaned further back over the abyss.

“Son, if you fall it would be sure death,” my Pops declared.

“And if either of you tell anyone that I grabbed your belt, I’ll kill you both…”

Well, I guess we all have to die someday…If you need me I’ll be around here somewhere…hiding from Pops.

From the top of the hill…

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Sometimes, when the day is coming to a slow close and my head is spinning with worry and lists, schedules and a pile of things that must wait until tomorrow and the dishes from a dinner of meat and potatoes sits waiting to be taken care of on the table, I slip on my boots and head out the door.

I’m usually not gone long, and husband has grown accustomed to this behavior, understanding it’s not a storm out, or a give up, or a frustrated stomp, but a ritual that his wife needs to put a flush in her cheeks and make sure she’s still alive out here where the trucks kick up dust on the pink road and the barn cats quietly wait in the rafters of the old buildings for a mouse to scatter by.

I tell him I need to go walking and he knows which trail I’ll take, down through the barnyard, past the water tank and up the face of the gumbo hill, the one that lets you look back at the house where the kitchen light glows, the one that gives you the perfect view of the barn’s silhouette tall and dark against a sky that is putting on its last show of the night as it runs out of light.

It’s a ritual that needs timing, because that sun, once it decides it’s out, goes quickly to the other side of the world. My pace is not meandering but diligent. I need to get to the top of that hill. I need to find the horses before the last of the light cools down the air  sends me back to the house to tend to the dishes and slip under the covers until we meet again in the morning.

So I time it, and sometimes, if there’s enough light I head  a little further east to check out how the light hits the buttes in my favorite pasture making the hills look gold and purple and so far away. Sometimes I just keep walking until dark. And sometimes the evening finds me sitting on a rock or pacing in the middle of the ancient teepee rings that still leave their mark on the flat  spot on the hill. I like to stand there and imagine a world with no buildings and no lights on the horizon. I examine the fire ring, close my eyes and think about sleeping under the leather of a teepee, covered in the skins of the animals, under a sky that promised rain and wind and snow and a sunrise every morning.

The same sky that promises me these things, but it cannot promise anything else.

I think of these people, the ones who arranged these rocks, hunted these coulees, and watched the horizons and I am humbled by the mystery of the ticking thing we call time.

And I wonder what they called it.

Because I take to those hills and look back at my home and the sections of our fences that have been washed away by the melting snow, the barn that is in desperate need of a new roof, a house that has stood for fifty-plus years on a foundation that crumbles  and I am reminded that time takes its toll on this land the same way it puts lines around the corners of my eyes… and there is not one thing man can make to stop it.

These thoughts, this understanding, is not what you would call comforting or nostalgic, but it is a fact. A fact that I have come accustomed to when I climb those hills. A fact that builds roads and oil wells, new houses and fences and bigger power lines stretching across a landscape I still like to consider wild.

I climb to the hilltop to see how things have changed, to catch the last of the day’s sun, and I am reminded that the progress we seek is the same progress the wild world is after as well, but the change is steady and slow. Trees grow, the creek keeps flowing and eroding its banks, the weight of the snow sends hills crumbling…flowers bloom, wither and die and just as the earth is sure all is steady, in comes a storm, a twister, a high wind or a bolt of lightening to knock down some trees, create new ravines and change things a bit.

I climb to that hill and look back at that farmstead and remember those kids we used to be, running through the haystacks and searching the barn for lost kittens. I climb to that hill and I remember my grandmother in her shorts and tank top, exposing her brown skin while she worked in the garden. I remember my first ride on a horse by myself, getting bucked off near the old shop, hunting for Easter eggs with the neighbor girls in the gumbo hills behind my grandmother’s house, branding cattle in the round pen.

From the top of the hill I could still be ten-years-old and my grandmother could be digging up potatoes. From the top of the hill my cousins could be hiding in the hay bales and my father could be waiting on the side of the barn to jump out and scare them, sending them running and laughing and screaming. From the top of the hill the neighbor girls could be pulling up in their dad’s pickup, dressed in pastels and rain boots, ready to hunt for eggs. From the top of the hill you don’t notice all of the work that needs to be done on the fences, the roof of the house, the crumbling foundation.

From the top of the hill that light in the kitchen is still glowing the same color it was when I would come in from an evening chasing cattle with my father or catching frogs with my cousins to a house filled with the smell of my grandmother’s cooking.

From the top of the hill the only thing certain to change is the sky…

and everything else is forever.