Tag Archives: writing

Three hundred and fifty-some days a year…

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We are honing in pretty close to a new year and ringing it in by, you know, bringing in a new house. It seems to be a pattern for us, making big changes at the end of the year. Three years ago we closed on our first home and spent the next two years renovating it during any spare time we were granted. Last year, on December 30th to be exact, we signed it away, every brick, board and painstakingly varnished door and have spent the next three hundred and fifty-some days between then and now planning how we might look in our new house.

It’s funny how quickly three hundred and fifty-some days go by when you spend it with your eye on the future while still trying to be all the things you need and want to be in the present.

And in those days, in those moments, we have been many things: cooks, cowboys, fly-swatters, lawn-mowers, photographers, poets, travelers, an uncle and an aunt, friends and big mistake-makers.

We have been dreamers and planners, singers and wanderers, sun bathers and bundled up for the cold.

On the weekends we were lazy, party-goers or two people making pancakes together in the kitchen as the light streamed through the window. And sometimes we were on a mission, to tear something old down, to clean something up, to pull weeds or cut the grass…living and busting our asses in the present for a more cleaned up tomorrow.

And sometimes our only mission was one another.

The hair on our head grew, some turned gray. Our favorite jeans turned into work pants, things were lost and never found and then, to our surprise, things that we thought were gone for good were recovered.

We’ve had conversations, countless conversations, about family and life and where we might be two years, ten years, fifty years from now. We have remembered together where we once were and laughed at how different things can be in just a short three hundred and fifty some days.

We have counted our blessings.

Yes, we have had some time to prepare for this change that is right around the corner, for a move, for the plan we had all along. Three hundred and fifty-some days to build new walls and roads and move some dirt and snow and rocks and trees and old equipment out-of-the-way, fitting a little work, a little planning into the spaces of time between breakfast and dinner at night… and still we’re not quite ready. The day doesn’t hang on long enough for us to find the right place for every nail, just as it doesn’t quite hold onto the light long enough to allow us to be all of the things we want to be, all the things we can be, in a day.

In a year.

In a lifetime.

There’s never enough time, the work is never done, all the lessons will never quite be learned. And there were days in there that I didn’t want to move away from the little stream of light that peeked through the curtains of my tiny room. There were days my head was spinning with the to-d0 list and the realization that there may be dreams of ours that just won’t come true.

I keep a few of those days in my pocket to take out when I need them. Just a few.

Because I have never been one to focus on the things I cannot change, at least not for very long. Because some of those things we cannot control have been the best things…the most certain things of all.

Like how the sun always rises over the barn

and falls on the other side of the earth behind my parents house.

Every day.

Reminding us that we can build houses, and fences and plant potatoes in the earth and drive down roads we’ve built to take us to places we’ve never been and places we need to go to survive, but in the whole wide world there is nothing more important than that big wide sky and the fact that, for another day, we get to live under it as it moves and changes and puts on a show.

And as we have been counting each time it rises, marking our calendars and making plans that are bound to fail at some point, it comforts me, it lifts a little bit of weight off of my shoulders to know that the sun only has one mission, day after day…

to rise and shine and make its way across the sky…

Because, you know, we’re not that different from the sun really.

At least three hundred and fifty-some days a year…

Ever had one of those days?

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Ever had one of those days that starts with good intentions, a comfortable pair of jeans, a groovy hat, a cup of coffee to go and a list. You  load up the car and drive on up and out of the farmstead, with the one-eyed pug in the seat next to you shivering at the idea that he might, indeed, be going to the vet today and you’re feeling pretty happy with yourself and the day off that you have mapped out in front of you: A little grocery shopping, a stop at the thrift-store because husband finally cleaned out his closet, downsizing his collection of high school wrestling tees and wiping out any trace of  polo shirt and dorky belts. And as you zip down the gravel road, Cosmo Radio on the XM, you smiled at the thought of a cleaner closet and the light and accomplished  feeling of checking “rabies vaccination for the pug” and “shots for mom’s new and beautiful stray rescue cat” off of the list, a scent  a little funky, a little narly, enters your nostrils.

You look at the pug who looks back at you with the best “innocent” look he can give with one eyeball  and open the window a crack to let out the stench. Shame on the pug, no matter the talk we have about manners, he always seems to let one rip at the most inappropriate and confined times.

yeah...I make him wear that when we go out in public...

But to your dismay, when you open the window, the smell only seems to get worse, filling the car with a stench that is a little less pug fart and a little more cat shit.

Shit.

The cat shit.

Realizing that you are only a good ten miles into your thirty-five mile trip to the vet, you manage to hold your breath long enough to make it through the windy and weaving road of the badlands’ breaks and out the other side to an approach where you pull over, get out of the car in the 20 degree temperature, open the back hatch and assess the shit-uation that came from the beautiful wandering feline in the kennel in the back of your car.

Yup.

The cat shit.

Like, a lot.

Yeah...just because you're pretty doesn't mean your shit don't stink...

And the towel your loving mother provided to keep the new wandering, fluffy kitten comfortable on her way to get civilized was not nearly the protection the rest of the world needed from the explosion that came out of that cat’s ass on the way through the badlands.

Shit.

So, to make the best of a bad poop, you take that towel and throw it in the only stray grocery bag you have floating around your messy car and seal that thing up as tight as Jane Fonda’s abs in the seventies…and then hold your breath and plug the pug’s nose as you drive the rest of the twenty-five miles to the vet, only to realize when you get there that not only are you a half-hour late for an appointment you weren’t aware had a timeline, but they are not thrilled with you…and probably less thrilled with the shit covered cat-in-a-box sitting outside their door.

Flash forward to the next thirty miles where you reach the drop-off point for husband’s khakis and turtlenecks that never saw the light of day and mosey on over to the Wal-Mart on the other side of town. And as you are counting the amount of toilet paper rolls and frozen pizzas you will need to purchase to get you and your dearly-beloved through the rest of the month, you make the turn into the parking lot only to notice blue and red flashing lights in your rear-view mirror.

“Surely he can’t be pulling over such a law-abiding citizen like myself,” you think to yourself in a panic as you search your memory for any foul play that may have ensued on the five-minute drive across town.
Seatbelt? Check.
Blinker? Check.
Speed Limit? Check.
Complete stop at the red light? Ummmm….you must have blacked out while thinking about paper towels.

Still unsure of your offense, you pull into the parking lot and search frantically through your glovebox for the registration papers and insurance card you were certain you put in there last week, but now has somehow grown wings and flown away…maybe it escaped when you rolled down the window to let the shit-smell out.

“Tap, tap, tap,” goes the cop’s fingers on your window.

“Hello officer,” squeaks your voice from your throat.

“I pulled you over because your tags are expired,” he says politely.

“What!! Really?! Are you sure?” you say a little too passionately, a little too loudly, as you jump out of the car, paperwork in hand, to check the front license plate, only to look down and find that the yellow tags were indeed not affixed to your plates but, you know, right there on the registration card that you were just waving around in exasperation.

At a cop.

A cop who tells you to scrounge up your drivers license and that insurance card that flew out the window and get those tags on the car before he comes back from doing whatever cops do in their cars after they pull people over and humiliate them in front of their fellow Wal-Mart shoppers and he will settle with a warning.

Yes, you were warned, and just the right amount of annoyed…the perfect combination to help get you through a care-free shopping experience in the land of the inappropriately dressed with a list ten-feet long that includs everything from deodorant to light-bulbs to socks to the kitchen sink.

An hour and a half, one comment from a little lady that went something like “I wouldn’t want to be paying for your cart-load,”  a suggestion from an employee that I shouldn’t just leave my purse in the cart and go walking around the store all willy nilly like that, geesh, and a receipt long enough to wrap three times around the sun it was time for your next stop: the liquor store.

A magical place where you would make all of your husband’s dreams of stocking the top of the fridge with a variety of whiskey flavors come true. And while you were at it, your momma’s dream of a little Kahlua in her coffee. But as you explain to the nice lady who helped you carry out the three boxes of booze that, no, there was no party planned, but that you live in the middle of nowhere and it is going to be a long winter, you gasp as you open the back hatch of your car to find that the eggs that you intended to safely place on the top of your pile of goods had not so gently dropped from their perch and landed in a nice, cracky pile on the floor of your car.

You consider cracking open that bottle of Jack for the drive back to the vet to pick up the animals, but don’t think that a second run-in with that cop would be good for your record, so you opt instead for a giant bag of McDonalds and a diet coke and turn up the radio to sing along to Bruce Springsteen between cheeseburger bites as you drive down the road to face the vet you so rudely scorned with tardiness earlier that morning.

But when you arrive she has nothing but good things to say about the shitty cat and the pug who looks so bad-ass now without on of his eyes. Nothing but nice things to say to a woman who can’t get her crap together enough to get to an appointment on time or put her eggs in a safe place.

So you load up the pug and the shitty cat and drive on out toward home, thinking this day wasn’t so bad after all, thinking about frozen pizza for supper…

thinking…wait…what’s that smell…Chug?

Nope.

Shit.

The cat shit.

Again.

Ever have one of those days?

it's a damn good thing you're pretty cat...

No?

Me neither.

Meow.

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

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Step one. Breathe in.

Step two. Breathe out.

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

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

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

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

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

And I am nervous.

I don’t know why.

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


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

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

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

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

Home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope we can do it.

I hope we do.

 

The Christmas Card Crisis…

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Hello, hello…happy Sunday everyone. I come to you from under my favorite blanket on my favorite recliner in my favorite sweatpants and fleece shirt while the snow blows and drifts outside the windows of this little house. The heat is on, the music is playing, the laundry is rolling in the dryer downstairs. All should be well shouldn’t it? I mean, this is the best place to be on a cold and dreary December day.

.Except one thing.

I just realized it is December.

Like December 9th or something right?

Sweet mercy, it’s almost Christmas!!!!

I’m in crisis.

I have been so consumed with photo taking, eating, working, writing, snuggling, and planning for the arrival of our new house (yeah, that’s happening in like a week or so, but we’ll talk more about that later) that  I have completely neglected the whole process of making it look a lot like Christmas around here.

I have no tree. I have no baked goods. I have no lights or tinsel or twelve-foot inflatable Santa riding a motorcycle on my front porch. My gift ideas are still ideas (the inflatable Santa and is one of them…but don’t tell my momma) and I haven’t even dug out Chug’s santa suit yet! I know he’s pretty damn disappointed.

I am very upset with myself. I am. But wasn’t it just yesterday that I was jumping in the lake in my swimming suit? Now I am digging in our chest full of winter gear to find my favorite mittens and scarf. Wow, time flies when you’re working, crafting, photographing, riding horses, chasing cattle, drinking margaritas with friends, swimming in big lakes, walking around aimlessly in the hills, yelling at the pug to get off the couch and planning the house you are going to live in for the rest of your life.

Anyway, today I woke up with every intention of making a dent in this holiday season. And the first item on the list was this:

1) Make and order our Christmas Cards

Pretty simple. Pretty straightforward.

That should be checked off in a good 20 minutes…

All I need to do is find a relatively decent photograph of husband and I. No problem. We’re together all the time. I have a camera I take with me wherever I go. I am sure during the course of the 360 days since we ordered our last Christmas card someone has taken a semi-decent photograph of the two of us in a khaki pants and holiday sweaters by a crackling fire with perfectly placed stockings with our names on them behind us as we smile with the warmth and love of the season.

I am sure someone has captured us clinking wine glasses together in a nearby vineyard as we gaze lovingly and knowingly into each other’s eyes.

Or maybe they caught us on top of a mountain in our Eddie Bauer ski clothes, with cheeks perfectly flushed from the crisp mountain air, arms around one another as we took a moment to sip a hot chocolate and pose as the clouds rolled by in the bright blue sky before we “swished, swished, swished” down the face of the powdery mountain.

I think I have that photo around here somewhere….

Or what about the one where we were caught together in a delightful fall day, raking leaves in our matching fleece shirts and mittens, finding it so refreshing and romantic to be outdoors together that we just couldn’t contain our joy so we began playfully throwing leaves at one another. I could use that one with a card that says something like: “Joy to the world, the yard work’s done…”

Hmmm…



Or what about the one with us in that hot-air balloon sailing over the Grand Canyon? Didn’t we do that this year? Didn’t someone document it?

Or on the beach with our perfectly sculpted abs from all of that P90X we’ve been doing. Yeah, I think I was wearing a bikini with one of those sarong things and my hair was blowing in the sea air while husband scooped me up in his arms as the waves crashed against our legs. I KNOW someone captured that moment. That would be a perfect Christmas card photo…

Funny, I can’t find that one anywhere…

And now it has been a good two hours and all I have is more snow, less coffee and thirty-seven thousands photos scrounged up of the two of us either double-fisting drinks at a concert, holding an awkward pose with forced smiles in a scenic place or captured moments of annoyance…

But I have lots of photos of hubby. Gorgeous photos of him riding through the prairies so stoically handsome or standing on a horizon somewhere looking masculine…

Maybe I could just scrounge up a semi decent photo of myself and, well, you know, smoosh them together. People do that don’t they?

Yeah, this ain’t gonna happen is it?

Seriously, if anyone was on that hot air balloon ride with us, can you please send me the photos?!!

Maybe I’ll just call it good with this one this year. I mean, it has holiday cheer written all over it.

Happy Holiday preparation everyone. I’ll be in the bathroom practicing my classy, warm, inviting, Eddie Bauer model smile if you need me…

It might be a while…

Goodbye Summer

 

 

 

 

It came in with the night….

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Go find your mittens
so your fingers don’t freeze
slip on your big boots
pull your socks to your knees

Dig out your best scarf
wrap it round yourself tight
the snow has arrived here

it came in with the night.

 I’ll put the roast in the oven
and heat the milk on the stove
they’ll be right here waiting
when you come in from the cold

Knocking ice from the branches
and stringing Christmas tree lights
yes the snow has arrived dear

it came in with the night.

So squeeze on your knit cap
over wild wooly hair
watch your breath float and drift
in the crisp morning air

Break the ice for the cattle
put the saddles away
yes the snow has arrived here…

and I think it might stay.

Turkey, ping pong, a cheeseball and memories…

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

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

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

I hope there was a cheeseball. I really do.

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

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

How the hell did that happen?

My handsome nephew

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of them is turkey…

and the other is memories.

I hope you made some good ones this holiday.

Next year, the memories are at our house…

our new house.

And get ready, because the cheeseball will be epic.

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

The pug situation…

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Recently one of my lovable bloggy-mcblog visitors inquired about the one-eyed pug. He said he wondered where he’s been. He wondered how he’s been doing and how he’s handling all the changes around here.

He noticed there haven’t been many updates lately. Not many photos. Not many references to his quirky and cute habits.

Well, I’ll tell you, it’s been rough, but I suppose it’s time to address the situation.

A situation that has been brewing around here for a few months. One I don’t like to talk about.

It’s too painful.

And awkward.

See, the pug and I, yeah….well…we’re in a fight.

I’m not sure when it all started, but somewhere between the Santa Suit, the porcupine incident of 2011, the cone, the Frankenstein/Pirate jokes and the eye stitches that finally disintegrated, the pug started sporting an attitude. He showed up after a night MIA minus one collar and plus a swagger that sends the songbirds flying from his path.

He started barfing on the floor with no remorse, finding hidden spots to leave smelly surprises, dragging dead things to the porch while casually licking his paws, watching them disintegrate and smell up the barnyard. Rolling his eyeball when he hears me open the door and screech.

And he’s started sleeping in. Like really sleeping in. Like 2:00 in the afternoon unless he is literally picked up and pushed out the door. Yup, that’s going on, which is really annoying and inconvenient when I am trying to get myself out the door and to work on time.

You know what else is annoying? Having to drive to mom and pop’s house every day to pick his hitchhiking ass up.

Because he’s started doing that too. Yup. He ties on his little bandana, puts a pity patch on the spot where his eye used to be, throws his duffle bag over his shoulder, finds his best pathetic face and strolls on out of the yard, thumbing his way over to his girlfriend’s house as soon as my tail lights are out of sight.

Yeah, he has a girlfriend.

how could he resist?

She lives at mom and pop’s place. And the two of them like to go on day trips up the highway to the neighbors. They also like to bark into the night at the moon or the wind or a rustling leaf. He likes to show off, show her he’s tough.

You know how he does that? He howls. He howls loudly. At 2 am. While he’s still in mom and pop’s garage because I “forgot” to go and get him before bed.

Oops.

Pops hasn’t slept through the night for three months.

And on the nights that Chug the Pug is on lockdown and is forced to sleep in his rightful place on the floor in the entryway in the house like he was meant, the ballsy little bugger not only sneaks on the couch immediately after husband and I turn out the lights..he lays on husband’s favorite blanket…

leaving behind the scent of disobedience and betrayal.

All of these things are not good. They are rebellious. They are irresponsible.

They are not cute.

And I am pissed.

Don’t get me wrong, I have let some of this slide. I have let him sleep in my bed when husband was gone on business trips. I’ve let him sleep even when his snoring has disrupted phone conversations (yeah, that’s an embarrassing noise to try to explain). I have laughed when I hear him howl. It is hilarious.

But it is also loud.

Like his snoring.

And his farting.

What the hell? What has gotten into this once sweet, once cuddly, once cute and innocent and smooshy faced little animal who used to fit so sweetly in the crook of my arm? Where did I go wrong?

Was it the Santa Suit?

Maybe, but he’s had a year to get over it.

Maybe it was all the pressure I put on him to tame the wild cats.

Or could he be trying to fit in on the ranch by making up for his lack of size in attitude?

Or, could it be?

No, it couldn’t…

Could it.

Could it be the eye?

Do you think that little shit caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and decided, well, he looks tough? Do you think he walked in the closet one day to plop down and wait for me to come out of the bathroom and noticed this sexy, masculine, muscular canine with one eye looking back at him and thought to himself “Hell, I’m a stud. S. T. U. D. It’s prime time I started acting like one.” ?

Do you think?

Hmmm….

I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.

I am out of options.

He won’t even look at me. He just hangs out under the heat-lamp with the cats.

Or on the couch that he just jumped on when my back was turned.

He glares at me from there.

I glare back.

Then I tell him he stinks.

He tells me my hair is frizzy.

I ask him if he just ran into a wall or if his face is supposed to look that way.

He asks me if the zit on my face has its own mailing address.

I say no, it gets its mail at our home address, thanks very much.

This is getting ugly.

So you ask how the pug is handling the changes around here friend?  To that question I have another one…

Anyone have a number for a good therapist?


Boomtown

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Good morning all. I just wanted to pop in for a quick hello and to let you know that after completing my call out to winter last night and shouting it to the world, all hell has indeed broke loose this A.M.

It is snowing.

Hard.

So winter has indeed arrived as I type this sitting at a computer in my hometown after  braving the thirty miles of ice with my neighbor trailing behind me creeping at 45 mph on the slick roads.  It has begun, our battle with the winter.

Ahh, yes, I like to talk about the weather here, it’s in my nature, it’s non-controversial and I think it’s something that we all have in common. But besides that this morning I would also like to share a little piece of what’s happening out here in my hometown. Our Little Boomtown.

The impacts of the oil industry and activity in Western North Dakota has recently made headlines throughout the country. If you’re not from around here, you’ve undoubtedly caught wind of it. If you’re a former resident it’s captivated you. If you live among it you know it has the power to consume you.  Regardless, we can all agree that it is indeed a story, this town of 1,200 expanding  to over 6,000 + residents and growing. It is indeed a spectacle to see the oil semis and service trucks roll on the ribbons of highway that used to carry only school children and quiet rural commuters on their way to work at the banks and stores in town. Now, because of what we have discovered below the surface 10,000 feet, something we have known was there for 60 years and we can now get to, we have something amazing to offer here on the edge of the badlands to those who are up for a challenge,  adventure, willing to work hard and sacrifice a life they knew.

Jobs.

Jobs and opportunity and challenges in what I have come to refer to as the “Wild Wild West.”

And love it our hate it it’s happening. We can have that discussion later. But all I know is that in a time in our country where people have lost their homes, their jobs and pieces of their lives that provided them comfort and security, it is out here on the prairie that people are looking for their hope.

And hope is the reason I am back here with husband. Hope that we can keep the family ranch in the family, hope that we can have a family of our own one day, hope that we can have a good life with good friends and the freedom for a little bit of adventure.

So as we count the out-of-state license plates or the headlights that pass us on our way out-of-town, as I answer the phone calls from people looking for employment and describe to them the type of winter that is settling in around here,  I like to think about all those stories, all the memories, all the struggles and triumphs and roads that brought these people here, to the edge of the buttes so far from what they know, to live in apartments or hotel rooms, to build a new house or rough it out in a camper on the edge of town. It’s hard to imagine what they have sacrificed to find their place, to find their future, to find a better life…

So yes, my little hometown has become a boomtown, but it’s not scared. It’s been there before. And yes, I have to wait in line at the gas station and the post office, something that we are not used to. We are having growing pains and there are challenges here, so we must be on our best behavior. We must be a little more aware, we must ask a few more questions, listen more carefully, take a little more time to understand what is going on around us so we can make this place the best that it can be…

We must be patient and find in us our compassion.

Please visit the link below to hear our story on Bismarck’s KXMB news channel and get a sneak peek of my new song “Boomtown.”

Scofield sings about “Boomtown” Watford City.


Catch me and Pops singing this tune and many others this Sunday at the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center
2-5:oo pm
Fort Buford State Historic Site

Visit the Jessie Veeder Music Link for more performance dates.

A new quiet chorus repeats…

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If I could fill my blank page with words that made up the most perfect ending to a season that has given us her all, glorious and blue, green and orange and wildflower purple and full of life, I would give to the wind a voice. And he would speak deep and coarse about the way the grass bent beneath him as he worked to push the storms through the buttes and over the prairies.

He would tell us how he worried it might not dry up, how he watched as our lands soaked with water forcing trees to uproot and slide down the hills, and rivers to rise and fill up our homes. He would cry on these pages. He would say “it had to be…it had to be so, just as I must take the leaves from your trees.” And then he would laugh a big laugh at the way our hair stands on end when he comes around and how we lean into him out here…

the way we loathe him and need him and keep him under our skin all at once.

If I wrote the book I’d make the wind tell us. 

If I could paint the most beautiful cool down, I would splash the canvas with gold and deep rich pinks and burgundy hues. I would use my soft brush to give the sky more clouds, thousands of clouds, fluffy and white, a stage for the sun to dance upon, to reflect her light, to choreograph her show the way it was meant.

I would paint the warmth of her glow on horses’ backs and splash her down between the shadows of the trees where the deer go to water. And next to the barn the cats would bask in the light–the light I would make live forever on that canvas. Forever in that space between day and night, sun and storm…warm and cold…

if I were to paint the cool down I would use all of my brushes and all of my colors.

If I were to sing from my soul an encore for the season’s end I would put the chorus on the wings of the geese. And as they took flight, catching that wind, touching those golden clouds, out from their lungs the world would hear a song so true and pure that up from the depth of the ponds and streams the frogs would find the harmony and the waterbugs would hum along.

The wild elk bedded down in the tall yellow grass would throw their heads back and bugle a sad, sad song of goodbye, the crickets would cry and the coyotes would take to the hilltops. The kittens would purr softly, the mice would hold still already and the cattle would stop their chewing to hear as the verses moved from the crocus to long days and onto cool rain.

And the third verse would swell and blend with the howling house dogs and the last screech of the red tailed hawk as the bridge pushed us to the end and then set us up with a prelude to a season changing…

And the geese would fade out for they’re heading south and in their place would be only the sound of winter…

a new quiet chorus repeats…

…another pallet of blues and grays…

…and a familiar wind to remind us.

The waking up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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