Resolutions, shmesolutions....

I can't tolerate that much tolerance, either....

but I still have a hard time with New Year Resolutions.

For some reason, in my world (Planet Crazy Mary), the new year doesn't start on January 1.  It has always and forever seemed like a strange time to start a year. Perhaps it's because on a ranch, the year seemed to start when the calves started hitting the ground, in March or April.  Ranching fiscal years generally start in November, after all the crops and calves have been sold and it makes the books look a little more tolerable; nice to end with an income of sorts, for once. 

My year starts in September, on my birthday. It was always the beginning of the school year, too, with new pencils and neat-looking notebooks, textbooks whose innards still held some mysteries. (You may as well know....since I was an incredibly fast reader, I always, always read ahead in the textbooks and was plenty bored with the content when we actually got to it. Isn't that awful? Yet, I didn't seem to LEARN it...)

It's amusing to me, on January 1, to read everyone's lists...Best Of, Worst Of, Books, Fashion, Sports Plays, To Do In 20--, etc.  I'm three months ahead or behind all that, and heaven knows I can't remember back to LAST January! Last year, in an effort to go mainstream, I made a list of 89 Things to Do in 2009. (I can't currently find it. I know. Shocking.)

So, in another attempt to conform, in no particular order of importance, I give you my top Ten Best/Ten Worst of 2009.
Brace yourself. (With chocolate, if necessary...)

Worst:
1. Movies  I think the only one we even sorta wanted to watch was "Up".

2. Dreadful pregnant-looking tops for the general public.  Just when I got to the point where all the maternity clothes had left the building, that style came in vogue!

3. Liberalism. I have had it up to here with being so open minded, the brain falls out. 

4. Disney-fication of America. (I realize I'm more sensitive to this, having small humans in the house, but still...) Must we have the Incredibles and Tinkerbell on our underwear/Sears photos/soup labels/Kleenex? Can you find a t-shirt for a five year old girl that DOESN'T have a Disney princess or (gagging here) 3?

5. Too much information.....please, for the love of sanity, don't FaceBook when you blow your nose and what you found in the tissue immediately following that. Maintain a little mystery.

6. Wild animal prints on everything. (I KNOW!!! I HAVE a giraffe print handbag with red accents! And it was outrageous last January. Now, it's annoyingly cliche...)

7. Saying good-bye to our Ruby Loo.

8. Texas Tech firing Coach Leach for truly ridiculous reasons. ( I know. I can't be objective. I wouldn't have had a such a beef if they'd had any sort of legitimate grounds whatsoever! It's ugly. I'm mad.) (College football is a big deal. Ask Patricia, from Pollywog Creek and Rosie, from West Texas Sandstorm...)

9. Grasshoppers. Blankets and buckets of grasshoppers this last summer.

10. That's all I had...9 worsts.  It was all I could do to come up with that...

Best:
1. Blog-friends. E-friends. Virtual friends. For a stay-at-home mom-on-the-Montana-prairie, this has been one of the most wonderful blessings I didn't see coming! (I may have lost a few, with this post...)

2. Both my children are functionally toilet-trained. (Soundtrack of the "Alleluia" chorus, here)

3. Working with my friend Homer on his new book, to be published this upcoming fall. A once-in-a-lifetime experience that I still can't comprehend. Homer and his fellow dinosaur hunter, Frank, joined us for supper in June, to our great delight. After they left (I've never told him this), I looked at Wayland and we both started laughing weakly...what just happened?!

4. Good, blessed good, health.  Not one day goes by that I'm not aware of this. And I hold tightly in my prayers those friends and family that haven't had such a good year.

5. Bum calves! (Vern has put that on his list of worsts, but I really loved having them. And I'm ready for the Class of 2010.)

6. A good harvest and a good calf crop. It wasn't a banner year, for Lang's Fork Inc., but we were again blessed with more than many ranchers.

7. Welcoming Twilla B., our new Setter, into the family. (As well as Shelly and Don Smith, dear new friends who delivered her here from Missouri! We can't wait to meet Baby Smith, due to be born the end of February....have we got the books for HIM.)

8. My bookclub girls...again, still. You save my life every month, truly. It sounds like an exaggeration to those on the outside of our circle, but we all know the truth; every second Thursday of the month is a literary lifeline of laughter. Long live the Underground Bookclub!

9. The Bible Memory Verse challenge, set forth by Beth Moore at Living Proof Ministries.  I didn't shine at this challenge, but I can tell you this: I memorized more scripture this year than I have since Vacation Bible School, 1982. It may be hidden deep, deep, deep in my heart, but it's there, and I'm SO glad I took this challenge on.

10. A new spark in The Farmer; interest in the life he lives here, that I've never seen before, and an involvement in his men's Bible study. He's grown so much this year, and I'm very proud of him! Please, if you haven't yet discovered his blog, visit http://www.pluharsrant.blogspot.com/ for a balanced look at our life. (Okay, so it balances out my fraggled, fanciful writing. You'll see just as many cow pictures, but not as many vintage/retro graphics. Think "guns".)


I'm bushed. Do you have any more of that fudge? (I have Scotcheroos. And I'm not afraid to use them.)

Good News, Bad News

Good News: I had nearly all the laundry done before we left for Billings on our swimming/vet trip. (It's true! I was so proud.)

Bad News: The volume of work killed my dryer.

Good News: I have a clothesline!

Bad News: It's about 10 yards from the back door, beyond the 3 foot drifts of snow and the windchill is -5 degrees, at the moment.

Good News: My husband can fix nearly anything with the right parts.

Bad News: He can't obtain parts for quite a while, due to the holiday and weekend.

Good News: The kids don't really wear clothes around the house anyway.

Bad News: Now they want to put on elaborate clothing ensembles, which I hate to discourage. They've decided to wear clothes! (They may have to wear the SAME clothes for 3 days, but they're dressed, doggone it.)

Good News: I will have a legitimate excuse for letting the laundry pile up.

Bad News: I was just getting into the groove of getting all clothes laundered, dried, folded and put away.

Postcards from my deck

Tiger, complaining about the weather and lack of game (mice).

Tiger is seeking employment and/or companionship from new, kinder people. If you are interested in a feline that is kid-broke, litter box trained, comes from good hunting stock and very affectionate, this is the boy for you.* 

*No returns or exchanges. We are not responsible for any damage incurred to property after the 120 hour non-refundable trial period. May change name as desired.

You knew they were coming, didn't you?!!

Cow Pictures!

All the cows in the pasture south of my house sensed the pull of the open gate and trotted up the hill to investigate and consequently trail through the yard to the pasture north of my house.

They kept looking at me out of the corner of their eyes, daring me to chase them out, but I just took pictures so I could identify the culprits, come sorting time. They really thought they got away with something! That makes me laugh.

Do you see how COLD his precious little paws are?

He's not hollering at me anymore; he's resorting to bad acting.

If he could produce icicles on his whiskers, he'd use that, too.

Christmas Post, Volume I

It honestly takes something like 25 minutes to load pictures to blog posts, here. SO I'm going to make a ridiculously long post about Christmas, with all the possible photos I can cram in. It may take 4 hours to complete, and nearly as long to read. If you have better things to do than read this, like trying out your new dental floss or individually cleaning the buttons on your keyboard, I totally understand.  And for heaven's sake, don't feel you have to comment on the whole bucket o' prints!

This is the way to photograph my house...dim, dim, DIM lights.

(Don't be all impressed by the way the lights shine on the floor. It doesn't necessarily mean the floor is clean. There's a good chance the kids tipped over buttered popcorn right there, then tried to wipe it up with a kitten....Kittens make dandy dust cloths, especially when they go poking around under furniture.)

CHEESE!

New pajamas from Grandma Banana, and Maggie is holding her dolly that her great-grandma Margaret gave her. She's so tickled with that doll!

Doll house....*sigh*......she wanted roller skates, but I wanted the doll house.

If you've been to our house, you know we don't have sidewalks or cement of any kind, so she'd have to rollerskate in the house. I don't THINK so!

Perhaps for her birthday...

Mags has decided she really loves the dollhouse anyway, and has been arranging the rooms constantly.

(We also hear her as the Mommy doll, bossing everyone around in the house. Must get that from her grandmothers...)

  I didn't realize it until I talked with one of my friends, but our family didn't have any electronic or battery operated toys this year. It was the year of books, pajamas, pretend play and puzzles.

Here's Angus with his pirate ship, that captivated his Dad as much as it did him!

You'll note the snake on the floor beside the ship.

That would be his father's idea.  Ew.

Maggie had a list, this year, of presents she wanted to buy others. We were very encouraging of that, and took her to Miles to make her purchases.  Her ideas exceeded her budget by a ways, but at least she was thinking of others, kindly, so we helped her.

She wanted to buy me "red earrings" because red is my favorite color. All the earrings they saw at Walmart didn't quite match her idea, so she and Wayland went to Jewelry by Monte, with her $13 wadded up in her grubby white satin purse.  I knew where they went, and how big her budget was, so I wasn't really prepared for the earrings she found for her mama.

I opened the little box and there on a pristine card were two little sapphire earrings.

Here I am, right as the tears started.

Poor Maggie thought I didn't like them, and it took me a minute to reassure her that I was crying because I was HAPPY and surprised!

Here she is, telling me the story of the shopping trip and why she changed her mind about the red earrings.

After the flying paper settled, and the candy wore off....

we read books.

Molly likes to be near us as we read, and look at her posing!

We're reading "The Kiss That Missed", a royal book that we adore.

Another story...this time Daddy is reading.

Christmas morning...

See the Santa, by the t.v.? He's turned to face the wall! Ever since I set him out, I'd find him turned toward the wall, like a naughty child. Wayland finally explained that Angus was examining the presents in his pack!

Maggie, reading a dog book to Molly.

This is how he watches t.v.

Seriously.

We're hoping all the blood rushing to his head will improve his ACT/SAT scores someday, but so far, there's little sign that it's helping....

Twilla B., sacked out on the couch with him.

Did you make it through all the pictures and narration in one sitting?
Good for you! Now go get a piece of fudge, because you must be exhausted, and fudge does a body good. Besides, after January 1, all the treats will disappear until Valentine's Day and you'll be regretting any turn downs you virtuously made right after Christmas....