Country Roads

....and they ALL broke out in song, "Country ro-o-o-a-ds, take me h-o-o-o-me, to the pla-a-a-a-ce I belo-o-o-ng..." 

Sorry to have to do that to you.  Now that song will be in your head all day, I know.  Isn't that wicked?  (At least it's not Frosty the Snowman or something like that...)

I didn't really have a great place for these pictures, from the last week, but wanted to show you the roads we drive and some of the scenes we see from them....miles and miles and miles of them.  Another ACTION-PACKED post, from the Farmer's Wife....try to keep your heart rate down....

This was taken from my in-law's road, in the direction of our house.  The light was incredible right then, but it's impossible to convey depth on a landscape that just rolls on and on, like a welcome mat.

Before I get scolded...I did NOT look through the lens to take this picture!  I know better.  But I loved how the clouds were backlit.  Same evening as the picture before.

This is a curious sort of Garfield County road.  Blacktop and then....bam! gravel. And that's all she wrote.  This is what our autumns look like...grey, grey, grey. Makes me so thirsty for color, sometimes!

 Such a typical Eastern Montana landscape.  It almost bugs me, because it's so....stock.  But then, perhaps, I'm used to looking at it and others will enjoy it more.

 I WASN'T driving at the time I took this picture!  But this is what I see in my rearview mirror when we're coming home from the bus.  Eight miles from the bus to our house! 

 And this is the scene through the windshield, at the same point. (A TREE!!!)

It's that time of year again...

....when everyone counts their blessings and feels the urge to list them and share with every acquaintance/passerby/FaceBook friend/family member/blogger/etc. 

I certainly look at my life with no small amount of gratitude and joy.  But my contrary heart gets absolutely balky when the entire world is urging me to share what I'm grateful for. It's the assignment of the week...EVERYWHERE!  Makes me cranky.  And obtuse.  And stubborn.

You really want to know? REALLY?

Alright.

But I must warn you....it's not a warm, fuzzy, pull the kids in close and remember the moment sort of list...

(Bulletpoints, because they are efficient.  And one of my readers lives and dies by them.  Today looks like a "lives" day...)

• Tweezers.  Yes, you read that right.  As women age, they get...whiskers, sort of.  (Well, they DO!)  And without tweezers, we'd look like Wolfman Jack.  Or maybe the guy from ZZ Top.  I'm truly grateful for these little tools.  And now, so are you.
• Paper towels.  I don't even want to contemplate how life would be without these precious things.  And yes, I know I'm killing trees by the hundreds of acres, everytime I use them.  I can live with that. 
• A friend that commented on my skinny butt with true sincerity, right at the moment I was ready to burst into tears over a bookkeeping error that is really going to hurt.  I completely forgive her for telling me earlier in the year that I was getting weird-ER.
• Football. That's all I have to say on that point.
• Multiple people who have taken on the role of my parents and family. Karen Yost (one of my mothers) MADE me watch "While You Were Sleeping" for one line..."Lucy! You're BORN into a family.  You don't just join them, like the Marines!"  She said I did that.  I don't know what's worse, that I joined their family or that they put up such a feeble fight.  But I love my families...all of them.
• Whipping cream...the whole fat kind.  The kind that actually makes a plopping sound as you pour it in the coffee cup.  When you whip it up, it's love on a spoon.  *sigh...*
•  Bacon.
• (I'll get away from food, now, or the list would start becoming all sentimental and sappy...)  Maggie's funny people pictures that we mustn't laugh at and Angus's kitten traps. And their "true" stories about dinosaur bones that they just found over the hill! (Dinosaurs and cows apparently had very similar structural make-ups. This is a scientific wonder that not many outside the family know about.)
• Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Cowboying with Earl and For Better or Worse.  Gosh, those are funny comics! I see my world everyday, there. 
• CD's....those magical little discs that scratch the minute you break the seal on the package.  I couldn't cope without them.  Pat Green, my friend, I'm sure you're going to hunt me down and have me arrested, because I've copied Wave On Wave for multiple people, but get this: they're now fans, too, and buy their own.  Please forgive me.   

I have more, but this should fulfill the requirements on the blog challenge.  And the desperate pleas of my friends who want me to list what I'm grateful for.  Bet they don't ask for that next Thanksgiving....

Oh, Boy!

Short, multiple choice quiz for you.  There's only one right answer to each question, and it's not "C".  I put "C" in for the grandmothers, who actually SAY things like that....to my FACE!  Pretty sure the woman who raised me did not hold that same philosophy when I was four.  At any rate, "C" is gratuitous. 

1. All our cats have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  This is caused by the boy doing what?
          A. Setting traps for them, tackling them and closing them in drawers to "save for later".
          B. Dressing them in doll clothes.
          C. Not knowing how he just over-loves them, precious little thing!

2. How many underpants does the boy go through in a day, on the average?
         A. Two...accidents happen.
         B. Five....that we can tell.
         C. Have you ever seen anything cuter than those tiny little Incredible Hulk underpants?

3. If the boy tells you not to go in the bathroom, right after he's been in there...pleads, in fact....you'll subsequently find:
          A. An entire new roll of toilet paper in the bowl that didn't flush for some reason, and water everywhere.
          B. Little piles of cat hair and a razor. (No...no cat.  Just hair.)
          C. Why was that baby left alone in the bathroom?  He could get hurt!

4. Reverse question 3:  If you are in the bathroom and it gets incredibly quiet, you will return to the kitchen to find:
          A. The sorta bald cat, in doll clothes.
          B. The remaining 4 pancakes from breakfast, in little bite-sized pieces, covering the floor, for the cat.
          C. He's SO imaginitive! You need to encourage that kind of thinking!

5. The porch + the boy + dogfood + boots = ?
          A. Tea party for the cats, complete with softened food he's "cooked" for them, in the boots.
          B. Cats, chuffed in the boots, and dogfood being prepared in the deep sink, that is plugged and about to run over...
          C. He's so GOOD with animals.  It must come from my side of the family.

6. It's snowed 6-8 inches.  The boy will wear, outside, after fighting about it...:
         A. Shorts, t-shirt, flipflops and a smile.
         B. Pajamas, snowboots, and a smile.
         C. He's just trying to come see his grandma!  He can wear whatever makes him happy.


There's sure to be a scene of devastation, behind Door Number One, that occurred while I was typing this...

Posted

Yesterday, I dropped Angus off at preschool and raced to my friend Anne's house for a small CUPS gathering.  "Small" being her and I, and her babies.  A sanity break!

On the way back, I saw things on fence posts.  Montana things, that I usually take for granted and drive right by.  Who looks at fence posts, right?  If you're a rancher, you are reminded of the hundreds of miles of them that need fixed or replaced.  If you're a hunter, you look for signs that say you can't hunt there.  If you're a kid, you wonder if it would burn, given enough flame. 

Here are some of the things I found yesterday. 

License plate....I never know which locals are reading the Chronicles.  It turns out there are WAY more than I ever knew!  So if one of you knows whose plate this is, give 'em a call.  Found it on the Brusett road, on the Murnion fence.

 Boots!  Probably a half mile of fenceposts with boots on them.  Isn't that cool?  I'm quite sure The Farmer's father would never let me do that on our fenceposts, but I love it.

 Rain gauge; or Montana Mood Predictor.  This one is probably as old as I am, truth be told.

In Garfield County, even the fenceposts are friendly...

Tumbleweeds....grrrr....temporary residents of the posts.

 Maggie found this one and we had to take a picture! 

I was SO disappointed that the dead fox who has been hanging on a post by the bus stop was gone, yesterday afternoon, and the huge golden eagle who had been working over a roadkill by the Hay Creek road was gone, too.  They would've been the stars of this post!



Next challenge....

....is supposed to be about my life as a writer.

This is a truly terrifying post for me, and thus late. 
In fact, I've been avoiding the whole BLOG for a week, because of it. 

How mature is THAT?

Don't answer that....


Everyone writes, for the most part. 
Grocery lists.
Phone messages.
Notes to self.
In the dirt on someone's car. (You think I didn't know about that? Yeah. I'll deal with YOU later...)
Memos on checks.

And I have friends who write as a vocation....
Susan Kushner Resnick (Goodbye Wifes and Daughters)
Homer Hickam (The Dinosaur Hunter, The Rocket Boys, among many others)
Shannon Popkins (Poppie! I don't have yours right off the top of my head...sorry! Except Tiny Paragraphs; your blog.)
Chris Brauns (Unpacking Forgiveness)(We've never met...e-friends; so, it's real to me...more on that later.)

I think I fall somewhere in the middle.
More toward the list end, actually.

The reason I've been avoiding this post is that I have very kind friends and blog readers who absolutely insist that I'm a writer, and that I need to write a book or (at the very least) a newspaper article.  You all are so very generous!  But you need to know....when I write, I write with my voice as though we were sitting across from one another at the table, and I'm showing you pictures or telling you a story about my day.  I have no plots!  I have no beginnings or endings or turning points! I couldn't craft or recognize a reputable dangling participle to save my life! (I have no idea why they might be important to a story, but my high school English teacher seemed to think they were.)

I struggle with telling you that, because I don't want it to sound all humble and "aw shucks" or anything like that. I simply don't feel that I'm a publish-able sort of writer. (I know.  Publish-able isn't a word.  Except in my world. )

 I read such AMAZING writers, daily; (see the list above) sometimes I read them aloud, even, because they have such power and grace and verve and humor! To be a writer, I believe you must be a voracious, curious reader.  But because I'm a such a reader, I'm intimidated and stop writing. 

I'm going to end this....mercifully....to be done with the challenge for the week and to free myself to write a post about posts.  (Really!)  So in summary, my life as a writer is really better described as a life of a reader who journals.  Fair enough?

Thank you!
Now...
let's move on, shall we?

(Whew....)