It seemed like the write thing at the time...

Do you remember the Indiana Jones movie about the Holy Grail, in which Henry Jones Sr. keeps a scrapbook-like diary with all the clues, symbols and research he's done on the artifact and its location?

It intrigued me more than the plot of the movie, really, and that's saying something because the Indiana Jones movies are my favorite stories in cinematography.

I have been given countless blank journals as gifts and they intimidate the heck out of me!  Pristine, empty pages....books and books of them....waiting for something brilliant to be inscribed on them.  And I've got nothin'.

Well, that's not true.

I've got plenty of things to write and say; it's just that the minute I open one of these dear little books, I get brain freeze.

MORE SO than normal....

The pressure of making it worthy, beautiful and enduring, is huge.  I imagine my family and friends finding the journals after I'm dead and gone, reading them and thinking, "That's it?!  That's all that was in her head?! She wasted ink on THAT?!"

You've read my blog, obviously.

I can write pages about flies and hole-y underwear and skunks.

With passion!

Can you imagine stumbling across 15 books of THAT?!

Don't let's.

That's not a legacy.

It's a comic book.

BUT...

I did grab one in a moment of weakness and jot a couple quotes in it.

Then, I pasted a great wine label that I couldn't bear to throw away with the bottle onto one of the pages.

And tucked a funny card from a friend in the back.

Taped in a Dilbert comic that made me laugh.

And wrote another couple quotes.

It suits me; it suits my personality.

Informal, not bound by duty, whimsical, bright, occasionally deep....

It's a little volume of delights and memories for me to return to, a place to tuck my smiles.

It certainly won't save any one's life, as the clues in Dr. Jones' diary did, nor reveal any sort of treasure, but it's a start.  It's almost full, so I'm looking at the next empty journal to begin volume two in. 

Do you keep a journal?

Besides Facebook or a blog?

Spring Break, Part II

When the kids and I go to Bigfork, we don't really DO anything except eat, sleep and play outside. That's it.

That's all we WANT to do!

Sometimes we all load up and go into Kalispell or Bigfork for groceries or tarps or Scotch tape.

(Or donuts.  Rosaurs has the BEST donuts!)

But for the most part, we just hang out in the mountains and soak it up.

Grandpa was burning leaves every day we were there, so we smelled deliciously of smoke and mountain air!  I don't know what else the kids tossed in the fire, but they were always over there, poking and stirring, keeping the smudge going. 

Slugs are fascinating! Maggie didn't really want to touch it, exactly, but she wanted to examine it more closely....turns out, clothes pins are the PERFECT slug-struments.

Grandma and the kids worked on the tree house.

By the time we left, she was even talking about painting it!

We were laughing at how it was sort of....red-neck-ed....in an otherwise neat neighborhood.

See?  Just right for all sorts of adventures and sieges!  A great lair for eating toasted marshmallows and chocolate Easter candy, when the adults are eating boring things....ham and sweet potatoes and the like.

There was much swashbuckling!

Every so often, we'd hear tromping through the house and a voice calling out, "Has anyone seen my helmet?"

Armor is frequently misplaced.

Or swiped.

I think he wore that shirt for three days.  I kept washing it and he kept digging it out of his bag...

Johnny-jump-up

All my bums have flower names. 
Daisy, Lily, Sweet William, Cosmo, Linnie (linum is the Latin name for flax), Rosie...
The bull calves are the hardest to name because...well...flower names really aren't all that masculine for the most part.  This year, I didn't think I was going to have a bum calf; two that looked promising were given away and the later the season gets, the less likely I am to have a baby to care for.  But, one of the rare afternoons this spring that I was asked to help put out pairs, there was a twin.  And his mama didn't want him.  She wanted the heifer, but left the little bull calf in the dust....literally! 

The Farmer picked him up, in the pasture, wandering around by himself.  He'd seen the twins the day before, but was hoping the mother would claim them both.  She did not.  And cows usually only want one of the two, really.  Two calves are confusing!  There's only supposed to be one!  The interloper, the rejected one, is cleaned off but generally kicked off or left because the mother prefers the other for some unfathomable reason. 

He put the calf over the seat of my four wheeler and told me to idle back toward the road, that we were going to get to the Honda Big Red and take him in to the barn and feed the little thing.  He knew that by the time we got back to the barn I would be completely attached to the baby.  And he just let me. 

Twins are so tiny. 
Calves are little and knobby kneed, big eared and adorable, but there's something exquisite about twins. 
I tucked the baby's back legs under my right knee and his front legs under my left knee, his sweet head rested on my thigh, bumping along as I drove through the sagebrush back to the Honda.  When we got to the ATV, the Farmer lifted the baby into the Honda and told me to take him back and feed him.  He may as well have told me to just take him on home and put him in the porch, because he was mine.  And I was worried, because I'd planned to take the kids to Bigfork already....would they give him away while I was gone?

May I introduce Johnny-jump-up?
This is the 2012 bum calf, for you all to fall in love with and follow through the summer!
And you WILL fall in love....

Spring Break, Part I

The kids and I migrated to western Montana for Easter and spring break; we love the mountains and miss our family in Bigfork. We didn't get there until Saturday evening, Easter Sunday was a flurry and we decided we hadn't scarred Uncle Frank sufficiently on family drama over the weekend, so we all drove south, past Polson to a little stage stop called Allentown to meet him for lunch on Monday.  Here are some photos from that little jaunt:

These were the first swans I'd seen in western Montana, despite all the references to Swan Lake and the Swan Valley!  Maggie was enchanted by them and they were very unconcerned with us tromping around in the rushes, noisily chattering about turtles and cormorants.

Angus found some bone and feathers, the grisly remains of some animal's dinner the night before, and wanted to show Uncle Frank.   There's treasure EVERYWHERE.

The cattails were a big novelty and I'm pretty sure we all had the fuzz in our hair and clothes by the time we loaded up to leave.

This weed is Dr. Seuss-ish to me in its form!

I don't know what it is, but I took several pictures because it fascinated me so.

Grandma Celestia and Grandpa Jasper, soaking up the sun and listening to the chatter....

On the way back to the cars to load up!  There was a little museum there, but it was closed so we decided to roar down to St. Ignatius to the mission.  I wish I had taken pictures there, too! 

More photos to follow, in Part II!