Notes and Nonsense

     I can't bear to think about how long it's been since I posted here, so we're just going to jump right in as though I never left, pretending all is normal as one does when someone returns to church after a long absence for no apparent reason or evident excuse....


     I am nearly finished with the UNABRIDGED audio book of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It has taken me longer than War and Peace, my friends. Just when I'm ready to call it quits and move on to some truly thrilling story (like a John Le' Carre spy novel), something happens to keep me tethered to the darn story. Mr. Blake just found out that he, himself, without his own conscious knowledge mind you, stole the Moonstone in the dead of night from Rachel's sitting room. She saw him do it. YES! A mess of emotions and investigation follows. (This I'm guessing because there are at least 10 more chapters of tedious, British dialogue and details. When I read books the conventional way instead of listening to them, I'm able to skip over much of the descriptions of the rooms and that sort of thing, but when listening, I have no idea if I'll miss something crucial to the plot so I have to wade through tasseled bell-pull moments and the like.)

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     Last week, I started in making homemade corn tortillas and I find it hard to stop. My cousin Jeff Newton gave me a tortilla press a few years ago, so I dug it out and (quite literally) pressed it into use. They're not difficult to make; if you can knead, roll dough into balls, smoosh them flat, and fry, you have all the skills to make 'em.  The ingredients are simple: 2 cups masa corn flour mix, a good gouge of salt, enough hot water to make the flour form a stiff dough....like, maybe, 4-5 T. Stir all together until it pulls away from the side of the mixing bowl, knead for 5-6 minutes as you would playdough (the consistency should be a little stiffer than playdough, and will become more pliable as you knead), cover with a damp towel and let it rest for 20-30 minutes. Go make a margarita or something.

     After the dough is rested up and you're sufficiently refreshed, cut a freezer gallon Ziplock bag into two pieces and spray one side of each with non-stick cooking spray. (You'll only have to do this once, and go light.) Get your cast iron skillet on the stove and get it warming. You'll need it medium hot to do these little dandies.  As your skillet is warming, squeeze off a hen's egg size chunk of your tortilla dough, roll it into a round ball (it should be about the size of a golf ball or a little bigger), and place the ball of dough between the two greased plastics. I was able to use my tortilla press here, BUT if you don't have one (and who in the world WOULD?), you can press the tortilla flat using a glass 9 x 13 baking pan.  Peel it off the bags, toss it in the skillet, and cook it until it starts puffing up a little. Flip it, cook it a little more until there's a little browning.....voila! Tuck that tortilla into a warm, damp dishtowel (no need to put in the oven) and keep going.  You'll get about 10-12 tortillas this way.

   We filled ours with Mexican beef, a lime vinaigrette, onions, olives if you have them.  They're great for fish tacos, enchiladas, or rolling scrambled eggs and sausage up in. Whatever blows your sombrero off.

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     After all that, here's a prayer that hangs in my kitchen that I just love, so I'm sharing it with you:

Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, 

and also something to digest.

Grant me a healthy body and the 

necessary good humor to maintain it.

Grant me a simple soul that knows

to treasure all that is good and that

doesn't frighten easily at the sight of evil, but

rather finds the means 

to put things back in their place.

Give me a soul that knows not boredom, 

grumblings, sighs and laments,

nor excess of stress, because of that 

obstructing thing called "I".

Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor.

Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke

to discover in life a bit of joy, and

to be able to share it with others.

Amen.

-Saint Thomas More

   

Let today be the day....

When someone says, "....love story...." the first thought is that of romantic love.

I read this today and it struck me that the truth of the matter is this:

 if you love someone, there's a story. 

And that's it. 

Amen.

Live and Learn

I was going to write about the Montana Women's Run that I have been doing on Mother's Day weekend for the last five years, but something else is on my heart so that'll have to wait.

As you know, we have a seventh grade girl now (soon to be eighth grade!) and are neck deep in junior high-ness. Junior high-ness means there's extreme moodiness, insecurity, friend drama, an amazing appetite, a body that's growing an inch a day at least (or maybe it just seems that way), a budding interest in the opposite sex....and much, much more.

I love watching this particular stage of growth! Junior high kids are all arms and legs and feet, they never know what's going to come out of their mouths, they're breathtakingly close to adulthood and the realization of that makes them giddy and terrified all at the same time.

I'm having a hard time parenting right now. It's like having a very tall three year old again. There's a lot of "I can do this, Mom! You don't have to help!". Every, every day I pray for wisdom and sensitivity. And insensitivity so that the hurtful, careless things won't be taken personally. But mostly for wisdom. All the junior high things my daughter is struggling with are bringing back all the things I worried about at that age. I thought that by now, I'd have some helpful solutions to pass along, you know? Nope. I've got nothin'.

This weekend was graduation in our hometown and the junior high dance. In Jordan, since there are so few kids in the junior high, the dance is open to 5-8th graders. Last year, I promised that Maggie could go when she was in seventh grade, but that I thought 5th and 6th grade was a bit young, and she agreed. So this year, it was a big deal. She called her cousin (who is also a good friend and classmate) to get the particulars, things like what to wear and date/time/location. We shopped for an outfit, nails were painted, hair styled in a long blonde French braid. She was nervously excited, so I played corny 80s music on the way to town to make her laugh. One of the things the parenting books don't touch on is how difficult it is to send your baby off on her own independent little way to an event you know isn't going to end well.

And it didn't.

Mostly because NO ONE'S first junior high dance goes well. It's one of those things in life that will bond people on down life's road, the awful experience of their first junior high dance. Or at every junior high dance. It's no one's fault and there's nothing that can be done. You just have to get through it.

When I picked her up I could tell that she was trying to be brave and pretend that she'd had a great time, but that didn't last long. There were tears, of course, but not the ones I expected because they were not tears about her. She explained with a sad, yet incredulous voice and many sniffles that there were way more girls than boys at the dance and that there was an awkward group and a more popular group of girls. (She was pretty prepared for that going in, so it wasn't a surprise.) Apparently Maggie fell somewhere in-between, having friends in both groups, but ended up mostly in the awkward group.....and that didn't seem to be the problem. She got to dance a few times, visit with friends, drink Shirley Temples...good stuff.  But then she told me about the girls who didn't get asked to dance and she just broke down. "They were standing there in a line, all dressed up, and they were beautiful, Mom. They were perfect. All they wanted was to dance one dance, have someone choose them ONE TIME, but no one did. It was just so sad. And I couldn't tell them that they were so pretty and that it wasn't that something was wrong with them, and they don't even know, now!"

And we both cried because our hearts hurt for those beautiful young ladies.

We came home, put on our comfies, and visited with the Farmer about how weird boys are and how hard it is to be this age for EVERYONE. Boys are scared and uncertain, too. No one was deliberately hurtful or mean, they are all good kids in a place where fear and insecurity are magnified at a ridiculous level.  Growing up means going through difficult experiences and making the best of it, rolling with the rough stuff, having compassion for everyone because we're all just doing the best we can.  As my Aunt Bert has said, if you can just get through junior high, you've got it made. (Parents, too!)

COWS!!!!

These pictures are from two weeks ago, so if you can picture more grass and a lot greener, that would be more accurate to today. We've been crazy busy with baseball, branding, the stomach flu, yard work, etc. I just wanted to share some calf pictures because, well, calves are kind of the only thing that get us through the winter. They're beautiful!

   Here are some girls running through the sweet peas, looking for some cake pellets. 

And here are some babies who are also running, but they have no idea why. 

"Mama runs, I run!" 

This little heifer can't find her mama, but she hasn't realized it yet.

Now she knows!

"Maaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

I felt SO bad for this mama.

Her calf is only sucking out of one teat, leaving the others....

OUCH!

The cow in the middle hasn't calved. 

It's pretty obvious. 

I'm sad that this isn't a picture of a pair, but it's another mama cow with one of the bulliest bull calves I've seen in a while. 

(Today, though, we branded a different bunch with a couple calves that looked just like this....like someone had shrunk a bull down to miniature size.)

This may be one of the best cow pictures I've ever taken! I was squatted down, taking pictures of that bully calf and 028 couldn't figure out what in the world I was doing so she came in for a closer look. It was funny and intimidating all at the same time because these are older cows which means they're much bigger, smarter, and less scared of us. If she had decided I was trouble, I'd have been flattened and stomped. 

Look at her funny face, though! Same face they make when a cat walks through the corral...

See how his mama has neatly cleaned the star in the middle of his face? And his center parted Dapper Dan hair? And the adorable chin whiskers?!?! AND the eyelashes?!?!? 

I never get tired of looking at the details. That's why I tell you they're beautiful. 

Checking to see if it's her baby....

See the different tag numbers and colors? That's because this is one of the two year olds who calved their first calf this spring. The blue number is their dam's number, their baby ID number, but the yellow is the new "big girl" tag. We'll replace all the blue ones with a matching yellow one this fall. 

This baby was napping when we got to the gate, but stood up and is taking a wee bitty stretch.

That's all for now!

Some year I'll get branding pictures. There's just no way, most of the time, because there are so many jobs to do and we're trying to get them done quickly to reduce the amount of stress on the animals. Also, because there's nothing worse than taking 5 hours to work and brand 30 pairs. 

And if you're interested, today was sunny, light breeze, 82 degrees.

A GORGEOUS DAY!

HAPPY SPRING!!!

Free and Forty....something

Over Easter, my friends "James"* and "Sue"* and I were discussing how great it is to be forty-something. It started when "Sue" confessed that it turns out she doesn't like strong coffee. For years she's been playing along with everyone, kind of secretly watering her coffee down when no one was really looking because it seemed less honorable or something to drink weak coffee. To be honest, I'd never really noticed her coffee business, but apparently she was worried about being teased or ridiculed for drinking light coffee. Now, in her forties, she's decided it doesn't matter and that she doesn't have to pretend. It is what it is, she is who she is, and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks. 

After that brave admission, "James" thoughtfully told us that he had only recently figured out that he really wasn't all that outdoorsy....meaning, he'd rather stroll a street than hike in the woods with a backpack, that a good bed was nicer than a sleeping bag on the ground.  This was BIG for a Montana boy to admit because one of the things we are indoctrinated with growing up in our beautiful state is that everyone must be outdoorsy.  There are varying degrees of outdoorsy-ness, from casual weekend campers to obsessive downhill skiers who would sell their kid brother for a season pass. But we're all expected to be outdoorsy in some way. (Not that "James" doesn't like doing things outdoors; he just isn't a hunter/fisher/hiker/whatever.)

Mine is similar to "James" in that I don't like hunting. I used to hunt and thought I enjoyed it, when really it was mostly spending time with the people I was hunting with, and hiking. I don't have a problem shooting an animal for meat or cleaning it or wrapping it. It's okay. I liked the end product; when I was single, it was the only reason I had meat to cook oftentimes. But if someone asked me for my top 20 things I like to do, hunting wouldn't be on that list. I'm not sure I'd even put it on a top 50 list. I hunted because my boyfriend at the time hunted. And because women in Garfield County gain a certain popular status by hunting. It's cool to be all liberated like that, doing man things with the men. I wanted approval. I wanted to be one of those cool women. 

But I really just don't need that validation anymore, you know? I'm forty-something and I don't really care that I'm not cool ESPECIALLY if being cool means that I have to wear pink camo. *shudder*

I don't think any of us really realized that we were pretending. I think it was probably just more of a functional thing, trying to get by without making waves, fake it til you make it and all. But the glorious freedom of owning our choices and lives without justification....that was worth all the junk we went through to get here. (And believe me, all three of us have been through some righteous junk in our lives.)

*Names have been changed to protect the super-secret identities of my friends. Not that they're in the witness protection program or anything, it just seems the courteous thing to do. 

Dear friend Sally,

I was going to start this letter poetically, all about the sun and the warm earth, but I just can't wait to tell you: the peonies are coming up!  I'm so excited!  

Well, at least two of them are poking their little heads out of the soil. One of the others is in a shady spot and will probably be another week. I had almost given up hope. This will have been the third time I've tried planting peonies, with the prior two efforts ending in sad failure. (That's right. Not simply "failure", but "SAD failure".) They seemed impossible. I would enviously drive past yards in Miles City with their abundance of lush blooms, stems drooping with the richness of the flowers....

I would also tell myself (like Emma in the movie of the same name) that really they were drab little flowers and who cared? (I cared. I cared a lot. Has anyone in the world thought a peony "drab"? I thought not. Because they aren't. They're glorious.)

Now, I know you said that they probably won't bloom the first year. That's just fine. And I know I shouldn't count my blossoms before they set on, but I am. 

The cats think I'm nuts, gasping at the ugly little beginnings of the plants, then cheering. (Really, peonies are quite homely on day one and two. Maybe even into day three. They have little alien-like heads before their leaves spread out.) I have to be careful, because if the dogs think I love a plant more than them, they promptly dig it up or lay on it until it dies, gasping and cracking. 

I completely forgot to take a photo to post; I can do that tomorrow and add it here. 

In other, more ordinary news...

The tulips need divided, so they only sent out two or three reminder blooms this week, sulking until they have their way.  All the trees and shrubs have baby leaves, tender and bright. The birds make such a commotion when I venture near! Oh! And for a few days we had two little owls living here! They were grumpy and blinky because they insisted on trying to sleep under the honeysuckle bush right next to the front door. Tough neighborhood for owls. 

I need to get something pulled together for supper, but I wanted to share the news with you and my other friends who read the blog. Or who used to read the blog. It's been a long dry spell, I know. 

Isn't it delightful, though, to have garden triumphs?! 

Happy spring!

The Farmer's Wife

Ooooo!

Sometimes mountain sunsets are missed because all the glory goes on behind the mountain, leaving a funny twilight in the valley. And sometimes the mountain sunsets are surprisingly gorgeous, rare and precious.  This was one of the rare and precious ones, after a rain....

Go Big!

I dig kitsch. 

Not necessarily to live with (although I seem to have gathered up plenty as I look around the room), but just...

It always amazes me that you can walk into nearly any old gift shop in the U.S. and find plastic tourist junk that ordinarily practical people wouldn't buy in a million years but after spending half a day at Mount Rushmore suddenly HAVE to have the refrigerator magnet/thermometer with George Washington's badly done rubber countenance leering away at them. Truly! There's just something in humans that compels us to take home awful, useless mementos of our experiences. And lest you start feeling all self-righteous about "those people", dig deep into your heart of hearts and admit to yourself that, yes, there was that ONE time you bought the rattlesnake egg envelope in a moment of insanity at Wall Drug. You were tired from driving, the kids were whining....whatever!...you did, and you're one of US.  

That's just the little stuff. 

Recently, I decided that when I get old(er) and find a couple kindred travel spirits to join me, I'm going to take a tour around the continent and see the big kitsch. BIG-BIG, I'm telling you. Like....the World's Largest Armadillo (located in Buffalo Gap, TX, south of Abilene) 

and the World's Largest Garden Gnome in Kerhonkson, NY. 

(Side note: Who wouldn't want to send a postcard from a town with the name "Kerhonkson", giant gnome excluded. Isn't that just the greatest moniker?)

I'm telling you! 

The Grand Canyon tours have been done, Niagara Falls is stuffy and old, the cable cars in San Francisco...blah, blah, blah. But the World's Largest Concrete Prairie Dog? Not many vacation albums with the family crabbily standing in front of THAT. (It's in Cactus Flats, SD. Totally do-able)

Besides the sheer absurdity of humongous forks and ducks and teacups and badgers is how (and I'm not making this up) once something becomes the world's largest anything, its title must be capitalized in reverence of the achievement. It's not the world's largest cowboy hat; it's the World's Largest Cowboy Hat!

 (Which is curiously located in Seattle, WA. Not Texas. Texas has the World's Largest Cowboy in the town of Canyon. Apparently he lost his hat while on looking for the World's Largest Cow.)

Isn't that awfully great?! Or greatly awful?!?

Either way.

I have already been to the World's Largest Radio Flyer Wagon in Spokane, WA with my sister and our kids, as well as a huge milk bottle cafe downtown there. It was great! 

 And then there was the stunning red shoe in the mall that I wanted to bring home and put in the backyard next to the fence so I could take pictures of it with cows in the distance...

When I was in Abilene with my Aunt Bert and Grandma this winter, I found a giant flamingo, 

(Be still, my beating heart...)

 a dinosaur with a VW on top of a building, (Angus calls them VFWs and we don't correct him.)

 and a huge deer skull/antlers! 

It's a start! 

Next winter, when the walls start closing in on me (as they inevitably do), I'm going to get out a Rand McNally atlas and start planning a road trip. 

I know the important things in life are the little things, but sometimes the big things are pretty cool too, don't you think?

And now, it's a gorgeous spring morning so I'm off to pull weeds and soak up the blessed sunshine! 

 *The photos prior to the Radio Flyer picture were borrowed from Pinterest. The photos after that are all mine.*

It Was Beautiful....

One of the things I've started doing this winter is to actively look for beauty. After being such a frumpy grump for days on end, I thought it would help. Like a little assignment that I could keep in my head and work on every day. 

Eastern Montana is NOT filled with great beauty for the vast majority of the winter. Don't get me wrong, I think I live in one of the most glorious places in the world. The first few lines in the song "America the Beautiful" are quite obviously about Montana. ("Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain...") But in the depths of winter, it's pretty grey and cheerless. EVERYTHING is grey and cheerless, even the people for the most part. We're like bowls of day old oatmeal....cold, bland, lacking color. 

Anyway, my plan was to find one beautiful thing every day, with no repeats; meaning, of course, that I have to work a little at it, seek with new eyes, be observant and present in the moment or I might miss that one, new, beautiful thing of the day! 

The strangest things are lovely when you start looking with the right "lens", so to speak.

One such strange, beautiful thing I saw last week and I'm still pondering it. 

When I go to Miles City, I usually have an intimidating "to do" list and a deadline....school bus time. In order to meet the bus in time, I need to leave Miles an hour ahead which means no later than 2 p.m. It's always hurry, hurry and sometimes I don't even eat lunch because it takes too much time. 

I had to drop off a box of books at the St. Vincent Thrift store before I left town, so I zipped to the back of store to take care of it. 

The back of St. V's is next to an alley, o-l-d motel parking lot, and it's pretty tough looking. As I was getting back to my car, I looked down the alley/parking lot and saw what appeared to be a scruffy old-ish homeless guy with a big convenience store go-cup of coffee. I don't know that he was homeless, but he had that look about him. Perhaps his home was a cardboard box or he was just traveling through. (Being homeless in Miles City in January would encourage a body to travel through, that's for certain.) He was wearing baggy grey and tan clothes that hadn't seen much care for a long time, had long hair and a long beard in the same shape as the clothes.  

I almost missed it.

He was shuffling along, there, careful not to spill the coffee or whatever was in the cup, eyes to the ground. But in an instant, as though someone had called his name, he looked up at the top of the building where the pigeons were. You know pigeons....dirty, grey and tan, homeless or near to it.  As he looked up, a bunch of them took to the sky in a very un-pigeou-like swirl of grace, silent except for the sound of their wings. For a small minute, he and I both watched them, mesmerized by the abrupt bird dance in the air. When I finally looked from the sky back to him, he was smiling. 

I am still unsure what was so beautiful...

The dirty grey/tan man watching dirty grey/tan birds in a dirty grey/tan alley.  It really shouldn't have been, you know? But every day I've thought of how lovely it was, just that moment that no one else saw. 

I hope you find some beauty every day too, this weekend. Keep your heart and eyes open!

Snowmen and Hedgehogs

Winter is HARD.

It just is. 

I think it's less hard for people who live near ski resorts and can afford to buy season passes and all.

And I think it might be less hard for Floridians. (Except those Floridians who are waiting on spring training in Ft. Meyers. Winter's pretty hard on them, too.)

Part of the reason you haven't read anything on the Chronicles is that after Christmas, I tend to roll up like a frostbitten hedgehog in my "burrow" on the prairie, waiting, waiting for sunshine and warmth. Hedgehogs don't have a lot to write about, really. And if they DO somehow come up with something, it's likely to be grumpy, so better to grumble to one's bellybutton than publish it, right?

You know what else makes a grumpy hedgehog?

Ridiculous, overly ambitious goals to accomplish in January. It's the longest year of the months, my friends, and it's made much, much longer by strenuous workouts, protein shakes, purging of cupboards, sobriety, increased fruit and vegetable consumption and so forth. Any fault I found with myself in 2016 will be eradicated in January. At least, that's the determined plan on December 28th. 

Grumpy hedgehogs are anti-social, too.  Not because they don't like people necessarily but because socializing requires an enormous amount of positive conversation (remember, the hedgehog has nothing to talk about), wearing clothes that are not stretchy athletic wear (nothing fits right after the holidays), and polite declining of refreshments unless it happens to be raw carrots or unsweetened hot tea. It's much easier to watch 3 seasons of Death in Paradise while snuggled down in the burrow, trying to pretend it's not -20 degrees right outside the window. For the 7th straight day in a row. Amen. 

So, I'm trying to open myself up to embracing certain things about winter. Such as the idea that it's perfectly acceptable to have some sort of soup three times a week and no one bats an eye. It's a good time to sew and knit and paint if one is into that sort of thing. Reading is encouraged; to disappear into a book is basically required in winter months, isn't it? Winter sweaters and layers are very forgiving to holiday bodies. (The one that will be brilliantly toned by March if all goes according to plan.) People play cards in the winter; I don't, but those who do seem to find it great fun. And for my friends who ski and dogsled and snowmobile, it's a glorious time! 

That was me trying to be positive.

I know. 

It was a feeble, trite attempt and nobody bought it, least of all this grumpy frostbitten hedgehog who is sincerely thinking of going back to wine in the evenings and just getting through to February.

To be continued... 

Prairie Hike

We had a beautiful prairie hike before the rains and snow hit this week.

Looking to the east from a high butte.  Tessie explored as hard as she could, saying (I'm sure) "This is the most GLOOOO-RIOUS day of my life!"

Twilla, on the other hand, is not high energy. We were a long ways from her couch. She still had fun, but it was probably not the most glorious day of her life. (She is a glamour girl stuck in a redneck world. Very trying...)

Loved the feeling of being on top of the world!

See those little white buildings off in the distance?  That's the shop, my in-laws' house and garage! We spent a lot of time looking for distant buildings, like the pellet mill in Jordan, which you can actually see from this point!

You're going to get plant pictures. That's all there is to it. Everything is about to turn grey and tan, so I am soaking up the little bits of color!

Angus found big mounds of clay and would climb up on them to make clay balls which he DESPERATELY wanted to chuck at someone, but no one would let him. Shocking.

I'm always fascinated by the lichen on the rocks. Isn't it stunning?

And the currant bushes echo the same colors...

A muddy, gunky, yucky little reservoir to swim in!  Talk about stinky dogs after this!

A whole day spent with Dad, just exploring, is a big treat.

Oh! Check this out! My Gramps used to tell us to always look at anthills because they excavate all sorts of things like Indian beads and shells. This little anthill had a couple sea shells...see the white one next to the ant? I was kind of astonished that my camera was able to focus and clearly shoot this.

I think sagebrush is beautiful.

We found another reservoir and the kids went to frog hunting. 

See the little swirl in the water? That's a frog. Angus totally missed them, and was dejected after half an hour of amphibian-less efforts.

The sand rocks are sculpted by the weather; rain and wind hollow and shape them, unlikely artists but faithful. 

We always look for initials and carvings in the rocks. It's irresistible, scraping one's name and date into these stones! I don't know who P.M. is. Nature is wearing away the details...

The grasses are graceful in their last days, aren't they?

The Farmer found a wee pile of purple glass and porcelain chunks scattered in the grass. 

I always wonder about who lost precious things out here. And they WOULD be precious, because it would have been so very far from any town, hauled out by rough wagons or carts. 

On our way back home, we checked salt'n'minral and jumped a little bunch of mule deer. This picture was taken from the moving side-by-side Honda and is not the best.  The deer were in good, fat condition and they didn't run very hard.  

COWS!

We stopped to look at tipi rings, too, but the crew was pretty played out by that point.  It was hot. We were dirty. The dogs smelled. The tween girl was barely able to tolerate another minute with her brother and mother. 

So we went home. 

Today it's cold and wet and grey. There's snow in the air and we're pulling out the winter clothes, sadly. I'm grateful we had a day of sunshine together before this hit!