Put on your sunglasses....

....because you are about to encounter a lot of rhinestones. Why tiaras? Because when bookclub is at my house, we do silly things.  One time we had a pajama party! I've been DYING to wear my gen-u-ine homecoming tiara from my sweet friend Shelly and this seemed like the perfect time.  It's my party and I'll glitter if I want to...
Now, without further ado, Underground Bookclub January 2010:

You can't see the label very well, but this is Middle Sister white table wine...

Traci is the middle sister in her family and was excited to have a wine that exalted the virtues of the birth order she landed in!

(I saved the bottle for her. Hopefully, I can peel the label and put it on a card.)

Anyway, this is how the evening began....

....promptly dissolving in hilarity!

(This was during the FIRST few sips of Middle Sister.  Pretty much, we could have chocolate milk and the photos would look the same...)

After appetizers of tortilla pinwheels and shrimp lettuce boats, we moved to the kitchen for the serious business of the main meal. 

It should be noted, here, that most of us "store up" for the evening, meaning we save caloric room for supper, so that we will have no guilt about eating seconds on whatever we want. 

One of the early and cardinal rules of the Underground Book Club is that there is no talk of dieting and no evidence of it. 

We had (besides appetizers) a green salad with dried tomatos, fresh cherries, homemade croutons and homemade bleu cheese dressing; blueberries; hard rolls and butter; seafood enchiladas; and finally but not leastly, a really glorious tirimisu.

(And, just because....we also had a box of Sees Assorted Fine Chocolates, between the main meal and dessert, to tide us over. We HAD to keep up our strength for the discussion...)

We get pretty animated, when making points.  Do you see the printouts and notes?

Penguins and Golden Calves brought out a lot of our personal beliefs and opinions, discussion of faith and God, examination of backgrounds and even how we read!

It's impossible to encapsulate the discussion on the blog, really.

Celestia, looking for a passage in her book.  This was one selection with underlining and writing in the book, and pieces of paper tucked in, odd little reminders of random thoughts.

Celestia, incidently, is the next hostess and she chose the book The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West.

(For those who are following along in satellite bookclubs....)

Here's the members who made it! We were down by four, and missed them terribly.

This picture pretty much shows how we end the evening, every time. 

Aren't they beautiful?

Celestia has often said that after an occasion like this, the house holds the happiness for days, and I really agree with her.

Chocolates and crowns,

candles and wine.

Could it get any more girly?

Wayland took this picture while we were all saying good-bye.

It's suitably blurry, because I was about to fall over, so tired!

(AND filled to brimmy-brim-brim with food and thoughts and friendship.)

Anne called in the middle of the meal, homesick for her bookclub, and asked me to tell her exactly what was going on. So I narrated the jewels and food for her, and she could hear all the fun.  If I could've somehow magically transported Anne, Beth, Marisa and Thelma to my house last night, I would've done it in a flash.

But we sent them love and I'll bet they don't miss the next bookclub, come illness or miles!

Changing

Okay, just to prepare you all....

This is not a deep, meaningful post about how my life is making a turn for the better and the introspection about that progression. (Have you EVER come to my blog and found anything remotely like that? So why would you now?)

However, I want to caution Traci and Beth to sit down, before reading on. Swallow the coffee, if you have some in your mouth, and prepare to be amazed.

(The rest of you all, well, I hope you're not horribly disappointed after this build up.)

(It's a True Confession sort of post.)






Yesterday, I voluntarily entered a clothing boutique with no intention whatsoever of buying anything, and spent an hour trying on clothes that cost more than my yearly book budget. 

The key word here is "voluntarily". 

Here's the story:

I don't like to shop. And I really, really don't like to shop for clothes. It's torture for me. 
The rare occasion arises when I must go to a real store and muster up the courage to pull something off the rack and try it on.

First of all, I can never decide what size to pull.  Do I take the size I think I am, the size I was last time I tried something on (high school) or the size that I'm hoping swims on me but probably will be perfect? Tricky. 
(And don't let saleswomen help you "find" something. They'll want to.  Under that perfect little outfit they are wearing beats a black heart, as I will explain further down the post.)

So, I grab about 3 things that should "go with everything" and humbly request to be let in to the fitting room.  Turns out, if you spend time cultivating a relationship with a salesgirl, you'll get the covetted room furthest from the door opening into the store.  I never have that kind of time, so I have to put up with the crummy room. 

Here's where it really gets ugly.  The dressing rooms are 2ft squared, which is NEARLY enough room for a full grown woman, her purse and some clothes.  I'm not the most coordinated of people, so I really need more room. I have to figure out where to put the clothes I just took off, how to get the try-on clothes on my person without marring them, and somehow slip out discreetly to find a mirror.

These dressing rooms are hot. I struggle, and finally emerge in a fashion don't.  I try to slip over to the full length mirror that was bought, incidently, at a circus supply store. You know the kind. Your bottom looks gargantuan, as does your face. My face, of course, is red from the dressing room fight.  This is where the evil heart of the salesgirl kicks in. 

She pretends to be getting clothes out of an empty dressing room to rehang, but secretly is looking to see if I managed to pull together an outfit. The MINUTE I re-enter the dressing room, discouraged and disillusioned, this woman who was sent by the devil himself, stands by my dressing room door and says in a sweet voice, "How are you doing in there? Do you need me to get you those jeans in a different size?"

She knows darn good and well how I'm doing and that I need those jeans about two sizes larger. She SAW me, for heaven's sake!

My reply (because I'm not going to play her wicked game and ask for the size I really need) is, "Doing fine. Everything's fine.  Don't need another size, especially not larger...thank you!"

The salesgirl saunters out, snickering under her breath, and I try to get all the clothes BACK on the hangers, and redress myself.

The dressing rooms are hot. I struggle, and finally emerge in a fashion don't. (The clothes I wore in.)  Using all the grace I can possibly muster, and a lacksidaisical air that is fooling no one, I hand off the three hangers of clothes to the saleswoman, and say that I don't really think any of them will work for me today, and leave the store. 

I try not to run until I turn the corner.

My only consolation is that the saleswoman has to put the clothes back, but I wish I could warn that poor dear soul that just entered the store with hopeful eyes.

I told you that so I can tell you this:

(Still with me?)

I went to Miles City yesterday for a doctor's appointment, without kids and husband.  After the appointment, I got the requisite short triple shot breve, and still had about 20 minutes to kill, so I went to the new (and only) clothing boutique in town.  Annie has been gushing about this place for a month, and I thought I'd go in and look around, to placate her.

 She swore it would be wonderful and she told me to be ready for big prices.   Big prices, to me, are double digits on the tag, with no red printing showing their original cost. 

I went in and I have to agree....it's really wonderful clothing! I would try to name drop about designers, here, but I wouldn't have a clue whether it was cool or humiliating, so I'll leave you to imagine exclusive lines of garments. 

The saleslady was engaging and excited about her wares. The more she showed me, the more animated she got.  We looked at darts, fabrics, lines and colors in great detail. She'd swoosh something off the rack, tickled to her toes by it, and then dash to the next rack, performing the same thing. 

Apparently, I was hypnotized, because the next thing I knew, I was in a cool dressing room with three lovely outfits that altogether cost more than what I could sell a bred heifer for. AND, get this...I told her my REAL size and she didn't bat an eye or snicker or anything. This bode well. (bade? boded?) I made the mistake, however, of looking at a price tag on one dress before I tried it on.  I nearly chickened out. 

I ended up spending 45 minutes, trying on everything she tossed at me in my size.  She was very kind and sincere, but she didn't flatter me.  When something was off, we both knew it, and I'd go back to the dressing room and start over with outfit #16. 

It was fun.

I really, really wish I could've purchased something, because I enjoyed myself so much, but I had to break the spell and buy groceries, instead. 

That's my confession.  That's the story. 

I still can't believe it happened, and neither will Traci and Beth, until I show them the card with the prices written down of the top 5 outfits. 

To start your day...

(This post is for my friend Traci, who is always getting calls from me in the middle of the morning, with thoughts like "Do you suppose Lazarus was really, really mad at Jesus for yanking him BACK from Heaven, just to prove that He's the Son of God? After a long, agonizing illness, God carried him home, then bam! Jesus brought him back to Earth. Wouldn't that make you mad?"  Bless her heart, she just rolls with them, but I'm sure she's thinking..."Caller I.D.  Next time, look at the caller i.d....")

So, I was thinking....

(In the middle of the night, where all my most profound thoughts take place; somewhere between 2 a.m. and coffee.)

Do you remember the story in the Bible, about Daniel in the lion's den?
If you aren't familiar with the story, here's a Reader's Digest condensed version. I urge you to go to the Bible for the whole story without my editing and commentary.

Daniel was a really smart man who (with God's help) worked his way to second-in-command to the king. The king's other poohbah got jealous of Daniel and devised a scheme to do away with him, only it would have to look like a legitimate thing, because the king really loved Daniel. (Long sentence; stay with me...) SO, they knew that Daniel prayed to "his" God (having been a foreigner, taken slave long ago. Another story for another day; stay tuned.) every day. They came up with a most evil scheme that centered on flattering the king's ego while taking out his second-in-command, our friend Daniel.  It was foolproof.  They got the king to sign and seal a law that said, basically, anyone caught praying to a god that wasn't the king would be put to death. (I wonder if the law wasn't passed like a lot of ours, with so many addendums that the king didn't really worry about it.)

Anyhow, they, of course, "caught" Daniel praying to God, just as they had planned, and brought him to the king with the law in hand. Gotta put him to death.  So the king, in angst that his beloved second-in-command was to die, had him thrown in the lion's den, and returned to the palace to spend a sleepless night fretting about his friend who was lion lunchmeat.

The next morning, the king returned to the lion's den and hollered down, found Daniel alive because God had shut the lions' mouths up tight, brought him back out, threw the wicked advisors to their deaths, proclaimed that Daniel's God would be the one worshiped in all the land henceforth, and they all lived happily ever after. (Cue swelling orchestra music, dim the lights....ahhhh!)

Now don't you wish you'd just gone and read it for yourself?

Getting back to the post....

Almost every study and reading guide for this story focuses on Daniel's unwavering faith in God, and that's very true. It's the main point, really, along with God doing amazing things to prove He's the one and only, the one who's really in command of every situation and the One and only God who should be worshipped. Those are points that should be examined and studied, deeply. 

What came to me last night was how the king RETURNED to the lion's den and called down for Daniel! If you yell for someone, don't you half expect an answer?

Think about it.  I think the king had some pretty big faith, too, wouldn't you say? It wasn't grounded, like Daniel's faith, but apparently, just being around Daniel and watching him live his life had planted some seeds in the king.  I would imagine as second-in-command, Daniel ended up having as close a relationship with the king as anyone could, and that once in a while the king might enquire about why Daniel did certain things that were different, things that had to do with his beliefs.
 It sure makes me think a lot more about my walk with the Lord, and pray that any seeds He's sewing grow like those in the king, that would make someone holler down into a lion's den and expect an answer. 

Obviously, this is not deep, theological thinking at it's best. 

And now you understand why every Bible study I join, eventually moves their time and location, while my postcard gets "lost" in the mail....

Postcards from the edge....

....of sanity.

They got married.

Angus wore purple harem pants and I'm not even going to begin to describe the bride's ensemble.

Taaa-daaaa!

(Made her own wedding dress....)

The pumpkin pie playdough cake that started it all.

(Note the pink gloves on the groom...)

Molly's indoor sport is trying to "beam down the food" from the table.

The hat wears him!

I love this picture.

Thrilled to be getting ready for bed!

Arrrrgggghhh! That's a GREAT puzzle!

Maggie goes out, no matter WHAT!

Twilla, "watching" t.v....

The cows, stalking the feed pickup.

Winter Wonderland

It goes something like this:
Wonder if I have enough coffee for four more days?
Wonder where that cat went?
Wonder how many movies the kids can watch without causing permanent brain damage?
Wonder what is taking my husband so long, coming in from work?
Wonder if we have any chocolate hiding in the back of the cupboard?
Wonder why I hid the chocolate in the wine glasses?
Wonder why the kids are being so quiet?
Wonder why the (now reappeared) cat has pink whiskers?
Wonder what is taking my husband so long, coming in from work? (This gets asked a lot when snowed in...)
Wonder why two bodies under 40 pounds can create 200 pounds of laundry in five days?
Wonder when they're wearing these clothes?
Wonder where I put my cross country skiis?
Wonder if I could still ski?
Wonder what to have for supper?
Wonder what is taking my husband so long, coming in from work? (Again)
Wonder why the kids are giggling hysterically?
Wonder if having a glass of wine at three o'clock in the afternoon would seem desperate?
Wonder who would know if I did?
Wonder if all the other stay-at-home ranchwives are wondering about dumb things like these?

That's why it's called a Winter Wonderland.

To Willie, From Ma '48

My Aunt Bert gave me a book, recently, that belonged to my Gramps. Gramps loved reading and I don't ever recall seeing him without some form of literature or pamphlet or letter. He especially liked the poetry of Robert Service and Robert Burns; I remember "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and not understanding why it was humorous, until I got older! 

This book is Robert Burns. I was reading through the poetry on New Year's day and found many, many great writings that I had forgotten about.  There are a lot of "Scotchmen" around here (as Gramps called them), and Burns is held in great esteem with a special evening of celebration for his birthday in Miles City at the end of January.

I'd never before thought about how this rough old prairie may have seemed like home to Scotchmen, but one of Burns' poems sounds just like he's writing from Montana. (The spelling, though odd, is correct to Burns' writing. He wrote like he talked, so Scottish it had to be read aloud to be understood.)

Here, for your wintry reading pleasure, is his poem:

Winter: A Dirge

The wintry west extends his blast,

And hail and rain does blaw;

Or, the stormy north sends driving forth

The blindidng sleet and snaw:

While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,

And roars frae bank to brae;

And bird and beast in covert rest,

And pass the heartless day.

'The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,'

The joyless winter day

Let others fear, to me more dear

Than all the pride of May;

The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,

My griefs it seems to join;

The leafless trees my fancy please,

Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme

These woes of mine fulfil,

Here, firm, I rest; they must be best,

Because they are Thy will!

Then all I want (O do Thou grant

This one request of mine!),

Since to enjoy Thou doest deny,

Assist me to resign.

After reading and typing that, I miss my Gramps so much, in his wool shirt with the woodstove blazing, reading and writing in his diary from his little red plaid chair by the window, amidst a nest of papers that only he could recognize the order of! I'm grateful I have this little book, and those dear memories. 

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....

Merry Christmas From the Farmer's Wife!

This is how God showed His love among us:

He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son

as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:9-10

This is a white Christmas, in Cohagen.

Day before yesterday, we had a frosty fog all day that produced "whiskers" on everything outside.

Yesterday, it snowed all morning and thickened the whiskers! It's beautiful, but so cold it makes your teeth hurt.

Sunflowers

(I know they should've been cleared out last fall, but I leave them for the birds to pick at...sort of...)

My rock wall garden bed catches all the snow...beautiful for moisture in the spring, and picturesque in the winter.  It's my favorite flowerbed!

(And it's currently under those three foot drifts, so you'll just have to picture it in your head.)

I love the golden hour, right before the sun sets. Blues and golds and pink-whites...

The wind makes snow sculptures in the shelterbelt.

(Usually, there are cat and kid and dog tracks through them, so this is a rare picture!)

My blown glass heart, on the trellis.

Here's a very confused, single sharptail who has been hanging around our place for the last week. She floats in, like a feathered football, and perches in the karagana trees, looking quite pleased with herself and picking all the pods left from summer. 

I don't know where her friends are, but she seems content to fluff around by herself.

This picture was taken through my livingroom window, to the north.

She dresses herself.

The temperature was hovering around zero.

She DOES have access to caps, snowpants, mittens and scarves.

In the words of our friend Gus Glasscock,

"If you're going to be stupid, you better be tough."

(We need that on t-shirts for the whole family.)

It takes 15 minutes to dress the boy in all his winter gear.

It takes him 5 minutes of plodding aimlessly in the snow to decide he's had enough.

I've wanted to say, this whole year, that one of the most unexpected, wonderful things about keeping this blog has been making and renewing friendships. My family and I have been blessed beyond measure by those of you who read and respond to the Cohagen Chronicles, either by comments here or comments in the store/post office/phone call/ letter etc.

I wish I could adequately express my gratitude and downright happiness!

Being a typical Dutton, I'd hug all of you, if I could. And don't think I'm not trying to plan a blog-friend picnic sometime in the future! Wouldn't that be just the best fun? Bring your tents, campers and dogs to Montana!

(I'll let you know.)

(My mother-in-law is gasping for air, this very minute, because she just read that.)

(There's a family of boys, in Michigan, packing their bags...)

Love you all, and have a beautiful, blessed Christmas!

Let's wrap it up!

I know this will come as a shock to most of my readers....

I'm sort of wrapping-impaired.

No, really!

There are several things that trip me up, not the least of which is the actual procurement of wrapping paper.  It turns out, in order to have a good-looking package, it would help to actually BUY PAPER. Now, I used to be pretty good at this, B.K. (Before Kids, as though you needed the translation...) I'd look through all the paper in the bins, buying the glossy, classy paper and co-ordinating bows. My packages still looked relatively horrible, but I got marks for spending money on the materials.

The era we are currently in would be D.K. (During Kids or Dang Krazy; either meaning is relevant) and the paper is borrowed. I'm NOT kidding you. Dead serious. I went looking for the Christmas paper today (I know, nothing like planning ahead) and found....a roll of Day-Glo chartreuse-y green stuff that had been hidden under our bed. Yeah. I don't know why I hadn't found it earlier, either...it illuminates the room. Realizing that wouldn't cover all 57 gifts, I pleaded with my husband to requisition some paper from his mom. (She makes Martha Stewart look like a slouch. But that's another post...)

While I was under the bed, looking for the Christmas paper, I ALSO managed to locate a bag of cheap bows that had a decidedly flat, dusty appearance, as though our 23 lb. cat had been laying on them. (I'm quite sure she had, because she wouldn't look me in the eye as I questioned her, and that's a dead giveaway that she had something to do with the flattening.)

It's also helpful to have some Scotch tape.

I found two rolls that showed promise. One had been in hibernation since 2003, (I know this, because that was the date on the newspaper it was with.) but the adhesive seemed to have retained its stickiness.

So, we are looking at 57 presents, armed only with a roll of sci-fi paper, a roll of borrowed Santa paper, 25 flat bows, two (?) rolls of tape and a couple of paper shopping bags I scrounged up, that looked sort of festive. (Meaning: the cat hadn't had a chance to lay on them, yet...)

Care to guess how my gifts look?

I can really get behind the statement " It's the thought that counts".
The TRICKY part is convincing people that I had a thought. 

And, no, I'm not going to post a picture of the gifts. Bad enough I bared my soul in print.

O Come Let Us Adore Him

Don't you love Nativity scenes?

When I was a little girl, my sister and brother and I made a whole set out of salt dough and painted it with tempera paints. Salt dough is a wretched medium to try to create holy dioramas with. As I recall, our figures were shaped rather like flat-bottomed Weeble people. We had a terrible time with their little facial features and decided to fix them with the paint. Tempera paint is a wretched medium to try to repair holy dioramas with. It's bright. It runs like cheap mascara in a humid room. And our Mom loved it, displaying it (to our horror as we hit the junior high years) prominently every year. 

When I was a young, single teacher, one of my students' families made me a tiny Nativity with clothespin dolls on a cottonwood platform. They built the creche with materials they had gathered around their ranch, right down to the lichen hot-glued to the base. Mary and Joseph were robed in felt, and had the most beatific looks drawn with care by young hands, and baby Jesus was tenderly wrapped with soft, white cotton. I cried when I opened it; it was so lovely, all that care for a foolish girl who was learning more from them than they ever would from her. 

When I was a new bride, my husband saw me examining a minescule Nativity in one of those World Market type stores in the mall.  It was the most delicate, perfect little sets that I'd ever seen! All of the figures would fit easily in a grown man's cupped hands...not neatly, but they'd fit.  It was all ivory colored, with darker tones to illuminate the features; simple and elegant.  That Christmas eve, our first together, he surprised me with the little Nativity! I've carefully arranged it every year, astounded that the kings still bear their gifts with no scratches or nicks, and that the shepherd's staff is intact. 

When I became a mother, I wanted a Nativity that my children could hold and feel and arrange. (They aren't quite ready to venture into salt dough territory...)  I found a resin-ish, plastic-ish Nativity scene in the Bible bookstore in Miles City this year.  The tallest of the wise men is about 10 inches in stature, almost Barbie doll height.  They are painted very subtly, in muted blues, soft browns and corals. But then, as though the makers couldn't stand to let them leave the factory with that much elegance, they encrusted them with a clear sort of glitter.  By the light of the tree, they are enchanting! By the light of day, they are border-line gaudy...kind of like women who put on makeup in dark rooms.  Whoa! 

The kids are loving them.  Most days, I find all the wise men, shepherds, Holy family and animals all gathered in a clump around the baby Jesus.  They're all looking in, crammed as close as they can, shoulder to shoulder, robe to robe.  Yesterday, however, it took on a new dimension as the Tyrannasaurus Rex joined the group.  He seemed happy to be there, but there was definitely a menacing presence lurking behind Joseph. We think he was really checking out the lambs, but we can't be too sure. I removed him, but Rex returned, carefully placed in his spot with sticky hands.  (You could tell by the glitter...)

I look forward to the Nativities I'll add, as the years pass.  I'm sure my kids will make some sort of representation and that I'll get tears as I unpack it, annually.  There will be missing lambs, wise men with battered crowns, shepherds that have been given more "detail" and donkeys with the OC brand on their right hip.  And they'll all be beautiful to me, because when I look at them I'll see the people I love and the real meaning of this Holy-day, my Jesus.