Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Senses Inventory: Friday of Possibility

   By 9:07 this morning I had finished my strongest run of the past week, 
started a big load of laundry, fed the animals, 
and fought off no fewer than six moments of deep despair 
over things beyond my control. 
Walking back outside with my last cup of perfect coffee,
I noticed the sky was different. 
I remembered a recent love letter from my husband. 
And I saw the day ahead of me as a clean canvas. 
Giddy over this complicated spark of energy 
cupped in my hands like that fated Baby Bumblebee 
that is always getting carried home to someone’s mommy, 
I sat down to take this inventory.

Seeing:  Metallic gold and silver clouds filtering the brilliant sun in the east and low, dark purple clouds sheathing the sky in the south and west. More pools of shade on the ground than I have seen here in weeks. A giant red wasp hanging the air above the water sprinkler, which is providing a wet playground for our five geese and occasionally a few of the chickens. Shimmering wet grass beneath all of this activity. Big trees waving their leafy arms at the new day. Four leggeds calmly finishing their breakfast.
Hearing:  The chit-chit-chit and then the giggling spray of the helicopter water sprinkler, the authoritative drone of the pool pump and too-loud suction noise of the filter there. Chickens clucking, geese whining, and guineas doing their necessary battle over property and sex. (They can’t live with each other; they can’t live without each other.) Locusts filling in the gaps between all of these sounds, a constant humming backdrop that feels meditative today, not desolate.
Smelling:  Sunblock. Sweet, sharp horse manure. Something full of pollen in the flower bed behind me. And dirt. I love being able to smell bare dirt. It smells clean, which is funny.
Tasting:  Salty sweat when I lick my lips and the last long swallow of sweet coffee, cold now because I have let it sit on this patio table too long while I soak up my surroundings. But it’s still delicious, and I can chew on the grounds that have fallen to the bottom of my cup.
Touching:  Breeze! An almost cool breeze, refreshing and light, not like the furnace blast we are so used to feeling these past few weeks. I still feel heat on my bare skin, but it’s comfortable at this early hour, still that pleasant summer heat that makes me want to invite all of our friends over to cook steaks and watch the fireflies come to life. The kind of pleasant summertime heat that makes me glad for bikinis and chlorine, watermelon and sweet iced tea. I also feel the rough plastic of my sunglasses’ arms behind my ears, where I have probably held them carelessly between my teeth. And I feel the excellent plush lawn chair cushion holding me firmly in this moment.
Thinking:  About the power of positivity, of gathering together your strengths rather than all the time searching out and magnifying your weaknesses (and those of others). Thinking of the gardens, of how many weeks might be left before the beautiful transition to autumn veggies and fruit orchard work. Thinking of my Mom and what it was like for her when I left home. Thinking of how much I have in life versus how much I give or produce.
Feeling:  Relief to have spent time with my girls yesterday, to see them so healthy and vibrant. I hope they are as happy on the inside as they appear to be on the outside, and I hope they know the truth of things despite some ugliness surrounding them. I hope they don’t mind resembling me so much, as sometimes teen aged girls hate to look like their Moms. Feeling worry for my sister and her children, confidence in my husband, excitement over a new writing project, and an overarching, belly trembling hope for our immediate future. I feel happier and more stable than I have in a long time.
Here at this farm we are not without problems, confusion, grief, or failure..
But we are so flooded with help and miracles!
We are steeped in natural beauty that reminds me of this grand design.
We are given morning after morning to start fresh, to enjoy the small rituals all over again, 
to try once more to not only get things right but also to build things up.
We are surrounded by good, strong, smart people who despite our failings… love us.
And together we keep circling this dream and this root of love 
that is worth everything.

Wishing You a Perfectly Love Filled, Miraculous Weekend!
Take a Minute to Notice Your Beautiful, Unique Life.
xoxoxo

Chicken Caesar Po’ Boys and a Glitzy Grimy Cafe

   Okay you guys, last night our supper was another Nawlins-inspired recipe, something (sort of) healthy and high in protein so we could feel better about polishing off those Pecan Pralines. YUM. This meal was neither complicated nor terribly original, not really even Cajun, but for Handsome and me it will always evoke good memories of a special meal in our favorite city.

   The place where we grabbed this meal is called Angeli’s on Decatur. Like most spots in the Quarter, it is very, very old. It boasts exposed beams and peeling paint, happily chaotic gallery walls made up of mostly Mardi Gras images, and over-sized mirrors. Late each evening, one plainly painted wall in the dining room is the screen for playing old projected movies. How cool is that? But my favorite part is what hangs from the ceiling…

   Multiple disco balls and star shaped, glittered lanterns strung up in constellations all over the room deny the age and shabbiness of the cafe. This much careless, happy contrast pleases me deep in my belly, and I plan to copy it pronto, Tonto.
   Okay, here is the food… Handsome ate his in Po’ Boy form; I ate mine as a breadless salad; and soon we both pushed away our plates, stuffed. But not too stuffed for another Praline. Duh.
This is a recipe approximation… All you do is…
  • Season and grill some boneless-skinless chicken breasts then chop them into bite sized pieces…
  • Then in a large skillet, heat up some olive oil for re-warming the chicken I had grilled mine earlier in the day and cooled them, to avoid the heat of the evening…
  • Along with the chopped chicken, add to the skillet a third of a bottle of Caesar salad dressing and stir it all up, heat it through, etc. This worried me at first but it doesn’t burn at all. And it smelled delish, baby. The aroma drew Handsome in from the green room during an episode of Storage Wars. This is a big deal, you guys.
  • Split, butter, and toast a simple French bread loaf. Layer it with ribbons of cold romaine lettuce and then top with the hot, dressed chopped chicken. I added to my salad a handful of cherry tomatoes from our garden! No extra salad dressing needed, because the chicken was so moist and flavorful.
  • We also ended up adding Parmesan cheese to our respective plates, the super classy kind that comes in a green plastic can. Because we are very high falootin folks.
   That’s it! We loved this even more than the original and will end up adding it to the main menu rotation around here. I’m excited about having a satisfying, nourishing meal that has this kind of emotional value, you know?
   What are you cooking this week? What memories does it evoke?
“Memory is always faulty. Emotions are always true.” ~Anonymous
Gently Wrap and Preserve Your Best Emotions
xoxoxo  

New Orleans Style Pecan Pralines

   After any trip to an unusual place, but especially after every trip to New Orleans, I come home full of cravings and ideas and this insatiable desire to adapt those things to my own to my home. Or my home to that town, or whatever. The urge covers everything from recipes to decorating ideas and (of course) gardening. Once in a while I get lucky and discover some foreign treasure that both Handsome and I would like to enjoy again, as is the case with Pecan Pralines.

   Last week in New Orleans, while strolling somewhere between downtown and the French Quarter, we followed our noses past the raw sewage (an unfortunate fact of life in some parts) and into a heavenly cloud of butter and sugar and toasted pecans and other wonderful fragrances. We cruised a glass front case that had been stocked with every imaginable variation of praline possibly known to man. We watched someone making the pralines fresh. And then we sampled tiny little crumbs offered by a temptress in a cotton apron, both of us staidly acting as if we still might not actually buy anything.

L O L

   So anyway, ten minutes and eighteen dollars later we emerged from the store with a box full of various candies, sealed with a pretty little foil sticker. I may or may not have felt panicky over the long walk back to the hotel. Will they melt in the box? What if we get mugged? I feel faint, I think my blood sugar is low. We better stop and eat all of these right now, just in case of all that. I definitely said most of this out loud.


   I am fairly certain my husband took a deeper breath than he actually needed, and he purposefully did not make eye contact with me.


   We each ate one praline as we walked through the skinny, bricked streets lined with book stores and art galleries. None of the other pralines melted. We certainly did not get mugged. And my blood sugar has not been low once since that heavenly day. That is how powerfully sweet these things are.

   I was shocked and delighted that Handsome liked this delicacy enough to want more. So when we got home I suggested he look up some recipes, and within a few minutes we had agreed on the first one to try. You can find it by clicking on this link.  It is perfect. PERFECT. I do not need to try any more.

   

   If you own a candy thermometer; if you can gather six basic pantry supplies; and if you have half an hour to spend in the kitchen then another half an hour to let these firm up, then you too can have New Orleans style Pecan Pralines. I pinky promise you this. I am not really known for my candy making skills, but I must say that this was super easy. It was even easier than making cookies, and much faster. Go figure, since it hails from the Big Easy, right?

   The photo above was taken immediately after I spooned the hot mixture onto waxed paper. The pralines look extra dark, almost like chocolate no-bake cookies, but that changes.

   A couple of hours later they were sturdy, flat bottomed, and that believable golden pecan color that makes me miss my Grandma Stubbs.
   As I write this, the time is 2:46 p.m. I have already eaten two pralines since lunchtime, and my blood sugar levels would probably give a hummingbird the shakes. That weird but wonderful sensation is the only thing ensuring that my husband will have pralines to eat when he gets home from the Commish. It also means I will never be making this recipe while he is out of town, because basically I don’t trust myself.
   More Nawlins stories and inspiration to come, I just had to share this with you guys real quick.

Eat dessert first.
xoxoxo

Did You Get Your Goat?

   About eight weeks ago I embarked on a new journey toward fitness, attempting in my weird ways to conquer the U.S. Navy’s Iron Goat. Perhaps you remember reading about it here on this blog, and perhaps you even joined the fun! I hope you did. Basically you give yourself one full month to run 26.2 miles, bike 112 miles, and swim 2.4 miles. It’s the Iron Man events, but accomplished over a month instead of in one day.

   Well, the time has come for an update. I have some awesome news and some awkward news.

   Let’s get awkward out of the way first: I do not own a bicycle and therefore did not even make a dent in a full third of the goal, the biking 112 miles part. What was I thinking back at the first of June? Did I imagine repairing the old blue forest bike and riding it to and from the feed store?

   Or did I maybe think that time on my garden tricycle with the big metal basket, pedalling up and down the driveway would cut it? Not sure, folks, maybe I already had heat stroke and didn’t know it. But despite fellow adventurer Tracy’s invitation to borrow her husband’s bike and ride with her around Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, I just never left the farm to do it. Thanks anyway, Tracy! Maybe some other time, I hope.

   So that’s the awkward news. I completely skipped what was probably the funnest part of this challenge.

   The awesome news is that I got myself hooked on running. This is the most major of major life developments, you guys. My grade school P.E. teacher Mrs. Heinen would shake her blonde head in disbelief and walk away skeptically to hear this news. Then she might secretly do a cartwheel, to think that all of her nagging and encouraging and prodding finally worked, albeit a thousand years later.

   My schedule in June was unusual, our calendar different every week with wonderful fun plans with friends and family, so my running schedule varied a lot. Actually our nephew Matthew was staying at the farm for a while and helped kick start me. He runs cross country in high school and was slightly kind but also slightly cruel about my slowness.

Matthew attacking his sister Sammie with whipped cream. Or defending himself, it’s hard to tell. Things got vicious that day. There may or may not have been peanut butter in his ear while he slept and later maple syrup on her hairbrush.

   Yes, it took me a while to find my groove, but when I did I loved it. I chipped away at the 26.2 miles, running laps around the back field of our property. The first several days included plenty of walking and wheezing, but having that very doable goal and a small group of friends asking me about my progress kept me trying.

   Then I added in swimming, though not at an Olympic lap pool like Tracy and I had imagined. I just paddled around our above ground pool here at the farm as consistently as possible, without touching the bottom or stopping, and estimate that I met the goal, more or less. You know what lovely thing I discovered? Swimming is as effective as yoga at stretching and cooling muscles. And the pool is a great place for ab work and flexibility.

Lots of times the chickens, geese, and guineas are hunting back here when I run, as this photo shows.  
   

   This is my favorite view on my morning run, the first big downhill slope, with the sun behind me. Handsome and a different nephew of ours drove the riding mower around one day, carving a nice, wide path for me in the prairie grass. Hopefully a good way for me to spot sleuth coyotes and wild Okie gators before they spring out, too. Because we do have those now, you know.

   So having completed those two parts of the Iron Goat, I feel pretty good. Actually I feel amazing. The earlier I run each morning, the longer I can run, topping out so far at three miles, non stop. Three desperate, sweaty miles, but still. That is huge for me. Then I immediately strip down and swim as many laps around the pool as I just ran around the back field, and magically I find that my body craves less caffeine. Handsome and I just might become millionaires by the money we save every month on dark roast coffee and real cream. Which is good news, because our once promising watermelon crop has dwindled painfully in the heat, so that will definitely NOT be the source of our windfall.

   Anyway, the Iron Goat has served me well. I haven’t lost more than about six pounds, but who cares? I feel stronger and leaner and just better… I dunno… aerated? My body feels better in so many ways, as does my mind. I love it. I totally see why people become addicted to running, it has so many surprise benefits.

   Big thanks to my gorgeous sister in law Halee for the inspiration, and thanks to my girlfriends who joined in the Iron Goat fun this summer!! Keep up the good work everyone.

When You’re Married Bikini Season is Actually Twelve Months Long
xoxoxo

You Take it From Here (Book Review)

   Having just returned from six days in New Orleans, I have three and a half thousand beautiful stories to share with you guys. I really should have been writing constantly all week long to keep up with the inspiration, and in fact I was scribbling things on hotel stationery every day, but I had almost no internet and was too busy enjoying the magic of the French Quarter and my Handsome guy anyway.

   Tonight, instead of Nawlins stuff, I just finished another VEEEERRRY interesting book and have a review to share. Got a few minutes?

http://pamie.com/books/you-take-it-from-here/ 

   Another generous gift from Julia, my most recent selection has been You Take it From Here by Pamela Ribon. It’s a new release, and I actually get butterflies in my stomach to realize that as I read these 311 pages, most of it at home floating on our 97-degree pool filled with dragon flies, Ms. Ribon was touring the south talking to her fans about her newest novel.

   One of these days I will finish a book in time to catch its author on tour somewhere and, while snagging an autograph, find time to discuss the original literature at length with its creator. I would really liked to meet Pamela Ribon in particular. She relays through her writing a lot of warmth and empathy that I think would be perfectly delicious in person.

   Okay, the book.

   I liked it a whole lot. I actually like it more and more as it sits in my Creole-stuffed belly, and I expect to want to read it again and also share it with friends and family. It seems to belong to a genre I would not normally say is among my favorite (chic lit maybe?), but that doesn’t matter one bit.

   You Take it From Here is immediately engaging, infuriatingly truthful, and wildly thought provoking about big, heavy topics. It weaves together maternal abandonment, cancer, coming of age, divorce, friendship, romance, and more. Ribon effortlessly juggles the weight of so many important themes at once that I am stunned to accept this as fiction. The wanna-be writer inside me kept thinking, Only real life could be so complex and yet so accurate, it’s just crazy how she orchestrated this much at once. Pamela Ribon, you have my respect. I found it very easy to relax into your story and let it flow over me.

   Reading this book’s teaser might tell you what it’s about technically, but only by devouring the actual story cover to cover can you experience all the author wants to give you. Just for fun, though, a sample:

On the heels of a divorce, all Danielle Meyers wants is her annual vacation 
with sassy, life-long best friend, Smidge — complete with umbrella cocktails by an infinity pool — 
but instead she’s hit with the curveball of a lifetime. 
Smidge takes Danielle to the middle of nowhere to reveal a diagnosis of terminal cancer, 
followed by an unusual request: “After I’m gone, I want you to finish the job. 
Marry my husband. Raise my daughter. I’m gonna teach you to how to be Smidge 2.0.”

   I strongly suggest that you read this book if you fall into any of these categories:

  • You have ever had a best girlfriend you loved more than a sister, who might even compete with your husband for space in your heart.
  • You are a child of divorce.
  • You have lost anyone to cancer, but especially a parent, and even more importantly your mother.
  • You have left your hometown for a new life but feel that gravitational pull to return even though you are an independent grown up. Especially if the town you left is in the south.
  • You have ever fallen in lust before falling in love, with the same man.
  • You are SICK of being bossed around by strong willed, controlling, arrogant women.
  • You are a strong willed, controlling, arrogant woman yourself. (I admit to hating Smidge right at her introduction, and I was actually relieved when she was soon to be no longer hurting and controlling her friends and family. I know, I am an awful person. But Ribon wrote a terribly difficult character, and I wonder is she maybe intended her readers to detest this cancer patient so we could let go more easily.)
  • You are raising a teen aged daughter who is closer to adulthood than you would like. 
  • You are a woman. Mother, daughter, sister, friend, any of it. 

    There is something in here for all of us, ladies, and I  hope you give it a few days of your life. I hope you encourage someone you love to read it, too, so you can discuss the emotional tide that will inevitably happen.


   Thank you for sending the book, sweet Julia! And thanks ever so much for writing it, Pamela. I am much better than pleasantly surprised by a new genre; I feel good all over. Just warmed and challenged and inspired to appreciate my health better; to see things from other viewpoints more often; and to love my people more deeply. Reading has, once again, enriched my life. Just as it should. 


Read Outside Your Zone
xoxoxo