Lazy W Marie

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

You are here: Home / Archives for 2013

Archives for 2013

Marathon Training Begins

   Ah, January… you temptress. You flirt.

   Forever seducing me and scandalizing my imagination with possibility, with promise, with high energy and blank-page calendars just begging to be scribbled with lists and fantasies about all the good things I want to accomplish and become.

   But this year, I have a more concrete plan for you.

   As January is every year, this month in 2014 will be replete with new beginnings. Fresh starts. Our gardens will need planning and cleaning; the sparkly holiday decor will get swapped for scrubbed baseboards and fresh pillow covers; and I might even be studying Spanish and attending a series of beekeeping classes. All good, worthwhile stuff. But there is one new start that will require more focus and discipline than all the others put together…

OKC Marathon official site

   On December 30th, I begin serious training for the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. After talking about it for several months, the time has finally come to get to work. Quit goofing aroung and start putting in the hours and miles. Following a wildly successful and really fun half marathon last spring, my excitement level for this new challenge is through the roof!

Our west field is not warm and verdant like this right now. But I am dreaming of it hard.

   As this cold new month pries open her sleepy eyes, a mere 117 days remain until the race. One hundred seventeen days to train my body (and more importantly, my mind) to run 26.2 miles safely and smoothly. I will be more or less following the Hal Higdon training program dubbed “Novice 2.” You can see this 18-week plan right here.

   If I am reading this plan right, then the coming weeks will accumulate a whopping 397 training miles. EEK. I might need new socks.

   Are you running this winter and spring? Are you training for any particular race? I hope to write weekly or bi-weekly updates on marathon prep in the coming months, so I would be really jazzed if you followed along. I’m a sucker for encouraging words, and if you’re local and training too, even better!

   Besides running, what other fresh starts are on your January horizon?

Jogging is very beneficial. It’s good for your legs and your feet.
It’s also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed.
~Charles Schulz
XOXOXOXO

Pause to Focus

   It’s the day after the day after Christmas. Our tree is still up, as are all of our holiday decorations, and it all will be for at least another week. To me this is comforting, although the great late winter purge and scrub will be comforting too.

   The recent cloak of thick ice is nearly melted, the sun is shining and warm for two more days, a little taste of spring right after the Winter Solstice, and all the animals are thankfully very happy and healthy. Our intermittent power outages have proven to be memory makers more than serious inconveniences, too. So that is nice.

   Handsome and I are carving a path through the holidays one gathering at a time, battling high fevers, terrible coughing fits, and threadbare nerves day by day. Honestly, friends, it has not been an easy Christmas. But our blessings are innumerable and we are choosing to count them and rest in the coziness of love and peace every chance we get.

   We do a lot of maniacal laughing at the Murphy’s Law vibe life has been displaying, too. It’s funny, but maddening, how difficult planning has been this month. I mean, I should really sit down and record all the lessons we have had to learn about living in the moment. Being present and focused on the here and now rather than always stretching, yearning, preparing for the next event or tomorrow’s list. We have barely felt safe planning what to eat for dinner lately! But… these are good lessons to remember. So we bow our heads in either obedience or resignation, depending on the emotion of the moment, and get back to simple things.

   Maybe if I list the things I would like to plan for, I can rest a little and get back to the business of right now.

   Things I am Thinking About 
That Life Keeps Telling Me Are for Later:

  • Painting the Apartment and finishing window dressings there.
  • Shampooing all of our carpets and upholstered furniture.
  • Rethinking the herb and veggie gardens for this spring.
  • Planning a lovely little book release reception for Dee. (I dreamt about this last night.)
  • Beginning serious training for the full OKC Memorial Marathon in a few short months. (I have barely been free to run a few miles here and there lately… Will I be able to turn this around in time to be ready for 26.2?)
  • Switching from blogger to a legit website and getting serious about writing.
  • Attending beekeeping classes and starting with fresh colonies.
  • Spending more time with my parents and my Grandpa.
  • Catching up on reading all these great books in my house.
  • Spending time with our friends. I miss our friends.
   
   Some of what I crave right now is purely selfish, so I try to remedy that by making unselfish choices hour by hour. Take stock of how much I have already received, how much is already working in my favor, and how much I can afford to emotionally and practically give away to others. Plenty. I can certainly afford a more open handed life than what I have been living. A less clenched way of moving about the world. Terribly, it has been with the people closest to me that I have been most clenched. 
   So life is good. It is full of teaching things and celebrating things. It is rich and meaningful and delicious, even with its bitter surprises. 
   How are you holding up?
   

 

 

Merry Christmas from the Lazy W!!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas Day…
Deep peace in your hearts…
Good food on your table…
Even if it is small-town Chinese food take out
because you lost power on Christmas Eve…

Love in your words and in your touch…



Laughter in your rooms…

Because when things go crazy, as they have here recently,
what else can you do but laugh? 
Also… You’d laugh too, if you were playing referee between 
a jealous parrot and a jealous lap dog in a dark room.
Fire in your hearth…
Flexibility when you need it…

and the best of tradition too…
The miracles we need always come right on time.
Trust in the power of Love and in His timing.
Many blessings and thanks for your friendship
from our home to yours!
From Handsome, Marie, 
and the silly menagerie 
at the Lazy W
xoxoxoxoxoxo

Icy Weekend, Ugly-Beautiful

   We woke before sunrise to the buzz of electronics losing power. An ice storm had moved through Oklahoma while we slept, and eventually the pale dawn revealed a hobby farm thickly encased by glassy, stubborn, frigid ice.

Oklahoma ice storms are beautiful but brutal.

   Our animals are all fine, thankfully. Their extra fat and fur are keeping them all plenty warm, and they also have shelter, high protein food, and forage. The power outage changes life inside the house significantly, though. And on a would-be very busy Saturday filled with holiday plans and tasks, succumbing to frustration would have been easy. But we really didn’t. (Not much, at least. wink!)

   Thanks in no small part to Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts, which gently nudges us to see the beauty in challenging situations, and also thanks to just a rich dose of Christmas cheer lately, my heart was light enough today to do just that. To see (mostly) magic in this unexpected Saturday Before Christmas. And you know what? Soon that is all I could see. I can’t even see the ugly any more.

********************

   I am so thankful for the breathtaking beauty of the gardens right now. These frozen herbs, these bent and frozen zinnias, all of this natural wonder in perfect wintry suspense.

When people say you can freeze your fresh herbs, this is probably not what they mean.

 
   It means we grew amazing things this year, that this little curve of earth is no longer void. It means that another swell of paradise is coming next year.

   I am so thankful for the freedom and ability to buy nice gifts for so many children we love. We do not take this for granted; nor do we take their presence in our life for granted. Handsome and I are very lucky to be called “Uncle” and “Aunt.” We cherish it. Have I ever mentioned to you that we have three million nieces and nephews? Well we do.

The Christmas memories you make are far more valuable than any gift you purchase. Please remember this.

  I am also thankful for the warm, pleasant feelings of nostalgia that washed over me all day, remembering so many little-girl Christmas seasons with our own children. This year, bitterly sad for so many new reasons, is oddly the first year I didn’t cry the whole time I shopped for gifts. In fact I caught myself giggling over and over, remembering so many fun things Handsome and I have done together over the years, things we did to surprise the girls and give them the best Christmas we could, year after year. Above all, we made memories. Now more than ever, this is clearly the most important part of all the work parents do at the holidays.

   I am so thankful for a messy living room, strewn with wrapping paper, Sonic ketchup packets, pine branches and other kindling, clean laundry, and unread books. I am thankful for the fluffy little dog my Father-in-Law has brought to live with us, because she brings so much new affection to our home. I am thankful for the paper whites blooming, for the pillows and soft blankets that beg us to cuddle, and for the candy canes, popcorn, and hot chocolate we can have for dinner. Because we’re grown ups and allowed to do that if we want.

The consolation of a deep, cold winter is a glowing living room.

   All of this means that we have a full life bursting with people we love and activities that truly nourish us. It means we have a home, not a perfect house. It means we work hard enough to relax on the weekend.

   I am so thankful for this small, colorful, happy little kitchen. I am thankful for this wall hook crafted my loving husband, loaded with slightly soiled aprons. I am thankful for that honey bee photo on canvas, a gift from our friend M when she and Hubs went to Alaska recently.

   This room reminds me that we always have plenty to eat. We often are surrounded here by people we love and who love us, and that I have been cooking lately with my youngest daughter, with friends, and by myself, feeding very special people, creating meals and desserts that nourish our bodies and make us priceless memories. 

********************

 
   Difficulties abound, no doubt about it. But so does sweetness. So do opportunities to make really special, one-of-a-kind memories. Love reigns supreme if we allow it to.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” ~Philippians 4:8

   I hope this finds you making the most of whatever circumstances are thrown your way. I hope your Christmas wish list is longer on “Fun to Have” and “Love to Show” than it is on “Things to Buy.” And I hope that, despite the romance of a power outage, you have all the electricity you need!

“He who has not Christmas in his heart
 will never find it under a tree.”
 ~Roy L. Smith
XOXOXOXO

The Lonely Polygamist (book review)

   Who recommended this book to me? Was it you, Birthday Girl Julia? Or was it Margi? Or just plain ol’ Goodreads, based on who KNOWS what profile criteria? Anyway, someone sent this title my way, and I am so glad. It is yet another relatively new release I might not have tackled without someone’s prompting.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
   The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall, The Random House Group, 2010. 
599 pages of pure modern literary blissful torture.

   The experience of reading this book was very much like eating a giant, heavy, extremely tart and juicy, crisp green apple. You know, the kind of apple with a smooth, waxy skin and crunchy green-white flesh that upon being bit causes your right eye to squeeze shut and your neck to tense and you shudder from the tartness, yet the intense sweetness that follows and the juice that runs down your chin are so unmatched that before swallowing that bite you take another? The kind of apple that, though its natural sugars for a while give you that empty-stomach nauseous feeling, you believe may be the perfect antidote to all the junk you’ve been eating lately? The Lonely Polygamist is not entirely a smooth and easy, succulent, buttery, tempt-me-with-your-cheese-and-chocolate read. But it is all of those things once in a while, when it’s not being so tart it’s almost painful. And the sweetness that follows its tartness is priceless. That’s about the best way I can relay the emotional experience of reading this very believable human story.

   The main character is Golden Richards, a middle-aged polygamist living out in the desert with his expanding patchwork family, which happens to be coming apart at the seams. There is an ostrich. There is a brothel. There is a nuclear test site. There is a Mormon church community, though that is more backdrop to the story than focus (I didn’t take this as a religious comment at all). There are tawdry if awkward sex scenes, complicated marital relationships, and absolutely heart wrenching coming-of-age inner narratives. Honestly, the book is so tightly layered and elegantly told that it almost has to be an exact telling of these characters’  real life stories. Or does Brady Udall truly have such a fantastic understanding of the human heart? At several points in the story I was in physical pain worrying about the people. I caught myself praying for one of the wives once and one of the sons several times.

   Are you the least bit curious about polygamy or polyamory? Among so many other surprises, Udall lifts the veil a little to reveal a shining aspect I had never really considered:

At this, she could only smile; he couldn’t have given her a more perfect, watertight answer. Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by; that love was no finite commodity. That is was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity- even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest- could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end.

   What do you think?  I have to admit, this is frighteningly parallel to so many things I have been studying lately, just the open, accepting, unselfish, freeing nature of pure Love. And no, I am not thinking about polygamy; I am just thinking about being less clenched in my own chest.

   I hope you will consider reading this book. It’s not for the faint of heart, unless you are looking for something to embolden you to your own life and help you find the teeth to take control. It’s also not for the  highly opinionated, unless you are in search of something to mellow and stretch out your rigidity. I almost put the book back on my shelf a few times. I had no idea where the story was going, and it worried me. But page after page I was drawn more deeply into the hearts and minds of these characters, and it mattered to me more and more what happened to them. I am so happy to have stuck with Golden and his clan through to the end. Which, it turns out, tastes very much like a weird new beginning. The tartness was followed by so much sweetness, and I am full.

   I gave The Lonely Polygamist 5 stars on Goodreads. Well done Mr. Udall. I will find more of your titles.

“What a gyp!”*
~Rusty Richards, age 11
XOXOXOXO

*This novel is anything but a gyp. But I got such a kick out of one of the son’s frequent use of this phrase, I had to share it.