Lazy W Marie

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

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Archives for February 2016

friday 5 at the farm: I’m an ADULT YO

Hello, and happy Friday!! We made it. We made it, we made it, we made it. I’m mostly cheering hard for you office dwellers out there who in a matter of hours get to escape the confines of your business-casual arena and explore the weekend however you see fit. But those stay-at-homers among us (like me) are happy for Friday too. Sometimes it actually means a little relaxation, a little freedom to spend time how we actually want to spend it. Reading, running, playing outside without doing required chores. Not always, but sometimes.

Anyway, it’s Friday and I haven’t checked in with you much since sharing our happy-sad news about saying goodbye to Chunk-hi. The funny thing, and you may know this via Instagram, is that he’s still here. Ha! He is wholesale refusing any and all attempts to load him into the trailer brought here by his new family, so every day we go through the same routine of opening and rearranging the maze of gates to form a pseudo-chute, hoping to lure him up to the front to the trailer with sweet, protein-rich treats. And every day he creeps forward on the black tips of his pointy hooves then scrambles backwards again before we can secure the gates. I’m pretty sure at least twice I heard him chuckle under his breath and say, “Yeah right.” But that’s okay. This long, weird goodbye will become part of the fabric of our memories with our big sweet boy, and I am sure one day we will be laughing about it.

Eventually.

Assuming Handsome doesn’t have a nervous breakdown first.

For now, once again, happy Friday! And a quick Friday 5 before I go for a run outside. HALLELUJAH I am able to run again!! Full post on this and related topics on Monday.

Five Things That Make me Feel Like I’m Doing Adulthood Correctly:

  1. Visiting an Aldi grocery store and remembering to bring not just a shiny quarter for the cart but also several reusable bags for my mostly organic, fairly low-priced, delicious haul. Once, before I had the hang of that store, I loaded my arms with good stuff then decided to also buy a giant watermelon, and without the required bags I ended up soccer-dribbling the gorgeous round fruit all the way to my Jeep. That is NOT how you adult.
  2. Collecting trash from all over the house and seeing that last time I did so I remembered to leave clean trash bags at the bottom of each receptacle. Wow.
  3. Doing laundry to the max. I mean, getting the clean stuff dried, folded, ironed, and put away the FIRST TIME and also days before we need said items. Having truly empty laundry baskets for a while. Also, folding clean towels like a hotel does. I don’t know about you, but bath towels folded so you see the open layered edges make me feel weird and sloppy. Best way: fold the towel in vertical thirds then double it over once or twice and make sure you see the smooth, round elbow of fluffiness when you look at your shelf. This is bath towel Zen. Or roll them up if you must, but please let’s not look at those open edges, okay? Eww.
  4. Having either tortilla chips or raw almonds in the pantry and only eating, like, a few at a time. Making the purchase last several days is tantamount in my life to balancing the state budget.
  5. Wearing sensible shoes as well as my fancy brace to allow my ankle to fully heal so I can get back to the business of marathon training, which I clearly was not doing on the night this photo was taken, but it sure was a fun night and anyway I love those shoes!
That red thing is my Super Girl cape blowing in the Oklahoma wind, in case you don't know. So I'm a wedge-wearing, Super Girl-Storm Trooper, and it's awesome.
That red thing is my Super Girl cape blowing in the Oklahoma wind, in case you don’t know. So I’m a wedge-wearing, Super Girl-Storm Trooper, and it’s awesome.

Okay, tell me one thing that makes you feel like an adult! And please do not say “when I pay the mortgage or find all the magical tax deductions.”

Carpe Some Diems this Weekend!!
XOXOXOXO

farewell to chunk

What I’m not going to write is one more piece on love and loss and the importance of keeping our eyes on the silver lining. We’ve had so much of that here on this blog, because my husband and I have had so much of it in real life. It’s all a worthy lesson, no doubt; but today we just need to rest a bit in a new reality here at the farm. I am writing to ask you for your best loving energy. Your prayers, good vibrations, kind words, or just you quietly nodding head as you read. Handsome and I will appreciate your embrace from a distance.

Just the facts, ma’am.

Okay.

Today we are saying goodbye to a beloved farm-ily member, Chunk-hi the buffalo. Our bottle baby-turned cuddle bug for nearly seven years, our cookie-loving, face-scratch-begging, engine-racing, tractor-tire flipping behemoth is moving on to his next life chapter. We are caught in that all too familiar brackish water where salty tears mix with fresh starts and past meets future face to face.

buff BW face

Chunk is alive and well, don’t worry, just going to live on another ranch. Thankfully, that ranch is here in Oklahoma and owned by the parents of some friends of ours, so it’s possible we can go visit Chunk in his new digs. We could see his new girlfriend. Maybe next year meet his little golden calves. (We could become bison grandparents!!) This ranch happens to be in Stratford, so we can also stock up on peaches when they’re in season.

Those are all silver linings, Marie, stop.

Sorry.

This decision is not one at which we’ve arrived easily, and the factors have been many and building in intensity. During angry, bitter moments we find people to blame (new neighbors usually, the Turnpike Authority also). In tender moments we see that maybe this was always meant to happen, eventually. Our bison dreams way back in 2009 were big, and life has taken so many unexpected twists and turns since then. Whatever you believe about fate and bad luck, these last six and three-quarter years have just evaporated with our sweet buff. He quickly became part of our farm-ily during those early summer bottle feedings. He has etched himself into our identity at the Lazy W (how many children have visited to feed him cookies and scruff his wooly face?). He will always of course own a slice of our hearts.

I promised not to wax too poetic about this. It’s just such an emotional thing.

Chunk is being picked up today around Noon, and it will be only his second time in a trailer. He will be arriving at only the third place he has ever seen on this beautiful earth, and besides his mother (moments before she was hunted, I feel the need to point that out), he will soon meet his first adult American Bison. Word on the prairie is she’s quite a looker and feeling amorous.

Wink-wink…

We are not heart broken, exactly. We are heart-aching. We know this is the responsible thing to do and that Chunk-hi will be safer (uninvited attention from passersby on our road has been a huge problem this year), and we even believe he will find a whole new level of happiness in his new life. Of course that last part stings a bit, but gosh. We have survived a child leaving the nest and finding happiness. We’ll survive this too.

It’s all for the best.

So please keep us in your happy thoughts, and for sure keep Chunk-hi in your happy thoughts. Hope for him wide, green pastures, abundant fresh water, excellent romantic companions, and just enough human interaction to help him remember us fondly. Believe in these hopes and we will too, and no doubt he will be okay.

To Robbie and your family, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Knowing that good people love Chunk is such a comfort. We reminisced this morning that it was Robbie who helped us feed Chunk grass clippings when we were neighbors. It was Robbie who held off a dog attack before Chunk had horns to defend himself. And it has been Robbie all along who watched Chunk grow just as both our families’ kids were growing. As poetic full circles go, this is a lovely one.

Friends of the Lazy W, if you have ever visited our farm and shown love to our buff, thank you too. Thank you so much. Thank you for your cookie generosity, your inquisitiveness, your sense of caution and bravado. We have enjoyed it all. We would really love it if you took a moment to share a Chunk-hi memory with us.

We love you Chunk! We already miss you, sweet boy.

Oh give me a home
Where the buffalo roam..
XOXOXO

 

deep sleep, blackbirds, & some magic

We slept so late. More than nine hours in bed. Our smooth new slate-colored sheets must have chamomile leaves woven into the cotton.

We creep outside well past daybreak. The morning is warm and absent of any breeze but overcast, as gray as our magical sleeping sheets. Perfect coffees in hand and one hundred-pound puppy bouncing around our ankles, we start the day already simmering in affection and buffered by safety. Hot Tub Summit. We plan our day.

An hour later we are outside again, this time dressed and sitting at a round metal table next to the barn, facing downhill. We are still wrapped by the warm woolly air, no technicolor sunrise today. Our four-leggeds eat their breakfast contentedly. So fat and beautiful. Hens tease roosters, darting seductively across the middle field, scratching at horse manure, chuckling in the dormant flower garden. The birdsong is exceptional. We hear and scout for cardinals, blue jays, doves, and woodpeckers. Then it happens.

Out of the southwest corner of the farm, a dense flock of blackbirds, half as wide as our property and trailing twice that length, swoops up over the sand hills, maybe from the forest or maybe beyond, and speeds across the farm. They are too high to touch but low enough to force the air down in whooshes with their energetic flight. The birds are massed together into one quilted black flying carpet, undulating and speeding between the sky and the earth, slicing through the moment.

They race toward one tree with one purpose and land on an oak just past my husband’s car shop. Its branches dip and dance from the burden. Every twig now is dotted with a round black bird, the whole mass still twittering and vibrating. Handsome takes photos of the spectacle.

When they eventually hush, the regular birdsong resumes. I cannot tell whether the cardinals, blue jays, doves and woodpeckers were quiet during this stunning display or just out-sung. Either way, the heartbeat of the farm returns to normal.

Chickens laughing again and roosters crowing on every side. Geese preening with soft honks down by the pond. Horses snuffling and bison knocking around a fallen tree with his massive horns.

I have one more cup of perfect coffee to sip before deciding between work and play. But on days like this, when the magic here is so thick, it’s hard to know the difference.

Happy Valentine’s Day friends
Enjoy some magic
XOXOXOXO

arrivals and departures

We finally saw Boyhood a few nights ago. Have you yet? The movie starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, the one filmed with the same cast over about a decade? It’s both award-winning and simple, a Texas boy’s coming of age story and a fairly typical modern family story, too, one shadowed by divorce, domestic abuse, blended families, and alcoholism. Whew, typing that synopsis pretty well sums up my take-away feeling from the movie. I honestly never want to see it again, haha. But one strand of beauty does run through the whole mess, and that’s what I’d love to share with you now.

About two-thirds of the way through the movie, when the two siblings are teenagers and spending time with their Dad (Ethan Hawke) and his wife and family, they all sit around at sunset singing a song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. They are drinking lemonade and just luxuriating in each other’s company. Apparently the song they are singing is one they all have written and rehearsed together, and it’s sweet and funny and sad.

The best lines of the whole movie are in that song. They lilt through snippets of good news and bad news and harmonize how in life arrivals and departures happen side by side. It reminds me of the late 90’s Live song Lightning Crashes. Remember it?

Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door

Lightning crashes, an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now to the baby down the hall

Oh, I feel it comin’ back again
Like a rollin’ thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin’ from the centre of the Earth again
I can feel it

I love that song.

All of us experience this dichotomy throughout life, perhaps constantly if we pay enough attention. People die suddenly; estranged loved ones return to the fold. Friendships end; we meet new friends. Jobs change. We pack up and move. Animals come and go. The loves and losses are unending. Handsome and I have joked (often with maniacal laughter) that sometimes we feel whiplash from the good-news-bad-news dance. 

But to my thinking it can serve to keep us steady. I’m no longer so bothered by the balance of light and dark. This ebb and flow is natural, healthy, right. And trying to weigh the value of these sorrow-and-joy exchanges is is pretty pointless. I’m just grateful to be learning how to ride the waves and accept lessons along the way. Rail a little less against those things outside of my control. Embrace a little more the good when it swells up. 

eggs square plate

 

Maybe today, as the moon enters a new phase and our energy begins to build again, before a new work week begins, is a great time to take a deep breath. Remember that both love and loss are meant to be woven into the fabric of our days. We can’t have one without the other. That’s ok.

“You must let what happens happen.
Everything must be equal in your eyes,
good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”
~Michael Ende,The Neverending Story
XOXOXOXO

where will you spend this early spring?

We sat in bed yesterday morning slurping our first cups of perfect coffee, braiding together our legs, and fighting off the bouncy and space-invading affection of our 95-pound puppy. Slowly I recalled the overnight thunderstorm (it was glorious!) and hoped that during chores at daybreak I would still be able to smell ozone and see damp flower beds and pastures. Handsome clicked on the morning news, and there he was. Puxatony Phil. The prognosticator of prognosticators. The groundhog of all groundhogs, hoisted up in all his fatness, ready to tell us what kind of weather to expect next.

Low and behold, as by now you surely know, Phil did not see his shadow and we are all set for an early spring. Or are we? No matter what Phil’s prediction, the news anchors are always quick to dismiss the folklore, citing that Groundhog Day is rarely accurate. So let’s compare Phil’s 2016 declaration to what the trusty almanac says. The farmers’ almanac, after all, is correct more than 80% of the time, and the science behind its construction each year is kind of mind-blowing. Here is what I see for our area over the next two months:

FEBRUARY 2016: temperature 50.5° (2° below avg. north, 3° above south); precipitation 1.5″ (avg. north, 1″ below south); Feb 1-3: Sunny, cool; Feb 4-10: Showers, then sunny, warm; Feb 11-13: Showers, warm; Feb 14-17: Rain to snow north; sunny, mild south; Feb 18-22: Showers; cool north, warm south; Feb 23-29: Snow north, rain south, then sunny, cool.

MARCH 2016: temperature 60° (1° below avg. north, 3° above south); precipitation 2″ (2″ below avg. north, 1″ above south); Mar 1-10: Sunny; cool, then warm; Mar 11-13: Rain, then sunny, cool; Mar 14-21: Sunny; cool, then warm north; warm south;Mar 22-24: Sunny; Mar 25-31: Sunny north, rainy south; cool.

That looks like an early spring to me, friends!! And if a chilly morning surprises us here and there, remember what Hemingway said…

even a false spring

 

Start surveying your life for the happiest places to spend springtime, okay? It’s so close.

See you soon.

“When spring came, even a false spring,
There were no problems except where to be happiest.”
~Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast
XOXOXOXO