Whoa Nellie, it’s Saturday! Yesssss. Happy weekend, friends. Handsome and I are at the tip-top of a week-long Stay-Cation, so we are feeling pretty great. This is a much-needed break from all things Commish for him and some much-needed down time for us together. I have stocked the kitchen to her chalkboard-painted gills with all our favorite edibles, and Klaus and I have done as much of our farm chores ahead as possible. Hopefully this will help us do lots of swimming and bonfiring and eating lazy meals. Minimal work for the next eight days. Fun projects only, please!

By the way, the reason we took off this week is that it’s our wedding anniversary. Fourteen amazing years. : ))

Since it’s Saturday, I have gathered up a collection of things worth reading. I hope you find something here that grooves you. Leave me a link in comments if you have discovered something else!

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Frida Kahlo’s life was tumultuous and sad and inspiring in wild ways. This list distills it nicely into lessons we should consider.

Since I am forever evaluating and analyzing how I spend my time, this article about the human body’s energy clock really spoke to me. And the infographic is great.

Also related to how we spend our time, Neil deGrasse makes some brief comments here about why balance is maybe overrated. I groove this. A lot! Life is such a constant roller coaster, it’s nice to just follow the rhythm and extreme demands sometimes. Nice to let the challenges strengthen us instead of deplete us.

This particular Ted talk made me cry happy tears. If you are a parent, or a mentor, or a teacher, but especially if you are a parent, give it a few minutes, okay? I happened to absorb this story right around my trip to visit Jocelyn in Colorado, and my heart is still thrumming from the Love. Malala’s father on not clipping her wings. xoxo

More love: Chances are good that a lot of my friends have already seen this next one, but I am sharing it anyway because it’s so beautiful. Ann Voskamp wrote this handful of brave things to keep in your pocket for hard days in a hard world. These are the kinds of things I pray to my girls (yes I pray to God of course, but I send them prayer emails, sort of, to their hearts, through Him), but as usual Voskamp has articulated it all so well. And you don’t have to be a young girl to benefit from this Love and wisdom. Check it out.

Now for some health talk. I ran across this article by SkinnyMom that explains a concept brand new to me. Have you ever heard of “Ayurveda?” Basically, it’s mindful eating. Really, spiritual, truly culinary… Mindful eating. The notion kept my attention because sometimes I crave certain foods with more than my taste buds; sometimes I feel an actual need deep in my muscles and bones, and after eating that food, especially if I do so slowly and in a healthy way, I feel amazing. Better than good. And happy. Give it a read and let me know if you think it’s smart or weird.

Tina over at Carrots and Cake is a lot of fun, and she has a pretty gorgeous (and healthy!) figure. She promotes realistic living, nothing extreme, which is so great. I started following her around the Boston Marathon for obvious reasons (it was her first, congrats, lady!) and have stayed because she shares so many wonderful ideas for food and exercise. But this? This blog post was profound. And before you dismiss me because you don’t think fitness blogs can be profound, just click over and scan down to about the middle. The Reason Why I Always Want to Work Out is not about mania; it’s about gratitude. Read it and count your blessings. Then go work out.

Okay. I’m outta here! I’ve got some Stay-Cationing to do!!
And some 14th Anniversary Romance to Enjoy!!
XOXOXOXO
p.s. It’s free Icee day at 7-Eleven!!

On the short flight from Oklahoma City to Denver I read several chapters of Lotus Eaters and have to surgically differentiate the main character Helen from the very similar main character in another book I’m nibbling at, It’s What I Do. (By the way? I can’t wait to tell you about both of these books. Wow.) I eat a couple handfuls of dark-chocolate-almond-cranberry trail mix plus a small red apple and a full liter of cold water. It is nervous, happy eating, because that’s a whole lot of food for me at eight in the morning. Still, something tells me the energy will be well spent throughout the day.

I cannot stop smiling as I make my way from the landed plane to a speedy underground train and then to the baggage carousel and my shuttle rendezvous. Texts with Handsome and my firstborn make my heart soar. 

Just minutes outside the Denver airport I see the landscape is comfortingly familiar to Oklahoma. Patchwork fields and modest farmland dotted with barns and silos. Scrubby prairie grasses, ponds, and even tree rows gone wild with time. It’s all very normal looking until I realize that above all of this, it’s not traces of clouds and sun I’m seeing, but rather snow capped mountains. Nearly halfway up the dome of the cornflower blue sky, I stare at the teasing, white, fragile looking shapes. Just hanging there. Broken silhouettes of the peaks where summer can’t reach, suspended above purple and blue shadows too smooth and quiet to be real. I have to refocus my eyes several times.

More brackish water in my life. Driving on the divided highway through the familiar-feeling terrain toward a brand new place. Closer and closer to my girl, my first baby, and a group of stunning rocks where her own heart has found purchase. Away from my own very real home. The drive is a pleasant mix of the two for a while, and I pray thank you and prepare my heart. Then once more thank you. 

The whispers of the mountain range had been on our left for an hour, just a tenuous suggestion of a foreign land, but now we are turned toward them, facing their immensity, their colors growing sharper with every mile, their heft swelling and gaining a pulse. I catch myself feeling physically sad for the cars driving away. Leaving already? And I catch myself holding my breath.

I see purple wildflowers, five feet tall. A pair of muscular, glossy horses grazing in a field that could be one of our own. A long, thick grove of vaulted trees all leaved out in silver and dancing shamelessly with the very Oklahoma-like wind.

If you are born here, if you grow up with these mountains as your nursery walls, at what age do you first acknowledge their splendor? Then, at what age do you grow bored with them and need reminding? 

Now the feet of the giants are visible. Green and carpeted, knuckled with foothills bigger than anything I’ve so far considered a mountain. More silver trees, this time growing in perfect twin rows, flanking a narrow, unpaved drive, a lot like the great ancient oaks in plantations of the South. I see feathery green grass and every kind of tree, but mostly pine. Cabins or boutique hotels emerging here and there. Generous hidden meadows and colorful wildflowers. This impossibly serpentine road as we climb up up up and my ears pop.

I gasp audibly at the massive boulders spilled out everywhere. Tossed like powerful marbles, great and meaningful, shocking in their size and perfect roundness. Others are deeply gouged and creased by long gone water, and I make a wish that I can maybe carry scars so beautifully. 

Still climbing, still sprialIng upward, I drink in a wide view of nothing but conical Scoth pines. They are stacked in wallpaper rows and layers, greens and grays, a color scale advancing up the mountain that seems to have no top. 

My eyes are greedy for every detail. 

Happy Saturday, friends. Happy end of the week or beginning of the week or however you think of this luscious collection of hours between Friday and Sunday.

Saturdays at the farm are among my favorite times in life, because they usually include sleeping a little bit late with Handsome, our legs braided together and his childhood Snoopy buried between us somewhere in the silky cotton sheets. Saturday means Hot Tub Summit with no time limit and less office talk than during the week (office talk never bugs me, but it’s really nice to see my husband escape it here and there). Saturday means the coffee tastes a little better and we get to watch an episode or two of Rifleman before starting whatever adventure we have planned. (Lately those adventures often include a pretty little nineteen year old young lady who has our hearts forever.) I love Saturdays at the dirt-and-hooves Lazy W.

Starting today, Saturdays here at the digital Lazy W will have a special purpose! They will be all about excellent reading material. Book reviews, stories about Dinner Club With a Reading Problem (our famous little Oklahoma book club), general chit chat about books and editing and writing, or maybe just a round up of great articles I’ve read the previous week. I’m really excited about this! Because reading is my favorite thing. Next to gardening and romance and coffee and running.

 and warm weather………….

Today, this first such Literary Saturday? The latter of all those ideas. I’m sharing some articles I’ve read that were flat out great and I think you’d love them too. Take a read and let me know what you think, or share in the comments a link to something you’ve read this week you think the rest of us would enjoy!

How to Mine Diamonds by the incomparable Ann Voskamp. This is a long article and one that could have your eyes brimming with tears by the end, but it is so worth it. So worth the investment of time and emotion. Ann (we are on a first name basis, ha!) writes with such poetry and grit, just like in her book One Thousand Gifts. In How to Mine Diamonds she expresses my favorite concepts, “carpe diem” more thoroughly and with more spiritual exactness than I have ever read before. Give it part of your weekend, okay?

Kitchen Sparkle by Joy the Baker. If I have a girl crush on anyone on the internet right now, it’s Joy. And I’m not even sorry. Practically everything she writes, whether recipe or inspiration or just anecdote, is like infusing my day with lemon juice and rosemary. Which is what this particular article is all about. Plus? She lives in the French Quarter. So either I love her or hate her.

Becoming Antifragile by Nerd Fitness. I stumbled on this website recently and have had fun going through the archives. This article back from July is just wonderful. And it’s not just about physical stuff; it points to every good reason we really chase after the physical stuff. The article also includes a book recommendation, so Nerd Fitness gets Lazy W bonus points.

The Place Where You Are Cared For by Edie. xoxo I really love Edie. She always writes beautiful, spiritually enchanting stuff that I pretend like is just for me, because she seems to know exactly what people need to hear. This piece of hers from back in November is on a list of things I have saved because I glance at it frequently. It’s especially valuable to me right now as the farm is more and more becoming a landing spot for our firstborn. Words fail to impart the preciousness of this season, friends. And Edie’s memories help me stay centered. So go read this piece (it’s not too long) and enjoy the makeover she’s doing in her digital space. Really gorgeous!

Okay, there you have it! Literary Saturday, episode #1, complete. I hope you sample some of this here, and I really really hope you share something else worth reading. Sending you so much love from the Lazy W. Thanks for stopping in!!

“Either write something worth reading
or do something worth writing.”
~Benjamin Franklin
XOXOXOXO

I’m not alone, right? The best moments in your day seem to happen when neither a camera nor a smart phone is within reach? So in your excitement you try to tell people about it, but it never quite translates. Or you try to go back and reenact the magic but the magic has already dissolved.

This week especially, great stuff seemed to happen around me left and right and then never again. So for Friday 5 at the Farm today, I’m offering you five little scenes that deserve to be immortalized somewhere. On this blog in plain old words will have to do.

Chunk-Hi the Tire Flipper
In the front field are two massive, deeply treaded rubber tractor tires meant for nothing except the buffalo’s entertainment. A few months ago we actually swapped a broken down four-wheeler for them. Chunk-Hi loves these tractor tires almost as much as he once loved that broken down four-wheeler. He uses his thick, curved horns and dense bony forehead to pluck these seemingly weightless toys out of the sand and throw them in great big loops into the Oklahoma sky. He delights in this! Sometimes the tires never even hit the sandy wallows before our split-hooved boy catches them again and flips them back toward the heavens.

Well, one evening this week I was walking up the gravel driveway just in time to see just such an exhibition. It was thrilling. Chunk seemed to know I was watching, which prompted even more enthusiastic efforts. I ran inside to get my phone for nothing, because by the time I ran back outside he had abandoned his toys and just wanted kisses. Or cookies. Which I had not brought.

Geoffrey the Cat Naps on a Saddle
Thursday morning I was walking out of the east doors of the barn carrying a large green tub filled with hay. The air was icy but the sun was dazzling, the kind of brightness that will convince you of warmth that cannot possibly exist. I stopped with my face turned up to soak into my eyelids at least some sunlight and heard a gentle meow coming from the ground to my left. Still holding the tub of hay, I looked down and saw Geoffrey (our gray and white barn cat) folded up neatly on a discarded leather saddle. The saddle was partly collapsed on the dead grass, warmer I’m sure than any other perch Geoffrey could have chosen. I watched him stretch and flick his claws against the felty seat, his slender back a question mark. He meowed at me again and yawned, also tilting his eyelids sun-ward. Then his small cat body nestled itself perfectly in the shape of the saddle and he went to sleep. You know. For a cat nap.

Frozen Pond at Sunset
This particular beauty struck me at least four times just this week, and each time it was so stunning that I’m not even sad about missing the photo opportunities. The sun sets directly behind the pond this time of year, just barely south and west of it, with a ridge of oaks and cottonwoods there on the horizon. So whatever fiery kaleidoscope colors the sky is offering are reflected on the pond’s wet surface there. This week, with so many consecutive freezing days and nights, the pond has been milky-frosty, opaque, with waves and ripples suspended in time. You can easily imagine movement in the water, but it’s so perfectly still. It’s like the fierce Oklahoma winds did battle with the arctic air and lost, bowed out gracefully. The reds, oranges, and pinks of our magnificent sunsets are thrown into so many new textures, it’s really breathtaking. I have felt lucky to frequently be walking past an upstairs window just in time to see all this beauty.

My Best New Salad Invention
Honestly, I could easily have taken a photo of this salad. I almost did, really, but everyone keeps shaming me for being that woman who takes photos of all her food, and I am definitely susceptible to teasing peer pressure. So, trying to cut back. Anyway. The salad.
It was equal parts leafy green lettuce, raw spinach, and parsley. If that sounds like too much parsley, just trust me. It tastes amazing! I could literally feel my blood purifying with every bite. On top of your greens, slice up a small avocado and add just a fourth of a cup of toasted sunflower nuts. Splash the whole thing with lemon juice, add pepper, and enjoy. So good!! No need to use salt because the sunflower nuts are pretty salty already. Delicious and healthy. Enjoy!

My Handsome
He stands there at the bottom of the stairs dressed in a black button up shirt, starched and open at the throat, sleeves cuffed flat below his elbows, and dark wash jeans. His forehead is creased with pain from a tooth ache, and tides of stress, and exhaustion from not sleeping. Because of the tooth ache. And the tides of stress. His shoulders are broad and strong. Able to carry all the weight thrust on him every day, but growing weary. He is tall and muscular, with strong hands that grip me perfectly and green eyes that flash with anger, humor, and passion all at once. Those green eyes also try to hide a depth of loss neither of us ever expected to feel. He is protective, responsible, funny, affectionate, desperate, confident, and a little bit lost in this world. Just a little. But his vision will come through. The toothache will abate. His broad, strong shoulders will catch that one moment of relief he needs to square up again.

He stands there at the bottom of the stairs dressed in black, waiting for me to join him for our morning prayer. He is an innocent little boy and a strong civic leader, my husband and best friend, brother, father, neighbor, son. Past, present, and future all in this gorgeous body and Handsome face I have loved for so many years. And I will love him forever. Come What May.

If you don’t have a camera, friends, 
take pictures with your mind!
Tell me something beautiful with your words.
XOXOXOXO