Lazy W Marie

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

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from unfocused to zen

Spring has sprung in Oklahoma, and soon even the stodgy old calendar will agree. My days are filled with worthwhile activity. My heart is brimming with hope and excitement for the immediate future. My mouth actually waters every time I notice a new pink or yellow bloom or that stunning wash of emerald-green in the middle field (which seemed to happen overnight). This week’s soaking rains have rinsed everything so clean, and the breeze is so mild again, that our air has a plump sweetness. It’s delicious. And it carries birdsong in that old, soft cotton, memorized-poem kind of way that we all love so much, especially at daybreak.

My Jane Magnolia has evolved from this just in the few days since I snapped this photo. Now she has almost as much green as pink, and she is gorgeous. Time marches onward!
My Jane Magnolia has evolved from this just in the few days since I snapped this photo. Now she has almost as much green as pink, and she is gorgeous. Time marches onward!

But I haven’t been feeling perfectly springtime-ish every day. Sometimes it takes some effort.

Handsome indulged me early this morning in a little coaching session. Or maybe you’d call it a pep talk or just a nice conversation between husband and wife about life lately. I shared with him that I am feeling a bit scattered, spread too thinly, and unfocused. And what he shared in return was so helpful. I have great respect for him. His words carry a lot of weight in my heart and mind, so his encouragement gave me a much-needed reset. He said to remember that everyone sometimes feels that way when they carry a variety of responsibilities and balance various priorities. (I don’t claim to carry the weight of the world; but I do manage a crazy-quilt lifestyle. It can be, well, crazy.) My guy said calmly that what you do is the first most important thing, then the next, then the next. Stay in control of your time and energy and know that you cannot do all of it all at once and that it is okay to set limits and say no. (I am paraphrasing, but he doesn’t mind.)

Simple, right? But the incoming tide of asks and offers and demands on our time and energy can be so brutal. Sometimes the world sees a person who doesn’t work outside the home and assumes that his or her free time is limitless and energy bottomless. And sometimes these people have a hard time saying no.

Our conversation was like a deep breath of that cool, sweet Oklahoma air. Cleansing. After he left for the Commish I comforted our dog because Klaus pouts for about ten minutes after his Daddy leaves, then I spent an hour doing just the first most important things on my day’s list, without letting my thoughts be pulled in every other direction, and I felt so energized. Soon I had a few minutes to notice again the details of this beautiful morning.

That is what I would add to my husband’s very good advice: When you’re feeling overwhelmed and scattered, start by focusing on small, beautiful details. Aim some of your energy at gratitude and allow your heart to settle on the gifts already at your feet. Then your mind will be more free to zero in on what must be done.

I love this combination approach of focus and gratitude. And articulating it now, I see that it’s a good blend of him and me.

God Bless Hot Tub Summits
XOXOXOXO

marathon monday: sidelined & up in the air

About April. The OKC Memorial Marathon is now seven weeks away. How we jumped from fourteen to seven weeks in just a few hectic days is a mystery to me, but here we are. I have spent the last couple of months in a state of gradually improving physical fitness despite that truly maddening ankle sprain and the attendant stillness that is just not my groove. Life beyond running has been full to bursting with changes and activity too, so it’s no wonder that time has flown. What does this mean for me participating in the April race? Well, maybe the Universe knew it might not be in the cards for me this spring, and that is why around the holidays when registration was cheap I just kept not clicking through and making it happen. I now feel in my guts that a full 26.2 miles is not what my body needs right now. That’s okay. There are other marathons later in the year for which I could train and be really ready. I had resolved last year not to run distance this again unless I was prepared. 2015 was humbling.

So here I am being all rational and peaceful about this conclusion, then Handsome and I drive to Bricktown last night with some friends and I see this view:

open streets

Wide open streets. Barely stormy skies. The Oklahoma City skyline. My gosh. It’s so tempting. I am going to be really sad if I don’t run something at the end of April.

Maybe the half? Back when Tiny T and I finally went to see an orthopedic doctor, I was granted permission to nibble at running short, slow distances, as long as I wore that bionic-woman ankle brace. So I began slowly, grabbing first a mile or two, then ramping up very cautiously to five miles at once then seven. That was about three weeks ago, and I am happy to say that now my weekly mileage is up to around thirteen (total), plus some barre classes or yoga mixed in, and overall my ankle feels wonderful. Sometimes it’s tight or has a stinging sensation, but it’s no longer painful. My follow-up doctor appointment was cancelled because it fell right in the thick middle of some much more important farm business, so I have yet to see the doctor again for that final green light. But I believe when I finally go in he will say, “RUN! Run for your life!” I want this more than Mitt Romney wanted the Presidency.

Okay, April. Fast forward through my convoluted brain process to this:

I’m okay with not being fast right now, which is the goal I had set for myself last autumn. I’m okay with postponing a marathon until later in 2016. But…Is seven weeks enough time to both get in the shape I crave (so I’m not dieting during race week) and prepare for a good, solid half marathon?

According to this Hal Higdon Training Program, yeah, probably it is. This is a totally reachable goal, and a lot of great stuff can happen in seven weeks.

So. It’s Monday. My plan is to dive deep into the second half of that half marathon training program and be kind to my body along the way (food, water, vitamins, stretches, positive affirmations). I will also call to set a follow-up appointment to check my tight, stinging ankle, and we’ll go from there. If racing even just the half is not in my cards this spring, it’s totally fine. The OKC Memorial has hundreds of volunteer opportunities that sound really amazing, and I would be very happy to participate that way too.

In the mean time, I know a few people running the Boston Marathon soon and I am VERY excited for them!! Most of all a local friend Robin, who in my mind is the Comeback Queen. So amazing. With her permission I might share some of those training updates soon.

Thanks for listening, friends! Obviously this is a big deal to me, haha. What races are you planning this year? How are you keeping in shape, mentally and physically? Do you ever see a wide open city street and fantasize about running it?

Run for Your Life
XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

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