Lazy W Marie

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

feeling challenged, nourished, hopeful (media consumption this week)

Hello, friends, happy Sunday! I am soon off for a solo long run in what might be the last warm morning for a while. Then Handsome and I have a fun plan for the cooler weather headed our way this afternoon. Battery recharging is our favorite hobby. What does life look like for you this weekend?

Below are some of the best bits of media I have consumed this week. I am feeling nourished, challenged, and truly hopeful. Marigolds, zinnias, and baby pumpkin vines help.

some flourishing “jack be little” vines in the spent tomato beds

Thursday evening, I finally finished reading To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedediah Jenkins and wholeheartedly give it five out of five stars. Ten out of ten. All the stars! If either good storytelling or deep, spiritual inspiration are at all your thing, give it a whirl. Here is the review I shared on Goodreads:

I finally read this book after several passionate recommendations from a variety of people I respect. Loved it completely. It’s different than what I expected, and better. It’s a modern Odyssey, really, a young man’s physical adventure and waywardness made deep and meaningful by his journey inward and reconciliation with home and family, spirituality, himself. He connected to nature and to the world at large, and to God, the Universe. I was drawn in by his physical endurance journey, appalled by his travel companion, and fully romanced by the long trail of travel descriptions, of places I am unlikely to ever visit myself. Absolutely satisfying read, from the first page to the last. I am sorry it took me so long to read, but happy to have it in my bones now.

You had me at, “narrated by Woody Harrelson,” but that’s just one of many wonderful things about Kiss the Ground. Another stellar documentary on Netflix, it’s about soil health, carbon emissions, and the things we can do as people, governments, and corporations to improve things. Often, exposes leave me feeling defeated; this time I felt motivated, challenged, excited. Spoiler alert: COMPOST!

kitchen composting is a great lesson for kids
three cheers for well rotted manure!

The Daring Romantics podcast is one of my favorites. Author Lindsey Eryn always seems so casually approachable, so sweet and soft, yet her material is substantial, usuable, important. Often her message is a mix between Christian faith and the Law of Attraction, which is so right up my alley. This episode titled “Paving the Way for the Miraculous” is definitely worth a listen. Four accessible ideas. Grab ’em.

Handsome and I watched The Social Dilemma, and I have a lot to say, ha! Have you watched it yet? Are you surprised by any of it? Do you think these realizations will impact your online behavior, or if you want them to, how will you facilitate that? I am especially interested in learning more about the pleasure-pain balance theory. In this house, we are determined to facilitate more face to face communication with friends and loved ones, somehow, eventually. And we have discussed the value of inviting perspectives from people who seem to be very different from us. Here are two of my favorite quotes from the show:

“This is stupid, we can do better. It is the critics who are the true optimists.”

and…

“It’s going to take a miracle. And that miracle, of course, is collective will.”

Joy the Baker directed us to read an article on The Atlantic, How We Survive the Winter. Maybe you have already seen it? I read it this morning, was not surprised by the grim data, and actually feel uplifted knowing that if we face anything with some honesty then we can take control of our experience of it, even the worst stuff. I cannot control the big picture, only my contribution to it. So I will be writing my own Winter Survival Plan, and I hope you do too.

My friend Dee is a gardener after my own heart, for many reasons (she cointed that delicious phrase, English with an Oklahoma accent). This week she shared her thoughts and progress lately on growing a native prairie filled with wildflowers. Handsome and I are working steadily on transforming our front field into something like this, so Dee’s post was fun to read. By the way, treat yourself to viewing her blog on your PC, not a mobile device. Her homepage and photography are mouthwatering.

My mom, my baby sister Gen, and I are now reading Killers of the Flower Moon. So far it’s a crisp, dry read, a nonfiction history lesson about some unsettling events in Oklahoma Indian Territory. I will report back soon.

What are you reading right now? What have you watched lately? What podcasts do you recommend? Let’s consume good stuff.

Thank you for checking in. I hope you and your people are well.

XOXOXOXO

kicking off anniversary staycation

It’s anniversary week! Tradition bears that we spend at least part of it at alone the farm, soaking up summertime romance. Late yesterday afternoon, Handsome signed off from his Commish duties until one week from Monday. Ten days off, very hard earned, wahoo!!

Ten days at the farm after 118, ha! Despite the obvious jokes about quarantine sameness and farm work being constant and a general inability to halt certain routines, we are pretty excited. This time together has historically been a special time to reconnect and recharge. I love it. I love him. I love us.

Day One:

Johnny Ringo the nursing cat makes cuddling an extreme sport.
LLM is baaing and approaching more bravely.

We slept until 5 a.m., drank coffee with Little Lady Marigold, and went to Walmart for pool chemicals and a few groceries. We also sketched out a list of random lists we want to share with you guys, to document our 19 years of marriage. We promise it will be just as boring as it sounds.

Midday, Handsome got the mowing done while I grabbed an hour of exercise (a mix of treadmill and gym today, while watching gardening videos). We swam at high noon, exchanged a couple of fun gifts, then retreated to the air conditioning when our skin hurt.

Handsome surprised me with this colorful area rug he knew I was loving.
Klaus immediately claimed it.

I got to enjoy an afternoon Zoom with my family to discuss Where the Crawdads Sing. So fun! And I appreciate our baby sister Gen for gifting copies of the book to everyone. Really generous! That’s the book review I recently promised, by the way, so if that interests you please stay tuned.

How fortunate are my siblings and I that we are all friends, and that our parents will join us in reading and discussing books, even during quarantine?! I just love it. They are both voracious readers. They always read aloud to us, our entire lives, and they read their own books and papers in front of us, too. It was just a very normal and constant part of life. I am super thankful that we can share it now, still, in new ways.

This evening we watched the new Netflix movie with Charlize Theron, The Old Guard. So good! Imaginative action movie with a surprisingly inspirational message toward the end. We both loved it, and I hope it is becoming a series.

How about one quick piece of salad advice before closing up for today? Instead of adding toppings to the top of your bowl of leafy greens, start with them. That makes them bottomings, I suppose. It makes all the difference!

Just get a much bigger bowl than you think you need, ok? Tonight I assembled a pile of chopped sweet peppers, cucumbers, and gorgeous garden tomatoes, also some cooked chicken breast, and let it all sit in the fridge with balsamic vinegar. While I cooked Handsome’s dinner, it all became extra cold and flavorful. Then I just piled it high with greens and mixed it up. So much better this way! The tomato juice and balsamic provided more than enough slickness and moisture to skip dressing, and all the chunky bits were findable with my fork. Like treasure.

One more story: Just before the golden hour while I was folding laundry from the clothesline into a big basket, my industrious and forward thinking husband tried to remove some very full fly traps (the water bag kind) into sealed trash bags, but one of them fell and burst. It was, even from a good distance, easily the most startling and psychologically unsettling odor I have ever smelled. EVER.

To his credit, my man stayed calm and cleaned it up quickly. But much more than a whisper of the offense remains. The llamas are sad now. The tomato vines wilted. The cats are in a frenzy over the smell, but they are too young to know why. I fear the Little Lady Marigold will take this personally, because it happened so near where we have been making such progress with intimacy.

Back inside, we almost got into an argument over who was yelling too much or stifling their yells or what, because in the midst of it all a worried, newly homeless fly tried to burrow in my ear while I was delivering leftovers to the chickens. I did not handle it well.

Staycation is going great! See you tomorrow!

“The man who does not read good books
has no advantage over the man
who can’t read them.
~Mark Twain
XOXOXO

leak stop & friday 5 at the farm

Hello, and happy Friday! I have one million thoughts and feelings to share but will distill them a bit.

This week my cup is full, running over actually, and I am humbled beyond words. The outpouring of love from people in my inner circle has been so fierce that I almost cannot look straight at it all. I know what a gift it is right now, how it is meant to be accepted and kept, and I intend to keep it refilling my heart for a long time. So with some deliberateness, I am storing it up. My normal tendencies might have me diluting it all and leaching it away with negative self talk or listening to critics too much; so instead I am applying a leak stop to keep that from happening. Just thoughts and intentions, really, but it matters.

Five Stories This Week I Forgot to Tell You:

  1. KFOR visited the farm. News anchor Ali Meyer and her very cool photographer Travis spent a couple of hours with us on Tuesday, and we made lots of happy memories. I can’t wait to tell you all about this.
  2. Date Night! Also on Tuesday, Handsome and I had a date night exploring Factory Obscura in Midtown then feasted on Tex Mex, late in the evening. Have you been? To Factory Obscura? (I assume if you read this blog tat we have plenty in common and you have eaten Tex Mex at least three thousand times.) Factory Obscura is a fantastic immersive art exhibit absolutely bursting with texture, creativity, stimulation, everything. My husband liked it ok, haha, but he also was glad we attended for free with Yelp. It’s not for everybody. It is very much for me. I want to go again. Go with me?
  3. Chores around here are pleasantly caught up for mid-January. (Side note: I accidentally typed MUD January, and almost let it stay. Because it’s so true.) Christmas is tucked away, the fields are 80% clean, the animals are fat and happy (except for Zsa Zsa, who recently had a moment of conflict with Pacino), and the house is pretty organized and clean. I feel those happy, late winter urges to scrub walls and purge clutter, to add green houseplants and order seeds for spring. It’s great to be caught up so all of this can be enjoyed day to day.
  4. Marathon training is warming up. I feel amazing. On week four now, my mileage is solid, and the speed work and tempo runs are so exhilarating! I think I have a good plan going (Hansons Advanced), and I certainly have all the support I could possibly dream of. The race is in 99 days. Eek!
  5. Books! This week I am rotating between Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr. It’s like approaching the same goal (wholeness and vitality) from two very different and complimentary angles (spirit and discipline). Next week I’ll read The Alchemist to be ready for a discussion dinner.

Okay, Handsome just left the room to make popcorn. I need to be part of that rainy day luxury. Thank you for touching base!

Oh! Bonus story, make this soup:

modified greatly from the original Run Fast East Slow cookbook

Happy weekend, friends. You are loved.

“Most people think they lack motivation
When what they really lack is clarity.”
~James Clear in Atomic Habits
XOXOXOXO

Educated, a book review

Five solid gold stars to this book for its social content, writing style, readability, relevance, and emotional impact. Wow.

Educated by Tara Westover

Often after devouring a book, I immediately want everyone around me to read it too, if only so I can then make them discuss it with me, haha. Educated by Tara Westover is no exception, but this time I have a few specific target audiences in mind.

Friends, make time to read Educated if you:

  • are a feminist.
  • don’t call yourself a feminist but want to understand your feminist loved ones better.
  • have ever struggled with fundamentalist religion.
  • appreciate your beautiful life situation (or are perhaps amazed by it) but feel you don’t deserve it, feel you don’t belong where you are.
  • are a survivor of an abusive relationship (not necessarily a marriage).
  • are estranged from either your parents or your children (though this could make parts of the book especially painful, it could be very healing too).
  • are not estranged from family but distinctly separated from them in some important way, and it hurts.
  • doubt your potential as a human being because of your life circumstances so far.
  • crave a wider view of the world, of written history, of society and family dynamics than what your personal world has offered so far.
  • simply enjoy lush prose and masterful storytelling.
  • appreciate memoirs that span time, geography, personalities, trauma, and triumph.
  • need some encouragement about the resiliency of average people and the length to which the Universe will go to assist us.

Okay. Does any of that include you? If so, please take my advice, as I took my sister Gen’s and her BFF Julia’s, and read this book. Page after page offers heartbreak, wisdom, good solid writing (even poetry), and plenty of universal truth and encouragement. Humanity stuff.

I can stand in this because I’m not trying to stand in it. The wind is just wind. You could withstand these gusts on the ground, so you can withstand them in the air. There is no difference. Except the difference you make in your head.

I’m just standing. You’re all trying to compensate, to get your bodies lower because the height scares you. But the crouching and the side stepping are not natural. You’ve made yourselves vulnerable. If you could just control your panic, this wind would be nothing.

The author is young, so her memoir only covers the earliest chapters of her life, which I hope will be long and only more fruitful. This is just her beginning. But in a little over 330 pages she manages to weave a page-turning drama and paint the emotional landscape of a life that could have continued on a very different trajectory, had fate or Love or (as she concludes) education not intervened. She views herself in a detached enough way that she can write with humility, almost too much of it, and a great deal of curiosity, just as if she is one of many human specimens worth studying. Curiosity is a vital element to good education, after all.

This is more than a coming-of-age story, so please don’t avoid reading it thinking that’s all it is. It’s as much about this one girl’s life as it is about her family, her family’s generational patterns, and their culture at large. It’s about ignorance and straight up mental illness. It asks really big questions about who writes history, what feminism could say to polygamy, how to discover self worth and exploit our potential free of labels, and so much more.

And because any true account of this much trauma and family implosion will certainly have more than one side to explore, you might read it with some skepticism. I did. The internet is brimming with skepticism about her stories. But what I found refreshing about this author is how diligently she examines herself, how brutal she is about checking her own motives and scrubbing clean her own processes. I never felt beguiled or cajoled into taking her side as I read. Even when I (incredibly) could perceive there was more to the story with her parents, I trusted her telling of the facts as she saw them, and this has led me down some healing paths in my own estrangement story. All of it is heartbreaking. All of it is beautiful, eventually.

Ok. This book deserves lots of deep conversation. I am so thankful to Gen and Julia for the push to read Educated.

Me, Gen’s hair, Julia, and Dad in the background,
exploring downtown Los Angeles last month!

And I am so happy that a few of my close friends are reading it now too, so we can roll it around together. Do you want to join the conversation? It is all so smart and beautiful and provocative.

Okay. Gotta go. Thanks for reading, friends! What else are you reading?

“First find out what you’re capable of,
then decide who you are,”
~Tara Westover
XOXOXOXO

read, watch, listen this week & some happy photos

This week has brought me lots of excellent stuff to read, watch, and listen to. Here it all is, plus a handful of random snapshots from my phone!

I’ll Have Another podcast (with Lindsey Hein) Her live interview with Scott Jurek, author of North, was crazy relatable and a solid inspiration. I struggle sometimes with keeping my eyes on my own dreams and goals, with not being distracted by others’ accomplishments, especially during race season. His words of wisdom encouraged me to play around with variety in my running and also to, quite literally, forge a solitary path. North, after all, was all about his journey along the Appalachian Trail, basically backwards. Cannot wait to read it. Give this podcast episode #164 a listen if you have time!

The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. I am making my way slowly through this book and love it to the max. Here’s a quote to tempt you:

Accept, then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.

Ride with Norman Reedus. Have you caught this new series yet? It’s on AMC, just like The Walking Dead. We are hooked. It’s mellow, adventurous, conversational, and filled with great personalities. And to watch a bunch of motorcycle scenes on the brink of springtime just gets us so excited for little road trips.

Sandy the Reluctant Entertainer posted yet another mouthwatering recipe, this time for a very special cookie, and the message she wove into the post is just as wonderful. Check out Simple Almond Cranberry Crunch.

Heal. Our friend Kelley, the same magical woman who together with her husband Chuck taught us that paint pouring technique, recommended this Netflix special. I have watched it once alone and once with Handsome, and it bears lots of discussion. The bulk of the message is mind-over-matter encouragement for chronic illness, but it’s illustrated by as much science as anecdote. If you watch it, I would really like to hear your thoughts. Keywords: Tonic versus toxic thoughts and words, Quantum Entanglement, and our Inner Pharmacy. Thanks Kelley!!

Okay, a handful of photos and only very brief stories for each:

One day this week we had warm, mild weather! I ran in a tank top, no hat and gloves!! And I wore two watches, ha. Handsome had left his at home (my old black one) so to be funny I wore it for an easy 6 miles. His watch gave a close pace to mine but said I burned lots and lots more calories, ha!

We have a new outdoor flight pen for Pacino!! He has needed this for a while, and we are pretty excited. As the weather improves he will spend more hours out here, and we will keep him company. We might even find some feathery companions for the blue boy. Since this photo was taken, we have added artwork and more obstacles for enrichment. He really seems to like it all.

For Valentine’s Day this year, we geared up for a fancy dinner at home then changed into pajamas and ate our meal blissfully in the cozy living room. I surprised my guy with an espresso machine for his office, and he gave me a weed eater for my gardens and beehives, haha!! Also, a long love letter form the world’s most romantic man and a perfectly cooked heart-shaped ribeye, a well established tradition. I love this exact recipe for being fluent in each other’s love languages.

Klaus loves playing fetch even more than I love perfect coffee. He also loves to collect his objects of fetch in little piles all over the farm. When I stumble on a new cache, sometimes he acts nervous. This one is in the far southwest corner of the back field, where we visit at least three times per day on patrol walks. Apparently he has been accumulating things secretly.

My brother’s firstborn, Greg, and my baby, Jess. These cousins are spending some quality time together this weekend, and my heart is swelling with joy.

I saved the photo for last that will go down in our family’s history as the biggest headline for this week. Dante, my sister Angela’s firstborn, finished Air Force Basic Training and actually graduated with honors. He is so deeply loved, and everyone is so proud and excited for his accomplishments and his coming opportunities, words fail me. We did not make it to San Antonio for the festivities, so I have been poring over the photo stream every hour, often crying with joy. So many hugs, so much intimacy and strength. Just amazing.

Okay sweet friends, thanks for checking in!! Life is good. Weather here is all over the place, but our hibernation days are numbered. I see streaks of emerald green in the middle field, but mostly from a distance. Up close, it’s still quite brown.

And God has been answering prayers big and small like it’s going out of style. Although obviously that will never happen. I cannot stress enough, TRUST HIM. He’s got this.

Ok it’s almost time for a movie and a bowl of popcorn, then rest day tomorrow! See you soon! Have the best weekend ever!!

“In the Spring I have counted
136 different kinds of weather
inside of 24 hours.”
~Mark Twain
XOXOXOXO