Lazy W Marie

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

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six quick thoughts

ONE: May we never forget that we started our 20th year of marriage in the year 2020, in the midst of a pandemic. This is an unforgettable season, and it is just the beginning!

TWO: People without unprofitable, chaotic hobby farms, what do you do with all of your free time and extra cash?

THREE: You know you are hard baked into rural living when you decline to enter a chicken coop, or even walk down certain paths known to produce certain stickers, because you’re wearing your “nice” flip flops. Same goes for your “going out” tank top and shorts. Also, it’s all one outfit.

FOUR: Apparently one of my favorite past times in life is wooing a stand-offish animal, coaxing it to gradually trust me and come willingly to my open arms, then decide it’s very annoying to have so much attention every day. “Seriously could you let me hang this wet laundry in peace, pleeeaaase?”

FIVE: Most often the worst injuries we suffer from wasps is not being stung but rather all of the pseudo-violent, evasive acrobatics we perform trying to avoid being stung. True story: My great grandpa Neiberding (the beekeeper who, according to legend, kept an alligator in his basement) once broke his own arm doing this. It happened against an open pickup truck window.

SIX: It’s good and magical to skip pesticides and herbicides for the sake of the pollinators and for the health of the planet at large. We do it! But you’re gonna have extra weeds to pull (chickens love these) and plenty of extra pests like grasshoppers and vine borers. The healthier your local environment, your own little ecosystem, the more frogs and lizards you will have. They help with the bugs. But they also attract snakes. These are all facts.

daily harvest, eggs already in the fridge xoxo

Thanks for checking in, friends!! How was your Thursday? What random thoughts can you share with me?

XOXOXOXO

jazz it up

Quarantine day 123, Staycation day 5. We woke up without having been struck by lightning again, which was pretty exciting.

Around 8 am I ran at a park in Harrah beneath low, misty clouds. Such a treat having cloud cover for an easy run. Handsome continued his work on the Batmobile, which you really need to see soon! It’s a dream come true.

Then we did the midday chores–swim–eat together thing. I am loving this easy, happy weekday routine. So far the hardest thing about Staycation is resisting my normal inclination to dive into serious garden maintenance or deep cleaning or home beautification projects, stuff that I would usually be doing solo during his office hours. Every day I see jobs that need doing and ask myself, “Can that wait?” However, if it’s something we’ll enjoy doing together, it’s a maybe.

Which brings me to this story:

Remember the colorful new area rug Handsome gifted me, the one that Klaus claimed, the one that necessitates a redecorranging project or two?

Today we finished removing every piece of artwork from the front rooms, downstairs, in order to see everything bare and kinda rethink the fun stuff. We loaded the upstairs Apartment with the truly astonishing amount of various wall coverings. A spacious room became packed in a heartbeat. This is just one side of the room:

When we descended into the now empty, very neutral, very flat feeling living room, we both felt a bit sad and unsettled, ha! The quiet echoed like a bad punchline, and we agreed it was making us feel restless. But I wasn’t ready to finish the original project yet.

So we turned on some New Orleans jazz music, and I added back just enough colorful stuff to remind us of all our favorite French Quarter elements. And we danced! We danced poorly and joyfully, and it was perfect.

Handsome also suggested we do some painting, so we assembled our supplies in the living room while enjoying the very good homemade salsa he prepared yesterday.

It is so spicy, you guys, that it gave me the hot kind of chills, the kind that make you think you have the covids, except it feels good. Dancing, delicious, addictive, drinkable salsa, and a couple of hours of creativity with my guy. Heaven!

For my paint contribution, I added some lyrics to my big lyrics canvas (photo above). My talented husband is still adding details to his canvas as I type this. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

I love people, and I love the many ways we are all finding to say I love you, since we can’t hardly hug or shake hands right now.

And I love plain and simple days that become forever memories just because we find little ways to jazz it up.

XOXOXOXO

come what may

Today is our nineteenth wedding anniversary!!

This snapshot was taken in the French Quarter at a very cool little artists’ walk we both love. He was refusing to let me smooch him like I wanted to. Then he grabbed me and held me up in the air. xoxo

When I reflect on the last nineteen years, my heart feels overwhelming gratitude that so much of our marriage has burned brightly with real and true passion, with romance that’s more than an undercurrent; it has been the theme, the mood, our day to day vibe. We enjoy a warm and safe, balmy, equatorial connection. I refer to brackish water a lot, meaning that we have a mix of fresh and salty water in our life. But it is almost always warm.

And when we have found ourselves swimming in the colder, more violent waters of grief and trauma, chaos and general stress, we always manage to choose each other. We are always drawn to the safety and center of us. That is an easy thing to take for granted. This magnetism is the reason young couples cannot stand to be apart. But the older we get, the more I see how powerful and beautiful it is to also consciously choose both each other and “us,” and to know that the other person will do the same.

Complimentary spirits and personalities, different gifts that make a good team, that’s real. And being greater then the sum of our parts, that’s also real.

What else is real is the history we have built together, in just nineteen quick and beautiful years. We now share almost as many memories together as apart, and I love that. We share so many dreams, still, that we will need to live to 150 at least to see them all to fruition.

As we go, though, the day to day is plenty for me. Our simplest days are my favorite.

Today after perfect coffee at daybreak and a near miss with a skunk, he oversaw our final electrician repairs while I ran at the lake. Then we fed and played with the animals together, and I started removing all the artwork from our downstairs. (He recently gifted me a gorgeous new area rug, so obviously let’s just start from scratch now.)

It will not look this way for long.

This afternoon we delivered a mattress set and picked up seats for the Batmobile then, instead of eating our anniversary meal at a restaurant, stopped at Crest for steaks and shrimp. Once home, I worked on potatoes au gratin while he chopped up ripe garden fare for fresh, warm, homemade salsa, one of his specialties.

I can’t really share every good detail, because they are innumerable. Every hour feels important. Every detail worth capturing.

Mostly, we are home together, happy. And we know that we will sleep in the same bed tonight. Then have perfect coffee together again at the next daybreak. And we know that we are both praying and trusting for the same things, our energies and intentions fully supporting each other’s needs and wants and dreams and goals. These are gifts for which I am wildly, humbly thankful.

Happy anniversary, Handsome. I love you more than ever, and I love that we are on this adventure together, even on the simplest days.

XOXOXOXO

lightning strikes again, running comfortably, clean hair, & a question

Another overnight storm, what? We did not see that one coming. The boys had been up for about an hour when I awoke to a wall-rattling chorus of rolling thunder. I rubbed open my eyes and was greeted by an extra dark upstairs hallway with strobe-light flashes of lightning. Gorgeous.

I love summer storms so much. I love the deep watering they provide, the drama, and the perfume. I especially love when they happen overnight, leaving us (and the gardens) free to soak up the heat during the day.

I am less enchanted by having our house and air conditioner struck repeatedly by such powerful bolts of lightning that electronics are ruined and mechanical apparatuses literally vaporized.

As I type this, Handsome and our electrician friend are outside making repairs. We are thankful that it is a repair we can make and that the lightning didn’t start a house fire.

This morning, to celebrate the dark skies and mild temperatures post storm, I ran seven slow, pain free miles with a nice low heart rate. This is more progress. I felt not so much as one tender Achilles or even a hint of aching feet, and my energy has stayed high all day. It feels like my body wants to run again, whereas for several weeks it was so scary or uncomfortable that I only did it here and there because I felt like I needed to, or in order to test my core strength. Now it’s a happy release again, and I am thrilled. I hope to gradually sprinkle in some short intervals and work up to a baby long run soon.

Crucial detail, if you are following along for the running injury saga: I was able to heal my body over a couple of months and regain all kinds of comfort and refreshed energy without changing running shoe style and without adding orthotics. Also I never took one one painkiller. I did trade my $1 Old Navy flip flops for more supportive flip flops from Amazon, which was a long time coming. I am only sharing this with you to say that some injuries are over-compensations and body imbalances, and we can do hundreds of things to cooperate with our bodies, rather than fight against them. Okay. That’s enough on that soapbox for today.

Related to both extravagant summertime living and running, today I washed my hair. Might not seem like a blog-worthy topic to you, but trust me. The more weird buildup you have of Sun-In, OFF bug spray, dry shampoo, mousse, chlorine, sweat, and who knows what from the farm, multiplied by how many days you wait to properly shampoo and condition your hair, equals the level of religious experience that cleaning event is. Oh my gosh. Nirvana. Valhalla. Heaven on a Monday afternoon.

Would you please feast your eyes on our baby boy now, compared to five years ago? I showed this to my husband and he asked me why would I try to break his heart?

sleepy Klaussen, 5 years apart

Here is the question, for my bibliophile friends! I love this multiple choice thought adventure. I have been daydreaming about each of the possibilities:

I choose #4 but love them all!

Okay, thank you yet again for checking in here! You guys are making this blogging streak so much fun. I love reading your comments below and in messages and social media.

Stay engaged with your life, whatever is happening. Keep focusing on and magnifying the beauty around you. Keep cultivating your relationships and let your joy grow and expand. It’s pure magic.

“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.”
~William Temple
XOXOXOXO

stress management, farm abundance, & the real vibrancy of love

Staycation Day Two: We reclaimed the whole point of being off work.

It almost never fails, that every time we anticipate a good relaxing stretch of days, something happens to jam up our chi. Sometimes it’s one huge crisis; other times it is the cumulative tide of smaller problems. I know this is universal. But this year, stress has been too damaging and joyful miracles too abundant for us to sit idly by and just allow the negative inertia to win. I mean, really, we should never allow it to win, right? But it happens. Stress is sneaky. But we are smarter and more resilient than everything that comes against us.

Ok, here’s the thing: Our air conditioning unit had some kind of catastrophic failure. Also, I skipped running some miles thinking that’s what my husband wanted (I was wrong), and it put me in a weird mood. Then he got chased by wasps. Three dumb things in a row, ok?

Happily, the burst open fly trap from last night is a distant memory, so the deck and pool area are no longer stinky. (And Little Lady Marigold has forgiven us wholesale, a fact she proved with an extra dramatic blaaaa-eeehhh at breakfast). But we are pretty accustomed to enjoying all the outdoor activities that cause heatstroke (swimming, gardening, playing in the car shop, chasing Klaus), if only so that we might retreat to the chilly, concrete-floored living room and watch a movie together. So we called a guy. We know a guy.

We called the guy then had an open, honest, lovely heart to heart conversation about not letting stress win and about transparent about what we need day to day, and we treated ourselves to lunch from Braum’s.

Now we wait.

My groom and I will soon have a cold house again.

So then we will go outside again, obviously. And he will promptly get chased by wasps. Again. You know how they say that the Universe continues to send you the same lesson repeatedly until you learn it? It’s more true than anything I know.

Mindset and intention matter.

The oregano and Rose of Sharon are especially magnetic to bumblebees. All day every day, the chubby, fuzzy creatures hover and dive noisily among the blossoms, reminding me that the garden is really theirs. The “High Biscuits,” as my girls used to call them, are stunning at the edge of the shade garden. Zinnia and okra seeds I planted a few days ago have already sprouted. I keep harvesting squash and tomatoes, fruits I could barely see a few hours before. The hens are happy to produce eggs, still, despite the heat.

It’s a thrilling time to live on a small farm.

Even the pond is full to it banks and wildly alive! Mama Goose and Johnny Cash, our two South African geese, swim gently like swans then run up the greenbelt of the middle field then feast on bugs in the garden then descend to swim again. They have wild visitors that include a blue heron and a small flock of white egrets. The horses take their fly spray contentedly, and the llamas are thankfully too relaxed to wage battle. Frogs, snakes, dragonflies, and spiders must number in the millions this year.

I love that our afternoons are too bone meltingly hot and humid to move quickly. The pace helps me see things.

This popped up in my Facebook memories from last summer:

Love is an actual cosmic power.
It is THE power.
Love overshadows everything else.
It’s not a flimsy, meek, gentle, water colored Victorian notion of hope for better days or a feeble turnaround.
Love is a loud, smiling, terrifying, throbbing neon bulldozer that, once unleashed, mows down every obstacle and razes mountains.
Love heals diseased relationships and connects people across oceans of separation, in unseen and truly mystical ways. Love provides for physical needs in ways that cannot be explained.
Love can be gentle, but it is never weak.
Love is the root of every good and beautiful thing, and it is the ultimate end of all difficulty too.
If you feel like love is just a lottery ticket, a slim chance at some kind of emotional or circumstantial lottery in life, try thinking more concretely. Think of Love as what encompasses EVERYTHING and ALL of your loved ones.
Trust all of that pulsing energy because it is just waiting to prove itself, for your sake.

Happy Sunday, friends!