Lazy W Marie

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

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Senses Inventory: Surprise Midmorning Rainshower

   This morning I was sitting in one of my red wicker lawn chairs, near the herb bed, drinking my last cup of coffee and making messy but intricate lists of things I want to do in all of the gardens. So many ideas, from lots more edibles to dedicated “wedding” flower beds, plots for animal foraging, and much more. The skies were moody and quiet, the clouds low, the animals in a muted kind of suspense. Then as I sat there enjoying the kaleidoscope visions in my head, a seductive little rainstorm washed over the farm. From the low northwest corner uphill to southeast, right on top of me and my myriad lists. It soaked my trusty spiral notebook. It washed the dirt off of my bare feet. It brought me gently back to reality.

   Obviously this necessitates a Senses Inventory.

See:  Black ink smudged on my lined paper. Raindrops splashing with abandon into my coffee cup. (I have mixed feelings about this.) Badly painted toenails. Bright yellow and orange marigolds, green pole bean vines, and red cannas in the herb bed. Wonderfully voluptuous mounds of basil and sage. Piles of withering weeds outside the herb bed, pulled this morning. An empty tuna can licked clean by Fast Woman. A purple haze of feathery prairie grass in the middle field. Low clouds in every shade of navy blue and charcoal. Seraphine looking at me with those arrogant but beautiful llama eyes, as if the rain was my idea.

Hear:  I heard the rain before I felt it; it was hitting the metal loafing shed downhill in a syncopated, excited rhythm several seconds before I felt the first cold drop. I still hear that chorus, as well as the birdsong of cardinals and crows and our neighbor’s turkey gobbling and our own roosters crowing.

Touch:  Zero breeze again. The morning feels like New Orleans in so many lovely ways. I feel cool rain tapping my shoulder and running down the back of my neck and the fronts of my shins; the fringe of my cutoff denim shorts tickling my legs; and the squeak of the painted wicker on the stool beneath my bare feet. The air feels brackish… Warm overall with pockets of cool. My notebook gets heavier and heavier on my lap as it soaks up the rain.

Taste:   I sill taste minty toothpaste kisses collected from Handsome before he left for the office, and of course perfect sweet, creamy coffee. Also a New Orleans memory.

Smell:  Most fragrances this morning are green, green, green… the grass, the trees, the gardens, especially the herbs. My hands smell like oregano and lemon-thyme from grooming the plants a few minutes ago. I love this smell… But so near the pool I also smell a nice bleachiness. And so near the animal fields I also smell a nice manureness.

Think:  My mind’s eye sees the gardens overflowing with so much delicious, healthy food that I can’t share it or sell it fast enough. I’m thinking about the reflective properties of the Universe, that the more freely you give the more you will have for giving. I’m also thinking of some fun construction projects Handsome and I are planning for the pool area, things that will make gathering our loved ones even more awesome. I’m thinking of my girls, grown, coming home for the weekend with friends, boyfriends, husbands, grandchildren. Just coming home.

Feel:  Happy. So, so happy and truly relieved from some recent heartsick worries. Feeling deeply refreshed and powerful. Wide eyed and aware of how good life is. Thankful for how real miracles are.

Tiny Mr. T celebrating the Fourth of July at an Oklahoma car show.

   I hope you had a wonderful holiday yesterday! We sure did. It was by comparison a quiet Fourth for Handsome and me, but a very happy one. We have needed and enjoyed easy holidays lately.

   Redeem you time today, friends! Redeem your liberty, in every way that it presents itself. Soak up the detailed beauty all around you.

“I am chained to the earth to pay
for the freedom of my eyes.”
~Anotonio Porchia
xoxoxoxo

Senses Inventory: Sleepy Stormy Morning

Good morning sweet friends.
I don’t know about you, but I am a little sleepy today.
Thunderstorms, lightning, and heavy rain woke us up in the wee hours, 
gripping the house rudely, slashing apart the sky, and rising the pond another foot or so.
I think I was already seventy-three or seventy-four percent awake when that started, though,
so my mascara-smeared eyes are about five hours short on sleep.
The dark, moody environment is beautiful but not exactly conducive 
to a chipper, energetic launch into activity. 
As I finish some excellent coffee and gather my scraps of energy
for today’s work and projects…
a quick senses inventory.

See:  Blue-white twinkle lights draped on our fireplace mantle. Colorful living rooms furnishings around me and new artwork on a gallery wall to my left. Clean wood floor. Spiky houseplant adorned with a bright blue parrot feather. A lidded, blue mason jar filled with pens and pencils. Short stack of notebooks, magazines, and books to read.

Hear: Wind pushing angrily into the chimney. Crashing, rumbling thunder. Rain. Groaning doors and windows, like I am in a ship on the ocean not a house on the plains. Guineas alerting us to a raccoon caught in a live trap overnight.

Taste: Perfect coffee. Remnants of breakfast, which was a cheesy sausage omelette. Minty kiss from Handsome still on the front of my lips.

Smell: Coffee. Coconut-vanilla scented wax. Occasionally a waft of rain or the last trace of that wonderful toasted bread fragrance.

Touch: Air conditioning kicking on early today, slicing charitably through the humidity. Lace tablecloth at my wrists. Bare feet on a squeaky, shiny wood floor. Cuffed jeans I have now worn for three days straight.

Think: How do I measure up? Should I rearrange my schedule? Should I stop blogging and just write? Will my little cucumber sprouts survive the floods? I hope the herb bed fills in soon.

Feel:  Cautiously optimistic about some important unknowns in life. Grateful. Creative but sleepy. A little wistful to have said goodbye to Mortimer the garden-munching turtle. Homesick for my girls but so thrilled for their health and well being. Excited for the big things coming for each of them. Also still feeling extremely, shamefully romantic.

Thanks for joining me today! 
I would sure love to know how the world looks, 
smells, tastes, and feels where you are.
Have an amazing day.
xoxoxoxo

Senses Inventory, Friday Joy

   Happy Friday afternoon my beautiful friends! What a week. Yes, I say that a lot. But I always mean it.

   What. A. Week.

   What a month.

   What a year.

   What a life!

   As we tip-toe toward the quick little recess we call a weekend, I have exactly enough time and energy for a Senses Inventory…


My youngest daughter and I saw this at the OKC Arts Fest again last week.
Every year she and I contribute to this cool community art display,
nothing more than shreds of fabric tied to some PVC structures.
And this year I am bringing the inspiration home. 
The veggie garden arbor is getting dolled up!
All visitors this summer are invited to play!

See: A pair of cardinals dancing in the air above the bird feeder. Stacks of folded clean laundry in the living room. A mason jar filled with browned but still pretty clippings from the forest. A flat of newly purchased herbs and marigolds on the table next to me. My unfinished Don Quixote. (Book club dinner is in two hours, yikes!) Shiny yellow ceramic dish shaped like cabbage leaves. Abundant, if cool, sunshine. Thick, soft green grass outside the kitchen door. One inviting chaise lounge and one shredded by a recent conflict with the buffalo.

Hear: Pacino grooming his papery feathers, blowing me parrot kisses, and clucking softly. The periodic click of the oven and hum of the refrigerator. Pickup truck driving past the farm. Wind. So much wind.

Smell: Clean laundry, pecan shortbread cookies, soapy water, coffee, roasting red grapes, seven different fresh herbs and their damp soil (I love that fragrance!), and my own perfume. Calvin Klein One today.

Touch: This beloved keyboard. My smooth cotton apron. A pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses that keep getting tangled up in my hair.

Taste: Perfect coffee. Really, really perfect coffee. The kind made with a French Press and hot cream. So good. Also, traces of olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary, plus toasted pecans and butter shortbread, all from sampling two recipes as I cooked this afternoon. Lipstick.

Think: About my daughters. Their hearts, their memories, their futures. About my parents. About the balance between living life and earning a living. About self worth and how complicated and fluctuating that concept is for me. About how I need about a month of nothing else to do so I can catch up on all of the incredible writers close to me.

Feel: Inspired. Calm. Stronger than I did this time a year ago, that’s for sure. Itching to run again. Excited for our book club dinner tonight, but also sad because we have recently lost members. Lucky. I feel so dang lucky in life.

The raised beds are growing our earliest crops like magic!!
Even the tropicals are faring well in this super weird May weather.

   What’s up with you? Was your work week overall pretty amazing? Do you have beauty surrounding you and love inspiring you? Do you have thoughts worth thinking rattling around in your head?

   Life isn’t perfect, but it certainly is full of wonder and grace. Be sure to feed that wolf, the good one, as the Native American legend goes, not the evil one.

Happy Weekending Everyone!
Thank you so much for stopping in at the digital Lazy W.
xoxoxoxo

 

 

Senses Inventory: Rattlesnake Edition

   Today I was trapped in the barn… paralyzed… completely unable to move for about seven and a half hours. Helpless and terrified. Because the batteries or something inside our motion detector emergency light sounds EXACTLY like a rattlesnake.

I thought. I was going. To die.

   So, in the spirit of Redeem the Time, since my word of the year Strength had most certainly eluded me, I decided a Senses Inventory was past due. Anyway, the intensity of the situation had my senses all keen and in overdrive. Not writing this would have been a waste of the moment. I mean, it would have been a waste of the hours.

   While standing in the barn like a New Orleans street performer** playing freeze tag, gripping a rake in one hand and an empty rubber bowl in the other, I took inventory. This is what I noticed…

See: Sand, dirt, loose hay, and a little buffalo fluff strewn about the floor. Five chickens seeking shelter behind the machinery. Wet shadows of dirt at the margins of the barn, soaking inward. A pile of colorful beekeeping supplies, waiting for the first tasks of springtime. Dusty four-wheelers. Loft stacked high with a collection of found lumber and other building supply treasures. That purple, black and white horse blanket we bought for the girls at the end of the last summer we spent together as a family.

Smell:  Hay, dirt, llama breath (Romulus had just excused himself from a barn visit), and rain. Glorious, clean, refreshing rain. Motor oil and gasoline. Fear. I smelled my own fear.

Touch: Fast Woman’s silky soft coat and round, heavy belly. Her nearly prehensile tail wrapping around my forearm. Horse scissors between my knuckles. Nylon mesh netting peeling like Velcro away from the new round bale of hay. My running clothes pasted against me with sweat. I-pod cord draped around my neck. Cool breeze teasing in from beneath the east doors.

Hear: Chickens pecking and clucking secrets to each other, probably about wherever the heck they are all laying their eggs. Horses just outside the west door crunching their afternoon hay and breathing and snuffling that wonderful way that horses breathe and snuffle. An accelerating tap dance of rain on the metal roof. Rattlesnake.

Taste: The last trace of an orange I ate earlier. And dirt, just barely, probably form kissing the horses. I was a little sad to think that an orange and some dirt might be my last meal.

   What’s going on in your world today? What are your senses revealing to you? If you hear a rattlesnake, I hope it’s really just a battery.

Soak it All Up
xoxoxo

*though obviously (and sadly) I was lacking silver or gold full body paint, a costume AND a devilish puppet…

Rule of Travel: Never, ever, ever waste time or energy sucking in your tummy for photos.

Senses Inventory: Coffee Shop

   Late this morning I had the sort of rare opportunity to spend time 
on a leisurely brunch all by myself in an unusual setting. 
It seemed like a perfect opportunity for a Senses Inventory.
See:  I see sanded and waxed hardwood floors, brick wall painted red, blue icicle lights hanging from a soffet, multiple chalkboard menus, and a wild collection of original artwork all over the walls. I see a menagerie of interesting characters floating through the shop, some professionals, some bicyclists, and others bent on personal expression. I also see my own collection of odd things… My second hand green leather purse with a long black scarf tied on, my trusty notebook, cell phone, a paperback C.S. Lewis book, a giant cup of cream colored dark roast coffee, and a square of cellophane squeezed into a crumpled heap and filled with crumbs from my breakfast. I look up and see sunlight blasting through the tall, arched windows.
Smell:  Rich, stimulating, glorious coffee and a tiny whiff of my own perfume. Or maybe that’s actually scented deodorant. It smells like spring break.
Hear:  The hissing and gulping espresso machines and some upbeat, wordless jazz music. The music has a monotonous beat that could lull me into a trance if I let it. I hear the hum of the air conditioner, too, and now the music has changed to a Beatles song, heavy on the tambourine please.
Taste: The remnants of a thick, tender, decadent scone that was my breakfast. I am guessing it was made with real butter and definitely boasted dried cranberries, almonds, and white chocolate chips. Delicious.
Touch:  Hard wooden arm chair holding me and the strings of my threadbare denim jacket pulling against my pointy elbow. (Still haven’t mended that.)
Think:  …About the relationships between Hinduism, Christianity and a newer expression of natural law marketed as “The Secret.” Thinking of C.S. Lewis and his particular brand of philosophy that seems to defy strict churchiness.
Feel:  Peaceful. Adventurous. Homesick for my children (that never really goes away) but also deeply grateful for them and for the conviction that all is not last. Romantic. Happy that Handsome and I have such incredible friends.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, 
you only think what everyone else is thinking.”
~Haruki Murakami 
xoxoxoxo