Lazy W Marie

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

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friday 5 at the farm: reasons sitting still is the best

Howdy from the couch. I am bed-ridden all weekend and under strict “limited mobility” orders all of the next week due to this annoying ankle injury.

Since it’s Friday, how about we enjoy a Friday 5 at the Farm? Let’s list the top five most awesome things about being forced to sit still when you have three million tons of energy and the entire weekend is about to be drenched in perfect, springlike weather. Ready? Okay.

  1. Uuum…
  2. Wait, no…
  3. ((crickets))
  4. yawn!
  5. (bangs head against wall behind her)

anyone

Well, this list is stupid.

Truly, on the bright side, I am looking forward to some face time with loved ones tomorrow, some extended hours reading excellent books, long cuddly movie nights, and also time to write and sew next week while Handsome is at the Commish. Not such a tragedy, I guess. Annoying. Not tragic.

Hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Run while you can!
XOXOXOXO

 

friday 5 at the farm: lies I tell myself

Hopefully I am not alone in these untruths. Let me know, okay?

Also- Happy Friday! What do you have planned?

Lie #1: The Grocery Store I will just run in for five minutes. All we need is coffee, spinach, and butter. 

Lie #2: Sticks and Stones I don’t care what people think of me. And gossip doesn’t hurt at all.

Lie #3: Tex Mex Health Kick I can eat all the chips and salsa I want and still wear skinny jeans.

Lie #4: Housework I am 100% caught up on ironing and dusting.

Lie #5: The Future is Certain. Solid as a Rock.  We know exactly what life will look like a month, six months, and a year from now. We know how the turnpike construction will affect things, specifically.

Literally not even kidding. I went in for three things.
Literally not even kidding. I went in for three things.

Five lies. I tell myself this stuff all the time to get through the day. Or through the weeks and months. As silly as lies are, and as uncomfortable as the corresponding truths really are, the bottom lines are still pretty wonderful. Let’s focus on that instead:

Truth #1: We have all the food we need and a gorgeous menu ready to go at the farm. Plenty for friends to visit, too. Eating with our people? That’s our favorite. We are blessed to be healthy and well fed.

Truth #2: Living with a tender heart can actually be beautiful, no matter how much it hurts to be hurt. It opens us up to richer experiences and deeper relationships. Totally worth the risk. More importantly, being hurt by others reminds us to be more careful with others.

Truth #3: Tex Mex really should be its own food group. Actually, forget it. I don’t want to be however skinny I would be in a life without tortilla chips. So this is all positive. Never mind about this lie. : )

Truth #4: Our house is pretty clean. And we have enough of everything from day to day. And I will be caught up eventually. Not being perfectly caught up means that daily life is quite full and quite interesting lately. For this I am very grateful. Also, my miles running is up to date for the first time in a while and I am in the BEST MOOD. This is worth having dusty baseboards.

Truth #5: While we do not know exactly what life will look like in the future (and really, have we ever known?) we can trust with total calm that life will be okay. That we will be okay. Change is inevitable, faith matters, and sometimes having the controls taken out of our hands is good.
That said, please keep us in your prayers that we make the best decisions possible and stay happy, that God sort of sheds light and miracles all over this turnpike situation. And sign the petition to halt it if you are so inclined. As my husband wrote last night on Facebook, “If you have ever come to the farm and loved being here please sign this (petition) and share with your friends. Oklahoma needs to retain some of the wild lands; we don’t need highways running to nowhere. Life as we know it will completely change if something doesn’t stop.” Well, friends, you who read this blog are friends of the Lazy W even if you have never walked these nine acres with us. We sure appreciate your good thoughts. We will face a long series of heart breaking decisions if this turnpike comes to pass.

STILL, yes, faith and trust. Life is beautiful. God is good.

What lies do you tell yourself to get through the day? What’s on tap for your weekend?

We are running miles, building fence, watching movies, reading books, and cuddling our animals like there’s no tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping. As always.
XOXOXOXO

 

friday 5 at the farm: stormy day photos

Thursday brought some crazy weather to Oklahoma. A lightning quick (get it?) and rather violent storm hit the farm suddenly in the middle of the afternoon. The morning’s flannel grey skies turned black. The warm, humid air turned icy cold. And all those fallen oak leaves twirled upward in spirals and autumnal confetti bursts. Rain flooded the middle field in just moments and ran in a silver-white, frothing stream downhill. The pond churned like a tiny ocean. Our east facing barn doors were blown out, or maybe the horses broke them out? It’s hard to say.

fri5 rain c

fri5 chanta wet c

fri5 meh wet c

Then the storm passed as suddenly as it had arrived. The skies calmed. Half-hearted thunder and thread-thin cracks of lightning kept me watching the skies for a few more hours, but overall the farm was quiet. I returned the horses to their field, consoled the agitated llama, and texted photos of the barn doors to my husband.

By evening, the air was so sweet. Clean and sweet, rinsed out and blown through by the storm. Settled. Fog appeared between the trees and above the grass in cottony streaks, filling every dip and corner with opaque white. It was a stunning kind of quiet. I adore the way fog muffles everything, and I think evening fog is an especially nice gift.

fri5 klaus fog east c

Klaus played and romped around in the gentle dusk while I watched Handsome repair the barn doors. Then he (Klaus, not my husband) appeared from behind the giant hay bales, smelling like sage bush. I imagined he was a small, Spanish-speaking werewolf, which may in fact be the case.

When the farm is so drenched in magic like this I cannot fix my eyes on one thing. Neither my mind. I want to collect all the details and force them into some kind of permanence. Which is silly, of course, because a big part of magic is that it is fleeting, elusive. So instead I hope to at least remember how pink the eastern sky was as the moon rose and how the pine trees vibrated with fragrance. I hope to remember how hard my husband worked to fix the barn doors, at the end of an exhausting day at his real job. I hope to think about this storm, its suddenness, and how grateful I am that no animals were hurt.

fri5 fog c

Storms come and go, and everything is beautiful and weird.

XOXOXOXO

 

friday 5 at the farm: things I heard this week

It’s been quite a week here at the dirt-and-hooves W. Handsome has been nursing an injury and doing his Commish work from home. I have been trying to stay caught up on things while not neglecting him. The gardens are changing seasons. And the animals are really enjoying the glorious weather. For Friday 5 at the Farm, how about a handful of things I have heard this week?

potting bench

  1. Llama Sneeze: On Tuesday while distributing protein pellets to the buff (on top of his free-choice hay) I leaned in for some face snuggles with Meh and caught, instead, a tiny, squeaky little sneeze. Right in the general direction of my forehead. Have you ever heard a baby llama sneeze? It’s not awful. Plus, he has lately been instigating spitting fights with his far beefier pasture mate. More on that soon.
  2. Parrot Playing Babysitter: Klaus is an enthusiastic romper of all farm-ily members, including Bobby Pacino the macaw, and sometimes our feathered boy has had just about enough, even from the safety of his outdoor cage. I was working in the nearby flower bed one morning and heard Pacino say firmly, definitely mimicking my own Mama voice, “No No! That’s a No No, okay?” The best part of this story is that the puppy obeyed the parrot. He sat demurely on the sidewalk and twisted his head and waited for further instruction. I went back to my garden tasks and left the parenting to the bird.
  3. V-8 with Glass-packs: We are selling the Jeep (aka Shakira) and have bought a little mid-century beauty for me to drive. She has a nice, strong, smooth engine that growls a little. Also not awful.
  4. Running Team W Expands: Around the time of my recent half marathon in Lawton, Handsome secretly ordered himself a pair of running shoes. This week they arrived in the mail. Then he got the green light from his doctor and told me he is ready to start running!! So hearing that fun news is just cool. Cool cool cool. So exciting! Now I am researching what races might offer discounts to married couples or people who practice anthropomorphism to a scary degree. Ideas?
  5. Sirens but no Alarm: Oklahoma is hot and dry this week, unseasonably so for October, and we have been seeing lots of grass fires. So we hear lots of fire truck sirens. Not good. Thankfully, none of them have been driving to our farm. This is a big deal emotionally because it was during this season seven years ago that we had that really scary house fire. In years since our area has been scourged with wildfires, too. So stuff like this triggers me. I’m sorry for those folks dealing with damage and simultaneously very grateful it’s not us this time.
He is getting so big. All the animals are cautious of him now. He still romps like a baby though...xoxo
He is getting so big. All the animals are cautious of him now. He still romps like a baby though…xoxo
louise buffing
Handsome showed me the ropes of car sanding and buffing before he laid a clear coat on my cute little treasure.

Okay, there you have it. Five things I have heard that made this week special. What have you heard?

Carpe Diem!
XOXOXOXO

 

friday 5: plans gone awry & a menu

Let me start by saying that nothing I had planned for today went quite according to plan. But that’s fine! Because far be it from me to only carpe the diems that go according to plan, right? Turns out, today has been awesome and as I type that sentence it’s barely halfway over. Today and I are buddies.

I spent almost two hours cutting, pressing, and pinning fabric pieces for some really cool gift projects before discovering my machine was busted. Womp-womp.
Before things turned around, I spent almost two hours cutting, pressing, and pinning fabric pieces for some sewing projects before discovering my machine was busted. Womp-womp.

After a weirdly frustrating morning of obstacles (like pent up energy from preparing for a long run that never happened then working on sewing projects before discovering a busted sewing machine) and rainy day cabin fever (although yes I most definitely appreciate the rain), my friend Marci agreed to meet me in Oklahoma City for lunch. It has been ten thousand years since just she and I were able to meet for lunch, and I loved every minute of it. We consumed the most beautiful food Panera has to offer, and we chatted efficiently in that condensed-soup girlfriend catch-up style.

490 calories of yum
490 calories of yum and nutrition (eat the rainbow!)

After lunch I stopped at a cheap but ritzy grocery store there, which I don’t frequent much because it’s basically forty five minutes away from the farm. I bought everything on my list and then some, including some freshly fire-roasted hatch chile peppers. Not a case of the beautiful things as you see below, just a 99-cent zippered baggie of them. Still, a treasure.

My new best friends. Sorry Marci!
My new best friends. Sorry Marci!

You guys.

The smell of peppers roasting in that big tumbler in the parking lot on a rainy day… The smoky, throaty fragrance in the air-conditioned store… Then the spicy cloud of mouthwatering goodness in the cab of my truck as I drove home… So intoxicating. I am such a sucker for good smells.

So anyway. Time with Marci and a leisurely trip to the grocery store helped me reset. I finished my in-the-city errands and made it home. The groceries are unpacked and all the animals are checked on and the last bit of laundry has been folded.

So now, the fun part… Writing our menu for the upcoming week.

Do you love this task as much as I do? I mean, of course you take a rough-draft menu and shopping list with you to the store, right? But while you’re browsing the aisles don’t you ever see something on sale or get inspired by a display and tweak things a little? Of course you do! Me too.

For example, these fire-roasted hatch chile peppers changed everything. The zippered baggie is marked “H” because I brought home the hot stuff.

friday groceries

So for Friday 5 at the Farm, here are some recipes I am really excited to make for us in the coming days. More than one of them includes my new treasure.

1. Chile Rellenos! Add homemade salsa from garden tomatoes and cream & cheddar cheeses, try ground Panko for crust.

2. Garlic-lemon baked salmon Serve with parmesean-roasted broccoli and a wild rice-quinoa mix.

3. Pasta night! Plain marinara for Handsome and vegetable-pesto sauce for me. Sweet Italian sausage, mozarella, and salad too.

4. Movie Night Nachos! Make with roasted peppers and shredded chicken, add salad.

5. Homemade pizza: Choose from grilled chicken, Canadian bacon/pineapple, pesto, Alfredo, olives, roasted veggies. Try whole wheat crust?

I also think these gorgeous peppers would be amazing in a frittata or as a burger sauce (look at this recipe by Katie!) or as a hot link topper… I probably need to go buy more.

These are perfectly delicious eaten plain, as is.
These are perfectly delicious eaten plain, as is.

Happy Friday, friends! Happy weekend to you. Happy life. I hope that even if things don’t go quite as you planned them, that you are surprised by something wonderful today and that you carpe this diem with great fervor. I also hope you eat well. Really well.

Thanks so much for checking in! Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow form some reading fun?

“Would you like-a-de-pepper?”
~Dana Carvey
XOXOXOXO