Lazy W Marie

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

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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

 

the mitt romney-law of attraction-high fever-skeptical husband story

One day back in the winter of 1883, during a blizzard and on the verge of a cannibalistic tragedy, an over-stimulated and under-challenged middle aged woman started reading a slew of books that altered her perception of the universe. Her eyes were flung open to new, exciting possibilities and she thrust this shiny new pseudo-knowledge on everyone nearby, whether they liked it or not. While milking the goats, while gathering eggs, while traversing the snowy peaks and dodging hungry settlers, she preached the gospel of the Law of Attraction and started to manipulate her own reality. It was magical.

lights

Not really, it was only me, and it was actually quite pleasant weather during the late fall of 2012, and while fresh eggs were plentiful then, we were happily free of cannibals at the Lazy W. But that got you imagining a cold and bleak setting, right? And the driving force of a new line of thinking?

Okay.

It started innocently enough with a book , which led to voracious reading on the internet and a few other related titles about the Law of Attraction, about the power of imagination and how meditation can fuel your prayers. I scoffed a little, I learned a little, and I experimented. Tested the waters. Prayed about it, actually. I compared this new philosophical material to what I already knew and believed about the Bible (my personal foundation of faith) and I just kind of… thought about it for a long time. I searched my own memory to see if it could be true. Had my mind been manifesting things into my actual three-dimensional life? Is that completely wonky, or is it possible?

Do you remember that “aha Moment” video?

Okay.

Let’s just bookmark all of that. I pinky promise to get back to it eventually, with concrete, important information, all kinds of adult thinky stuff.

Today I want to tell you a story about me in a fevered stupor, the Law of Attraction, Mitt Romney (remember him?), and my sweet, skeptical, doting husband. Grab some cocoa with marshmallows and prepare to text BW if you have his number.

sadromney sticker

It was early December, almost exactly three years ago, in fact, as I write this. The presidential election was over and cooling. Romney was sad. I was laid up in bed for a few days with an increasingly difficult flu or something equally temporary but incurable. I remember our big, soft bed was oriented against the east wall of our bedroom, not the south wall where we have it now. It was a dark morning, pitch black, and my fever was raging. It was that awful sweaty-shaking kind of sick that makes me nauseous just remembering it. Handsome had been taking really good care of me; he is gentle and attentive and good at condescending to the bed ridden, so I had been pampered. But on this morning he absolutely had to leave me to drive to the city and do Commish things. He was dressed in suit pants and a button down shirt. He smelled shower fresh and was so good looking even in the dark, even with my fever-cooked eyeballs barely open to see him. All week we had been volleying back and forth my new found ideas about magnetic thought (we disagreed to say the least). That morning I had one last chance before he left for the office to convince him of the things floating around my scattered brain. I desperately wanted him on board with me:

“I mean it, Brand, I think this stuff is real. I think if you think about something enough it will happen. What do you think?” So much thinking.

“Babe, no. It’s not real. Mitt Romney wanted to be President real bad and it just didn’t work out for him.” My husband favors clear cut ideas over well executed adverbs.

Check mate? Not even close. But this gentle rebuttal almost made me cry. I remember sitting halfway up to literally grip my husband’s lapels and say earnestly, to his face, glassy eyes flung open now, “He just didn’t want it bad enough!” I’m sure my fever breath was super sexy.

My husband of (at that time) eleven years gently loosed my cold, sweaty fists from his lapels, checked for wrinkles, then tucked me back beneath our billowy comforter. He smoothed my hair and stage whispered, “None of this is real. Now just go to sleep.” Like he was comforting a child who had just woken up from a nightmare! As if!!

He went to work. I fell into a fitful, fevered sleep. He came home frOm work, and I mentioned neither Romney nor the Law of Attraction again that week. I did, however, with some measure of silent pride, make a mental note that I had been imagining in detail his homecoming that day. It happened exactly as I expected.

Bingo.

Okay, friends. Here is where your texting invitation comes in: Please let my sweet but too skeptical husband know whether you are in his camp or mine. Have you ever had an experience with manifesting your thoughts/prayers/hopes/worries into reality? Do you think Mitt Romney is to be blamed for losing that election? Spill your smart guts.

Thanks as always for checking in.

You guys are the best.

XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

would you rather…

Life is full of choices and also full of contrast and opposite extremes. The ways we polarize ourselves as a society are endlessly fascinating to me, if a little exhausting at times. Democrat or Republican? Conservative or Liberal? Crispy or Grilled? Coffee or Tea? Which camp are you in? Who are you allowed to be friends with, and whose rants must you avoid for your own sense of calm and maybe the health of your relationships? As political season heats up, things will only get dicier.

Or at least more confusing. I think the VMA’s confirmed that much. Kanye was definitely joking, right?

Well, friends, tonight I am feeling particularly knitted to my people, especially well loved and wildly loving, so let’s explore some fun but perhaps less divisive territory.

Will you play along? Just tell me a few things. Would you rather…

… eat fried eggs or an omelette?

eggs

… have pizza delivered or make it yourself? What toppings?

… run on the treadmill or outside? Or, no thanks?

run shadow

… wear sweaters or tank tops?

… ball cap or cowboy hat?

hat

… play hostess or be a guest?

… read paper-and-ink books or electronic devices?

… fly to your destination or drive?

… vacation in the mountains or on a beach?

paradise

… renovate an old house or build a new one?

… have cats or dogs? Or llamas? Or, heaven forbid, a parrot?

… plant a new garden in virgin soil or give a face lift to an old, overgrown one?

… enjoy a bouquet of florist roses or wildflowers?

… bake cookies or brownies? Are you a milk dunker?

brownies

… Atari or Play Station 4?

… accomplish one errand per day or do them all at once?

… take off work for a three day weekend, on Friday or Monday?

… decorate for Halloween or Christmas?

… drive a classic car or an new, exotic one?

t a

… Three Stooges or Lewis Black for comedic entertainment? Or Mitch Hedburg?

Okay. Now spill your guts! Tell me everything you dare.

Variety is the Spice of Life, after all
XOXOXOXO

marathon monday: what’s your worst outfit?

One day last week I finished up a hectic afternoon of running errands by stopping at that one-mile loop track that’s sort of near the farm. I sprinted for three sweaty, desperate miles, making eye contact with nobody, then hurried back to my Jeep and made a beeline for home. Once there I kissed my husband, who was working on his Camaro and thankfully didn’t need a lot of eye contact, then made a second beeline to the shower and then my closet for fresh clothes. I’m not always in such a hurry to shed my running layers, but on this day my running layers were embarrassing.

I was wearing third-day, baggy yoga pants, full length ones with wide bottom legs that went swish-swash with every stride. Also the kind with a wide elastic flap at your hips that when flipped over reveals a super classy word, etched in sequins. Totally appropriate for a woman my age. Oh, but I tend to wear these pants wrong side out because I hate the way those sequins feel against the small of my back if that flap flips up. Which it often does. So, third-day, baggy, wrong-side-out yoga pants with bell bottoms that could start a campfire.

I was also wearing a lavender-colored stretch cotton pajama top, some ill-fitting Winnie the Pooh number from I cannot fathom what chapter of life (it looks like a maternity top but isn’t), and my husband’s athletic socks. Picture, if you will, the heel contour landing somewhere north of my ankle and near my calf muscle. Not that you could see that. On account of my super classy yoga pants.

I looked less like a runner and more like a person who had just awoken from a coma that had started long ago, while nursing a baby during a Britney Spears video.

My only semblance of normalcy was that pair of new blue and turquoise Brooks that still looked pretty fresh. Those shoes alone carried all the heavy burden of making me look like a legit runner at the track that day. Apparently I care about this now.

shoes

Why such shoddy attire? Because I hadn’t done laundry in several days. So all my workout gear was used up. Nor had I showered very recently.

These were facts of life because our septic tank was near capacity.

This was because Oklahoma has been enjoying a deluge of steady rainfall for weeks now.

Our water table is full. Our well is full. Our pond is full. And so, as things go, is our septic tank. Or at least it was last week, and I was exercising an abundance of caution. Trust me: not showering and not doing laundry is not my thing.

Anyway, the next time you see a badly dressed person at the running track, resist judgement and assume that he or she has a good reason for it. Things happen.

After all, color-coordinated spandex and witty racer back tees are for the drought.

The End.
XOXO

 

 

 

 

marathon monday: the pretzel story

I have in  my own head a million stories from the whole experience yesterday, but I realize most of them may only be interesting to me. What follows is a relatively short anecdote, something that happened around mile 20 maybe? And it pretty well exemplifies my marathon personality. Specifically, my level of awkwardness that I can’t even shake during a big event like this.

dorky runner

Keen on not drinking any more Powerade because it makes me feel weird in mah belly, I approached an aid station and accepted a plastic cup that from a distance seemed to be clear. I assumed it was water, my desired refreshment, and snagged the plastic cup with clumsy thank yous. A few yards away I realized it was actually filled with mini pretzels, which I also didn’t need in mah belly. Sooooo… did I just toss them? Nope. That would have been wasteful. I jogged back to the same aid station volunteer (why??) and tried to return the snack to him. He looked at me like I was off my rocker crazy and said, at least I think this is what he said, because I was listening to music by now, Shakira at that moment, “You don’t want them?” He was truly perplexed.

“No, thanks though! Thanks! I appreciate it but I thought it was water, you can have it back and give it to someone else who wants them.” I rattled the cup as if to demonstrate to the guy that water doesn’t make this sound, mmkay? And I was actually shouting those long, unnecessary sentences because, you know, Shakira. He took a very long time deciding to go ahead and accept it back from me, then there was an awkward moment of eye contact between us. Really weird vibe. I finally shouted again at the poor guy, “I didn’t touch them!” And ran off.

My god. I am embarrassed to be seen with myself.

The End.