Lazy W Marie

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

You are here: Home / Archives for memories

our weekend of diems that were fully carpe’d

Hello and happy Monday!! Handsome and I are still thrumming from a weekend packed with good stuff. The “carpe diem” lifestyle has been happening, and it suits us just fine.

Starting with Friday night, we filled the farm with a variety of friends and family to swim and watch “Deep Blue Sea” outside under the stars. It was Shark Week, after all. I love how all of our people mix beautifully with each other. Really nice. And that movie! One of our all time favorites. I had forgotten how many lines from it we quote on a regular basis. Especially from LL Cool J. Hilarious.

Deep Blue Sea, 1999
This is Maddie, me, and Kenzie, left to right, swimming with sharks. Probably. We had a lot of fun scaring each other and having underwater flip contests while the movie played across from the deck.

deck + futon mattress + blankets = movie cuddles under the stars

After many hours of that fun we left the kitchen messy (a rare indulgence), crashed hard, and slept until an unheard of 7 am Saturday morning. Haha, that’s quite late for us. We enjoyed our leisurely morning routines, fed the critters, then set out for a little drive through small towns and back roads. That adventure took us to Tecumseh, where we explored antique rooms and ate an early and memorable lunch at The Farmer’s Daughter. Delicious! I’d been hearing lots about this cafe and am happy to report that it’s even better than expected.

Look at this interior wall made from old, chippy doors! And a chalkboard menu!

My meal was a salmon salad with all the delicious trimmings and exactly one bob bon, pecan-coconut covered in chocolate. Perfect. My guy had ribs with exactly his favorite kind of macaroni and cheese. We were both pretty proud of our selections.

After that we drove more, looking for garage sales, but came home with limited treasure. I did snag a few potted plants from a greenhouse tucked away on the side of a state highway. Also a stack of hardback books for 27 cents total, but that purchase cost us about 20 minutes standing in line. Why?? Haha Still, happy to have the books.

Angel wing begonia, foxtail fern, and a purple heart. Easy and lush.
I’m excited to read the Pickens memoir, and those Michener epics make my mouth water.

 

Late Saturday night, after some swimming and playing with the animals, Handsome got brave and anted-up for yoga. The outdoor movie screen was still in place, so we used it to follow a Tara Stiles “relaxing” sequence, haha, but let’s just say it was a rage-filled half hour!! So much fun though. He cracks me up. We might try Adrienne next time, as she is much more mellow and low key.

Sunday mid-morning I laced up for 7 miles of pure bliss, an hour very well spent. My body is really getting comfortable again, and the weather was magical. I bumped into two sets of friends at the park where I ran, and those conversations were icing on the cake!

While I ran, Handsome worked on his Cadillac restoration. He’s undecided and enjoying the creative process, but for now the previously pink beauty is a sleek and sexy black. Her name is Marilyn.

We swam more and did a few other projects around the farm.

baby watermelons!

Late Sunday afternoon we threw on some clean clothes and drove to the city for something we rarely seek out unless we are in New Orleans: Live music!

Our friend Lynn has fallen madly in love with (and secretly married!!) an exceptionally talented musician whose band is all rockabilly, both vintage and original, which is straight up our musical alley.

The band is called “Jimmy Dale and the Beltline,” and if you ever get a chance to see them live, jump on it!! We had so much fun. I promise to tell you more about this unique couple soon. Besides being adorable and loving, they nurture a joint creative force that makes Oklahoma pretty special.

Whew! As I hit “publish” on these weekend memories, Handsome and I are still happily thrumming from it all. We are also coming down off some incredible Monday energy. You know that exhausted-but-accomplished feeling you earn after setting yourself up for a really excellent work week, and you probably want chicken and dumplins for dinner, and maybe a foot rub? That and more. So good.

Thanks for checking in, friends! See you tomorrow for Monday stories, a recipe, and more.

“I got a black car!”
~Jimmy Dale
XOXOXOXO

 

sweet sixteen, midweek check in

My husband and I are quite talented at Staycation-ing. Or is it called Staying-Cation? Whichever, we are so good at doing this thing where you schedule time “off” but do not travel. You just stay home (mostly) and do and eat what you want (mostly) and luxuriate in the fruits of your hard earned nest feathering labors from the previous several months.

We tend to reserve a week or so for exactly this pleasure every summer around our wedding anniversary. This July we are celebrating 16 years, and for the first time maybe ever I feel the heft of that number.

Not in a bad way, not at all. Just in a less juvenile way than before. If that makes sense. Almost as if all the anniversaries prior had been tokens or curiosities, or practices, even the milestones like 5 or 10.

Do you remember the birthday from your own childhood when you suddenly felt older, less like a little kid, not quite grown up but certainly in that middle ground between the two? It’s a feeling familiar to that. I know we are no longer a new couple; yet we are far from having venerable tenure.

Handsome and I have expereinced and accomplished a lot together in sixteen-plus years as a couple, so it’s a surprise to me that I should only just now feel the heft of a numerical representation of our union.

Sixteen.

Sweet sixteen.

Old enough to drive in this country.

Old enough to actually marry in some places.

The age when most teenagers begin to work for their own actual paychecks.

Still a transitory age, though. And not an altogether easy one.

The traditional gifting mediums for the sixteenth wedding anniversary are silver and peridot. But we have never adhered to this.

After all, we are saving money by not traveling, right?  One of our accidental but long-standing traditions is to gift a single thing to each other, a treasure for the house or the farm, some indulgent memento that we hopefully always remember as “the thing we found at our so-and-so anniversary!” With some luck we tend to find these treasures at cool, weird, cobwebby places for either cheap or nothing. Or, we reserve our anniversary for purchases larger than we might normally make.

Sometimes we see beautiful objects and take in the artistic inspiration then tackle a DIY for the farm. I like this image for that:

Does the Lazy W need a silver-painted mermaid? Probably.

As of this blog post we have not found our 16th year treasure. I’ll keep your posted.

Back to Stay-Cationing!

Some of our favorite activities are pretty obvious: Swimming and laying out in the (abundant, oppressive, delicious, healing) Oklahoma sun, grilling food outside and generally cooking whatever we feel like from day to day, keeping a slightly less rigorous healthy diet. (At the onset of this week we went grocery shopping together and filled the cart with quite a selection of separate cravings.)

Plus literally the best restaurant food.

Lots of spinach topped with pistachio-crusted goat cheese, mango, grilled chicken, prosciutto, and more. HEAVEN.

We go to the movies sometimes, a rare treat. This week we have seen both Pirates of the Caribbean and War for the Planet of the Apes. Such good films!!

We go running for fun, not training, I mean mostly I do, but I try not to feel guilty about it, and the boys have been joining the sweat fest a little bit too!

We socialize with friends. Sleep in the heat of the afternoon if we need it, especially in our cold and comfy green room downstairs. In fact sometimes we even sleep downstairs at night, like a slumber party. It’s great.

Staycation is for looser schedules, maximum sunshine, indulgent foods, and lots of want to do activity, less have to do.

Several times per day the words sweet sixteen pop into my head.

Happy Anniversary, BW. Midway through our week off together, I wish you all the rest and refreshment you crave. I love you more now than ever.

XOXOXOXO

a much happier storm season blowing through us

When the farm has just emptied of kids, evidence is plenty. The deck, pool, and surrounding lawns are all festooned with brightly colored plastics: Water guns and leaky swim masks, half-inflated floats, sun-crunchy pirate beach towels, and orphaned flip flops and hair ties. They are all scattered like confetti across the calm, green expanse. We discover an empty juice box here and there, a chewed-to-nothing melon rind, a discarded (hopefully used up) bottle of sunblock.

The chairs and chaise lounges are all askew, abandoned and resting happily like exhausted chaperones after a late night middle school dance.

When we bought these nine acres in 2007, our dream and vision was to give our girls, then 10 and 12, a second half of childhood, a healthy, wholesome coming of age with lots of space for deep breathing and long-leg stretching, animals to love and learn from, and much more.

The seeds of that vision had barely germinated when some destructive life storms blew through our family and changed everything for a season. We hung on, everyone survived, and eventually the sun came out again, brighter than ever. But that’s another story for another day.

Now I sit outside soaking up the cheerful debris of a happier storm, one of so many like it, each one important. “Cousin-Palooza 2017” came and went in a flash, leaving in its wake all this color and all these good vibrations. I sit here taking note of how much love and joy have actually grown here in the midst of that other storm.

Despite it? Or because of it?

For all the years that storm took from our family, has it actually nourished our foundation?

I think so.

I think, I feel in my bones, that the culling and strengthening and the deep watering from both tears and sweat have all contributed to an ongoing beautification. Not just a bigger deck or prettier gardens, not just faster internet, better food and more artwork on the walls- although yes to all of that!

But really, more trusting hearts for my husband and me. Freer minds. Effervescent joy that is actually pretty difficult to flatten.

We are blessed beyond reason. Thankful for adult siblings who trust us with their children so we can share these nine acres in some of the ways we always imagined. Happy to cultivate memories and bonds with our nieces and nephews that, despite inevitable storms headed our way in the future (that’s just how life goes), will last a lifetime and anchor us all.

Chloe, Kenzie, & Greg. July 2017 xoxo
Daybreak in Fort City, upstairs in the Apartment. They slept hard for almost 7 hours then sprang awake at full power, ready for chocolate chip pancakes and more fun.
Little fishes doing tricks all day long.

I always resist the hurry to clean up after a party. I am in no hurry to see it all wiped away, all the colorful debris that kids especially leave behind.

Except that other good stuff is on its way, and we need to make room. Every day, every moment, holds a new promise and a host of surprises. The whole big, beautiful, equally colorful future is about to happen.

I’m ready.

XOXOXOXO

 

going by feel

I had scribbled this down in my notebook a full week before it all clicked. Our friends Mickey and Kellie visited the farm on Memorial Day, and together with my sister Angela and brother Philip we all luxuriated in some pretty great conversation. As the golden hour grew purple and the honeybees were going to bed, we explored the vegetable garden together. I was pulling errant weeds, and Kellie asked how to tell the weeds from the plants. Our visit was nearing an end, so I just tried to answer briefly. You know that feeling when starting a brand new conversation would have been too much? But she and I had shared thoughtful vibrations about so many other things, how I wished to explore this with her that night!

Private note: This has both of my grandfathers wrapped up in its sentences: My paternal Grandpa Dunaway who was a sharp-witted, light-hearted writer and has always been my personal Will Rogers (also son to Papa Joe the slightly famous beekeeper), and my maternal Grandpa Rex, who you know by now was the world’s best gardening mentor and given to much puttering in exactly his own style.

bare-handed & going by feel

Assuming all basic safety from garter snakes, burrowing frogs, and other deadly creatures, the best way to pull weeds is bare-handed. After a brief re-acquaintance between the inner edge of the forefinger, the first pad of the thumb, and the exact dimensions of every upwardly mobile green thing in the garden, the task becomes commonplace, an easy old dance, even more familiar (and I will say more useful) than riding a bike.

The fuzzy, round barrel chest of a cucumber vine is easy to distinguish from the skinny weeds growing thick against it, though the weeds are also fuzzy. Another fuzzy-stemmed neighbor, the tomato plant (blunt and wounded thanks to a llama without borders) has a somewhat squared off base, and is woodier. Alpha and well rooted. Vastly different except for the green and the fuzz.

The gardener should be able to go at the task with eyes closed, flicking gingerly from one thread of life to the next, deciding which can stay and which should be plucked out. Just a swift, underhanded twist of that well informed forefinger, and the cooperating palm is filled with chlorophyll and potential energy, one tiny decision at a time.

If, in a fit of momentum, the gardener grazes too near a bed of arugula, crushing a few leaves or maybe even uprooting a thread like seedling or two, then the sharp, peppery fragrance will announce the misstep quickly. A friendly alarm to redirect, so that no more than a trace of food is lost. And even that bit of green will find its way to a happy chicken’s belly.

This is one of my favorite things about easy gardening moments. Pulling weeds bare handed and getting really up close and personal with every shape and texture, usually with my eyes closed.

And it points gently to so many Universal messages I have been receiving lately. Messages about being quiet, going about my work more privately, relaxing into the moment so much that I can keep moving with my eyes closed. Trust and steady movement, knowing that nothing is wasted. Believing that every detail in this complex life is beautiful and useful. Acknowledging that as different as I feel from people near me, we have some things in common.

Most of all, the message that it’s okay to operate by instinct once you are informed and practiced. That is exciting. 

I love you and miss you Grandpa Dunaway, I love you and miss you Grandpa Rex, and I love you too Kellie. I am so happy to know you better and better.

Go by feel and trust in Love
XOXOXOXO

,

happy birthday week to meh!

This week we mark the third year that our little farm has been made so much sweeter with the addition of the world’s most magical llama.

The world’s most kissy-face llama. Who lacks a good sense of personal space.

The llama with his mama’s caramel brown fluff and his daddy’s eyelashes. Also his daddy’s distaste for horses. Also his daddy’s penchant for stealing garden produce.

For three years we have been cuddling, smooching, throat-caressing, and listening to the siren song of Meh, so named for the sound he made incessantly for the first two years of his life.

For three years our guests have laughingly endured Meh’s unwanted (but wonderful) advances, and we act like there’s nothing we can do to help. Ha.

When Klaus joined the party here, Meh was only a year old, so the two have grown up together and are best buddies. BFFs forever and ever, cross their hearts and please let’s go swimming now. Meh is the only animal on the farm who can play hard enough to satisfy Klaus without hurting him, and vice-versa. Our horses are known for kicking the lesser beings, not so much frolicking. Very disappointing for two playful boys.

We certainly owe Meh’s extreme touch-ability to Handsome. From day one, he held that baby and pet him, kissed his face and touched his legs, just like you would a colt. Meh lost his mama Seraphine too young, so this bond proved to be an extra blessing.

We love you, Meh. We love your liquid black eyes and those broomy lashes. We love your irregular spots and caramel-colored fluff, your pointed hooves and straight, usually wet-from-the-pond legs. Oh my gosh that velvety mouth and soft-whiskered chin.

We love how you boss the horses around but wait until the third position to eat. We love how you tolerate Klaus then beg for him to play when he is finally tired. We love your weird ambulance screaming sounds and sweet breath. We appreciate how you never spit on us! We do not appreciate how you eat the garden veggies, but your neck is so long and bendy, and you are so sweet otherwise, how can we ever be mad?

Keep on bouncing and loping and doing that swooping, underhanded roping you do with your body. Keep on napping excessively beneath the pine trees, having rubbed our landscaped trees down to bare sticks, chewing on probably very fine baby kale. You are worth it. We are so lucky to have you here.

You are the world’s best, most beautiful, truly magical and amazing llama.

And now you are three.

Happy Birthday
XOXOXOXO