Lazy W Marie

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

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hold what ya got

My husband says something that drives me crazy.

Not the… please shut the cabinet door or would you please put your dirty socks away kind of crazy.

(Not that he does those things.)

(I’m just giving you examples.)

More of the… Sleeveless tshirt, backwards ballcap, and stern business voice on work calls kind of crazy.

That kind of crazy that gives me shivvers.

Handsome behind the wheel on a country drive…xoxo

At various crucial times around the farm, he says to me in his deepest, most controlled, most deliciously mellow voice, “Hold what ya got.”

And I almost can’t focus. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I love it, ha!

This past week he said it to me while we wrangled Scarletta Jones into our makeshift squeeze shoot to administer antibiotics. My job was to hold the rope against her strenuous objections and then apply whatever full body tension I could muster onto the steel gates to keep her still. Hold what ya got. He just utters the phrase calmly under his breath, without making eye contact, focused on his side of the task.

Earlier in the week and again yesterday, he said it to me many times while we worked together on our little greenhouse build. He has designed and purchased and organized all of it. Planned every step. He gives me useful-feeling tasks along the way, often amounting to lifting lumber to the sky while he measures some mysterious distance or holding two pieces together while me makes an angle just perfect.

Hold what ya got.

Then inwardly, to myself, Focus, girl!

There are innumerable examples of him casting this atomic spell on me. He’s been saying it for years, and I only recently intimated how it affects me. He doesn’t get it. But that makes it worse. Or better.

I suppose he’ll keep saying it forever. I hope he does.

And I absolutely will.
XOXOXO

snowmelt & hope for change

All week we been shivering and hiding ourselves away in near-zero temps, shrouded in snow and ice. Dark, moody skies. Until today.

Today, the sun reappeared. It started with a raw, rusty edge in the east, a quiet daybreak already more promising than the previous few. And although the morning was still frigid, still just four dergrees Farenheit, the brightness made it bearable. Then the sun rose fully and the sky turned from silver-grey to true blue, and I got very excited.

By lunchtime, sunlight was bouncing off of every surface, really truly streaming through the windows. I caught glossy reflections of water here and there. I saw drips, too. Wait, water? The ice is melting! I looked through a window in the Apartment and saw that the middle field, solid white just a few hours ago, was suddenly half mud. The pine trees were suddenly relieved of their snowy burdens, too, and the horses’ manes looked dry. Everything was bright and saturated with color. I ran downstairs to grab a light jacket to go play outside, and when I opened the door the cold nearly took my breath away. I folded in half and shut the door. It was still only around ten degrees, ha! Still frigid cold, even with the evidence of melt.

((snow day in January with Klaus, Max, Sadie, and Charlie!!))

So I bundled up properly this time and invited Klaus on a walk. He loves the cold. We checked on all the animals, distributed carrots to the horses and extra biscuits to the cows, made a bouncy loop around the back field, and caught Johnny Ringo on our way back uphill. When we passed the Batmobile and walked to get the mail, I started thinking about the sunlight and low temps and how we can enjoy a thaw even before we approach thirty two degrees. The concentration of light, I suppose, is pretty powerful.

You must already know where I’m going with this, if you’ve been here very long.

A little bit of weak sunlight, at low angles, is no match for ice in low temperatures.

But strong, abundant, uninterrupted rays of light, concentrated, directed energy, maybe bouncing off of surrounding walls and objects, can absolutely melt ice, even in low temperatures. That’s amazing.

I’m taking this as a reminder that focused attention can make all the difference in our work. That prayer can change things, if it is strong and focused. Abundant.

Maybe I’ve been playing a few things too softly, just casting my energy and attention vaguely where more focus is needed to accomplish something. Praying only in background ways, saying I trust God, when something more fervent is required. Pursuing a few worthy goals too lightly.

Maybe it was just a really beautiful, snowy day with a really beautiful, melty surprise tucked in. Maybe it was just nature doing her thing. But I can’t help but see the message and the promise:

If you focus your energy better, things will change.
XOXOXO

a charlie and rhett story

Read this short story in your best Rod Serling voice:

Imagine if you will, a ten degree morning on an ice covered farm. The sun is brilliant, bouncing wide, metallic sheets of light off of every surface. The wind is mercifully nonexistent.

Everywhere you look is a snow dusted pine tree or a pile of oak leaves, crunchy and frosted and as still as a sculpture. Chickens are clucking, a goose is skronking, and horses are whinnying their demands for breakfast.

Now you see a happy and energetic Puppy following his giant best friend German Shepherd during morning chores. They are flipping like fish and bounding across the weather stiffened tundra. Their claws mostly grip the ice, but not always. Still, they run and chase and beg the Lady to play fetch and keepaway with a frozen softball. When the Lady throws it, the puppy runs with absolute abandon, no thought given to its trajectory or obstacles or ice or anything.

The Lady is not great at throwing. The Puppy has not learned this yet.

The softball lands on this side of a wire fence, in the vicinity of a young steer, his face buried in a pile of soft hay. The puppy is exactly one second behind the ball. He hits his brakes. His claws fail. He skids on his bottom, pliable young puppy legs splayed, toward the ice dusted Thing With Horns. Thankfully, the fence is between them, but still they bump, giant face to small body, and the Thing With Horns emits the deepest, most baritone objection the puppy has ever heard. A rare sound, it startles the Lady too.

The Puppy regroups, retreats to the Lady without the prize, and checks over his shoulder to see that the fence is still in place. Fetch and Keepaway continue but not without some anxiety.

The End.

space to feel my feelings about Joc

My energy has been stalled for a few hours. I thought surely it was just from this spell of cold, dark weather. Or maybe from having a list of important but not very challenging tasks to finish today. Or maybe it’s the ambiguity of not being on a training plan right now. Some days I embrace my freedom and really squeeze a lot out of it. Other days, when I am low on motivation, the great openness is unnerving. I feel unmoored. Whether with fitness goals or caring for the farm or writing or anything, too much blank space can, well, stall me out. I guess I need to reestablish some structure, I think to myself, fill the calendar back up. Train for another marathon.

Then I noticed two prevailing trains of thought, both about Jocelyn.

One has surfaced almost every time lately when I get on the floor to cuddle Klaus, nearly every time we play outside: I am keenly aware that Jocelyn’s dog, Bridget, was a puppy when Klaus was a puppy. They were well acquainted then and even sometimes “corresponded” through the mail, when she and Joc first lived in Colorado. I see Klaus’ silver whiskers and ample belly, hear his gentlemanly groans and notice how his energy is so different now than it was nine years ago, and I cannot help but wonder what Bridget looks like now, how her energy is, what middle age looks like on such a strong and adventurous little woman. These are bittersweet imaginations, and I think maybe I can tilt that scale away from bitter, to mostly sweet. Maybe I can willfully conjure up how the reunion will soon look and feel. Bridget running in the grass towards us, no doubt carrying a rock for someone to throw. Retrieving rocks was once her favorite thing next to chasing bears off their cabin porch and stampeding behind deer up the mountain.

The second prevailing thought is much darker. I have been trying to silence a voice in my head that says, “She’s just not coming home. It’s been too long.” And I have no idea what to do with this, because it won’t stop. Hourly, at odd intervals, it just echoes. The actual words, typed out and spoken silenty in my head, are cruel enough. I don’t have to hear them to recoil. It makes me physically nauseated.

When people ask me if I have heard from her, the truth is awful. I have not. I sometimes hear updates about her, not from her. But I do appreciate hearing her name spoken. When noone asks, that hurts too. But I kind of understand why they don’t want to bring it up. When I see photos of her on my phone or her artwork around the farm, or even when I care for the horses she once loved so much, my god. Everything hurts so much. Sometimes it all serves to keep her “with us,” but right now it is terrifying. And complaining about this pain when so many people have lost their children forever, in undeniable and truly hopeless ways, feels so self indulgent and ridculous.

I still do have hope. Right?

Maybe these are just the emotions I have successfully avoided in all the previous months and years of being extremely busy and overcommitted. I probably was staying busy to not have to feel it all. Maybe this short season of loose schedules and low commitments have simply given my heart some space to unfold. Maybe this is what I have been feeling for a really long time, in other words, and none of it is a signal to any new and terrible thing happening. It’s not a prophetic warning, which is something else I fear; it’s just an emotional landscape finally visible because I have cleared some distractions. Is this a true psychological phenomenon, or have I invented it to make myself feel better? Does anyone know?

I tell myself again that this is just a season. A test. That one day we will be celebrating again, just as we have so many times already! And in that bright future, I will be ashamed to look back at any point before when I had given up hope (which is impossible to do with your children, actually) or indulged in sadness. So today, I’ll finish some work worth doing and get some exercise. I’ll bend some deliberate thought toward good things coming soon. And, because this feels like an instructive moment, I’ll be honest with myself about how I’m really doing: Not great. This is hard.

I love you so much, Joc. Nothing can change that.
I dream of you almost every night, and I talk to you all day, every day,
so much so, that I often trick myself into thinking you’re just across town
and could surprise me at the front door any minute.
I hope you are happy and being loved fully.
I hope you know that we are still here,
still loving and missing you.
XOXO

read, watch, listen January 18, 2025

The brain food lately has been delicious, friends.

The Huberman Lab Podcast always has great episodes, but I got more out of this conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos than most others. They explore happiness and biochemistry. They discuss all kinds of great reesearch and compare it to social norms, gender, dogs versus cats, you name it. They direct you to other authors on the topic, too. And their deep look at dopamine was extra valuable to me. Key takeaway: Beware any dopamine you haven’t worked for! Check it out for mentions of “time confetti” if nothing else. Yes, it’s long. It look me several sessions of housework or running at the lake to listen to it all, ha! But it was time well spent. This morning I started (but did not come close to finishing) a different episode he recorded with his Dad. They have a very sweet, respectful rapport, and the material is worthwhile: “How to Use Curiosoty & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life.”

Also in my ears recently has been Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Oh my gosh. You guys. If you are already an Ina fan, then this book is a must read for you. Or consider it a must listen, because she narrates it herself, and she is a gifted storyteller with a voice like browned butter. If you don’t consider youself an Ina fan but you do love a nourishing memoir, you should still check this out. Her life story and career path are fascinating, and the way she infuses her expereinces with meaning is inspiring. She distills everything into translatable life lessons, useful to anyone. Of interest to me: She waited until the epilogue to utter the words in the title of her book.

I have been nibbling away at a book called Philosophy for Gardeners: Ideas and Paradoxes to Ponder in the Garden. I wanted it to be so great, you guys, and it may still be. I ordered it thinking it would be the book I always wanted to write myself, you know? But so far I am having trouble catching its rhythm. I’ll keep trying, because it’s such a great combination of topics. I have always thought of gardening in philosophical terms! But it feels a bit like an assignment. Wish me luck.

A book that has been easy to collaspe into is a Pulitzer Prize finalist from over twenty ears ago: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. When I can talk myself into sitting still to read, the words are like music to my eyes.

Our son in law Alex has a voracious and interesting appetite for information. He and I have lots of overlap, so I always take his sugestions when he sends them. This week he suggested the podcast “Unexplainable.” There is a great episode on whether AI can feel, and whoooooo that one is thought provoking. Since listening to that one, I flew through several more, various topics.

Handsome and I have been watching a trainwreck of a show called 90 Day Fiance. It is about as bad as it sounds, except for the deep dive into human nature. Love is an irreducible need, you know? Cannot say I reccommend it exactly, but there ya go, ha!

Okay, that’s what I’ve got to offer this week! What have you read or listened to that’s worth sharing? January is a pretty wonderful time to cozy up and feed yoru brain.

If you can’t find orgaic, farm fresh books to read,
Store bought is fine.
XOXOXO