Lazy W Marie

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

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farewell to chunk

What I’m not going to write is one more piece on love and loss and the importance of keeping our eyes on the silver lining. We’ve had so much of that here on this blog, because my husband and I have had so much of it in real life. It’s all a worthy lesson, no doubt; but today we just need to rest a bit in a new reality here at the farm. I am writing to ask you for your best loving energy. Your prayers, good vibrations, kind words, or just you quietly nodding head as you read. Handsome and I will appreciate your embrace from a distance.

Just the facts, ma’am.

Okay.

Today we are saying goodbye to a beloved farm-ily member, Chunk-hi the buffalo. Our bottle baby-turned cuddle bug for nearly seven years, our cookie-loving, face-scratch-begging, engine-racing, tractor-tire flipping behemoth is moving on to his next life chapter. We are caught in that all too familiar brackish water where salty tears mix with fresh starts and past meets future face to face.

buff BW face

Chunk is alive and well, don’t worry, just going to live on another ranch. Thankfully, that ranch is here in Oklahoma and owned by the parents of some friends of ours, so it’s possible we can go visit Chunk in his new digs. We could see his new girlfriend. Maybe next year meet his little golden calves. (We could become bison grandparents!!) This ranch happens to be in Stratford, so we can also stock up on peaches when they’re in season.

Those are all silver linings, Marie, stop.

Sorry.

This decision is not one at which we’ve arrived easily, and the factors have been many and building in intensity. During angry, bitter moments we find people to blame (new neighbors usually, the Turnpike Authority also). In tender moments we see that maybe this was always meant to happen, eventually. Our bison dreams way back in 2009 were big, and life has taken so many unexpected twists and turns since then. Whatever you believe about fate and bad luck, these last six and three-quarter years have just evaporated with our sweet buff. He quickly became part of our farm-ily during those early summer bottle feedings. He has etched himself into our identity at the Lazy W (how many children have visited to feed him cookies and scruff his wooly face?). He will always of course own a slice of our hearts.

I promised not to wax too poetic about this. It’s just such an emotional thing.

Chunk is being picked up today around Noon, and it will be only his second time in a trailer. He will be arriving at only the third place he has ever seen on this beautiful earth, and besides his mother (moments before she was hunted, I feel the need to point that out), he will soon meet his first adult American Bison. Word on the prairie is she’s quite a looker and feeling amorous.

Wink-wink…

We are not heart broken, exactly. We are heart-aching. We know this is the responsible thing to do and that Chunk-hi will be safer (uninvited attention from passersby on our road has been a huge problem this year), and we even believe he will find a whole new level of happiness in his new life. Of course that last part stings a bit, but gosh. We have survived a child leaving the nest and finding happiness. We’ll survive this too.

It’s all for the best.

So please keep us in your happy thoughts, and for sure keep Chunk-hi in your happy thoughts. Hope for him wide, green pastures, abundant fresh water, excellent romantic companions, and just enough human interaction to help him remember us fondly. Believe in these hopes and we will too, and no doubt he will be okay.

To Robbie and your family, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Knowing that good people love Chunk is such a comfort. We reminisced this morning that it was Robbie who helped us feed Chunk grass clippings when we were neighbors. It was Robbie who held off a dog attack before Chunk had horns to defend himself. And it has been Robbie all along who watched Chunk grow just as both our families’ kids were growing. As poetic full circles go, this is a lovely one.

Friends of the Lazy W, if you have ever visited our farm and shown love to our buff, thank you too. Thank you so much. Thank you for your cookie generosity, your inquisitiveness, your sense of caution and bravado. We have enjoyed it all. We would really love it if you took a moment to share a Chunk-hi memory with us.

We love you Chunk! We already miss you, sweet boy.

Oh give me a home
Where the buffalo roam..
XOXOXO

 

deep sleep, blackbirds, & some magic

We slept so late. More than nine hours in bed. Our smooth new slate-colored sheets must have chamomile leaves woven into the cotton.

We creep outside well past daybreak. The morning is warm and absent of any breeze but overcast, as gray as our magical sleeping sheets. Perfect coffees in hand and one hundred-pound puppy bouncing around our ankles, we start the day already simmering in affection and buffered by safety. Hot Tub Summit. We plan our day.

An hour later we are outside again, this time dressed and sitting at a round metal table next to the barn, facing downhill. We are still wrapped by the warm woolly air, no technicolor sunrise today. Our four-leggeds eat their breakfast contentedly. So fat and beautiful. Hens tease roosters, darting seductively across the middle field, scratching at horse manure, chuckling in the dormant flower garden. The birdsong is exceptional. We hear and scout for cardinals, blue jays, doves, and woodpeckers. Then it happens.

Out of the southwest corner of the farm, a dense flock of blackbirds, half as wide as our property and trailing twice that length, swoops up over the sand hills, maybe from the forest or maybe beyond, and speeds across the farm. They are too high to touch but low enough to force the air down in whooshes with their energetic flight. The birds are massed together into one quilted black flying carpet, undulating and speeding between the sky and the earth, slicing through the moment.

They race toward one tree with one purpose and land on an oak just past my husband’s car shop. Its branches dip and dance from the burden. Every twig now is dotted with a round black bird, the whole mass still twittering and vibrating. Handsome takes photos of the spectacle.

When they eventually hush, the regular birdsong resumes. I cannot tell whether the cardinals, blue jays, doves and woodpeckers were quiet during this stunning display or just out-sung. Either way, the heartbeat of the farm returns to normal.

Chickens laughing again and roosters crowing on every side. Geese preening with soft honks down by the pond. Horses snuffling and bison knocking around a fallen tree with his massive horns.

I have one more cup of perfect coffee to sip before deciding between work and play. But on days like this, when the magic here is so thick, it’s hard to know the difference.

Happy Valentine’s Day friends
Enjoy some magic
XOXOXOXO

arrivals and departures

We finally saw Boyhood a few nights ago. Have you yet? The movie starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, the one filmed with the same cast over about a decade? It’s both award-winning and simple, a Texas boy’s coming of age story and a fairly typical modern family story, too, one shadowed by divorce, domestic abuse, blended families, and alcoholism. Whew, typing that synopsis pretty well sums up my take-away feeling from the movie. I honestly never want to see it again, haha. But one strand of beauty does run through the whole mess, and that’s what I’d love to share with you now.

About two-thirds of the way through the movie, when the two siblings are teenagers and spending time with their Dad (Ethan Hawke) and his wife and family, they all sit around at sunset singing a song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. They are drinking lemonade and just luxuriating in each other’s company. Apparently the song they are singing is one they all have written and rehearsed together, and it’s sweet and funny and sad.

The best lines of the whole movie are in that song. They lilt through snippets of good news and bad news and harmonize how in life arrivals and departures happen side by side. It reminds me of the late 90’s Live song Lightning Crashes. Remember it?

Lightning crashes, a new mother cries
Her placenta falls to the floor
The angel opens her eyes
The confusion sets in
Before the doctor can even close the door

Lightning crashes, an old mother dies
Her intentions fall to the floor
The angel closes her eyes
The confusion that was hers
Belongs now to the baby down the hall

Oh, I feel it comin’ back again
Like a rollin’ thunder chasing the wind
Forces pullin’ from the centre of the Earth again
I can feel it

I love that song.

All of us experience this dichotomy throughout life, perhaps constantly if we pay enough attention. People die suddenly; estranged loved ones return to the fold. Friendships end; we meet new friends. Jobs change. We pack up and move. Animals come and go. The loves and losses are unending. Handsome and I have joked (often with maniacal laughter) that sometimes we feel whiplash from the good-news-bad-news dance. 

But to my thinking it can serve to keep us steady. I’m no longer so bothered by the balance of light and dark. This ebb and flow is natural, healthy, right. And trying to weigh the value of these sorrow-and-joy exchanges is is pretty pointless. I’m just grateful to be learning how to ride the waves and accept lessons along the way. Rail a little less against those things outside of my control. Embrace a little more the good when it swells up. 

eggs square plate

 

Maybe today, as the moon enters a new phase and our energy begins to build again, before a new work week begins, is a great time to take a deep breath. Remember that both love and loss are meant to be woven into the fabric of our days. We can’t have one without the other. That’s ok.

“You must let what happens happen.
Everything must be equal in your eyes,
good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”
~Michael Ende,The Neverending Story
XOXOXOXO

where will you spend this early spring?

We sat in bed yesterday morning slurping our first cups of perfect coffee, braiding together our legs, and fighting off the bouncy and space-invading affection of our 95-pound puppy. Slowly I recalled the overnight thunderstorm (it was glorious!) and hoped that during chores at daybreak I would still be able to smell ozone and see damp flower beds and pastures. Handsome clicked on the morning news, and there he was. Puxatony Phil. The prognosticator of prognosticators. The groundhog of all groundhogs, hoisted up in all his fatness, ready to tell us what kind of weather to expect next.

Low and behold, as by now you surely know, Phil did not see his shadow and we are all set for an early spring. Or are we? No matter what Phil’s prediction, the news anchors are always quick to dismiss the folklore, citing that Groundhog Day is rarely accurate. So let’s compare Phil’s 2016 declaration to what the trusty almanac says. The farmers’ almanac, after all, is correct more than 80% of the time, and the science behind its construction each year is kind of mind-blowing. Here is what I see for our area over the next two months:

FEBRUARY 2016: temperature 50.5° (2° below avg. north, 3° above south); precipitation 1.5″ (avg. north, 1″ below south); Feb 1-3: Sunny, cool; Feb 4-10: Showers, then sunny, warm; Feb 11-13: Showers, warm; Feb 14-17: Rain to snow north; sunny, mild south; Feb 18-22: Showers; cool north, warm south; Feb 23-29: Snow north, rain south, then sunny, cool.

MARCH 2016: temperature 60° (1° below avg. north, 3° above south); precipitation 2″ (2″ below avg. north, 1″ above south); Mar 1-10: Sunny; cool, then warm; Mar 11-13: Rain, then sunny, cool; Mar 14-21: Sunny; cool, then warm north; warm south;Mar 22-24: Sunny; Mar 25-31: Sunny north, rainy south; cool.

That looks like an early spring to me, friends!! And if a chilly morning surprises us here and there, remember what Hemingway said…

even a false spring

 

Start surveying your life for the happiest places to spend springtime, okay? It’s so close.

See you soon.

“When spring came, even a false spring,
There were no problems except where to be happiest.”
~Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast
XOXOXOXO

 

 

late january reading update

Happy Saturday friends! I think this is a great week to pause and do some literary looking. The month of January was rife with excellent reading material, both digital and print, and I am happy to have made a small dent in my 2016 goal. A couple of these titles warrant their own full reviews, but for today, here are some nudges from me to you. Please share what you have been reading too. I love to hear all about that.

Books:

BIG MAGIC
by Elizabeth Gilbert

This book was lovely. I am letting it count toward one of my best-sellers reads of 2016, though I had sort of intended that to be best-selling fiction. Big Magic is sort of a creative’s manifesto. In it, Gilbert is encouraging, liberating, smart, sassy, and very much the feminine counter-balance to the more industrious guidance Stephen King offers in his creative memoir On Writing (my review of that is here). Gilbert really calls down the power of magic, after all. At least that’s how it struck me. And I loved it. Five of five stars, for what it is. Compared to her other books I have enjoyed (Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things) this one was not my favorite; but it did have the quality of sparking my writing-living-nest-feathering energy and of having offered a long conversation with the author. That was really nice.

One of the oldest and most generous tricks that the universe plays on human beings is to bury strange jewels within us all, and then stand back to see if we can ever find them. ~Elizabeth Gilbert BIG MAGIC

This quote is perhaps my favorite takeaway theme from Big Magic. How tantalizing!

My Life on the Run
by Bart Yasso

I nibbled this book last autumn after meeting the author at the Spirit of Survival half-marathon in Lawton, Oklahoma. I enjoyed my chapter nibbles then and have thoroughly enjoyed reading it cover to cover this month, plus a few chapters multiple times. I will post a full review next week. For now, I offer you this little treasure, part of Bart explaining how a burro race operates and what are the differences between all the creatures:

Mules are the domesticated offspring of a female horse and a donkey, and a burro is a small donkey. A jackass is a wild donkey or someone who runs a race with a burro. ~Bart Yasso, My Life on the Run

The Shack
by William Paul Young

Oh, friends. I can barely make a passing mention of this book without really diving in. Please please please tune in for my second review soon. The first one was way back in August 2011, when my life was so very different. Reading this same book now, with five years of life changes, growth, and spiritual enrichment along for the ride, was a completely new experience! At least two of my friends are reading it for the second and third times, too, and I am looking forward to comparing notes. How wonderful. Apparently this is something I will need to own in hardback in order to refer to it many times in the future, as life continues to evolve.

I suppose that since most our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing, and that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside. ~William Paul Young, The Shack

Online Articles & Blog Posts:

Lifeingrace:

Edie is blogging again!! This makes me so happy. A few days ago she shared a beautiful, thoughtful piece on why we should still bother building a family library. My Mom would probably appreciate this as much as I do. Welcome back, Edie! We are all so excited for your book release!

Meta-Marriage: Ten Big Truths for Every Committed Couple

I  would genuinely appreciate this series even if its author was a faceless expert in some far-flung think tank I will never explore. But the fact that this very meaty and nourishing stuff is a gift to the world from my friend and local writer Kelly Roberts? Well, I shouldn’t have to tell you how happy that makes me. Red Dirt Kelly, as most of us locals know her, really knows her stuff. And her delivery is warm. Go check it out! This is perfect timing for Valentine’s Day, too!

Vitamin D in January?

Nutritional supplementation is often on my mind, especially since discovering how much better I feel taking the right Iron (three cheers for slow-release!). When local running celebrity Camille Heron shared this Competitor.com article about Vitamin D and its connection to athletic performance, I paid attention. I groove anything old-fashioned and not trendy that could help me feel better, work harder, and just live a fuller, richer life. Sunshine has always felt great, but reading a little science behind that was nice. PS- yesterday at the pharmacy, while grabbing an anti-inflammatory prescription for my stupid ankle, I refreshed my vitamin D supply. Thanks Camille!

Thanks for staying to chat, friends! Please let me know what you have found to read, whether online or in print. Let me know what YOU have written too! That would truly make my day.

Wishing you a deeply nourishing weekend. Talk soon.

I think of life as a good book.
The further you get into it,
the more it begins to make sense.
~Harold Kushner
XOXOXOXO