Lazy W Marie

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

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friday 5 at the farm, straddling seasons

Hey friends, hello! How goes your passage of time? The clocks here, and the calendars, still refuse to slow down. We often catch ourselves looking up with bewildered expressions, asking each other what day it is, what year, and again for good measure, are you sure it’s already Thursday? Already September?

That cannot be right.

Thankfully the days and weeks are packed with work well executed and memories well crafted. We are buoyed by extravagant laughter and nourished by even more extravagant food. So, if time seems to be accelerating, at least we can feel sure that we have redeemed it all for the best treasures. I do think we have.

((hydrangeas fading into their autumnal glory))

Here are a few headlines, in classic Friday 5 at the Farm style:

ONE: Handsome’s birthday week was rock solid and glittering and, worth remembering forever, covered with a lavish mountain of hypoallergenic foam and sprinkled with disco lights. We first celebrated with our hilarious neighbors who donned shark and mermaid costumes just to make him laugh, then at his office with the Pubic Utilities Division (forever in our hearts), at a gala downtown (we sat alone at a table for twleve but had great fun together), in Bricktown with a small group of fun seeking friends (only one bone was broken), at the farm with even more friends (barn movie and FOAM), and daily, just the three of us, in as many small, sweet ways as we could manage. We even indulged in a double date night with Jess and Alex. Handsome reported feeling very loved and celebrated, which makes my heart happy. He is the engine that keeps so much in this world running and moving forward, and he certainly tends to give more than he receives. So at least at his birthday, I love seeing him spoiled rotten!

TWO: The middle seasons have begun their long, slow ceremony of changing guard. Summer is folding up her threadbare and wrinkled flag solemnly, advancing one measured step at a time toward Autumn, who yawns and rolls her shoulders, blinking without an agenda. She is ready but in no hurry. Autumn will steal no glory from Summer, because she knows that once we settle into her embrace we will not look back. We’re all a little tired. Still, the landscape still boasts more saturated color than muted. Flowers are still blooming. Tomatoes, basil, and eggplants are still offering us their final promises. And our air conditioner is still keeping the house cool and fresh, for a few more days at least. This is the in-between, the bridge, the weeks in Oklahoma when anything could happen and often does. I intend to absorb and enjoy the details as they come.

THREE: I remain deeply thankful for a farm full of healthy animals. Chanta and Dusty are thriving in their fatness and rippling muscles, good teeth and less troublesome hooves. The cows are enjoying their preordained romance, to the extreme most days, and have you heard that Scarlett has been sleeping in the wild coreopsis? Most mornings, if I do not hear her mooing early for breakfast, she is still asleep in that especially tall, thick patch of yellow flowers on the west side of the big barn. I will admit that we have not collected a fresh egg in over a month, but that might be due to the flock being free range and definitely prone to laying in strange places, like open vehicles and soft hay bales. I recently discovered a clutch of fifteen eggs in a deep hollow below some Mexican sunflowers. Tricky girls. Mike Meyers remains the reigning champ of happy splashes.

FOUR: Speaking of gardens, whew! For someone who talks about this a lot, I sure do not seem to have any idea what I am doing, ha! That extra long stretch of 100-plus weeks with no rain was challenging, but still so much survived. Our water pressure troubles have been resolved, and I am back to watering on a cautious rotation. We have more cooling on the forecast, too, which will bring tangible relief. Now the name of the game is taking stock of what is still full of good energy and then babying those plants with every trick in the book. Any blank space that comes from removing weeds and spent plants will be given the chance to host broccoli, spinach, lettuces, carrots, kale, pansies, and a few more fall treasures. For the next several weeks I will be busy with the school gardens too, so available time to play outside might be limited this season. We shall see. Really, everything is fine. Not the lush and productive garden she was in July, but still beautiful.

FIVE: I have been a glutton for great reading and listening lately. Recently, I finished off another Abraham Verghese novel, this time Cutting for Stone. His writing is one of the most mesmerizing and thirst quenching reading experiences you can give yourself. Please choose a title, any title, and let me know how much you love it. I also finished The Stand finally, after many decades of wondering if it was for me It is!! Oh man it is. Stephen King is a crowd favorite character writer for good reason. I had forgotten. Also loving some good marathoning podcasts lately, but maybe I’ll save that for an upcoming running update.

Okay, friends, listen. As if to underscore how quickly time passes, let me admit that I wrote this “Friday 5” post exactly 8 days ago, intending to share it with you last Friday. Since then, we have enjoyed refreshing cool weather and more hot weather. I found the energy to run sixteen miles, most of it with my dear friend Sheila, the longest run I have tackled in a while. Jess and I had an incredible garden clean up day at her house then another spontaneous day of baking something extraordinary, here at the farm. We are all working and playing and loving each other left and right, even with an unexpected handful of sick days for my husband. Life is good. Life is beautiful in every way. I really that the days are so full we have to consciously stop and look aroudn to see what we are doing.

Happiest Friday ever to you.
XOXOXO

full pond, full hearts

Our recent rainfall in Oklahoma has been pretty stunning. We always hope for rain and sometimes pray for it, and every few years it seems like God answers all at once, ha! Such is the case now. Handsome and I have been enjoying the changing view of the farm for weeks. Everything is lush and emerald green. Grass and clover are growing where usually we find only sand burrs. Tree bark everywhere is almost black from moisture, and mushrooms and moss are quietly overtaking the north side of the property. When a thin silver rivulet appeared in the middle field and connected to the pond below, we celebrated! It’s usually a sure sign of a satisfied water supply. Everything is so beautiful.

Yesterday morning after feeding everyone, Klaus and I walked around the back field and up to my favorite spot on the edge of our pond to see how different things looked from there. Over the years I have taken a series of photos that show the pond mostly in various stages of drought. It’s still beautiful in those times, for different reasons. It’s still reflective of our extraordinary sky, if narrowly; and it is still a habitat for wildlife. But yesterday, the sight took my breath away. Its collar of pink sand was completely submerged, water having risen all the way up to the high bank and beyond, that place where Jocelyn once rescued several dozen fish and where Daphne and Chunk-hi used to swim. The big rocks we call Turtle Island were nowhere to be found, and an old telephone pole we were using to slow some erosion had floated into the middle of the glassy, dragonfly covered water. Water even extended up past the new fence we recently built for the enlarged cow pen. If they choose to, Rhett and Scarlett could be in the privacy of their own space and still go for a little swim, a new hobby of theirs.

((full pond, June 5, 2024))

I stood there just gazing at the pond, at its fullness, at its stillness and perfect mirror-like surface. Rain has been falling steadily for weeks and weeks. Sometimes it fell softly, just a mist, and often it was torrential. But overall it has been so consistent that we feel confident the pond is “sealed” now and will hang onto this fresh supply for a while. I don’t really know if that is good science; I just know that sometimes a single random downpour is not enough to satisfy parched earth. It’s like we are so profoundly dry that we need several doses of rewetting before we feel safe enough to hang onto it and let it refill us.

Do you ever feel like that, in your life, in your heart? I sure do. The needs are great and numerous and often painful. A spiritual drought. But sometimes, like right now, I also feel overwhelmed by how God pours Himself out so generously and so consistently that, like the pond right now, our lives are overflowing with goodness. Our dry, bare edges are gently submerged, and we are once again amply supplied. New pools appear, new resources. We are able to reflect the gorgeous sky even more widely than before. And we can relax, knowing we are safe and well nourished.

Yesterday I stood there absorbing all the beauty while Klaus meandered and sniffed the mud, visibly perplexed by the new scenery. He smiled. I started laughing. Life is full again. A few precious answers we still crave are on their way. I know they are. Other answers have already arrived and are blowing my mind. We are drenched with purpose, safety, romance, community, health, peace, and much more. We have enough to share. And we know who sent it all.

If you are in any kind of a drought, I hope the best rain finds its way to you soon. I hope you see the clouds gathering and get excited. I hope you smell it. I hope it gradually causes your heart to overflow and then helps you blossom the most gorgeous details all throughout your life.

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears,
for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth,
overlying our hard hearts.
I was better after I had cried, than before-
More sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude,
more gentle.”
~Charles Dickens
XOXOXO

we are the lucky ones

“We are the lucky ones,” my sister Angela reminds us gently. She often says this in a slightly hushed tone, happiness about life tempered with the realization that it might not have turned out this way.

Coming off of a particularly joyful and celebratory year, our family is well aware of how blessed and lucky we are. How different things could be, how beautiful life is. We still have dark valleys and shadows, and we still wrestle with unresolved trauma and unanswered prayers; but wow Love is here in the midst of us. Wow! We feel rescued and uplifted, filled with purpose and surrounded by comfort.

Last summer all one thousand of us (haha) gathered in Oklahoma to celebrate our parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. This dovetailed into an engagement party for one of our sisters, and lots of hooping and hollering about nieces soon committing to college and wahoo the Navy bunch is back in the western hemisphere. A few months later we gathered again for Thanksgiving, which is peak feasting for a family this big. Somewhere in here we learned of a baby about to join the happy ranks. And over and over again jobs are secured and made even better, travel plans happen, health is restored, and Mom feeds us mightily for all kinds of reasons. We attend high school performances. We play games, uphold traditions, swim, trade names for Secret Santa and maintain the world’s wildest group chat, The only thing our Family at Large is not great at, it seems, is Zoom meetings. But man do we try.

On Christmas Eve, at Mom and Dad’s house, the sound track was pure laughter, dotted with raised voices and overlapping conversations. It is a private language only we know, and it is not for the faint of heart. I was in the kitchen, and Dad walked in. He said to no one in particular, “Man I would not want to be an outsider with THIS bunch!” He is so right. We love and welcome new people all the time, and our family prides itself on hospitality; but there is definitely a feral element to our core. We are a bit wild and very protective of each other.

To illustrate this: Even after more than twenty years, My husband and my brother’s wife are often caught at family events, huddled together, their eyes wide and watchful, like prey among predators, just catching their dang breath for a second, ok? Now they have a new member to indoctrinate into their subculture of in-laws, our little sister’s soon to be husband. Funny to me that a family of brown eyed blondes has chosen three green eyed brunettes. The thing is, this makes it easier to see who the outsiders are. Ha. Anyway, it’s the three of them now, against the rest of us. They’ll be fine. We chose well.

We are the lucky ones.

We are lucky enough to have warm, beautiful, comfort-filled homes. We are lucky enough to have all these amazing jobs that not only provide for our needs but also serve our communities and maximize our talents. We are lucky enough to have the foundation of church and extended family and cultural tradition, all the invisible things and memories that become our spiritual framework. We are lucky enough to know how to choose the best habits, cultivate relationships, play and work and forgive each other when we are not our best selves.

We are the lucky ones who still have our parents with us, loving us, hoping we can coordinate our fantastic lives often enough to not lose touch, As if any of of us could ever be happy without each other.

We are the lucky ones who actually enjoy being around our siblings and who are proud of each other’s accomplishments. We love our nieces and nephews so much, and probably each of us at some time feels like the favorite aunt or uncle, because we all make so many fun memories with these precious kids.

We are the lucky ones who can talk about loss openly, because we feel safe with each other. We can also talk about alcoholism and addiction, healing and recovery, and the terrifyingly thin veil that separates us in this warm, glittering life from a very different one.

We are the lucky ones who can support a long calendar year packed with colorful traditions. From Easter to anniversaries, school events, retirements and engagements, Thanksgiving, and the gift giving month of December, with all the delicious seasonal foods that connect our hearts and bellies, it all matters. And it does not come easily to everyone. We could do away with every bit of it and still call it a life, but this is LIFE. We are the lucky ones who have received this immense gift, and we appreciate it. We are so thankful to be passing this gift on to the next generation. Teaching the management of it to them, sharing the joys of it as it trades hands.

((thanksgiving 2023))

We are not perfect, and we are a lot. But we are certainly the lucky ones.

XOXOXO

early october senses inventory

See: Sunlight streaming in and bouncing cheerfully off of several small disco balls, now their fuzzy reflections wiggling around the room as if they are living creatures. Halloween decorations in front of me on the dining room table and above me, suspended from the light fixture, mixed with honeysuckle twigs. I have the light bulbs in here set to purple just for fun, and even in the bright afternoon sun this is causing a bowl of apples to appear black. Oh wait, that is a plastic rat. The apples are fine. Two stacks of notebooks and garden references. My cell phone which needs to be charged.

Hear: Roosters crowing. Klaus alternately snoring deeply then breathing fast and shallow, catching his breath after a fun romp around the back field. Clack-tap-clack-tap of my keyboard. Refrigerator humming.

Touch: My bare feet on the area rug, toes searching tentatively for stickers that are surely hiding in the deep pile. Baggy denim overalls, too baggy, constantly falling off of my shoulders. My husband’s Top Gun t shirt beneath those, also too baggy but perfect. Some dried sweat around my hairline, proof of a morning well spent. Comfortable tailbone allowing me to sit like a normal person, something definitely worth celebrating.

Taste: Salty tortilla chips, a remnant of Dijon mustard on the corner of my mouth, and that bittersweet flavor of off-brand diet cola. A high quality lunch.

Smell: Faint smell of fabric softener mixed with potting soil. That midseason perfume of sunshine cooking dust on the open air windowsill. And sweet red apples. Red, not black.

Think: What is the weather today in Colorado? Does she have time to hike this week? Are the aspens bright yellow yet? Will we get to host Thanksgiving at the farm this year, and if so, can I persuade any of our guests to spend the night with us that weekend? Thinking about the power of words, both written and spoken. Speech and spells and blessings and curses. Not because it should be that way, but because it is. Operating Secrets of the Universe, you know, not someone’s mandates. There’s a difference. Thinking of turning fifty next Spring and how, if we keep to our pattern of leaving the farm once every four years, then I have at most 8 trips left. Best case scenario, what are the top eight places I would like to visit?

Feel: More in control of the emotional tidal waves lately. If not in control of what causes them, then at least more like I am able to surf them more gracefully, more safely. Certainly more in control of my perspective and responses. Feeling disturbed by recent events and still reeling a bit from dreams about beheadings, but not overwhelmed. Feeling thankful for an incredible summer season and excited for our transition to fall and winter. Feeling amazed by the detail with which God sometimes answers prayer. The specificity and timeliness. All the many ways He efforts to demonstrate his love for me, for our family, for everyone. Really amazing.

((we keep it classy like san diego))

How are your senses informing your world today?
XOXOXO

respect your life

At the risk of fully enraging my husband who just wants light and easy stuff to stay light and easy, I am about to ruin a perfectly good raunchy comedy by extracting from it a luscious bit of wisdom. Please join me in this meanness.

A couple of weeks ago, Handsome and I indulged in some vegetative relaxation by re-watching some old comedies. Among them was The Change Up starring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds. If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: Two life long best friends, now adults but leading very different lives, are suffering from respective versions of burnout. To remedy their angst, they hit the town for a night of revelry which culminates in them both urinating in a public fountain. While peeing side by side in the fountain, they make a wish simultaneously, I think just as lightning strikes? Or maybe it’s just at the stroke of midnight. Either way, their mutual wish, uncoordinated, is to have each other’s life.

Bam! Their mutual wish is granted, and the hilarious, predictable chaos ensues. Jason Bateman’s middle class, somewhat-happily married-with-children, upwardly mobile-white-collar-career, suburbian lifestyle is swapped with Ryan Reynold’s scruffy, ill mannered, sad-bachelor, rarely sober, disconnected-from-his-father, free wheeling, barely-surviving-but-also-very-free-and-promiscuous lifestyle. The connective tissue between them is the married guy’s house and wife. The men both float in and out of the domestic scene freely, and the wife, unaware that her husband and her husband’s best friend have switched bodies, well, it’s all so cringey. Lots of fun.

Here’s where I ruin the fun by extracting a message.

Somewhere past the middle point of the escapade, deep in the predictable and hilarious parts where each man is really sinking into the newness and novelty of his best friend’s exotic and unfamiliar, supposedly much craved lifestyle, one of them admonishes the other for not appreciating his life more. I can’t remember which one says it and at exactly what moment, but I think he says, “Respect your life, man!”

Respect your life.

Everyone in the world is susceptible to burnout, no matter how their life looks from the outside.

Most people will at some point wish for a different reality. It’s a normal and common human phenomenon. This shows imaginative pliability and an openness to growth, as long as we can avoid the sticky territory of envy and bitterness.

Respect your life.

This message was well timed for me. Every single day since we watched that movie, the phrase has hung in the air. I have felt more inspired to see the uniqueness of my days, the particular opportunities I have, and the weirdly beautiful custom fit between my talents, my responsibilities, and the needs I can perceive around me. Such a fast acting antidote to any comparison traps.

I have also tried to step outside of myself and see what I might be forgetting to notice, by viewing my life briefly as an outsider. That ones takes some effort, and who knows how effective it really is? But it’s a fun exercise. It invites me to dive more deeply into everything, and I love that feeling.

Respect your life.

Maybe you are familiar with the modern parable of the room full of crosses: A man issues a litany of complaints to God, that the cross he has been carrying in life is too big, too heavy, too cumbersome, too splintery. He is exhausted and wonders why everyone else has such lightweight, smooth, manageable crosses to bear. So God offers him a chance to exchange crosses. He ushers the man into a large room filled with hundreds of other crosses of varying sizes, materials, weights, and apparent difficulties. There are mammoth sized crosses that must have required the strength of armies. Ones made of rusted iron and spikes and ones so rough and shifting they were barely in one piece. Every option looked brutal and beyond his scope. The man scans his options, evaluating the various burdens carefully, and eventually chooses one. He finds a smaller one, a cross he can lift with a moderate effort, one shaped to his back and shoulders perfectly. It’s not smooth, but his shirt protects him just fine. He thanks God for the opportunity to trade down on his burden. God smiles and reveals that the cross he selected was the same one he had been carrying all along, that in His infinite wisdom, God had always known it was exactly what the man could bear safely.

Respect your life.

((Klaus tempting me with soccer on a snowy day))

If you feel weary of your life burdens, how could you reframe your thoughts about them, to know all over again, deep down, that you are not just capable of carrying them, but maybe destined to? That certainly you are the perfect person for the task?

If you are noticing the beauty in someone else’s life and quietly wishing it was yours, how could you remind yourself of the pain they might be hiding, of the sacrifices and responsibilities that come with their outward success? Better yet, how could you reinvigorate appreciation for the beauty in your own life?

I believe pretty deeply that the life situations into which we are born and the uniqueness with which we are each created are exactly the magic raw materials each of us needs to slowly and deliberately imagine, form, and refine a living masterpiece. Wishing for someone else’s life not only invites burdens we might now be able to handle; it also leaves our unique offerings on the table.

Respect your life.

And watch a lightweight comedy with me at your own peril. : )

“Be yourself.
Everyone else is already taken.”
~Oscar Wilde
XOXOXO