Straight Shooting

Here is why I am not a good blogger right now.  Every time I have a few minutes to spatter something out, I run into things that make it take much too long.  As in, I just tried to copy and paste an essay I wrote on an airplane in a word document into this format and I want to throw my computer at the wall because it turns into characters and minions on the actual blog post.  I am not a troubleshooter.  I'm a straight shooter.  

Now I'm mad.  So here.  Here's my post.  It is not the originally intended one but it's something.  

A picture of the pretty sky - look pretty sky!  I might try to go back to troubleshoot the minions now.  Maybe.  If you're lucky.  

It's There

There's this certain way he greets the neighborhood dog.  It's like he tells Lefty in every word just how happy he is to see him and that he appreciates getting to spend minutes of this precious life together.  

It gets me every time.  If it's not written down somewhere, it should be.  Judge a man by the way he treats a dog.

Between Christmas and New Year's we were out clearing snow together, me on the shovel and him on the snow-blower.  The cold air cut through my lungs and I kept looking around - at the mountains, the little trees we so carefully care for all summer long, the lit up wreaths on the garage lights, the front porch, and the man greeting Lefty in that certain way as he came bounding through the white fluff.  And then I had one of those moments, you know the kind I'm sure.  The kind where you actually feel like the world is aligned and you are right where you are supposed to be.  

Inside my fleece lined leather mitten, I felt on my left hand the ring.  The ring that was given to me the day after Christmas.  The ring that was given to me in the most special way and that tells me we get to be right where we belong for the rest our lives.  Because right where we belong is right with each other.  

Folding Hunting Tents and Deer Off

I just found this in my drafts folder and I don't want it to disappear so even though it's now January 4th, 2016 and I wrote this on a night in November of 2015, here it is.  It's like the Christmas card that gets sent in April, or something like that.  Without further ado, a piece of my mind and shots from my viewfinder...from October, but in January.  

My view right now is white hotel bedding and a remote that quite possibly holds more germs than anything I can currently muster up in my mind.  I try not to think about it, the funk of how many folks from different strokes have touched the hotel remotes.  But, hotel nights are my nights to catch up on emails while watching HGTV or the latest Real Housewives of Somewhere and that trumps the dirty remotes.  

On Halloween evening, we folded hunting tents because that seemed like a normal thing to do.  The view that night was just a little bit better than white hotel bedding.  I kept saying things like, "Love a duck the sky is doing some good things right now.  Hey are you looking?!  Look.  I mean really, that yellow tree is killing it over there.  The clouds!  I love the way the white tips look against the fall colors.  Are you looking?!"

The reaction I get to most of those spurts of sentiments over pretty that happen more often than I care to admit is the face of yes, yes Amy it's pretty.  But then it's followed by another look - a quick little glimmer of I love that you love that.

After we finished folding, I reminded Kiel that last year we folded the hunting tents together too.  We were fresh then, new in our finding out who we were and are together.  A quick little chuckle escaped as I then reminded him of what he said to me when we finished.

"Okay.  So you're capable."

I guess he didn't know he had found a girl who could do things like fold hunting tents since all we had really done up that point was go to Bison football game weekends together.  

Lucky him.  I guess folding hunting tents was a test and I passed.  

Little did he know at that time I would also be capable of a great many things as we progressed through the year.  Really, really important things like rearranging the kitchen counters and Roundup-ing weeds in landscaping rocks and Miracle Grow-ing the shit out of those baby growing trees.  

When spring rolled around, I secretly thought Kiel was potentially a little over the top in his care for the rows and rows of little evergreen trees that surround the yard.  He talked to them for Pete's sake and said things like, "That one was a good one.  He grew really well last year and now look at him.  He just couldn't make it through the winter."  

It's most likely no shock I found this mildly over the top.  

But now!

Now I've spent time caring for those trees.  Much time.  

So when a big buck deer decided it was in his rights as an antlered being to RUB all over the trees and go right ahead and take off branch after branch after branch and break the little trunks into these poor pitiful broken stalks...

I felt like it was just not acceptable.  Do you know how many years that little tree had to work to get that big?  Now I've joined the crazy team.  The team who is trying to grow trees in Montana which is apparently much harder than one would think.  I mean don't tell anyone I said this, but North Dakota might even be better at it.  And don't even get me started on the internet situation in the 406.  I used all the internet in one day.  How is that even possible?  But I digress.  

I hate to think that this tree right here is probably broken off right now, on the ground.  Just lying there because it couldn't fight against the big buck. 

I also hate to think about the Deer Off that we sprayed on Sunday in the 50+ mile an hour wind because we simply had to get it done before we left for travel working for weeks.  Deer Off smells like hell.  Like actual hell, or at least what I can imagine it might smell like in a place you are not wanting to be EVER and when it gets in your eyes, your eyes will burn and tingle for days.  

BUT the trees that buck hadn't gotten to already?!  They will survive dammit.  

Because I am capable. 

Plus this is pretty.