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.  

Currently

Currently I'm...

Sitting in a rocker in the front foyer looking out at the sunrise watercolor strokes through the wreath pine edges.

Sipping coffee from the pot I had to MacGyver with a toothpick to brew this morning - I guess the small plastic piece was indeed important that broke off in my hands. 

Reflecting on packing up my entire house on Saturday and moving here on Sunday; it was a crazy whirlwind but I'm like a kid in a candy store having all my things in one place again.  

Thanking my kick-ass family for stepping in and helping me get the job done - could not, could not have pulled that off without them.  My sister-in-law saved me on Saturday, pure and simple.  A crew came in after deer hunting to load the trailer in the dark night.  My cousin Austin drove here and back basically in one day.  What would we do without family?  Turns out, I don't want to know.   

Wondering if the large area rug in the kitchen is too much.  

Keeping a balance of duck, geese, and elk art with my wonky vintage tendencies to tack aprons to the wall, sew buttons onto fabric and frame it, and hang pictures with glitter clothespins.  I believe in this house representing us both...the things we love, which means I'm determined to pull off the aesthetic of woodsy mountain deer meets vintage farm zebra.   

Telling myself that future me will worry about all of the winter travel in and out of here for work.  If I worry about it before it happens, it's a futile exercise.  

Remembering how the notion of actually saying in my mind, "Future you will worry about xyz..." truly works.  It's an exercise I picked up somewhere along the way and it keeps me from spinning on things that might not even happen.  Future you will worry about xyz too...give it a whirl.  

Pondering hooking up my big computer all on my own.  This is coming from the girl who once had her best friend's husband come over to hook up the DVD player.  I'm good at a great many things, hooking up technology simply isn't one of them.  But I want my pictures and my pictures live on the big one.  

Feeling thankful.  Really, really thankful.  Life is not perfect because nothing ever is, but my favorite orange bench is here and I have the best person ever to share it with.  

Warming up to the holiday season; I've hung a wreath on the front door and am looking forward to spending Thanksgiving at the farm, a little time in early December in Arizona, followed by Christmas in the mountains.  I'm ready.  The boxes are unpacked and I'm ready for the best time of the year.  

Thinking about how I'm not as physically strong as I used to be; there was a time when I could lift and carry pretty much anything.  It was the farm upbringing, I'm sure.  I don't know if it's my age, the surgery I had this summer, or the fact that I don't get to go to Muscle Pump with Sara at the YMCA anymore...but I've definitely wimped out a bit.  It's ironic however, I feel the strongest I've ever been mentally.  Now, why can't I get that Christmas tree box up the freaking stairs? 

Reminiscing about the Oregon trip and these captures from Crater Lake.  To say it was breathtaking is an understatement and it's worth adding to your list of places to visit.  Please make sure you make reservations way ahead of time for Crater Lake Lodge, unlike us.  We tend to book flights and hotels the week of travel because that's just the season we are in.  The coffee by the fire at the lodge was our way of pretending we were staying and not driving.  

Adulthood or Something Like It

When do you know how to really be an adult?

I remember lying in my bed as a teenager with thoughts rolling through my head like...

How do taxes work?  Will I ever have a clue how to do them?  What if I don't do my taxes right, then what happens?

Who decides things about insurance?  Do you always just have an insurance man come to your dining room table and hammer it out for the year or is that more of a Dad thing?  What do you do if you aren't Dad?   

What will I ever do if the furnace breaks, freeze?  

Please tell me I wasn't a completely neurotic teenager and you all had these types of items running through your mind as well.  Or at the very least, it happened to you once college hit.  No?  Twenty-five then!  It had to start happening at twenty-five! 

The good news is - I now take care of my taxes, insurance, and have successfully handled a new hot water heater, which I feel is close to the heater of my previous thoughts.  

Does this mean I'm an actual adult?  Probably.  I mean, I am thirty-two.  

BUT.  

Every once in awhile something comes out of right field where I think, "Alright.  Who takes care of this for me?  Oh.  I do?  Shoot."  

Or every once in awhile my mom stands in my kitchen as we are packing it up for the big move and says something absolutely genius to my little sister, "Emily, we are going to put each piece of china in a Ziploc bag.  That way, it won't break on the trip and we aren't wasting a bunch of paper.  She can still use the bags once the china is unpacked."  

That's an entirely different level of adulthood right there.  That is most likely described best as momma-hood - specifically, MommaDebi-hood.  

Someday.  Someday I'll be as cool.  

Do you get that smart when you have kids?  I'm betting that's the ticket.  I don't even have a dog; I just claim the neighbors as my own because he loves me.  Lefty, not my neighbor - let's not start any rumors.  

One on a Sticky Note

I clicked apply, saw the ridiculous spinning wheel, and proclaimed with a quick wave of my hand, "And folks, this is where I simply walk away for a few moments and practice my patience."  I did just that too - walked between two of the tables as we all shared a laugh.  When I turned around to make my way back to the front, the wheel was gone and the report was loaded.   

A few minutes later when everyone was back to working through the work on their own, a lovely first grade teacher handed me a sticky note which read, "Patience is the ability to idle your engine when you feel like stripping your gears."  It was written in perfect first grade teacher handwriting and I thought to myself, okay I get it - here is yet another reminder.  I smiled at her and we nodded in our heads in a mutual understanding.    

 

Patience.  It isn't easy and it's especially not easy for this girl.  

It's like Momma Debi has said to me time and time again.  

"We can all have patience.  But real patience is not just waiting, but waiting graciously."  

The universe gave me a sign today - quite literally one on a sticky note.  

I'll take my hint.  

String of Family

We recently watched Woman in Gold and if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and carve out a couple of hours as it is beautiful with a capital "B."  

Tears ran down my face several times from being reminded of the hard, hard moments people have gone through in history.  The kind of hard like saying goodbye to your parents knowing you will never see them again.  The kind of hard like running for your life through the streets trying desperately to escape the people you know want nothing more than to see you suffer until you finally die because they believe you are worth less than nothing.  The kind of hard like starting your life completely over in a brand new country knowing you don't have your family lineage in its entirety and never will again. 

The kind of hard which quickly puts what I think of as hard into a perspective of well, let's just move right along because love a duck, this life is easy.

After the movie, we came upstairs and vacuum-packed the herbs picked from the porch earlier in the evening in anticipation of the first chilly frost.  As I was writing basil, spicy basil, and thyme on the little pouches I turned to Kiel and said, "My parents would be proud of us right now.  I can't tell you how many nights I went to sleep with the sound of the vacuum-packer sealing up whatever it was they wanted to preserve." 

I come from a long string line of canning, freezing, doing whatever it takes to save food grown in the summer for the long North Dakota winter.  It is deeply rooted in my dad's family and in my mom's too.  Great-Grandma Alice didn't waste one bit of a butchered pig right down to the head and Grandma Gladys wouldn't have dreamed of letting even one carrot not be pulled from her massive gardens. 

I often think about the folks that came before me and pushed through enormous hardship.  My great grandparents coming over from Norway and Germany, my grandparents surviving the Great Depression, my parents getting through the droughts of the 80s...

It's a long history of grinning and bearing. 

A string of events that leads to me standing in the kitchen vacuum-packing herbs from the pots on the porch and my almost four year old niece Hazel learning how to get the kernels out of a durum head from her Auntie Em.

Family history makes us. 

It makes us have a reserve tank to pull from when needed.  

If I ever am faced with actual hard things, I like to think Grandma Gladys would come through in me with her quiet strong will and Great-Grandma Alice too, with her fearless attitude. 

I like to think I'd pull from the string which has connected us all.  

And so, I say a simple thank you.  Thank you to my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents.  For having grit.  For getting through.  So that I can flutter around and take pictures of pretty things, travel all around, and live this life. 

Fall to the Next

I think fall as a season is meant to be a reminder to enjoy the current and the now before worrying about the next.  After fall comes winter and we know it happens the same every year and yet, there's something about fall that brings out the happy in us.  Seeing the colorful leaves, wrapping a sweater around your shoulders for the first time, hugging a cup of coffee with steam rising from the cool air meeting the hot liquid, hearing the crispness of the grass as you walk through - it all makes us take pause.  

Yesterday, I had a mild breakdown of sorts.  An anxiety fueled session of worrying about moving.  Where will the stuff fit?  How will we coordinate the coming together of two complete houses into one?  It probably started as a legitimate concern but ended as a tailspin of going nowhere fast.  Self admittedly, I let it get the best of me when I deep down know it will all settle in and figure itself out as things like this tend to do when they are done for all the right reasons.  All of my worries were about the tiny stuff, the material things.  The big stuff, the who we are as people being together causes me absolutely no concern.    

This morning, I awoke feeling like I once again hold the capacity to enjoy the current season before worrying about the next.  Figuratively and literally.  I slid my arms into my favorite long sweater, walked to the kitchen to start the coffee, and looked outside at the mountains with the yellow trees in front of them.  

Fall.