Tag: Happy Monday

A Little Valentine Story

Picture a second grade class, decades before now. There were rotary telephones with party lines (which meant that sometimes you had to wait your turn

Read More »

18 years

On this day, eighteen years ago, at this time, Silent Bob and I lay on a bed in a Grand Junction hotel room, our grief

Read More »

Swing Me Around

“Janet, stop jumping around and doing cartwheels in the house.” That was my dad, his temper often intensified by the hangovers and headaches that regularly

Read More »

The Scorpion Tale

At this time in 1978, just two years in advance of what will be the hottest summer on record, I was in the hospital, laboring

Read More »

Steam

My men were all out for the evening. I figured I could make them proud of me.  Amazon had delivered the replacement for the failed

Read More »

Arcturus

“What in the world are you doing?” Josh said, walking down the driveway. It was mostly dark, as dark as it can be on a

Read More »

Chlorine and AI

We have a pool.  Which is a very usual thing to have in Houston.  We’ve had that pool for almost 40 years and with the

Read More »

Mother’s Day 2014

It seems to me there has been more buzz about Mother’s Day this year. (It’s possible that this is a personal observation based on my

Read More »

Walmart Wisdom

Sitting in the Walmart parking lot a little bit north of Houston, the blustery wind is buffeting the car. It’s going to be a hot

Read More »

Lap Top Less

I am seriously going crazy. And I mad as hell at Dell… For two weeks, two weeks, my laptop has been broken! and I am

Read More »

L’chaim La Niña

I shuffled around the pine needles that filled up the farm yard. Everyone’s gone but me, they’ve gone north and south out of Hempstead and

Read More »

The Decorah Eagles

I was primed for baby birds with all the nests at the farm. There were Carolina wrens in the barn and barn swallows in their

Read More »

Moses and Mary

“I have an old lab. He’s 12. I just want you to make him comfortable. He has trouble making his back legs work. But mostly

Read More »

A Treatise on Crazy

I never watched ‘Two and a Half Me’; mostly because I never seem to get involved with 30 minute sitcoms. The few times I did

Read More »

Morocco

We’d been at Elfoud for three days. Base camp had been a lovely palace turned hotel just outside the city. Each morning we had piled

Read More »

Fossil Hunt

For reasons that have to do with a battle, my sister in law and her husband have been in town. They are Midwesterners, living outside

Read More »

A Tale of Two Trucks

I’m sentimental. I am wondering if there is a word that could indicate a lot more excess of emotion than that, because if there is,

Read More »

What To Do

I’ve been trying to write a happy Monday for three days. It’s not that I don’t have things in my heart to say. I do.

Read More »

Ghostie

Silent Bob came back from the back field. “#12 is acting funny. She’s in the middle field lying down. The other cows are back there

Read More »

Take Flight

It’s been the year of insects out at the farm. This summer the fields were filled with grasshoppers and crickets peeped out of whole under

Read More »

There’s the rub.

The old house on Oak Hill was drafty. It would have been more so if it hadn’t been spit and pasted together with layers of

Read More »

What a Wife Must Do

“Don’t just stand around. Figure out what needs to be done and do it.” Dad said. “Don’t wait for me to tell you,” he continued,

Read More »

Leslie and Life

We sat in Beijing, Leslie and I, about in the middle of the auditorium. It was hot and the day outside was typical for the

Read More »

In Praise of Jerga

Sometimes I see things I really want. Take for instance the utility sink that my amiga had in her Mexican home, when I was visiting

Read More »

My Day Job

I’m here in Mexico, Cuatro Ciénegas to be exact, one of my favorite places. A place I have spent some time looking at the mountains

Read More »

The Quilt Group

We used to quilt. Okay, maybe we never really quilted much, not as a group anyway. But given that no one seemed to come up

Read More »

Fish Kill

The lake was an eerie green week before last. All that cow poop, as those black Angus mommas stood in it 24/7 to try and

Read More »

Little Seeds

Near Troy, Missouri and the junction of state roads V and W and JJ, there are a series of low rolling mountain ridges. These ridges

Read More »

Who Silent Bob Is

Silent Bob, my beloved, is a very smart man. There isn’t a sport that you can talk about that he doesn’t know the stats, in

Read More »

Who I Am, Part 2

Maybe it’s because I drive so much, but lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about cars. The one I am currently driving has become something

Read More »

Who I Am

I have never been much into cars. This is clearly all on account of my Dad, no question about it. He thought one of the

Read More »

Memorial Day

It’s the last hours of Memorial Day 2010. All day I have chosen to remember… “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who

Read More »

Read Line Four

“I am going to have to renew my driver’s license. I want you to take me,” says my tiny, feisty, soon to be 78 year

Read More »

Mother’s Day Redux

“I think you need a brooder box for your birthday,” says brother Neil. I don’t want to raise anything else, I think to myself. “No”.

Read More »

Babies

“Babies amaze me.” I said to God the other day. “I gave you three of your own. Weren’t you amazed then?” He replied. “Yeah, I

Read More »

An Arabian Night

We sat there, Fariq and I, gazing out on the pyramids. “I don’ think an Egyptian made them.” He said. His eyes were like dark

Read More »

Magic Straws, Part One

You might recall that I have mentioned previously that cow farming is all about reproduction. It’s  a place where we acknowledge what is true and

Read More »

Bodhi

March 1, 2010 The young woman looked to be in her late teens. Very tall and lithe, she was beautiful. She was applying her makeup

Read More »

Be Quiet 2-15-10

I knew it was going to be a bad week, Harriet had left three messages for me to call her back. ‘Janet’, says Harriet, when

Read More »

Beauty

I have been having a strange desire the last few months. I want to create something. There was a time when it was babies that

Read More »

Romancing the stone

They had just laid down a fresh load of gravel outside Moss’ place.  Meant to cover the potholes and welcome the thirsty souls looking for

Read More »

Day 2

Everyone here in northern Mexico is bracing for an even colder weekend. Today clouds covered the mountains that surround this valley and we kept our

Read More »

Road Trip: Come with me

Day 2 Everyone here in northern Mexico is bracing for an even colder weekend. Today clouds covered the mountains that surround this valley and we

Read More »

Come to Mexico

I don’t know what you are doing this week. Maybe you are starting some new resolutions or maybe you are trying to get settled back

Read More »

Those in Heaven

Have you ever wondered about Heaven? I mean beyond whether there is one or not. (I have to assume you already made a decision one

Read More »

Crown me.

I think my Mother would have liked it if I had been a movie star. She wanted this, not because of any particular talent or

Read More »

Thinking about Christmas

“Mom, you can’t do what you did last year about the Christmas tree.” Johnathan says, somewhat exasperated that he has to go there with me.

Read More »