Can you help me out here? (It's about writing.)

I've got a question for you.

If I were to write a series of stories about my childhood on the farm, what would you like to hear about?

There are so many stories competing to be told... I just don't know where to start!

Some of you are here because you relate, in some way, to my way of looking at life, and my rural upbringing. Some of you, though, are here because it's totally different from your life, which makes it interesting and new.

I haven't been the best blogger lately. My posts are pretty short, and I haven't made time to go read the brilliant offerings from my fellow bloggers. (Sorry!!!) I don't think my blog's been up to the quality I'd like it to be.

I'm at a slightly uncomfortable place in my fledgling writing career. I've proven that I am capable of writing a whole novel from beginning to end, as well as rewriting and editing that novel until it's as close to perfect as I can get it. I've learned how to put in the research needed to learn how the publishing world works. I wrote the query letter and the synopsis and then rewrote them both over and over. I sent out over a hundred queries. I'm still here wondering what to do next.

The query letter once thought to be polished to perfection has not done its job. I plan to start it from scratch and get it right, then start the process again.

Big problem: I'm not writing enough! The new novel that had me fired up is becoming a chore and that is Not Good. I want to love writing again.

I think I could love writing about the kid I was, with the braided hair and "I love horses" T shirt. And the Shaun Cassidy T shirt.

Can you tell me what you'd like to read?

When Captain Jack Sparrow and I finally shack up...

...and he takes time off from his raiding and plundering...

...and tells everybody else to leave him alone...

...and he has time to hang around in the sticks with me...


...I will get him a nice big old horse to ride so we can go out on the backroads together...

AND THIS WILL BE HIS SADDLE!!!!!

(Jethro needs a holiday. Have a nice weekend, folks!)

The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes

Lucy, the half-wild house cat, at Grandma's farm, lurking in the ancient window.

LLAMA-A-RAMA

I recently visited a farm with a very interesting watchdog. She's about a year old, very friendly, and spits instead of barking.

Actually, she doesn't spit very often. According to her owner, she has to be severely perturbed before she lets it rip. And there's warning. Like horses, llamas flatten their ears when they're angry. Horses don't hork though. Apparently she stretches her nose straight up before she lets it fly. Good to know.

But she's just the cutest, sweetest, friendliest critter! We were warned that she was in a bad mood... which makes me suspect that if she were in a good mood, she'd have crawled into the trunk of the car and come home with us. Not that I would have minded. I was not-so-secretly plotting a way to stick her in the car without anybody finding out. (Where's that truck when I need it?!?)

Oh, oh- here she is, scratching her belly with a hind foot! My Pug does that! It's so cuuute!

If you ever have the chance to see a llama in real life, you must notice the feet. They're like paw-hooves. Little padded feet with two chunky toenails in front, or maybe a better description would be tiny split hooves. I can't think of another animal foot like this.

Good for sneaking up on, and scratching!

But the face. Oh, the face. With that delicate muzzle with a comical hare lip, and little camel nostrils, and big, heavily lidded eyes, they look perpetually aloof but secretive. Sleepy. Bored yet amused. Like they've got a joke on you. And those eyelashes... you know how I feel about long eyelashes!

She came right up for a snuggle and to my surprise, she has the softest fur, not coarse like I imagined.

Then she stuck her bottom teeth out at me and I laughed.

I would love to have a llama. I mean, I wouldn't want to put the Pug out of work, since he takes his guarding duties so seriously. But c'mon, wouldn't a Pug & Llama Security System be a new form of awesome?

I'd draw the line though, at the llama sleeping in my room.

Okay, maybe just when it's really cold in the winter...

This is NOT my truck.

I found this super cool bitchin truck in the side yard in front of the garage. It's not mine. I'm not sure who it belongs to. It was only there for a day and a night, and the next afternoon it was gone. I had a real good look at it though. It's almost but not quite like my truck. Almost.

Yes, it does have the same logo on the front in big red letters, but don't let that fool you. My truck doesn't have those clearance lights on top. (When I was a kid, our 1958 Ford dump truck had lights shaped like bullets on the roof. Coooool.)

My truck also does not have an induction scoop on the hood. That's how you can tell this isn't my truck.

Here's another way to tell them apart: I don't have big chrome wheels like this. Maybe these are unavailable for a half-ton truck and this is a one-ton. However, it might be possible to rig up some nifty checkerplate wheel well mudflaps for my truck. But then, after I get my truck painted black, it would be even harder to tell these two apart.

Of course, mine does not have these extra wide rear fenders, under which not one but TWO tires hunker down waiting for something heavy to pull. I could slap a 4x4 sticker on my back quarter panel, but who am I trying to kid? All my front tires are doing is steering.

But here, lurking under the hood, is the biggest difference between my big ol' pickup truck, and this monstrous machine...

6.5 LITRE DIESEL TURBO rawr rawr rawr rawr

rawr

rawwwwwwwwwwwr.

This truck could pull your house down the road. This truck could pull a house over snow. This truck could pull a house up a snow covered hill with the cargo bed full of llamas and the cab full of steer-wrestling-sized cowboys.

sigh.

Okay... I don't need to pull a llama-laden load of houses anywhere. I just don't need it. I have no intention of pulling my house anywhere, and despite this being an exceptionally cool July, it's still summer... besides, I don't know any steer wrestlers and I don't have a llama. Yet.

Maybe my driving insurance is lower than this guy's. That'll ease the truck envy considerably.

Uncovering a surprising New Talent!

Folks, I've just discovered something I'm good at.  I think it's a very useful and potentially lucrative talent.  I'm not considering giving up on the riding lessons career goals, or giving up on that goal of actually having a real book to sell, but I think I may be onto something here.  I have a job title made up and everything.

I'm a FLOOR FINDER! 

Last week, I was up in the straw mow digging through several years' worth of old car parts, junk, straw, lawn mowers, pigeon crap, scrap wood, feathers, crap, junk and stuff.  I FOUND THE FLOOR.  Turns out it was there all that time, under everything, and all I had to do was keep digging (literally) until I found it.  There it was, the floor, incredibly wide planks sawn over a century ago out of what must have been huge honkin' trees.  What a relief to find that floor.  What a relief for my ol' man, who hadn't been paid any storage money in too long and just didn't have time to clean it all up.

This week, I've been up in the hallway at the front of the house, finding a different floor.  The stratified remains weren't quite as clear in this job; as a result of adult children moving off the homestead and gradually removing and sometimes bringing stuff back, the layers of clutter were a little more varied.  Darn grown-up kids.  Yes, I am referring to Sweetie and me.  When Mom has a big old farmhouse with a few unused bedrooms upstairs, it's so tempting to leave some junk there... or bring some back, for storage, just for a little while...

At least I didn't have to deal with any bird poop.  However, if you live in an old house, you know about the dead flies gathered under the windows.  I'm not gonna sugar-coat it, you know that.  Don't believe the pictures in the pretty magazines... they sweep up the dead flies first.  Trust me, it's an ongoing process.

I found that floor, people.  

I had help, like with the barn.  A kid or two, and a parent, are big help with carrying things and making decisions.  I do think the decision making is the hardest part of the floor-finding process.  Most of the time things are kept because they seemed to be important.  That alone can trick you into thinking it really is important.  Some of us have a real hard time with that. 

I'm  not ruthless or cruel about it.  I'm a big believer that today's seemingly unimportant objects can become tomorrow's antiques.  It's history, man.  

HOWEVER.  Sometimes it's truly useless.  

Want to know how I find floors?  I'll let you in on it.  I might be ruining my future Floor Finding Business by giving away my secrets but I'm feeling generous tonight.  And, blissfully free of, well, everything, really.

TOOLS NEEDED:

a broom and dustpan

dusting rags

garbage bags

recycling box

cardboard box for things being donated

*if you're finding a barn floor, skip all the fancy stuff.  You need a wheelbarrow, a burn barrel, a pickup truck heading to the dump and a scrap metal trailer.  And gloves.  And a paper dust mask.

GETTING STARTED

Without a doubt, the hardest step, and the reason this job often doesn't get started. 

Pick a corner.  Don't wade into the middle.

Choose one corner, and pick up the closest object to you.

Look at it carefully.

Is it still useful?  

No?  Garbage or recycling.  Yes?  Okay.  Do you love it?  No?  You can donate it to the thrift store.  Or if you do love it, great.  Where are you going to put it?  And are you actually going to use it?  No?  Give it away?  Seriously, look at this thing.  Are you really, truly, honestly, ever going to want or need or appreciate it ever again?  You wanna keep dusting this thing?

There's a good chance you don't want to keep it.  Let it go and then stop thinking about it.  

I allow some sentimentality.  If you genuinely want this thing, set it in a safe place until you're done floor finding for the day, after which you'll take your thing and set it in the place it'll live while you continue to pour affection onto this thing and be glad you decided to keep it.

Good luck, hope you're happy together!!

GETTING THE JOB ROLLING

As you're sorting through the mounds of paper and magazines and shoe boxes full of 15 year old income tax papers, have your dust rag in one hand.  There will be dust, trust me, and don't feel bad about it.  

You might even find spider webs and a few dried up flies but you did not hear that from me, okay, because we're so very tidy around here we just never see anything like that, right?  Right.

Sometimes it's hard to tell if a piece of junk is actual garbage or not.  I'm not kidding, a brain can be seriously fried by this process.  Mine's already a strange place so I'm not in much danger.  Anyways.  Is it garbage?  ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE!  Chances are if it might be, it just is.  You want it?  No for real, do you really want this thing?  Is it beautiful?  Is it broken?  

Could you get one just like it, for a reasonable price, if you suddenly realized you needed one?

Yeah?  Boom, out goes that piece of garbage.

On an ecological, environmentally friendly note, if you're concerned about throwing out garbage, my advice is... stop buying cheap crap.   That's all I'll say now, because I think that's worthy of its own blog post.

None of this is new.  All of those Perfeshnul Organizers have been preaching this for years.  Imagine that!  A whole career built around our hoarding habits.  I'm not going to make anybody roll up their socks and put them in individual plastic holders in the top drawer.  Yeeesh.  Shudder.  Deal with your own socks dude - I just wanna find your floor.

YOU CAN'T DO IT ALL AT ONCE.

Once you've got your corner sorted into Give-away, Garbage and Recycling, grab your broom and give that corner a sweep.  

You can stop here.  You don't need to knock yourself out and do it all in one day or one hour.  If you need a break, take it.  You must pace yourself because honestly, this is hard work.  

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT ALONE.

Find someone you trust and like to help you, even if all that person does is keep up the light witty banter while you agonize over a  souvenir from a beautiful wedding you went to.  A helper can dust things, hold things, move things or carry things.  A helper might have a better perspective on how valuable your crap really isn't.  If you're lucky a helper might take you out for ice cream after!!!!

This whole process can be emotionally harrowing.  I for one have placed way too much importance on material things... not valuable things, just stuff.  I'm not a materialistic person in the way that I must own or buy status items.  It's just that anything I've acquired feels hard won, and I am often reluctant to give that up.

I'm getting better at it though, sooo much better.  

I'm getting good at Floor Finding, and learning that an empty floor can be a beautiful sight.

(Mom- thanks for holding the garbage bag open.  And thanks for giggling when I tossed those perfectly good paper clips.  And please remind me to take the other 400 paper clips out of my pockets before I do laundry.  Thanks!)

Same breed, but totally different

My two Appaloosas look very similar out in the field.  They're both what we call "Varnish Roan Appaloosa" which means they have a majority of white hairs mixed in with chestnut coats.  They both have dark smudges on their faces.  They both have brown legs and ears, and manes and tails streaked with red, brown and white. They're both horses... that's where the similarity gets lost.

He's got spots that stand out.  If they're facing away from us, we see those spots right away, big brown spots on his rump.  The rest of his coat is speckled with brownish red, and his face is darker because his skin is more black-with-white spots than the other way around.

She appears to be mostly white, but close up the freckles across her shoulders are visible.  Her white face shows the pink skin under her fine velvety coat, with black dots on her lips and around her eyes.  

He is solid, long necked, long-legged, and moves along like he just don't care.

She's tiny.  She's pony sized.  She is that difficult combination of petite and delicate, but muscular and hard bodied. Short neck, short back, short solid legs and strong little hooves.  

Nothing upsets him.  He's not the nervous jittery type.  In two years I've never seen him spook.

She doesn't spook easily either, but if she isn't sure what's being asked of her, she'll turn herself inside out trying to get it.  Too much pressure on the reins will have her tossing her head trying to decide if she should stop, back up, or spin in circles.  She just wants to do it right but isn't sure how. 

The gelding is a DUDE.  He sticks his whole muzzle into the water trough, right up past the nostrils, and then dribbles it all over her back.  He'll stick his hooves into the trough and splash the water around. When he's tied, he usually stands with one hind leg bent, like a guy leaning on a wall.  

The mare is a Little Lady.  She drinks daintily and barely gets her lips wet.  She stands quietly as long as Boyfriend is nearby.  She has never been the boss horse, ever.

If you let him, he'll plod along until he feels like stopping.  

She moves off with the slightest cue.

They both had a rough first year, but have known nothing but good care and affection.  

I adore them.  

They have such a long way to go... neither of them is trained as far as I want and need them to be.  But that only means I must spend more time with them, figuring out what makes them tick and how to work with each of their unique personalities.  Horsonalities.  

It's barn time...