Author: Dre

Categories
Ranch Life

The Prodigal Son Returns

A couple of years ago, I had to find a new home for Maximus, the St. Bernard/Boxer mix I’d had for many, many years.  Maximus is the dog who propped me up through illnesses, heartaches, and learning the ropes of motherhood.  The dog who let me bury my face in his fur and would lay behind my babies as they learned to sit up, to cushion their inevitable falls.

Good Gah, I loved that dog.  I cried a million tears the day I had to say good-bye.

We had to send him away because he developed a taste for… brace yourselves… baby goat brains.  Yecch.  He just could not leave the baby goats alone.  Apparently, their brains are some sort of delicacy.  And, living on a ranch, we couldn’t just eliminate the temptation – especially after he attacked a goat right in front of me, which resulted in this and that.

However.  Fate being what it is, we have had to get rid of our goat herds because their feed contains corn, which was causing a problem for corn-allergic Blythe; Max’s “new” owner has just recently been transferred to Tennessee for work, and isn’t able to take a dog with him.

An alignment of the stars?  Possibly.

Joy, our 5-month-old American Bulldog pup, adores Maximus.  She is basically his groupie; she follows him around constantly, waiting for him to notice her.  And when he does, she is clearly in some kind of doggy heaven.  Until he pins her head between his front paws and humps her face, but even that she doesn’t really seem to mind.  The little hooker.

For the past week, they have been inseparable, which I thought was cute.  Until today.

Today, they decided to be little dog Houdini’s and escape the back yard.  Apparently acres and acres of land isn’t enough for them.  Oh, no, not for the aging rockstar and his groupie, who, until this very day, never dreamed of wandering off.  Unlike Maximus, who had a little bit of a thing for running off, now that I think about it.  Hmmmm. 

The two of them ran over to the drainage pond a half-mile away, leaving Cage the Chubby Labrador in their dust, and ignoring me as I called them.  Yes, you little stinkers, I saw you turn and look at me when I called your names, and then run off in the opposite direction.

My car is covered in mud.  I almost got stuck, chasing them.  When I went after them on foot, the mud sucked my shoes in, ankle-deep. 

And when I caught up to them?  They jumped right into the back of my car, happy as can be, as if we’d all been for a friendly little springtime stroll.

I’ve had to put my baby girl and her too-old-for-her boyfriend in doggie prison until we can figure out how they got out of the yard.

You can tell Joy is quietly humming some sort of soulful, bluesy song to get her through this indignity.


Oh, the horror.  What will the neighbors think?

I’m afraid that soon, Maximus is going to have my sweet, gorgeous puppy turning tricks around the neighborhood, and then?  Then, I’m going to have to kick some prodigal son ass, since Cage the Chubby Labrador is far too busy taking a nap in his posh doggie Mansion to stand up for his sister’s honor.

Categories
Blog Carnivals Life in general

Girl Talk Thursday – Chicken Shit

                                                   

I’ve been thinking about participating in Girl Talk Thursday for awhile.  The problem is, I usually don’t think about it until Friday morning.  Woops!

But the topic today is something I’ve been thinking about – being a chicken.

I’m a big fat chicken about a lot of things, but there’s one thing in particular that I don’t want to be chicken about. 

That one thing is my writing.

I’ve started writing seven novels in the past twelve years.  Been passionate about them to the point that I can’t think of anything else, writing and outlining and developing characters at every spare moment. 

Inevitably, I come to a point where I want some feedback.  But I’m too chicken shit to show my writing to anyone.  The blog doesn’t count, of course, because it’s fluid and ever changing, and people who come here to read aren’t expecting works of pure genius. 

My real writing, that’s something I hope to have published some day.  I want someone to purchase one of my books, spend their precious time reading it, and come away happy that they did so.

That’s a whole lot of pressure.

I realize that what shows up on bookshelves isn’t anyone’s first draft – which is why I need feedback.  I can’t be objective when I’m neck deep in the process of developing a scene.  But I’ve always been too chicken to show anything I’ve seriously written.

Until now.

Maura is taking a look at the first few chapters of a novel I’d decided to abandon.  Something I haven’t looked at in 9 months, but that I know has potential to be something worth reading.  Something worth writing.

I’m still a chicken.  But at least, for now, I feel capable of laying some eggs.

Categories
Food Life in general Marriage

More Than a Salad

I snarled at my husband over a wilty, soggy, left over salad.  Oh yes, I did.

This morning, as I rushed to prepare Alison’s school lunch, my eyes drifted toward the container of left over salad I was saving for my lunch.  As soon as I saw the lid lying askew, exposing the now disgusting looking salad to the air of the fridge, I abandoned my task and stomped over to my unsuspecting husband.

He had apparently been curious about the container from Strings in the fridge last night.  I’m sure he was incredibly disappointed to find salad where chicken parmesan should be.  That was no excuse, however, for just dropping the cardboard circle haphazardly over the top of the container, rather than sealing it the way he found it.

He tried blaming the salad for looking unappetizing.

So, basically, had the salad looked good to him, he would have gone ahead and eaten it?  But since he found it unappealing, he couldn’t be bothered to preserve it for me? 

Well, thanks.

Tears began to spill over my cheeks and I couldn’t let it go.  It was my salad.  That I went to the trouble of bringing home.  Maybe I like my salads to look unappetizing, it was still mine.  Had he eaten it, that would be one thing, but now it was ruined and nobody was going to eat it.

He apologized, profusely – he hadn’t meant to be careless, hadn’t meant to ruin my lunch, hadn’t meant to upset me.

Even as I accepted his apology, I felt stupid for making such a big deal about a wilty salad.  On any given day, I probably would have been happy about the excuse to eat something delicious, rather than a left over salad that, truthfully, wasn’t all that tasty the first time around.

I knew I was making a mountain out of something far more ridiculous than a molehill – an anthill, maybe.  A very tiny anthill, made by miniature ants.

There are mountains all around me – other people’s mountains, ones I want desperately to help them conquer, but I can’t.  And while those steep peaks looming in the distance help me to see my molehills for what they truly are, I find my eyes filling with tears and my face flushed with heat. 

Life is so freaking unfair sometimes.  And it’s not the salad, forget the salad, it’s the injustice of people’s mountains.  And looking at that pathetic salad, I’m reminded that there’s nothing in the world I can do about that. 

I can try to ease people’s suffering, but how I would love to throw it away like an old, wilty salad. 

Replace it with something tasty and warm, paired with a nice bottle of wine and some laughs.

What I wouldn’t give to have that power.

Categories
Health and Nutrition Ranch Life

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

My hands are tied, and it’s making me feel rather frustrated. 

I mentioned before that Jeremy and I created a charitable organization to help connect the ranchers of our community with hungry families.  In our minds, it created a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, things have come to a screeching halt because the issue of liability was brought up by a reporter interested in doing an article in our local paper.  Rather than highlight the good we were doing, she wanted to focus on the bad: who people could sue. 

Thanks for the support, local paper!

Our organization has helped hundreds of otherwise hungry families eat nutritious food, donated by ranchers who asked for nothing in return – not even a tax write-off. 

Professionals are involved in every step of the process, to make sure only quality ground beef goes home to those families.  And yet, when a reporter starts asking those professionals about liability, people get spooked.  And families go hungry while people like me scramble to do some damage control.

It was suggested by the reporter that instead of asking local ranchers to donate meat, we’d do better to ask supermarkets, thereby putting the issue of liability on “Corporate America”.

Well, listen here.  That is not the point. 

The point is that we are a community, taking care of our own.

Supermarkets cannot donate hundreds of pounds of beef in one go.  They are working for a profit.  Ranchers, though?  They can donate a quarter of a steer and not blink an eye.

Your average steer weighs about 1500 pounds.  Subtract about 30% of that for bone and, um… the stuff that goes into “hot dogs” and you’ve got 1050 pounds.  A quarter of that is 262.5 pounds of ground beef.

Do you know how many mouths that feeds?

And yet.  Our meat packer – the only one in our area that is state inspected, is spooked.  They won’t package any more “charity meat” until we can take the liability off of their hands.

Our insurance agents can’t get a liability policy for us, because the meat isn’t ours.  They say the liability lies with the packers. 

The USDA requirements for donated meat have been met – and yet, people are going hungry.

I don’t know what to do.  I have no idea how to keep things going at this point, and I don’t have any money to give to a corporate attorney.  I hope, with a little bit of research, I can solve this problem and be able to move forward.  I’ve already discovered that Idaho has dealt with this issue already. 

Has California?  If not, how can I get them to?

A part of me wishes that the people who have used our court system to become millionaires over cups of spilled coffee could see what they’ve done to the spirit of giving – they should be ashamed at the ugliness they have created.

Categories
Health and Nutrition Life in general Motherhood and Pregnancy

Strength

When disaster strikes, the way it has recently in Haiti, people wonder what they can do to help.

Watching footage of people being pulled from rubble from the comfort of our living rooms can make us feel powerless, especially in our current economy, when many people can’t donate much to relief funds.

But there is something most people can do, and it doesn’t cost a dime.

Give Blood. 

Give it now, in the midst of major catastrophe, and give it later, when time has brought about complacency.  Give it for the heroes, for the needy, for the woman behind you on line at Starbucks.

I am that woman.



This is my family in crisis.  My family that would be incomplete, were it not for blood donors.

Here you see a phenomenally strong and able-bodied man, gently cradling his newborn daughter and holding his wife’s hand as medical professionals try to force her uterus to stop bleeding.  He is the epitome of strength, and yet he is powerless to save the woman he loves.

My husband, one of the strongest people I have ever known, held my hand.  He helped me through the pain, he kept me from fading away.

But it was blood donors (with the help of a fabulous midwife and countless doctors, nurses, and EMTs) who saved my life.  I hemorrhaged severely three times after giving birth to Blythe.  During the second and third hemorrhages, which occurred in less than 24 hours, I lost seven pints of blood. 

My body only holds approximately eight pints of blood. 

I am alive today because eight random strangers took the time to give their blood and plasma.

Giving blood saves lives.  It saves lives in times of worldwide tragedy, and it saves lives every single day, for people whose stories will never make it onto the 5 o’clock news.

So, give.  Give now and give often.  Go to www.redcrossblood.org, or www.BloodSource.org to find out where, how, and, if I haven’t yet convinced you, why. 

You never know when you will be the one in need.

*you can’t see it very well in this photo, but jeremy just so happens to be wearing his “Don’t Be Chicken: Give Blood!” t-shirt (from bloodsource) in this photo.  coincidence?  i don’t think so.*