Spring has Sprung!

I know, it's not a very catchy blog title! I just thought I would pop in and update ya'll on where I am at on writing, farming, raising kids, and pigs, and a husband...two dogs and a billy goat. No just kidding.

As farmers we take the winter off, which means that I spend the winter writing - which I did. I finished THE POLIS and will go to The Wenatchee Writer's Conference in May to try and sell it to an agent. This was a difficult book to write for me because it was in a different genre. This is a Young Adult adventure book instead of my usual Women's Fiction. Thankfully, it is done and put away, knot-tied on the binding until May.

In addition to writing, this winter Wave and I did a fair amount of fishing for Steelhead, winter camping, game playing, and hot tubbing. We did not get to do a lot of sledding or igloo building with the kids so that was a bummer. We took the kids to Disneyland for Christmas and then we went to Kauai in February. For those of you that did not hear, once again we had plane trouble over the Pacific and had to be returned to Hawaii which once again resulted in free plane tickets. Last year they had engine problems, this year the windshield "shattered" half way over the ocean. Most people think we are nuts if we attempt to go back to Hawaii again. As I have said though, we always get there, it's the making it back that seems to be a problem for us!

Since then, I have been working on my third book, which some of you know the title to, and others might not. For those you don't, I am keeping it a secret from the internet world. The title is too good, too yummy, and too leading. I don't want anyone else to have it - greedy me! It is once again a women's fiction book and it has caused a lot of "laughter through tears" as I have been working with my good friend and accomplice Mary in the character planning process. We are actually gaining stomach muscle from all of the gut-holding giggling we have been doing while plotting out this nasty little gem.

Yesterday was Easter, and I just wanted you all to know that we ate some DIVA! If you don't know who Diva is, read the last blog. She is the devil who tried to kill me last September. Therefore, we ate her. And, I have to admit that she was fairly good. Wave was a master chef, especially for someone who never cooked lamb before. My problem was my imagination. All I could see were the poop covered dreadlocks that I had to trim off of her "roast" area last Fall. I only had a bite because I could not get over that image for anything. That being said, master chef at the grill or not, lamb will not be my favorite meat. We did have some more "Evil Dr. Pork Chop" as well, in the form of a shank ham, and it was divine! I can eat that because - as I said before - I never had to clean a pigs butt, or trim their poop from their hind end. Never. Not once.

As for pigs, we are off to Moses Lake with another 4-H family next week-end to start the whole project rolling once again. Yeah!! I love this time of year! It means more time out doors and more blogs about farming with a pack of young un's, a yard full o' animals, a stressed out tired farmer, and a hot headed farm wife. I love this time of year...no really, I do.

FYI: You should see these pigs though, they are said to be grand champions boars, but they look more like a bull dog/rhinoceros mix. They are monsters and I think they come with their own weight lifting sets and boxing gloves. They might scare me worse than Diva, if that is possible.

Summer and Jack will not be doing sheep this year - most likely because I said, "Hell No!" Instead, they are raising bunnies. They each got one for Easter. They are a mini Lionhead mix and they are so super stinking cute!

Well, happy Spring and back to writing!

Amy

August 29, 2011: The Mom Plum Lost it!

Prologue: I only use that because I like that word. It’s so formal, so professional. I just wanted to point out the obvious fact that I have not been adding in my diary for a while. That is because I was at the Palouse Empire Fair with the kids! Well, I’m back now, so on we go to Monday…

Last night it rained. Yes, rained! While my husband was busy musing over what possible time that they would be able to get into the field the next day, I was secretly smiling in the dark. I had not been able to water the lawn since the pump went out on the well, and what water I had given to my flowers had been limited at best. Scooping it out of the pond with the knowledge that I didn’t have hot water to wash my hands in afterward often caused me to put off that chore until it was almost too late. As for the garden, well, I had all but given up on that. The weeds flourished to be sure, but the plants were beginning to show signs of a stress that they might not recover from.

            I let Wave sleep in, and just before breakfast I opened all the windows wide in order to catch the last traces of green air, as I like to call air after it rains. There is something about it that just smells green.  I also cooked pancakes and eggs that morning as if I would have hot soapy water to wash the dishes in afterward.  For a while, with the pressure in the air released and the pressure of the need to water momentarily alleviated, there was laughter in the house once again.

            Our local grocery Mike called just after nine to say that the box of tomatoes that I ordered for the salsa I planned to can had come in. I will make lunches, walk the sheep with summer, and then go get the tomatoes before the water guy comes to fix the pump. I cannot wait for this, but I holding my breath. If it doesn’t work, we will learn that we have bigger problems and right now with the thought of having to wash pigs again tonight that is just not an option I am willing to explore.

            The sheep are unruly as usual and Summer will not be patient with them. She is worried, as am I, how they will act at the fair. They do not like their lead ropes and they end to jump and buck so hard when they are on them that we can barely lead them, let alone have Jack try to lead them for Daddy’s Little Sheppard. Finally, we simply put them back in their pens. They are hot, we are hot, and without water our patience is coming to an end. I walk over to the pigs and pet them on the snouts. I like them so much better then the sheep.

            I pick up the tomatoes in town and upon the return see that the pump guy has arrived. I hold my breath and wander about aimless even with my trusty list in sight. I can think of nothing else but water. I pull out the salsa recipe, but dare not start it knowing that if this doesn’t work, these tomatoes are destined for the freezer instead of the canner.

            Just after 1:00 Brett rushes out the door in a panic stating that he made a mistake. He flushed the toilet and there was actually water in it! I looked at the pump guy who was calmly screwing the face on a power box and said, “Well, that’s cuz’ I’m done!”

            Now you would think at this point I would be relieved and happy, but I guess there was something in the amount of tension that I had been holding inside that caused me to burst like a balloon. Suddenly, the list wasn’t enough to keep me in line, and I was immediately ordering everyone around like a drill sergeant. I quickly thanked the pump guy, barley pausing long enough to send out a thank-you to the universe for not letting this be a bigger problem that it already was. Then I started tossing out orders like baseballs. You do this! You go here! Pick this up! Put that down! Get in the car! Don’t forget your boots!

            By the time we got over to the pigs everyone in the car was tense and therefore so were the pigs, but I couldn’t stop myself. I pushed the kids through a round of “let this pig out, and put that pig in” so fast that everyone, including the swine went ape crazy!

            By the time that was over it was time for sheep practice at the 4-H leader’s house. The kids were hot, stinky and tired. Dustin was soaked from the quick bath he gave his pig, Georgia, and I was still cranky. Jack and Summer walked their sheep, but the other’s behind them were antsy. I was embarrassed to admit that the reason the sheep were acting up was because we all smelled so strong of swine feces that the sheep were unable to concentrate. It was terrible; sheep were jumping for no apparent reason and kids were being dragged around trying to collect them and get them back in line. Finally, I informed the 4-H leader of what the problem might be. In other words, I confessed. We stunk! We did learn however, that sheep don’t like the color red and we had been keeping a red halter on our sheep Diva, who was the main jumper, the whole time that we had been training her.

            When we returned home, Summer and I removed the collar and we could not believe how much calmer she was. Had we only known this a month ago, things might have turned out very differently with Diva.

            I baked tomatoes and quesadillas for dinner and went straight to bed. As on other stressed out woman once said, tomorrow is another day…

Did You Get the Tequila?

            It all started at 5:30 in the morning with the alarm clock going off. Where I live, you might have expected me to say that the rooster was crowing; but no, instead it was the incessant jabber of a talk show host ranting about something to do with the price of rice in China. Really, at this time, I could have cared less. All that I could hear was the fact that she had obviously had her coffee, probably Starbucks and most likely made by a barista that I would never see in my kitchen.

            Five thirty was also when the guys from the fertilizer company drove up the driveway and my husband popped out of bed like a jack-in-the-box. Therefore, I guess that I was up too, barista that I must be.

            I climbed over the six-year-old who had crawled in at some odd hour of the night, threw on my sweats and headed for the kitchen. By the time my husband had his clothes on, I had already started a pot of coffee, unloaded the dishwasher, located a piece of paper and started my list for the day. Number one, make four lunches, move the tractor, make the tea, chicken for dinner, bread, start the burn pile, trim the raspberries, rodotill the garden, move the other tractor, piano lessons at 3:00, and pee. I always put that in there as my own little joke to myself, because I know full well that this list will be a page long by the time the morning is over and I will need a break. I also know that I won’t get half of it accomplished.

            I was just on my way to the shower, knowing that it was that or a cup of coffee, when my husband said something about needing a ride to the field.

            “No problem,” I smile. “When?”

            My husband looked out the window. Here, I must digress. If any of you have read my blogs on Spring Work, you must know by now that a farmer looking out the window causes warning bells to ring in his wife’s head. Frankly, it means, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. What do you think dear?”

            However, with Spring Work being so super late this year and farmers all over the Palouse in danger of not getting their crops in on time, my farmer quickly recovered.

            “Now?” he asks.             

            “Sure,” I say. “Let me write a note to the kids.”

            Already I am doing the math in my head. It’s almost 5:45. My son, who is the early riser, will be up to shower at 6:00. Another at 6:15. If the first one isn’t out of the stall on time, there could be a fight. Oh well, I can’t worry about that now. The others won’t see the light until after 7:00, so if we get after it, I can make it back in time to start breakfast and head off any brewing fights. The drive out and back would take a half hour.

            Now, in favor of this blog not being as long a read for you as it was a day for me, let me just speed this up for you – because frankly that is how I experienced it.

            So, on the way out, I’m informed that we need to stop by the fertilizer plant, it’s only five miles out of the way. It’ll only be a second. Just have to tell someone something. Fifteen minutes later, now almost time for the second child to rise and find the note that I am MIA, we just start heading for the field.

            “Think you have time to move a truck,” he asks.

            “What truck?” I say.

            Yep, I’m gritting my teeth. He’s been in the house for the morning routine all blooming winter. He knows full well that four hungry boys can get chaotic without the mommy buffer.

            “It’s at the other field.”

            Now, dear reader, the “other” field in question is almost ten miles the other direction, and moving a truck isn’t like helping your friend move his car down the road. You have to wait a generation for it to warm up, for the farmer to pee, and then it rumbles, slowly, ever so slowly, through the field and onto the road like a very, very old man. And then, as I know all too well, there is always a chance that we may have to stop by the fertilizer plant again. 

            “Where is it going?”

            “To my dad’s.”

            Another seven miles the other way.

            “No way,” I say. “Kids need to get up.”

            “Well, that truck needs to be in the field in an hour,” he states, as if I’m delaying the work that must get done.

            “Fine,” I say. “I’ll go home, get the kids up, ask the eldest can take care of the youngest and I’ll get it done.”

            I race out to the field, practically kicking him out the door and then race back home, hoping like hell that I don’t see a cop and that I’m awake enough to drive because this barista has yet to see a cup of joe! If you think this is tedious, wait till you hear about the tequila!

            When I arrive home the fertilizer team is still there and they are unable to get a much needed nozzle working. I radio the farmer who gives me instructions in some form of farmer-speak over a jumble of other voices on the radio. I race back and forth playing the telephone game between the two of them until finally the damn nozzle magically works. Great, good. One success.

            I race in the house, now hollering for the kids to get up. I give my eldest instructions, thankful that he is willing to help and not in a bad mood. I call the father-in-law to help me move the darn truck, ask the middle child to make the youngest a lunch, and am just about to run out the door when one of the kids reminds me he needs to go to school early. Let me tell you, I flunked math, so by this time, my numbers are starting to get a little jumbled on who needs what by when.

            “Okay,” I smile. “Get your stuff.”

            Stuff attained, out the door, to the school, out to the field to meet the father-in-law, texting the eldest to inform him that I just passed the bus on our dirt road heading straight for the house. I pick up the father-in-law to help get the slow lumbering truck, get a text back from the eldest that one of the younger children has hidden his backpack and that he will “FAIL” school if I don’t find it and bring it to the school RIGHT NOW. I want to tell him that I’m not a fan of capital texting, but I’m driving so I keep it brief. OK.

            About here, I’m wishing for my list to write all this down. I move the truck, all the while have a civil political discourse with my father-in-law, race back to the house, make four lunches, find the backpack which my eldest simply left by the dryer when he got his clothes out, discover a wayward suitcase that had been left her by another kid who had stayed the night a couple of days before, a coat from yet another visiting boy, and some books I need to deliver to the school. You getting all that?

            I am just in the car when my dear husband texts that he needs his tractor moved. He’s waiting. Like time waits for no man, farmers do not wait for busy wives. Around here, excuses can get unpaid helpers such as myself fired. Right now I’m thinking that sounds damn good!  

            “No problem,” I state. “No problem at all.”

            I deliver everything, realizing that I still have not had a cup of coffee, but being a woman, I have to pee anyway. That will have to wait!

            I deliver the goods to the school, only to find my youngest upset because he forgot his lunch. I console him and magically produce the lunchbox that I found left on the counter at the house. Then I race to the field, flag the tractor, only to get a call from the hired man. He’s ready too.

            Done! I get back home, turn OFF the radio, walk straight past the list and into the office to try and edit my book for the upcoming writer’s conference. I got an hour in on my project before I got another text from the farmer.

            In favor of getting you through this, I will give you the final straw. Wish I could say it was stuffed in a blended margarita, but it wasn’t. No.

            After taking the middle child to piano in a neighboring town, helping the youngest with his homework, washing and folding laundry, and just pulling the chicken out to start dinner, I get the call from my two eldest boys that they need picked up from track. Fine, I say. We can eat leftovers tonight.

            I get back in the car, start to drive to the school and I literally have to stop at the only stop sign in town and contemplate who in the heck I am headed for; the hired man, my husband, or the kids. I laugh and sit there for minute. I’m taking a break, I laugh. Right here in the middle of town. I had almost regained my bearings again when my cell phone vibrates. I pick it up and read the text.

            “Hey,” my husband types. “It’s Cinco de Mayo. Did you remember to get the tequila?”

            Needless to say, that man did not get an answer this time.

            Now, for all of you waiting patiently – and of course on pins and needles for me to write “Why Am I a Liberal Part 2,” I will just point out that I haven’t had much time of late. However, I will get on it…after I pee. 

Writer's Block

Today's place of insiration

 I’ve been working on two novels for three years now. One is Young Adult. The other is Women’s Fiction. Every day I sit in my living room for four hours and pound away on the keys, amid fielding phone calls and questions, the hourly beep of the washing machine, unsolicited texts, the Seventh Day Adventists doing the Lord's work at my doorstep, and my own devilish procrastination. Maybe a snack will help, or a ten-minute break, or starting completely over, or pushing headlong on through type-o’s and all. Nothing really has.

            Behind me I feel the pressure of those who desire - either out of loyalty to a local or hopefully because I actually have talent– another book like my first one. I so want to give that to them. I can see the bold features of my characters and smell the cool earth beneath their feet. I can hear the robins in the background and see the house that they live in. I am given the rare gift of being able to sort through their problems like some ethereal psychotherapist who wants to be their friend. But, what I have to possess in order to make my readers relate to my characters as deeply as they, themselves, relate to their own friends (or if I'm truly lucky, make them hate them as much as they hate their worst nemesis) is inspiration.

            That, in my wonderfully warm living room is what I am lacking. I’ve seen that couch so often that it has lost all beauty to me. I know the people who sit on it, and am too accustomed to the stains in the floor. Inspiration for me comes from changing scenery, something so new that it may be a path trodden heavily by another, but it holds a mystery for me.

            So, I have wandered away, outside my living room, onto roads I have driven and paths I have walked before. They might be slightly familiar, but alone I see them with a different eye.
There are ducks in the pond below me. I have seen that pond before, but I've never stopped long enough to see that there are so many cattails. They alone bring me bring me back to my youth. They remind me of days at the Rock Crusher where the local neighborhood children and I would have cattail wars, and spend countless hours making forts amongst the boulders that we might never return to.

            There is a mysterious house down there too, set against the backdrop of the most amazing forest. It is only minutes from my own backyard, and has probably been here for well over a half a century, but it is new to me. I can see the kitchen, where once there might have been bacon cooked so early in the morning, and up the road there is an old gunshot riddled “School Bus Stop Ahead” sign. Were there children who ran to it at one time? Did they carry lunch pails, or dine on school lunch? Were there school breakfasts offered during that area, or were the kids expected to be well nourished at home prior to racing each other to the stop?

            And where are they now? Did a mother, in a dress or in cool lots, tend to that garden as the earth was just awakening in the spring? Do the worms still wriggle in the earth waiting for the first plantings of potatoes and lettuce only to wonder where all the commotion has gone? Was their a father who lit fires in that crumbling fireplace at night?  Was the atmosphere tense, cold or warm and full of laughter?

            There is mystery in the house. Probably not for the people who lived there, but now, standing alone and in danger of dilapidation, there is for me. I have always wanted to get lost in story, in mystery, and adventure. With every day outside as a child, feeling the cool spring air on my skin, or wiping the sweat from my heated brow only to find a outdoor faucet on a neighbors house to drink from, I found both adventure and inspiration. What I see today is that to find adventure, you must first be adventurous.

            Every day I will try and find inspiration, and maybe someday it will lead me to you; the ghost who waits for an ear who will listen; the character whose story needs told. 

Gettin' er Done

Oh my goodness, that sounds so George Bush or Sarah Palin. I would consider changing it, but I won't. Neither of them should have a right to talk about gettin' er done, when neither of them have probably gotten anything done without the assistance of a camera crew, a make-up team and an herd of editors.  When I say gettin' er done, I was referring to this opening statement on my new blog, so that I can get back to getting everything else done on this farm.

Today, my list consists of volunteering at the school library, ordering pigs from middle Idaho, cleaning the house, doing the laundry for four boys and one farmer, attempt to make a healthy dinner out of a freezer filled to the brim with hamburger and pork chops, convince all of my sons that they can do homework, music lessons, and wax the tractor all while texting their girlfriends on their cell phones. I have to tend to the cat, drive fifty miles into the city to pick up a pair of glasses, get one of the boys to piano and another to basketball, convince my husband not to freak about about the market when Spring work hasn't even started, stem the rising water in the basement, do the recycling, and oh yeah, the school called. I have to go. Sounds like the littlest one has pneumonia again.

Alas, these are my days. They are filled with laughter, irritation, sarcasm, and most of all speed. I have been accused of living my life on Novocain, and that someday I am going to wake up and realize what the hell I went through being married to a farmer, raising five kids and being a writing. I hope so, but I hope I don't wake up too soon. After all of this, I still have to start training for Bloomsday this afternoon!