Dreaming in Black and White: Re-release

My happy place. 15 feet from a too cold to care alligator, this picture was taken and sent to my Instagram account with GPS data so that if that gator ate me, it might help find my bones.

I know. Dramatic. The point is though, at this moment, I wasn't just on a forbidden walk alone in the wilderness, I was sharp witted, funny, and practical. I felt awake. I was dreaming too.

This place, this particular path I took that overcast day, hold a special memory for me now. I shall haunt it in my dreams.

Back in Iowa:
I came to this place, the one I occupy now, by my own choices. Let's not forget that. I chose regret. I chose inaction. Then I stopped being silly and got my stuff together and went, out of the ashes of my own mess. You know what though, this mess of mine is beautiful.

It is snowing when I wrote this post, with a thunderstorm on the southern horizon too. The wind on the prairie was angry this night and I hope we don't have any ewes lambing in this. Everyone is taking shelter.  We have market tomorrow and have to move some product because feed is running low and we have a season ahead of us that needs funding. Ah, farm life. Tomorrow will be a flurry of activity and we'll plow through, especially if there is actually 3 inches of snow out there.

But tonight....tonight I dream of Ossabaw. Tonight I dream in black and white, where things are simple, yet dangerous. Easy, yet incredibly complicated. Good night, fellow dreamers.

I put this blog post and picture back in drafts once I had sent it out for publication. This photograph is being featured in the 2014 Spring edition of the Portland Review Literary Journal. You can buy the book on Amazon here.  Thank you!

Wild Women of the Woods, or how I got over my fear of boats but not horses......

I know most of the time I sound like a totally competent farm lady, right?

Nope. I grew up in the city. I had an aunt with a farm that we visited. For a while my dad had a vegetable garden, but when I was 10 we moved to Illinois and then Iowa and it wasn't until I was an adult living across town that he took up gardening again.

No chickens. Every dog we ever had ended up "moving to the country" and cats don't count.

Truly, my born and raised in the suburbs husband is more country than I am in practise.

Love of the prairie, the open sparkly night sky,  deep desire to raise my children in a safe environment with complex experiences- that is what brought me here. It isn't enough though to just read about experiences and then teach them to the kids, especially things like kayaking that one just cannot learn from a youtube video- not safely, at least in my case.

When the local county conservation office to the north of us advertised a women's only camp out and day long workshop, I was eager to go. I signed up for things that pushed my anxieties and fears, boldly faced them.

Stupid fear of boats first. Fear of boats you say? Then how on earth did I make it to Ossabaw island last February? White knuckled, lots of spiritual negotiation, and mediation. Flying? No problem, bus ride from hell? Take that over even shallow water any day. I HATES IT.

My kids are all water babies like Chad. They love it. We have a gorgeous pond on the farm, more like a lake. I needed to learn to at the very least navigate water like that. Kayak seemed like a good first step? I have taken our flat bottom with oars out before with Lily, but that requires my focus to be on keeping her safe instead of facing what makes me so afraid of water.

Some people are afraid of spiders, have nightmares about zombies, or the like. I have nightmares about drowning. Slowly. In filthy, mucky, swampy water. Tangled in rusted chains or algae. Taking a boat out in the deeps is like tempting fate to make that reality.

Still, I got in this boat and rowed my little heart out. I actually enjoyed myself. I actually liked it enough to seriously contemplate buying a kayak to use at home. For real. I stood at the farm pond tonight and the water was clear and glassy and I actually felt pulled to get in it. I didn't, but I really wanted to. That was an odd feeling.

I also took a lovely nature walk and geocahed. It was fun, like where's Waldo or those hidden picture puzzles. I think Lily might like it, but I loves the opportunities for macro nature pictures.

I ended up leaving a few hours early. Not sleeping combined with heat and anxiety over leaving Isaac at home with his breathing problems last week (Chad totally had this btw, he's DAD of the year....) that landed poor little Zap in the ER one night....all of that combined to make he feel really sick, too sick to play with bow and arrow equipment. I headed home mid afternoon.

I think I may do this again next year. When Lily is old enough, I hope to bring her along too. Actually, this is the camp we are thinking of sending her too this summer with her church group. She can pick horses or fishing and she chose......fishing. Of course. It is LILY after all.

Hotel Charitone

When we first moved to Chariton, Lily fell in LOVE with the old, abandoned hotel on the corner of the square. We'd walk by it on our manners/shopping day and she would daydream aloud about buying it, restoring it, and adopting a bunch of orphans to keep it clean.....wait. No. Then we talked about child labour laws and chores at home have been a struggle ever since.

When she saw the dumpsters outside a few years ago, she was excited and broken hearted at the same time. Now where will the orphans live!? And again we talked about child labour laws and how she can't just adopt a bunch of kids to do her bidding and chores even if she puts a swimming pool in the basement for them.

But MOM, she told me, they'll fix it up WRONG.

This May the Hotel was brought back to life as apartments and a first floor restaurant, Hy-Vee put in a Market Grille. This is Hy-Vee's home town after all. I expected the food to be good, the interior to be the bare minimum, and I don't know what else. My years in historic preservation have jaded me. I too thought they would do it all wrong.

I am happy to report that I was the wrong one.

First, the wait staff is fantastic and attentive. I basically camp out at a table every week and order coffee and write. They are so nice about this. My coffee is kept hot, fresh, and served with real cream and not plastic cups of not really dairy yuck. Real. Cream. In a little glass pitcher.

The whole place as a very urban feel, open kitchen, lots of light, not too loud music, and all the staff is uniformed. There are hostesses. There is a bar tender who actually knows how to make fancy drinks. More than once the chef has come to my table to check on my food (the rare times I order anything.....). The managers know me by name and ask about what I am working on. The best of small town with a sophisticated feel.

And, be still my preservationists heart. The floors are original. The whole floor plan design, while updated and changed (it was a hotel before), also respects the few remaining features. The huge windows, the flooring, and the entrances are all restored or replicated to match what was originally intended. I love it. Many developer would have seen the stained tile by the wall and declared it all unfit, ripped it out, and put in new. This restoration pays tribute to the original artisans and to historic design principal. I'm impressed, at least with the grille. (I have not seen the apartments or the mechanicals, but to be fair, I'd be way more critical of those anyway).

Perhaps good coffee puts me in a generous mood, but I really love this place. Especially now that they added dessert to the menu......

Goals for this year?

This is my personal goal list from 2011, though it includes some farm stuff too.

1)Expand the apiary
2)Learn to play fiddle
3)Grow tomatoes
4)Bring strawberries to market
5)Harvest wild fruit and can it (I did get some this year but the major bounty of the farm has yet been untouched. We have gooseberries, black raspberries, morels, wild plum, rose hips, nettle, juniper, mulberries, elderberries, blackberries, crab apple, boysenberries, and who knows what else.)
6) plant 15 more trees, find cherries that I like
7) create a wall poster with the tree varieties we have planted for reference
8) mail the envelope back to NY (I've been saying this for 12 years now and really, it is too late, but the principle of the thing is bugging me.)
9) write the last chapter
10)sell the DM house
11) say thank you more often with both words and actions
12) take the kids (and grandpa) to ride the train in Boone
13) bake pie more often
14) read more books.



I did all of these except # 7. Well, and number 2 is still being worked on. :/ 

Why goals like this, lists like this, are important? The reflection back is hopeful. I got these things accomplished, though not all in 2011. In fact, many of them were checked off the list in 2013 and 2014.  Progress is still progress, in inches or in miles. I had to travel cross country on a bus and suffer severe sleep deprivation have dinner with the ghost of a drag queen in Savannah, Georgia, and track pigs on a wilderness island to get number 8 done.

Sometimes it takes a bunch of Jennifers to get me on the bus to begin with. Ha!

Completing these goals led me to new ones, new adventures, new connections, deeper connections with friends and family, all good things. It helps when you look back, to know what you were looking at, like an aerial landscape, you can see the watershed, the rivers, a clearer view of the options ahead. There are always variables, storms that happen, rerouting, delays, but adventure is still to be had. You can hide in a corner and wish for death or you can make a ridiculous video and make friends.

I have been thinking about what my new goals are. How my New Years goals are going, am I remembering not to Sabotage myself? No, but I have folks holding me accountable for that and it is often.

1) Finish my self designed/paced poetry course. I have about 7 unites left, stalled at writing a ghazal, not yet to Haiku.
2) Travel to Prague, hug my friend Adrienne, who needs a hug. Take a ton of pictures of buildings a sheep.
3) Finish the short story about Alice.
4) Finish the short story about the cat lady.
5) Write more poems. Revise twice as many.
6) Send all of them out and stop fretting about them being done enough.
7) Take Isaac to ride the trains in Boone, now that he is old enough to love trains and pay attention to it.
8) Submit more work to Literary Mama. Start writing essays.
9) Work on cookbook.
10) Take a photography class of some sort. I never have, y'all. Not one.
11) Send out all the thank you letters. Even ones that are long over due. My gratitude has not expired.
12) Be more patient.
13) Visit my aunt.
14) Get a self portrait done. One that is good for bio blurb. One that is sexy and cool.
15) Paint things. All the things. Except not the perfectly finished, pristine antique wooden things, that is a crime against history and humanity. Painting cheap crappy things is ok though. ;)
16) Host a dinner party and use the good dishes.
17) Recover the dining room chairs. 
18) Master baking cookies and making caramels.
19) Clean out my closet.
20) Feel pretty more often.

What are your goals? How do you stay on track?