Ride 'em

Everybody should have a plaid flannel jacket. EVERYBODY.
Yeeeeee Haw!
Not sure what's going on here...is the saddle crooked? Is one of my legs longer than the other? I know one hip is higher. Is it because she's walking? Well at least after 6 months of exercise therapy my elbows are almost at the same level.

I do know one thing: this little mare has a gorgeous butt.

Reading "A Complicated Kindness." Upset. Must Keep Reading.

I've had this novel on my shelf for a year. My friend gave it to me because I'm Mennonite. The author, Miriam Toews, is also Mennonite. That is where the similarities end.

I'm completely torn apart by "A Complicated Kindness."

It is so, so, so beautifully written it breaks my heart. She has achieved the voice of a bored, betrayed, downtrodden teenage girl, and captured it perfectly.

But it is so damn offensive to me, the way she describes my chosen faith. I am telling you, I don't even recognize anything Mennonite in there. I don't understand her denomination; it doesn't even vaguely resemble mine.

Worse yet, reading this has caused me to do something I vowed twenty years ago to never do. I am worried about what other people will think!

If you were to read this novel, with no knowledge or familiarity of the Mennonite faith, or of the Anabaptist movement in general, you would come away believing that we are all a bunch of joyless, grim, rule-bound, judgemental, miserable prudes.

I was born into a Mennonite family, and raised going to church every Sunday. Sure I rebelled quite a bit in my teens- like a large majority of kids- but I missed the connection of spirituality and that church family, the support and guidance, and I missed the four part harmony, and I came back. Even after I moved way down the highway I kept coming back. I had dropped out of baptism class twice and at the age of 26, married over five years and a mother twice, I was baptized. I was born and raised Mennonite and I thought real good and hard about it before I chose it for the rest of my life.

Now I ask you, especially if you've been dropping by here and reading for awhile. Do I seem to you to be joyless, grim, rule-bound, judgemental, and miserable?

I find myself feeling so angry at the author for misrepresenting my people!!

But then I realize that I am making some very huge mistakes here.

-I know that Miriam Toews is from Steinbach, Manitoba. I've never been there. But I do know that Manitoba is where many Russian Mennonites settled over a 50 year period from the late 1800s to the 1940s. I'm thinking that there are cultural differences between Russian Mennonites and Swiss/ German Mennonites, which is my background.

-She's not the first author I've read from her background who portrays this culture as very harsh and strict.

-If I were to ask ten Mennonites to describe how their faith makes them feel, I'd get ten different answers.

-I am being totally unfair. I've only gotten to chapter ten. I told my mom last week that I'm all torn up over this book. I was only on chapter two back then. I told her that it doesn't look anything like the Mennonite that I'm familiar with. She is a very wise woman. She told me I should keep reading. Things sometimes change at the end of the book.

-What am I getting so worked up over? It's a novel!!!

Or is it??

This is where it gets really tangled for me. Readers expect biographies from their authors. I often worry that anything I write will get dredged by those who know me, looking for clues, wanting to know who I stole the little bits of life from to come up with this so-called fiction! It's the old "write what you know" thing. Admit it: you've done it. You've wondered if the words came out of the writer's experience.

I have so many questions.

Did she make it all up because she's bitter about her upbringing, and wanted to take literary revenge?

Doesn't she know that Menno Simons did not invent the faith that was eventually named after him? Or is it the character that doesn't know?

I've never known of anybody who was shunned- is this an old order thing? Does anybody actually still do this? For real?

Did she quit going to church when she left Steinbach?

Was it really so bad??

Are prairie bound Russian Mennonites really more miserable than the rolling-hills Ontario Mennonites?

(We're not just in Manitoba and Ontario either. We're nationwide. We're in little pockets all over North America. And you can't tell by looking at us all the time. There are more Mennonites in Africa that there are in Europe. Surprize.)

If this town is run by the church, how come the characters don't spend much time there?

And what's with the one totalitarian pastor who runs the church and therefore the entire town with an iron fist? That's so completely un-Mennonite. We choose our pastors. We can unchoose them. Our congregation is full of committees and groups and discussions and outreaches and on top of our bulletin, under the pastor's name and the names of the elders (who are men and women of all ages) there is a line stating, "Ministers: each member." I've never heard of a church with a dictator for a pastor. And there are a LOT of Mennonite churches where I'm from. Is this different in other parts of the world?

Is the town in "A Complicated Kindness" full of Mennonites like me who look (somewhat) like everybody else, or do they wear dark clothes and drive black cars with no chrome? I can't tell. The main character watches TV. She has a boyfriend with a pickup truck and they go hang around and smoke and swear and listen to Led Zeppelin.

Geez...is this book about ME?

So many questions.

And of course, as I read, this dangerous idea that the novel and its writer are so inextricably connected keeps coming up for me, fearing that same thing happening to me someday!

I'll tell you, I have a lot of respect for Miriam Toews. She's a writer with a gift for observation, emotion, and voice. And how cute is this woman? Seriously. Please notice that she's smiling with her teeth showing in this photo. You know that's a big thing for me. Come on, all of you serious and dignified authors! Smile! Let's see some teeth!

I have to keep reading this novel. I have to know what happens. She's got me hooked. I've become totally enamoured with this 16 year old character who speaks with all the irony and sarcasm that teenagers work to perfect. I understand her, because nobody else understands her. I know that she wants to express herself and nobody allows her to. I don't relate to this character because I was a Mennonite teenager. I relate to her because I was a teenager.

I have another reason for reading and it's tricky. It's that awkward combination of jealousy and admiration. About a year and a half ago, I started writing a novel about a Mennonite teenager. "A Complicated Kindness" came out in 2004. I'd been avoiding it. I can't put it down, because it angers me, and it intrigues me, and I hope that some day my novel will turn out half as good as this one.

Barn Tour: Dad's barn (and his mother's, and her father's...)

Up in the hay mow in June:
These giant wheels were used as pulleys to lift the old hay wagon off the chassis, all the way up to the loft level, where it was pulled over the platform. Then a trip rope was pulled to release all the loose hay into the mow. This wasn't the way to do it anymore by the time my old man was a kid in the 50s.
But let me tell ya...swinging off those big ropes sure is fun. Enough fun to make it worthwhile keeping those giant wooden wheels and ancient hemp ropes around!

Is it creepy and scary in the old barn? Heck yes! It goes a long way to explaining my fascination with the fantasy world of twisted apple trees and haunted houses and all those odd Burtonesque images...
(edit- One thing I need to tell you about, just in case the pictures don't tell you, is what it feels like up there. It was a hot day in June when we put the hay up, but inside the soaring barn, the air was pleasant. There was shelter from the sun's heat, but all those cracks in the boards let in little crossbreezes from every direction. The light is so diffused, also because of the spaces between the barn boards. And above all, the smell of the hay...ahhhhh! This part of the barn is used only for storage- we don't work in there except for putting up hay. But the reward for all that hard work is to climb up the ladder and sit for a few minutes, soaking up the good smell and the light and the gentle breeze.

It's like a cathedral up there. A cathedral for birds.

Me, and my boy, after a hard day's work.
Looking up at the haymow. Check out that big beam overhead.
With a building like this, it's all in the details.


The foundation:
In a bank barn, half of the ground floor is actually underground. Our south facing wall is the open end, while north is built into the hill. This way the livestock get the benefit of the sunlight.
The ceilings in this barn are quite low. Our horses are tiny so it doesn't really matter. When I'm asking people to pay me for boarding their horses though, I'll need more room overhead. Some people have had their cement floors taken out and dug down to get that ceiling height. I don't know if it's worth it financially. Lots to think about.

I wonder if someday I can find one of these that can give me all of this good stuff, but with high ceilings and wide aisles. I'll keep dreaming...
Happy Thanksgiving to my American Friends!

Heidi's Barn

I'm over my rant from yesterday. People are allowed to live in the country if they're not farmers. I would just appreciate it if they would't go so far as to call themselves farmers. But I'm over it pretty much, almost, mostly.

So what do I want when I go out looking at farms? I've been spending months figuring this out. When working on my correspondence course over the last few months, I've had to give a long look into my priorities.

If was sensible...if I had any logical thinking capacity whatsoever...if I was guided by practicality....if I worked from a business sense rather than giving in to what I simply like...if I had any smarts at all, I'd be looking for something like this:

(These photos are taken from Morton Buildings.)They're very nice! They have open sheds, and dutch doors.
Look at the interiors: so easy to work in!

There are two disadvantages to a modern, specialized horse barn.
1) Any real estate listing with the phrase "horse barn" automatically adds about another 200 grand onto the listing price. If you build one new, well...let's just say that's really stretching the budget.

2) It's new. It's modern. And you know what? I just...plain...don't...like....anything new and modern. With the exception of my Mac. But y'know, it is about five years old now so I guess in computer world it qualifies as an antique. Yeah, okay, I only like old stuff.

Call me a hopeless romantic. Fine. I can take the abuse.

Once we started actually reading the real estate ads instead of just looking at the pictures, I got a strange feeling in my gut. All these shiny straight barns caught my eye, sure. They looked great-- on other people's properties.

What I really want is this:I don't have any logical, rational, or practical thoughts. We all know this about me.

I imagined myself leaving my house- my slightly weather worn farmhouse- and walking across the yard in my coveralls and rubber boots. What would I be walking out to? I stopped in my imaginary tracks. That shiny straight barn just wasn't right. Practical, yes. Perfect for its purpose, absolutely. But all, completely, wrong.

It faded out and in its place a big, looming, century old bank barn materialized. I looked up at its high roof, at the tiny window in the peak where birds zoomed in and out. I swaggered up to the wooden door set into the stone foundation- stones so big that I couldn't imagine moving them without a tractor. There's nothing pre-fab about these old beauties. They were built one at a time, without power tools, without an architect's stamp of approval, and the fact that there are any left standing is proof of their quality.

The bank barn isn't perfect. Few of them are straight- they were probably leaning a little when they were new, 130 years ago. The ceilings in the bottom level are usually too low for horses. (This bothers my old man; he says their draft horses fit in that barn just fine when he was a little guy.) Old barns require repairs and maintenance that aren't ever necessary in a new barn.

Many have been altered to accomodate modern farming.
Jethro says they don't build em like that anymore-- they build em better.

He's right in many ways. He's the guy with the head for business. He'd never build a studio in a structure that wasn't worth it and tells me I shouldn't do business in an unsuitable building either.

But the bottom line is, no, they don't build em like this anymore. They never will again. We'd have to let the trees grow for 300 years before we could get beams like that again. These old barns are treasures to me, and while most people speed past them on the highway, ignoring them or worse, scorning them for being so old and weathered and, (gasp) rural, I admire them and mourn for the ones left to rot. They're part of our history.

I won't feel right without one of those in my yard.


Tomorrow I'll take you on a tour of the one I grew up in.

Farm for Sale, My ASS!!!

So on the way home from church, we see a red and white sign. Farm for Sale. Open House, Sunday, 2-4.

Of course we hop in the car at 2:05 and go across the highway, past the church and down the road. I was ready. I had my spiral notebook to write things down, things like, barn construction, bank or hip roof, ceiling height, condition of fences, overall condition of barn, drive shed yes or no, oh, and, is there a house??? That kind of important stuff.

I even brought my barn boots with me, just in case.

Well. This so called farm was not a farm in any way shape or form. It's a house. It's just a friggin house in the country. It's the kind of place I totally hate. Useless! The house is a boring big looming monstrosity with a two car garage stuck on the side. It's less than twenty years old and completely devoid of any interesting features. It sits back from the road, surrounded by a perfectly manicured lawn, spindly young trees, and fake sloping hills.

This is the kind of place that people buy when they want to go to parties and say, "OOah, yeeeeesss, we live in the country now, yeeesss, we have deer in our yard, yeesss, it's all very elegant."

And these are the kind of people who get right bent when the guy who owns the fields surrounding their little rural paradise get busy with the sh*tspreading in the spring. The farmer was there first and is making a living, or at least trying to against all odds, and yet Buffy and Biff Stuffington don't like the odour.

Needless to say...we did not go in. Although I really felt like stomping up and down the paved driveway in my sh*tboots.

Crush, Part 2: The Hall of Shame?

We had so much fun last week, counting down all my past and present crushes. Let's do it again! Only this time...it's gonna get weird!

First of all, I have to include Donny Osmond. I can't say it was really a crush, because I don't remember anything other than getting a Donny Osmond doll at some point in my childhood- he had purple socks!! and a conversation on the school bus about how all of our mothers told us that if we brushed our teeth every day, twice a day, we'd have nice teeth like Donny and Marie.



Then of course Shaun Cassidy came along and I got all silly and blushy for the first time...the rest is history!







I must tell you about Billy Idol. What was I, all of 14?
I had posters and pin ups of him all over my wall. In fact, I kept them until last year when I lovingly gave them to my girl KC, who took me to see him, for the first time in my life. Yes, I went to see 52 year old Billy Idol with my 17 year old friend. And he was hot. He's better now with a few wrinkles on his face. He sounded great and told stories in his mangled accent (duh! English!) and raspy voice. We laughed at his stories even though we cuddenunnastand afukinwuhdman. We were almost close enough for him to sweat on us.

Now here's proof that a man doesn't have to be agreeably gorgeous or drop dead sexy to win my heart. It helps, sure! But I love this guy. He makes me laugh. He plays a mean acoustic guitar. Sometimes he goes way off wrong. One of my friends tells me that I should not see Nacho Libre if I love Jack Black and want to keep loving him. But if you ever want to see him at his best, watch High Infidelity. (John Cusack is in it too!!) He was perfect as the opinionated record store employee. And come on. Admit it. He's portly and scuzzy and has a face that can't be controlled....but he is kinda cute, no?In a crazed garden gnome kind of way?

Now for the disgraced. You know how I love my rock stars. I mean, everybody knows that Heidi the Hick, the Hick Chic expert, loves her rock stars. Sometimes, they break my heart.

I have an undying love for Steven Tyler. It's slightly irrational. I've seen Aerosmith twice.He's just revealed that he has Hep C and I wish he didn't have it. He's the same age as my mom and seriously, what is goin on with that man's face? What is with his face? Know what? Don't care. Still find him fascinating.

The only band I've seen more than them, is the Tea Party. They were one of my favourite bands of the 90s. I've seen them live four times, and let's keep in mind that I spent much of the 90s under a rock, due to either poverty, babies, or both! I dug their slightly psychedelic, deep and meaningless type music and I thought they were fine looking, especially the one in the middle there- he was always the one in the middle- who totally fits with my dark haired dark eyed smug smiled preference. I met him once. Thought he was a real gentleman. I was a total clueless hick in my corduroy jacket and my deerskin gloves. But they lost me at their last concert, and then they broke up and it got ugly and the whole thing kinda lost its appeal to me.

And speaking of lost appeal....I had a thing for this guy for quite some time. It's incredibly unhip to admit this now, but I'm gonna say it. I really dug Scott Stapp. I liked his big brown eyes. I liked his big arms. I wished he'd quit gelling his hair but I liked his deep voice. I saw them in concert a few years back, right after the Tea Party played. They were great! It was a good show! (Other than the ballad. I hate ballads.) But each album got more and more self-serious, and the tunes gradually got less tuneful. The 3rd album came out. I loved the first track, but it was otherwise very bloated and aimless. Then there was the whole thing with the break up and it got ugly and the whole thing lost its appeal for me. Especially the part about getting arrested for being drunk in public in the airport on the way to the honeymoon. NOT COOL.

More shame. Justin Hawkins. Yeah, he confuses me. He's hideously skinny, has a face that looks good in some photos- big lips, nice jaw- but really awful in others...stringy hair...questionable teeth....but he's English darnit, and to a little farm girl like me there's something irrestible and exotic about an Englishman, and he's a wicked guitarist, possesses a glass shattering falsetto, a frighteningly good sense of pitch, a rich chest voice, and a cheeky sense of humour. He has flames tattooed on his abdomen, he wears pink proudly (which is not something I usually like in a man) and has been known to wear feathers in his hair. He also has his own name tattooed on his arm. If you don't get why I think that's brilliantly funny...I can't explain it. But he's bunked up in rehab now, has dumped his band, and the whole thing has kinda lost its appeal for me.



But Anthony Kiedis has not lost his appeal, no matter how hard I try to resist him. He's bad. I tried not to dig his action fifteen years ago. He keeps pulling me back in. How could I resist? Look at his hair. So shiny, and straight, and I bet it would be so soft and smooth...gah! I've read his book! I know where he's been! Don't touch the Kiedis! Unless wrapped in plastic. Or I could poke him gently with an 11 foot pole. I'm pretty sure he's crazy. Oh he's such a bad boy.

He's got the look of a guy who could talk a girl into just about anything, and likely has, and that's why we must not touch the Kiedis!





He's all cleaned up and healthy now, and looking better than ever. He's handsome, he's one hell of a dynamic front man, and he gets better with every album.

I can't help it, Anthony. I love ya despite all reason.












And I like John too. He's cleaned up and his playing has gotten soooo good but he's still a wacky little dude. I tend to fall for men who are very good at something. Listen to Stadium Arcadium and you'll know why I like him more and more.





I did tell you things would get weird, right? Proof:
I still love him.

And of course, just like in Part 1...the biggest crush of my life.The son of English immigrants, he was different. He was cool, he was funny. He was awkward and goofy. He was sweet and affectionate. He was pretty and scruffy. He had a blue Strato Chief and a red Stratocaster knockoff.

No shame here!!! It all makes perfect sense. The old car had to go to the great scrapyard in the sky, and the man put on some weight over the years. But I am still insanely, irrationally in love with him. Nineteen and a half years down, a lifetime to go!!!

these guys are so heavy they don't need instruments...

This crosses from heavy into gloriously ridiculous: Killswitch Engage. Heavy metal marketing genius? I love it!!!

Scatterama

What is going on this week???

My brain is so full it threatens to burst. I've got ideas boiling in there. I could write three blogs a day! I'm coming up with all these ideas for T shirts but sadly not enough computer skills to make them work. I had all of my homework from my correspondence course done by Tuesday. I only remember half of what I read...but that's not the point, because I got it done! My last third of the big assignment is in progress. My bathrooms are reasonably clean- they're at least not disgusting. I got the dishes washed. Laundry is being processed somewhat efficiently. Still haven't got all the leaves raked up but it's coming along. My desk is clean! I wrote a letter to my husband's cousin!

For the last two weeks I've been waking up almost every day feeling queasy and nauseous. I still do a little bit. I'm not pregnant. I know this for a fact. Ten years though, I've been convinced every month that the big V didn't work or he's so vigorous and healthy we're insanely fertile, and we've beaten the odds and there's gonna be another one. And that this one is gonna kill me for sure, it'll finish off what the first two started. But I'm not.

This week alone I have manipulated my fake fictional teenage characters into all kinds of shocking situations. Pages and pages worth of trouble and mayhem! One's in jail, one's despondent, devastated, and in despair, one's beating the snot out of another for looking at his girlfriend, while she's very upset because he's a big jerk and he's mean and slightly abusive, and then she flies into what I call "A Black Rage" and causes a Big Scene in the corridor outside the auto shop. What is wrong with me? That is the second Black Rage I've written for this girl in the last year. She has some problems, man. Seriously. I hope I can help her work it all out, because she's gotta get this thing under control. But I'm thankful that it's her having the Black Rages and not me. I never had a rage like that. Always kinda wanted to though.

Meanwhile I've been coming up with all these new story ideas. I write them all down. I get up and go upstairs for a drink of water. I come back and stare at the words as new pictures of fake people come into focus behind my eyes. The dryer stops; I pull the clothes out and fill the dryer with the next load. The new stories are so demanding that I feel overwhelmed: I switch over to read my blog. I poke around for a few minutes and then go back to my correspondence course. Check the discussion board. Pat the cat. Ignore the phone, but get very distracted by it. Stretch.

Think about horses. Think about my future barn. Think about my future horse. Think about the little mare's training. Imagine my barn. Imagine putting up fences, posthole diggers, wire stretchers, hammers and nails. Imagine hay bales and remember that wonderful smell and sweeping it off the floor of the barn out the door to where the horses pick it up with their flapping lips. One stalk at a time they reach for it and pick it up. I miss them. Plan to escape the evil clutches of the subdivision this weekend.

Back hurts; do some exercises. Marvel at my developing strength, and the lessening of the pain. I don't wake up in the middle of the night with a sore back anymore. Run back to the desk and quickly write down another scene that could be used later. For waht? I don't know but it's good and I should find a place to use it. Go back to the novel and write a painfully unsexy awkward scene. Why do I put my fake people through these things? Did I cry that much twenty years ago? Yeah I think I did. Poke at the last third of the business plan again. Remind myself that I've only got two more weeks to go and it's done. Linger over the way this course takes away from my novel writing time.

Get up and smack the dog on the ribcage for a bit. He loves that. He grunts and stretches.

Sometimes Jethro is upstairs sleeping. I go up and smack him on the ribcage. He loves that. He grunts and stretches. Sometimes I have to stay there a little bit longer and then I'm not writing. But I'm still getting ideas. Lots more ideas.

My brain is germinating. Percolating. Expanding and imploding. Back and forth. Incubate. Gestate.

Boil. Simmer.

Believe it or not I've been in an incredibly good mood.

I have no idea how long this will last.

Another Hick Chic Jr Photo Montage!

This is what happens when the girl gets hold of the camera: