First day of school, with style. PICKUP TRUCK HICK STYLE!

The trunks were packed all summer, ready to move back to college, the teenager girl was excited, and the mother didn't need to cry the second time around.  All set.  Except for one big problem: The HONEYBADGER was having a difficulty.  And I'm not just talking about the driver's side window which quit working about six months ago.  (Just glad it quit in the closed position or I'd be driving a swamp.)  My truck eats exhaust systems.   I had my ol' man get a look under it and well, it turns out, there's nothing left to fix.  The crossover pipe between the engine and the catalytic is pretty much cheesecloth now.  The last patch job he did on it held up long enough that I forgot about him patching it up two years ago.  He tried the best he could, but it only made it slightly less unbearable. So we were facing an hour's drive with only one window down for air, and a rumble so loud that teeth rattle and skulls go numb.  AND twice the gas guzzling, because a vehicle with no exhaust is gutless and needs to be stomped hard to move.

Then my ol' man offered to move her there in his truck.

Well!  "Hey, you wanna have Papa take your stuff in the F100?"

"HECK YES!"

The college always has teams of students who've moved in early to help with the grunt work.  You should have seen these kids when my dad and daughter showed up.

Eager 19-yr-old dude: I'll carry everything in if you let me take that truck for a spin.

My ol' man: chuckle chuckle chuckle nahhhhh I don't think so.

Oh yeeeeeaaaahhhhhh!

Last year, backing up to the front of the residence building in the Honeybadger was one of those experiences that normal people would be embarrassed by.  The thing looks like scrap metal.  But we're weird.  We love our nasty truck.  We don't even really think of it as old.  It's only 24 years old.  My dad's truck?  That's old.  Well, most of it.  Parts of it are a variety of vintages.  Our truck is awesome in a defiant kind of way.  

Papa's truck is awesome in... well, every way, pretty much.

Besides being awesome, these two trucks have only one other thing in common: they're both packing a small block Chevy under the hood.

The family that moved in later with a perfect Chevy SS truck with low profile tires and chrome rims?  They think it's awesome.  We'll let them....

Meanwhile, Bucky was planning his own arrival at school.  It's his last year of high school, and he got his G2 licence this summer.  He had to drive himself to school today.  It's only right.  

But he opted not to drive his favourite little VW.  He's taking the truck.  

Why?  

BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME.

Faded paint, peeling off the front fender, dents, mismatched rims, rust spots, inadequate exhaust... the thing runs perfectly and stops, so what's the problem here?

Well heck.  It only takes 20 minutes to drive to his school from here.  I'm sure in that time he won't be deafened.  Or get pulled over.  Or run out of gas.  

STYLE.  That's how we do things around here.  

A slightly embarrassing story about me, a self portrait, and a cardboard box.

As some of you know, a long time ago in a place a little farther away than here, I aspired to be an artist.

And having these arty goals, I developed a strange habit of doing a self-portrait every couple years.  Sometimes more often.  It was sometimes hard to get someone else to sit still for me.  If I had a mirror or two, I could draw myself, and I was a great model.  My face is quite asymmetrical, so I could look different at any angle.  I could have the up-smirk or the down-frown.  It was a great exercise in identity as well, which was a favourite subject of mine from age 12 until... well, I'll let you know when I figure it out.

In high school, my grade 12 art assignment was to create a pastel portrait of myself based on a photograph.  A few girls with some decency and brains chose a cute baby portrait and gave the finished piece to their mothers.  I know, so sweet.  But me, for unknown reasons, chose a school photo from Grade 11, with my awesome layered shaggy hair and my big toothy grin, you know the one, with more teeth showing on one side and the collar of the shirt hanging crooked.  I'm not kidding, my hair was awesome.  I didn't consider myself any great beauty, I didn't have a knockout figure, and I wasn't particularly brilliant at anything obvious, but holy smokes I had great hair.  I didn't colour it or perm it or curling iron it or anything.  It was just naturally awesome.  Maybe that's why I chose that picture.

When it was done, the pastel portrait looked pretty good.  Except for the eyeballs that looked straight at the viewer rather than at the photographer like in the photo, it was decently well done.  It even resembled me.  I handed it over to my boyfriend, who went into his dad's woodshop and made a nice frame for it.  He actually liked it and hung it on his wall.

As newlyweds, we lived in a big crappy apartment on the only bad street in a ritzy town, above a Scottish pub, a Portuguese hair shop, and a cockroach infested Chinese take-away.  The place smelled funny.  (Not funny-haha, funny-bad.)  A few of my high school masterpieces came with us, including my huge crazy abstract painting, which I still cherish and always hang in a prominent spot, and the pastel self-portrait.  A few more joined them as I worked my way through my one year of art college.  Then we moved.

The job offer was in Memphis Tennessee.  Since we were facing a possible 6 months to a year of paperwork to get through immigration, we packed up all our belongings, every single thing, including wedding gifts we hadn't even used yet.  We were young and penniless when we got married, which made us easy to buy for, I guess.  Most of the boxes got stored in a big and mostly unused room at his Mum's house, while a few boxes came with us to the farm.  We lived for six months there, with our cat, in the room I'd slept in when I was a teenager.  Cozy.

Then we stayed at his Mum's house in town a few more months before moving to a great apartment up the hill in the woods, where I ran into all kinds of life changing adventures which you might have to wait to read about.  (I have to go out to the barn and thaw a water pipe, I ain't got all day to write here!)

Years went by. Eventually we moved into the cute bungalow in the subdivision and I got busy chasing my toddlers and unpacking long-forgotten boxes.  And being me, filled that little house to overflowing over the course of 12 years.  Now I've spent this year getting rid of, giving away, and saying goodbye to all kinds of things while I pack up the things I want to keep.

For the second time in my adult life, I am moving in with my parents.  This time I'm bringing two children, a dog, a cat, soon a husband (same one!) and every last one of my pared-down possessions.

Squeezing two houses into one is not easy.  It takes a lot of tough decision making, especially for two women like my Mom and I, who both like our THINGS.  There's been a lot of purging.

In order to find storage room for some of my valued things, I need to clear out the old apartment/ summer kitchen on the back of the house.  The last tenant moved out years ago, and since then it's been used to hold the freezer, recycling boxes and lawn furniture over winter.  But you know what happens when you've got a big empty room, right?  It's gonna get filled up with stuff.  Now it's my job to clear out that stuff.

Yesterday I pulled a large box off the stack.  My own handwriting commanded that this box be stored at my mother's place.  It appeared to be full of brown packing paper.  On closer inspection something appeared to be wrapped in it... I pulled some of the paper away.

I saw the handmade wooden frame and the strands of awesome hair in the picture.

I set the box down.

I didn't have time to dig into this.  I had to pick up the kids from the bus stop.

I felt kind of disoriented though.  This box had been there since... when did we leave our crappy apartment?  1992?  1992?

It's been out there for seventeen years????

I was just thinking or dreaming about that picture.  I dream so much I often can't tell if a memory is real or dreamed.  Never once did I realize that I haven't seen that thing in ages.  I didn't wonder where I stashed it all these years.

It's been on my mind now since yesterday afternoon.  I feel like a total slob for leaving it there for longer than my kids have been alive.  I wonder what the heck else I've hidden away.  I wonder if I'll ever find that skull collection I hid in the barn when I was a kid.  (Relax, they were rodent skulls.  I was a weird kid but I wasn't dangerous or anything.)

Today I must tackle that old apartment/ summer kitchen, because there are a few more things to come to the farm, and time's running out.  I need room.  I'm going out there with a jackknife to cut up cardboard boxes.  I have no idea what I'll find.

I do know this: it is embarrassing to publicly admit that I packed up my precious valuable meaningful stuff and then forgot about it for almost twenty years.  What does this say about me?  That I'm forgetful and have a bit of a packrat problem.  I'd be ashamed but I've made it a point to abolish shame.  I will go face my face, haha.  Speaking of my face though...

The portrait is kind of haunting me now.  I mean, think about it.  I drew it when I was about eighteen.  I hid it away when I was twenty-one.  I think I've aged since then -- I can see it, but apparently nobody else does.  I've gotten used to being carded at the beer store.  I try to be flattered by it.  Just yesterday I got asked if my daughter and I were sisters, and I laughed it off.

But... but... what if I get out there today, take the paper off that framed picture and... find a hideous account of nearly 39 years of cold winters, working outside in the summer, bouts of depression, the stress of living with a workaholic man and not enough income to keep everything fed and paid for?  Every day I go over my face looking for whiskers to pluck -- what if they're all grown in thick and black in the picture?  What if I don't really take after my mother and her father, who didn't sprout grey hair until their 50s?  What if in real life I have straggly witchy hair but it only showed up in the picture?  What if my forehead is creased with visual evidence of all the worrying I do?  What if I have much more than just my cherished laugh lines?

What if there's a murdered heart beating under the wooden floorboards???

Oh wait- that's a whole other story.  Never mind.

Am I Dorian Gray????

(Apparently a movie came out/ is about to be released and I missed out on it.  That's what I get for living under a rock surrounded by cardboard boxes!)

So do feast your eyes on this lovely fella with his fresh new portrait.  I may not look so pretty by the time I turn 39, in like, a week or so.  Wish me luck.

Jethro says I sleep too much.

To which I say, WHAT?  These days I'd spend all day in bed if I could.  Dark of night, sun outside, doesn't matter.  You know, maybe that isn't good.

Maybe I'd rather do anything other than face all this damn work I have piling up.  It's not being lazy, exactly, it's more like um, burnout?  Forced apathy?  Emotional overload?

I'll tell you one thing: moving house has meant excavating layers of sedimentary paper.  I have found some interesting stuff.  I knew I'd always kept my Dracula story from Grade 6, the one Mrs Prosser wrote a very complimentary note on the back page beside my mark, telling me to keep writing.  I had to keep all that proof that I have always loved to write and have always been halfway decent at it.  But then to find all these short stories, written before the computer phase of my life, in big juvenile handwriting, is both heartbreaking and encouraging.

Heartbreaking because I know, and realize all over again, that somewhere along the line I stopped believing in my ability, or maybe (more likely) never really believed it.

Encouraging because I know I've always had it, and still have it.

The handwriting matured, and from the quick glances before shoving it all in a box, the stories improved.  By high school I was starting into all these concepts and big ideas.  If I'd put half that effort into actual schoolwork I'd have done much better, I guess, with the whole report card thing.

Anyways.  I have so much to do and not much gumption to get at it.  At least the sun is poking through the clouds, and leaves don't rake themselves.

I must stir the snoring Pug and make him come outside with me.  Who exactly is it sleeping too much around here???

The New Routine

5:30 am  The squirming and snuffling at the foot of the bed tells me the dog has to go outside and take a wiz.  I realize I do too.  But not outside.

5:35 am   Cat and dog both fed.  Cat eyeballs me playfully from under a chair like she's about to swipe and blasts upstairs to hide.  Dog follows; bed needs more warming up.

6:20 am   If Mom works early, I take her to town so I can have her car later.  Otherwise, I'm back in bed, but probably  not sleeping because my brain is full.

7 am  get up.

7: 07 am Get the boy and the girl out of bed.  I know the boy's been working hard driving tractor and the 4 wheeler and stuff, cuz he is hard to wake up.  In town he was always awake before me.

7:10 am   Take dog out, tie him up, put the fly masks on the horses and open the gate to let them out into the pasture.

7:12 am   The dog and I go for a run around the yard, along the hay field, around the bottom of the south side, and up the hill by the pasture field.  We both run.  Him, almost all of it, me just the hay field stretch.  The downhill part.

7:20 to 8 am  Eat, move the kids through the bathroom while finding time for parents to use it, then getting them through the kitchen ensuring something in the vege/ fruit category goes in the lunch bag.

8:10 am   Git in the car!

8:10 to 8:40  Drive through the country and gawk at all the farms.  There are so many farms around here.  They're everywhere.  Farms everywhere you look.  Only one was for sale, too much land, too much money, and it's already sold.  But there are more!

8:40  drop kids off at school, wish luck, tell boy not to ignore his sister when he sees her, see you at 3 etc.

8:45 to 9:15  tell myself I put them in the right school even if a different one would have sent a bus to our place to pick them up.

9:15 am  to 2:30  pm   Depends who's home here.  Sometimes help mom with groceries or help Dad with whatever project he's working on involving machinery and the great outdoors.  Take Mom to work if she works late.  I always call my husband when I get home.  I miss him.  I'm used to him not being around during the day; I'm used to going to bed alone and telling myself to sleep and not wait for him to come home.  I sleep here with one ear open and can't tell myself he's not sleeping where I am.  I miss him in the morning.  This is hard.

So I make the phone calls and sweep the floor, do laundry, clean the barn, move the pile, walk the dog, remind myself to eat, play with the horses, vacuum, sort through stuff nobody wants anymore, and wonder where the hell the day went and wonder what I got done, because mysteriously, it never looks to me like I did anything.

2:30 pm  Go get the kids.  Drive through the country thinking about how much I kinda like my Mom's Alero with its big General Motors body and half decent stereo and power seat and A/C that works.  But I drive with the window down, elbow out, too fast on the dirt road.  I wave at all the guys on tractors.  They all wave back.

3 pm  I bring a book since I'm usually there a little early.  Try not to watch kids leave the school and wonder who will be friends of my kids soon.  

3:05 outta here

3:30  home, or at least, home we're at now.  If Mom works early, go straight to town to get her.  

4 pm tell the kids they really need to get their lunch bags out, do they have homework, the internet's too slow for facebook right now and let's get outside to see the horses before it gets dark.

5 pm  hopefully I'm outside, with the Pug on his tether-rope watching me do my horsey thing.

6 pm  Mom's got supper ready to go if she's home and we all migrate to the house.  It's gonna be good.  However, if she's at work and supper's up to me... it's gonna be canned.  What?  Pretty hard to train a horse and cook supper at the same time.  Just sayin.

7 pm  to 8 pm   Either getting Mom, or checking off my To Do list, or trying to get in a quick ride before it gets dark.  Oh, and likely doing laundry.  

around 9 pm  Barn.  I love this part of the day.  I take my scoop of cat kibble from the cellar, carrying it to the barn while Larry and Moe trot across the corral, meowing and already purring.  I pour it into two bowls so the brothers don't have to fight.  You know how siblings can be.  

Outside, Phoenix and Copper stomp and snort, pacing the back wall of the barn, but they are not wildly impatient.  The grain goes into the feeders, and I lock the door shut after I return to the scoop to the bin.  Then I open the back door.  Phoenix walks in first, calm and easy, turning the corner into his stall.  The Little Lady is close behind, walking briskly to her stall.  They both know it's rude to trot down the barn aisle.  I lock them into their stalls as I putter around, picking their hooves, sweeping up the aisles, stopping for ear scratches and pats.  

When they're done munching (Phoenix has to lick out the feeder before he considers it done) I unlock their stall doors.  They ease their way out of their stalls and back out into the dark.  I check to make sure all the doors are shut tight, turn off the lights, and give them their last pats of the night. 

10 pm Bark my kids into bed.  Send the dog out for one last wiz of the day.  Tell him he's a good boy because he listens to me when I yell at him to not chase the barn cat.  Hug my kids, pat their backs, tell them gently to get their carcasses up to bed right now darnitall.  Try to keep track of bathroom traffic.  Find the feral house cat rubbing her back against a doorframe, pick her up and coo to her in a baby voice.  Let the Pug back in.  Refill their water bowl.  Clean out her litter box.  Say good night to parents and yell up the stairs to git in bed would ya already.  Charge up there like I'm real good n mad and instead give them hugs and goodnights.  Promise them I'm going to bed too, I really am.

11 pm  Sneak back downstairs, get cordless phone, call husband.  Coo at him in a sweet voice.  Tell him I miss him, tell him what happened today, who each kid ate lunch with, how they're doing.  Hear about his day.  Find something to laugh about.  It's never easy to hang up.

11:30  Sneak some dial-up internet time.  Get frustrated and give up.

11: 45  Realize while brushing teeth that holy crap I'm tired.  Have been for a couple hours.

11:47 pm Find a kid and a Pug snoring in my bed and a furry little cat on my windowsill.  She mews at me.  I pet her and whisper to her.  The moon makes the trees look silvery.  I shove the kid over, because there's no point moving a kid at this time of night.  There's room for all of us.

Late o'clock  Give myself heck for getting to bed so late, but remind myself that I actually get a lot done in a day.  It just doesn't look like it.

5:30 am  Pretty kitty shows up on my pillow purring and brushing her fluffy tail in my face.  Pug whimpers and squirms and tells me it's time to get up....

The New Kid

Tribble is the kind of kid you'd think would have everybody scrambling to be her friend.  She's pretty, funny, smart, sweet, goofy, and artistic.  She has a cool fashion sense and just enough weirdness to be irresistibly interesting.  

She amazes me, and not just because she's my kid and I love her.  She's just amazing.

She has all these friends who are all unique in their own ways, from the Egyptian girl with the big black boots and YouTube following for her animated short films, to the Italian girl who loves horses, to the Sicilian/Irish girl who loves vampires, just to name a few.  This group of kids has always impressed the heck out of me.  They're wonderful.  They don't tease anybody, they aren't into getting blasted, and they let everyone be themselves.

We love them.

Here's the problem: they are in the town we almost don't live in anymore.  Tribble doesn't go to school with them anymore.  

She would likely love her new school except for that one, huge, glaring problem.

She's in contact with them over our super-slow rural internet, and will be in touch for real when we return to our house for the next month or so (getting ready to sell) but in the meantime, she's ready to hate school.

The kids are all "mall kids."  They all wear that Hollister stuff.  They all have straightened hair and obnoxious giggles.  They all stick together.  They text constantly.  They are boring.

Gah.  No wonder I have recurring nightmares.

This kid only changed schools once: last year, when she went to Grade 9.  Could we have picked a worse age to move her???

I am so sure that there have to be some slightly and delightfully weird kids at that school.   This town is smaller than the one she came from, but in my teens, this school was known as the "city school" and the other one in town, which my cousins attended, was the "farmer school."  I've told my kids they have the best of both worlds, living in town, but  spending a lot of time in the country.  They can relate to most other kids.  

I told Tribble that it's only the first day, so the other kids haven't had a chance to get to know her yet.  She says they might not bother because they already have friends. I tell her I can't believe that nobody will bother to get to know her.  She's so awesome.  They just haven't had a chance to find out yet.  When they do, she'll find friends.

I've told her this town is known for being all arty, and full of touristy stuff, so some of these kids have to come from tourist-trappy, arty, entertainingish kind of families.  They've got to be interesting, not?

She's not so convinced.  

By the way, Bucky is his usual cool self.  Hey.  Wtsup.  Cool.  All long curly hair and big feet and grass stained jeans.  It's not easy for him to leave his brainiac nerdy friends but eccentricity clings to him and he likes it that way.  They'll find him.  

I hope she's got kindreds out there.  

Anybody out there end up changing schools at the delicate age of 15?  Any advice for this heartbroken mother?  She cries, I ache.  It's like the cord's still attached, man.  I feel her every move.

After supper I asked her to come out to see the horses with me.  We had a lovely bareback ride in the dirt corral as the sun went down in the pink sky.  Tribble loves her little mare so much.  She neck reined her around with only a hackamore on the Little Lady's head, marveling the whole time at how cute and awesome her little sweet horse is.  

If only that horse could go to school with her, I might have a heart-mending solution...

Oh no, not this again!

Seriously, WHEN will the high school nightmares stop? Last night I was my real self, or at least the distorted dream version, all 38 year's worth of me, throwing lunch into a knapsack while the bus rumbles down the road to my lane way.

I am now going to console myself with a nice Johnny picture.

Okay, that's better.

My kids were going to school with me in this nightmare. I'm not sure if that made things better or worse. It was just a whole other level of crazy.

This is how I can tell it's August... and that maybe I have a few issues left over to deal with.

Oh yeah, and apparently Mars is really close to the earth right now, and with it being the ANGRY PLANET that could explain a few things, right? I don't know.

Am I the only one who has recurring nightmares like this? I can't be. Anybody brave enough to share their brain burrs?

Did I ever mention that I hated school?

Well I dunno, Heidi.  What did you hate about school?

I hated the hallways.  The lockers.  The gym.

I hated the lighting.  I hated the noise.  I hated the curtains in the windows.

I hated the smells.

I hated the homework.  I loathed and abhorred the homework.

I hated the pressure, the expectations, the unsaid assumption that I was somehow not good enough.

But.

I liked the books.  

I liked paper and pens.

I liked to write.  I actually liked essays because I got to write.

I really loved learning.

Most of the time I liked art class.

I liked my friends.

I liked boys, and the school was full of them!

I liked my locker once I had it full of all my rock star pictures and horse pictures and funny little tag that came off a bottle of peach schnapps that one of my friends smuggled into the school but that's not something we'll talk about here... let's not do too much digging up of the past now...

So she's off.  First day of Grade 9.  She's there right now, with her long legs and British knees, dressed in three different shades of green (mint, forest, and lime) with her big eyes lined in black.  Last time I saw her she was dumping her giant purple knapsack on her desk and flipping her crazy long bangs off her cheek.

She's got math for homeroom.

I hope everything goes uphill from there.

The school's government has already pissed me off with their incompetence and stupidity.  I dutifully filled out my parent survey sheet after the assembly, including such comments as "Couldn't you find a better way to organize the registration process than to yell out names among a chattering crowd?"  as well as, "It would be helpful to hand out a readable map of the school" and let's not forget  "How about conducting tours with a teacher guide who can speak loudly and clearly while staying out of the way of three other groups, all of whom are speaking loudly."  First day and already I am a pain in the ass end of the school. 

I think I might hate high school more than she does.  And that's really okay.

Taking Steps, Missing Steps, Stumbling, and Moving Forward

Because I compare everything in my life to horses, I've been thinking about my daughter's education and the horse training I've done.

Last night was Girl's Grade 8 Graduation.  Yes, she was lovely.  Exquisite!  She looked so cute in her black and pink polka dot dress: very pretty and elegant, but not too grownup.  She smiled, she stood up straight, and she walked in those high heels like she'd been doing it for years.  (Actually, she has. She's grown out of all my high heeled boots so she had to get her own!)

I was so proud of her.  And I had so many conflicting emotions during the ceremony.  Any mother will feel that her kid ain't ready for big bad scary high school.  I really honestly feel that she is ready.  BUT.  I've had many long conversations with her school about her math problems.  She's smart enough to get good marks, but those marks don't show her frustration and discouragement.  It doesn't show that after years of not quite getting it, she kind of doesn't give a crap about math anymore.  Most of all, those high marks do not show that there are a lot of gaps in her education.

Because of her Attention Deficit Oh Shiny, she was in Unicorn Land when certain mathematical things were being taught.  Anybody with ADOS will tell you that there are complex coping strategies invented to get through life in a Focused Punctual Organized World.  She's got a huge network of inventions.  She could have fooled her teachers but she couldn't hide if from me.  

So here we've got a child who could potentially have massive problems next year.  I don't intend to let that happen.  I spent an hour and a half at the school this afternoon, hashing out a plan to get her the special help she'll need in Grade 9, getting the paperwork together, finding out who I speak to next.  I have my own coping strategies.  When my hands started shaking with anxiety around the 70 minute mark, I placed them on my neck, or in my lap.  I sipped water to keep my mouth from drying up.  I found spaces in the conversation to exhale so that I wouldn't hyperventilate.  I blinked when my mind wandered.  I hated doing this meeting.  It had to be done.  My daughter is missing a few important steps in her education.  I have to make sure this gets solved.

I'm her mother.  Nobody loves her like I do, or cares more for her future.  This is what I do for her.

So now you might be wondering how this relates to horse training.  Let me tell you about a petite mare who you know as the Little Lady (even though that isn't her real name.)

We got her as a tiny little yearling.  She'd been picked on quite a bit by the other foals, which is one of the reasons my friend DW sent her out to Dad's place for the summer.  Well soon we'd fallen in love and I made the deal with my friend for us to keep her.  Instead of paying for boarding the other two horses she sent over that summer, she gave us the filly.  (I always wanted one of my friend's foals, and I'm so glad we got this one!)

She was meant to be my kids' horse.  She has the perfect temperament for it.  However, because of her tiny size and an injury to her hind leg, I waited until age three to start her under saddle. I was too cautious to start her at age two.   

Meanwhile, she had all those steps in place to be able to mentally handle what life was throwing at her: She'd been handled gently and firmly by humans for her whole life.  She knew that she could trust us.  Being led to the barn for a scoop of grain and flake of hay was not much different than being taken into her stall to have a vet look her over. She was never allowed to be rude, but she knew that it was nice to be with people.

Keep in mind, I don't live with the horses.  I knew with my limited time with them, it was going to be a long, slow process to get her trained.

I spent her two year old year doing all kinds of groundwork, but no lunging because I didn't want to run her in tight circles.  I took no chances with that leg.  I draped saddle blankets all over her body, flipped ropes over her back, around her legs, under her tail... all of which she reacted to by blinking those big eyes.  

If her reaction was any stronger, I backed off.  I went back to something she was okay with.  If she didn't like the rope under her belly, I went back to laying it over her neck.  I watched her reactions and body language because that's how she told me how she was doing.  Eventually I saddled her, but just left it there for awhile, maybe rode my other horse while the filly stood saddled and tied to the barn.  Later we worked on putting a bit in her mouth and letting her flap her jaws til she got used to it.  

I might have had a total of four days each month to work on her.  It's not ideal.  They need to keep things fresh in their minds.  I think I got away with it because A) she's smart B) she's not rebellious at all, and C) I had decided not to rush her, ever.  Even if I had to recap over and over, I didn't rush.

The day I first sat on her back was totally anti-climactic. She was tied, in her usual spot, and all saddled up.  I put a foot in the stirrup.  I took it out.  I did something else for a minute, came back, foot in, foot out.  Went away.  Came back.  Foot in stirrup, held the saddle horn and bounced on my leg a little.  Did the whole go away come back thing.  Worked my way up to putting weight on that stirrup, then standing in it, then leaning my body over the seat.  This took about an hour.   That's how slow I went.  Finally I swung a leg over.  I reached down, stroked her neck a few times, talked nice, and then dismounted.  

Then we were done for the day.  

It was tempting to try to ride, but she wasn't ready.

She's seven now, and I realize that her training level really lags behind other horses her age.  She has lovely manners, and she does a great walk and jog.  She steers well, neck reins, and moves off the leg.  She has a great stop.  Her lope is still sketchy, but what she knows, she knows well.  It's very basic, but it's there.

She's got a home with us for life.  She's remained sound and healthy.  She's our kid horse, and will be a trail horse too.  If my kids let her out of their sight, she might even help me teach a few lessons.  She'll never need to know how to run a reining pattern or how to jump a hunter course.  I expect the basics from her, and she'll be fine.  What she knows now, she knows well.  And she's good at it.

So transitioning from my petite mare to my petite daughter... Girl didn't have the benefit of one devoted teacher working with her.  Where Mare showed her knowledge gaps to me quickly, Girl could hide them in a classroom.  I made time to go back a step and make sure Mare knew her stuff before we moved on; Girl's teachers never had that time luxury.  

It would have been nice, and totally unrealistic, if the Girl could have been taught in a similar process to how the horse was trained.  A little step at a time.  Make sure she knows it.  Go back and do something easy before relearning the next step.  This just isn't the way the school system operates.  It can't.  

If I really look for comparisons between my daughter in school and my horse in training, I can see that like the sweet little horse, my kid is smart and easy going.  She has a basically good attitude.  I believe that she can overcome any gaps in her education.  She'll never need to know some things they'll try to teach her at school, but the stuff knows, she knows like it's always been part of her.  What she's good at, she's very very good at.  

The more I move through my life, the more I see that it's all made of up of little steps.  If you try to skip a step, you can fall flat on your face.  I'm doing all I can to guide her along, and believe me, with the mental state I've been dealing with, it hasn't been easy.  But I keep moving forward.  Some days, just getting dressed was the small step.  It's still forward movement! When I was teaching the filly to move forward at my cue, I'd tap her until she moved.  If she so much as leaned forward, not even taking a step yet, I'd let off the pressure and fuss over her to let her know that she did the right thing and I was pleased. It was the smallest step, and the next was bigger.  I've encouraged my child to do her best , not take shortcuts, and build her knowledge on what she already knows well.  I have total faith in her.  

I think we'll talk more this summer, she and I, about those tiny important steps in life and in learning.  She's become an excellent horse-helper and I figure we'll spend a lot of time in the barn together for the next couple of months.  

I have a hope that she'll end up with a teacher in high school who also happens to have trained some horses...

Oh, Girl!

She marched off to school today, bouncing slightly with every step, like she has for ten years.  Today is her last day of Grade 8.  

Tonight is her graduation.

It kind of freaks me out real bad that my tiny 4 year old, who wore pink rubber boots with a dress on her first day of Junior Kindergarten, is now a long legged teenager who has crushes on rock stars and actors and is trying to play Metallica songs on her Daddy's big classical guitar.  She's got ridiculously long legs that remind me of a weanling filly.  She is, impossibly, graceful and goofy at the same time.  She can't lie worth a crap.  Like me, she messes up 90% of her jokes before she gets to the punchline, sometimes because she's already giggling too hard. 

She's taller than me but she's the shortest girl in her grade.  I'm not sure what that says about me or the size of these darn kids today.

We found her a cute black dress with pink polka dots for ten dollars.  She had to get new shoes since her feet have grown in the last couple of months.  Her hair's been trimmed, her grad photos are done, her locker is almost empty.  We've got a new shirt for her little brother; he's even going to wear a tie for this big event.

I tease her that this really shouldn't be such a big deal, since really, passing Grade 8 should be a given.  I mean, even if it takes a few years, you should pass Grade 8.  I still have this attitude that high school is too long.  (This from me, who took 5 1/2 years to finish it...)  But Grade 8, you simply have to get that.  High school is basically an exercise in meeting deadlines while narrowing down what you might do for a living later on, and of course, massive flirting and giggling and heartbreaking and growing.  Surviving high school is a feat.  Even one year there can change you forever.

But you know, when it's your own kid who graduates Grade 8, it's a big deal.  

She's so bright and imaginative.  She's also a total Unicorn Rancher --she'll be doodling or daydreaming or picking her fingernails or anything instead of paying attention in class.  For this reason alone her good marks are a big deal!  She's really struggled to get along in a world that doesn't always understand her Attention Deficit Oh Shiny.  I'm proud of her for trying to cope while never losing her unique personality.  

She and I spent the weekend together, since the guys were A) at a friend's cottage, or B) working.  We had Girl Weekend, which for us means hanging around with horses, puttering in the garden, and watching This Is Spinal Tap.  And yeah, so many things about her life make sense now that she's seen that movie.  (Finally she gets the Bobbi Flekman imitation.)

The Girl really worked this weekend. She got our Current Favourite Pony to lope all the way around the ring, twice, without breaking down into a trot!  Plus she rode the pony down the road to the neighbour's arena, where they did another quick ride!  The kid knows how to handle Ponytude.  She's quiet in the hands, doesn't lose her temper, and uses those long legs of hers to move the pony.  I'm proud of her.  I can't wait to see her with her own horse again.

She also helped with some barn work, and did a little babysitting job.

On Saturday night she slept for twelve hours.  I think she was taller when she got out of bed.  

I know for a fact that this evening, when both of us are wearing our dresses and high heels, she will still be taller than me.  I'm bringing her flip flops in my purse, just in case she gets sick of the heels... I may never be the taller of the two of us but I'm still her mother...

My Abandoned Art Career

It appears that I have a little part of me that hasn't really shown its face here on my Hick Chic blog. Before I made the decision to let myself be a writer, before I realized that I must do something with horses, before I became a mother, I took a crack at being an artist.

It's common knowledge around here (folklore? legend?) that I was the kid with the hair in two braids, wearing my ratty old jeans, hanging around with my ponies, and dedicating myself to writing only about ponies in my Grade 4 english class.

What I haven't made a big deal about is my little side career illustrating my stories.

Looking back it amazes me that I had enough attention span to actually finish those little books I made, all stapled together at the fold and with a dedication page and everything. And yes, the dedication was always, "To my beloved ponies, Beauty and Chocolate." Always.

I loved drawing all the way through school. I have boxes and boxes of scribbles and masterpieces. Even through all of my sickly phases and then my rebellious phases, I dabbled with drawing. I wasn't always good at it. I failed grade 9 art because I didn't finish stuff and came to class drunk a couple of times. I wish I was kidding.

I took art all the way through high school. Sometimes I finished my work on time. Sometimes I hated what I finished. Sometimes I created something that I loved and have carted around with me ever since.

This was one of them.



To get a sense of scale, it's about three feet high and hangs on the wall that faces the front door. Up close it's incredibly detailed.

I still love it. If people ask me what it is, I say, "It's a representation of what's behind my eyelids."

My art teacher in 1988-89 was a towering mountain of a man who referred to himself as Doc. Most kids either disliked him or were afraid of him. I had a fascination/ fear of the lumbering grumpy art teacher. By the time I got to Grade 12, I was going out with a certain long haired guitar freak who happened to be family friends with Doc- they were members of the same Anglican church and had British ancestry in common. This never came up in class. He was just my art teacher. He was a total curmudgeon, sharing his sarcastic opinions and never hesitating to criticize. I snickered at his blistering tirades. I silently agreed with his scathing criticisms- even of my own work. Sometimes, if I had access to a car for the day, I'd bag off the entire day...except for Doc's art class.

He's mellowed a bit in his later years. That abstract painting was a restoration project of his about ten years ago. It had been in storage after one of our many moves and I was devastated that the canvas had been stretched out. Doc was out of teaching and into art restoration. He first inspired that painting and then repaired it.

In my last year of high school, I turned back into a 9 year old girl, because our final year assignment was an independent study of art history and my chosen topic was...The Horse. My art teacher didn't get it. She thought I was nuts. My argument was that without the horse, human history could not have progressed as it did and that there is evidence of their importance in art. I had all the representations to prove it.

This painting was one of my projects this year but damn if I can remember what I was trying to prove with it. Cubism? It's not very Picasso. Art Deco? Who cares anymore? I just like it. I'm not a perfeshnul artist, so I can say things now such as "I like it" as opposed to expounding on its artistic merits.




And yes, it's my horse, the King. It's Champ.

I thought about going into art as a career. I still don't know how I thought that would be a good way to make a living. At the time I was very busily subconsciously talking myself out of being a writer. I believed that people like me didn't get to be published authors. I have no idea now what that means. People like me? Girls? Country kids? Fragile people? I never let myself believe that I could do it. And there's never really been any role model for me that a living could be made with horses. I didn't know anybody who made a sole career in the horse business. I didn't really know if there was a horse business, just a bunch of people who had horses in their backyards and went for rides when they were done with their other work.

Only art was left as a career choice. To my credit, I did know that it wasn't a good one, that I'd have to work way too hard for not enough money. At that time in my life, I figured that was what had to be done. It's all I'd known.

Two months after the wedding, I went to college for a course called Craft and Design. I majored in Ceramics and minored in Textiles. I spent many days hunched over a potter's wheel, covered in sticky wet clay. It was awesome. I really loved that tactile/ visual experience.

The program included Photography, Drawing, and an elective, which for me (duh) was Creative Writing.

In my drawing class I did this, my self portrait, which I am so proud of.





It's based on a black and white photo that one of my friends took of me. That photo session was fun. We messed with the lighting and wore black lipstick. I sketched out the photo and reduced it to lines and shapes, then into hot and cold, light and dark. I scared the crap out of most of the guys in my class. I think they were worried about the safety and sanity of my young husband, who in turn figured they were just jealous.

I loved being surrounded by art. It pleased my eyes and expanded my brain.

But there was one huge problem.

I didn't love it enough.

I found it hard to be creative on command. This was not uncommon, and it's one of the hardest thing for any artist to develop. Even now I have days when I have to force myself to write, but I know now what I didn't know 17 years ago- if you practice, it gets easier. If I write even when I don't feel like it, the next day the words come more freely.

One turning point for me in 1992 happened in my Creative Writing class. My pal Dstewart ("what the F*** is a silent P???? Why can't I have a silent D in my name?"), who was a frightening intellect and had Axl Rose's hair, was the only other Craftie in my class. I wrote an intense story about a girl who is stalked down into a corner while working in the barn, and threatens to bash the hell out of the guy's face with her spurs if he comes any closer. My friend was shocked by the violence in the story. He was impressed with my vivid imagination. After I read it out loud in class and silenced the room for a few minutes, we walked back to the Craftie corridor together. He shook his head. "I don't know why you're doing this, Heidi. You should drop this and write. That's what you're meant to do."

Some day I need to track him down and thank him.

I started probably two or three books in that time. They'll never see daylight. Ever. They were practice.

Meanwhile, every sunny day had me itching to get on the highway back to the farm and ride my horse. A few of my friends commented that I should do something with horses too, out there in the sticks, with a potter's wheel in the barn and a wood fired kiln out back. Sounded great to me. But how to do that when my husband worked in Mississauga, snuggled up in the armpit of Toronto, cleaning up Axl's spit on the studio floor?

College got cut off when Jethro got a job offer in Memphis, Tennessee, and we attempted our move to the US of A , which is another story I haven't gotten into. Maybe someday. Once the dust settled with the immigration lawyer, I no longer had the heart to go back to school. We'd moved back to the farm, where Jethro agonized over which direction his career would take, and I spent all my time with my horse. I felt a black cloud over me and all of our uncertainties with our careers and our homelessness and our young marriage. I took Champ for a ride twice a day, in the pasture, in the plowed field, down the dirt road. That horse got me through a very tough time.

But something else nagged at me.

I was not supposed to be an artist.

My art would come out in a different way. In a couple of years I had a baby and poured all my creativity into her. One of the last self portraits I did was my own pregnant body, about two weeks before my son was born. Between the births, I started writing another book. And stopped. And started again, and finally seven years later I could say that I'd finished writing a book.

Five years after that my husband bought me a computer. The rest is all here in this blog.

I hung onto a few brushes and charcoals. I have sketch books on my shelf. Sometimes I get an urge to draw something and I bust it out. I take pictures with my little Cybershot that I'm reasonably proud of. My pictures and paintings are all in my head now, in that beautiful place where imaginary people have lives and worlds, and all I have to do is observe carefully and choose the right words for them. I don't feel deprived.

The fine line between the WRITER and the WRITTEN

...with today's special guest, "Mort Rainey" who makes an appearance here today courtesy of Mr Johnny Depp.



The last two days have been interesting. I've recovered my missing glasses, who were lurking on the floor beside my bed at the farm, I've given my blog address to two friends from church (Hello!!!!) and realized with a jolt that all those notes I scribbled in my manuscript with red ink did not get done inside the computer!! I've been sending a first chapter to agents that still needed editing!!! Gack! Nooooo!

All weekend I've been reminded over and over that writing fiction can be uncomfortable and sometimes frightening.

I'm basically a liar and a thief!



I make stuff up and I want you to believe it, even though it never really happened. I steal things from real life to tell my lies. I might take a conversation I had with you and use it. I'll twist it and mangle it beyond recognition, but I am aware at all times that any of this could end up in a novel. The closer I get to my goal of being an actual author as opposed to a person who writes for nothing, the more frightened I get that somebody will think they see themselves in my words...and feel hurt by it.

It is so difficult to separate the Writer and the Written.

I do it too, y'know. I had such a hard time with A COMPLICATED KINDNESS. Just this past summer I read two Young Adult novels that made me wonder just how much fiction was involved and how much was thinly veiled autobiography. And I'm afraid to read anything by James Frey.

So how do I face this thing I've created, this monster of words that sits here on my desk with poke marks all over it?



Already from my test readers I've gotten The Question. Which one is you?????

None of them are me. I made them up. However...if I am totally truthful...all of them are me.

Just creating them in my head makes them me. I put little bits of myself into each imaginary person- that's how it's done.

This is what makes me cringe. Even though it's fiction, not my life story, it is so deeply personal and so thoughful that I can hardly separate myself from the work. I tell people it's fake, it's not real, none of it really happened, but I must have had glimpses of it in order to write it. Yes I have a very vivid imagination but I must have observed something like this in order to write it. Right?

Let's see...Mennonite teenagers. Late 80s. No internet, no cell phones, no trained grief counselors working for the public school board. Boyfriends with long hair and motorcycle jackets. Long drives down dark country roads. Photos of a tragically deceased friend. Drug abuse. Sex and everybody's attitude about it. Parties gone wrong. Sitting in church wondering what it's all about. Praying to a God who hopefully hears it, praying desperately that everything's gonna be okay. Watching the world change and feeling completely helpless about the whole thing.

Yeah.

I can see why people would make the mistake of thinking it's my life story.

Finally late last night I put it all together and it's not a new revelation. I've known this for awhile but I can articulate it now.

This is not my life story. But it's the story only I can tell.

I fully expect that this story will offend people and I'm already sorry about that. Not sorry enough to abandon it though. Definitely sorry enough that I'll be prohibiting my parents, sister, many close relatives and church family from reading it! WARNING: this book will offend you and cause you to think cruel thoughts about the author! Do not read! Ignore the book and love her anyways!!!


And on that note, Mort and I have work to do. Mort needs to just write something. He needs to put down the slinky, stop stalking his imaginary people, and hit a few keys on his computer. Get busy, Mort. I will be checking up on him later to make sure he's staying at it! As for me...I have to go fight the bear and bring home the bacon...or something...and I have about 355 pages of red pen marks to enter into my computer.




This'll keep me busy for a few days. I need to get this done so I can keep on with my Quest For A Literary Agent. Plus, y'know, I have to be there for poor Mort while he frets over his cheating wife and shakes that writer's block!





I want to hear from you though-- how much do you think of the writer when you're reading something? Do you wonder how much of the story might be based on real life? Do you believe in the power of a writer's imagination? And most important of all, when I finally do get that place in the country, where none of the neighbours are close enough to see me, should I lurk around in a nasty old bathrobe while I write???? Or should I stay in my barn clothes all day?

Farm Boy Friday

Confession: I never went out with a farm boy. Ever. I had farm boy neighbours. Rode the school bus with them. Went to church with them. Never dated any.



Actually, I never "dated" anybody. Just went on lots of long car rides. (And yes, as a matter of fact, I actually have written a book about it!!!)

I don't regret my lack of a farmer's son boyfriend though, since quite a few of them were related to me. You think I'm joking? I'm not! Twenty years later, most of the neighbourhood is Dutch. My daughter, when we move back out there, has a very high chance of going out with a nice Dutch boy. They're all quite tall and fair skinned, have neato tractors from Holland, and go to church a lot. Not that I expect she'll go out with a boy I approve of. She is half-me, after all.

Nope, I never gravitated towards the respectable type. Looking back, I can see a definite pattern:

-pretty eyes
-loves music
-unruly hair
-as my dad would put it, "a s**t disturber" which if you're a farmer is not good because you want all your s**t in one place so it's easier to move later
-an absolutely worshipful look in his eyes when he sets them on me

I didn't ask for much and I married the third one who came my way!

Now I have a thirteen year old daughter. She is me, only more. She's taller than I was at that age- she's eye to eye with me right now. She's prettier than I was. Smarter. Has a better singing voice. She says all the boys in her class are rude and mean and they like that hip-hop music so they're totally out of the running. I can't wait to move her out to the sticks, so the boys have to work a little harder to get to her. Jethro's looking for a house with a porch big enough to stand on and look intimidating.

Well...one day, just a few weeks ago, we were shopping at my favourite store, TSC. They have a new, awesome clothing line called Farm Boy and Farm Girl. On a big poster above the T shirt rack, right there in all his glory, was....





...................AN AUTHENTIC FARM BOY...........................




We both stared. I think our jaws were both hanging.

ME: Sweetie...I think we have to move out to the country. Soon.

GIRL: Yeah....

Now just for the record, there were some good lookin kids in my youth. I had brief fleeting recurring crushes on a couple of the guys in my class. No, not the ones who were my third cousins. I don't think. Anyways. By the time I got to high school, there were tons of handsome young men who could drive a tractor and make your heart flutter at the same time. Going to church was a total blush fest. You wouldn't believe how good looking those guys were! What was I thinking? I could have married a fine lookin fella who would have wrapped me up in 100 acres of love!

But no. There was no question. By the time I was 18 I was totally lost on this big, grinning, pale skinned, long haired, rock dog. Not the son of a farmer. Son of an immigrant Englishman who taught high school shop. Not a country boy, but a small town boy with the feed mill on one side, beer store on the other, and a chicken coop behind.


I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I got what I wanted.

But my Girl...




I'm just saying.

Maybe moving out to the sticks won't be such a difficult adjustment for her?


Look at you, you cute Farm Boy! With your pretty eyes and curly hair and perfect stubble on your perfect chin.




And them big hay bale flinging arms.

And the way the stylist carefully sprinkled little bits of hay chaff on your T shirt.

Dang.

Obligatory Friday Blog Post

And then I have to get to work. Not house work. I have do finish some things. Some words. My brain is slightly less melted than it was yesterday!

And when I get the words done, when I get the letters written and the words sent off to where they're going, then, and only then, will I tackle the mess in the front hall and yes, yes, I will fix up the mess on my bookshelf.

This is not writing:


This is procrastinating!

Sometimes you have to consult your muse.



Sometimes you need to find the right equipment to do the job.



But no matter what, you have to get finished.



It's hot outside.



brain melt.



I dig deep for inspiration and I find it.

It comes from everywhere. Some finds its way into the words and some doesn't.


























I really do hope that some day all of this will make sense to you.

Back to work for me.

Darn Teenagers: Reading and Writing about them...

Two more book reviews over next door.

My Second Boyfriend

It was February 1986. He was the new kid.

I walked around the corner on my way to the cafeteria, and there was a young man standing beside my friend’s brother. I’m not kidding. He was 15 but looked 18. He was already 6 ft tall, had shoulders as wide as a doorframe. His curly black shaggy hair spilled over the collar of his black leather motorcycle jacket. He had sparkling hazel eyes and of course, yes, there is a pattern here, black eyelashes. I didn’t breathe for a few seconds.

He smiled at me even before my friend introduced us. And the rest is history.

Danny’s life hadn’t been easy. He was traumatized by his father’s death seven years before, he had a hard time in school, and he’d already had a nasty little cocaine experience that put him in the hospital. He’d also been in some kind of juvenile detention situation. We had some badass characters at our school. Country kids come in two types: nice kids and total badass punk asses. But Danny had a tattoo. Back then, nobody under 25 had a tattoo. He had snarling Dobermann inked over a scar from where somebody had stuck a knife in his arm. I had no reason to not believe any of it. I mean, who the hell inks a tattoo onto a 14 year old kid?




I was not his first girlfriend, either.

It was two days before Valentine’s day and at the big dance dance the next night, we were completely in love. The next day we found each other and floated down the halls, holding hands, grinning sloppily.

Understand that a kid like him doesn’t show up at a rural high school and not make some news. It was a big central school, with at least 1000 kids in it. But the students were from a wide radius of neighbouring towns. Moving from one town to another could keep a student in the same school district. He was new, different, and dangerous. There were girls flirting all over him. Preppy girls, metal girls, pretty girls, older girls.

And he picked me.

Little, goofy, scrawny, me. The pastor’s granddaughter. Odd, misfit, flat chested, awkward me. I was not cool, or hip, or gorgeous. And he picked me!

He wrote me long barely legible letters instead of paying attention in class. He was funny, and passionate, and deeply troubled.

He would let me wear his denim Levi’s jacket with the Pink Floyd The Wall carefully drawn on the back. The jacket smelled like smoke and whatever that cologne was. Are you kidding me? Cologne. He was from a different planet.

He made funny faces all the time and sang out of key in his deep young man voice. His voice was lower than most other guys, but in goofy moments he’d break into a bubbling giggle. He was emotional. He could be extremely dark and he couldn’t hold still until he fell asleep.

He introduced me to Led Zeppelin. I will forever love him and be grateful to him for that.

We spent long hours listening to music. He wasn’t a musician and had no aspirations to be, but he was a huge fan. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music between 1968 and 1978. He loved U2 and XTC and INXS - all the letters bands. He knew about British punk and American punk and mod and new wave, and was a connoisseur of heavy metal. He liked to misquote lyrics in those rambling disjointed letters he wrote me.

I was so crazy about him. I mean, I was frighteningly, violently, stupidly crazy about him. My emotions actually scared me sometimes.

Love is not always sweet and caring and pretty, and my love for Danny taught me that. Love really can make you feel like your heart is being ripped out. Being in love like that, in the middle of your teens, grows you up pretty damn fast.

We were boyfriend- girlfriend for a year. In that time we had a lot of laughs and fights and taught each other some hard lessons about life. Two mercurial people like us could not stay together and survive. When we were done with each other, we had thoroughly broken each other’s hearts.

There’s no way I can tell you everything about that volatile year and I wouldn’t anyways. Some things have to stay in my memories and I would never want to violate his privacy by spilling all the details.

I will tell you this though. You don’t spend such an influential time in your life with somebody and then forget about him, not in my family. Eventually, after the hurt cooled, he started bringing his new girlfriend out to meet my parents. He started chatting about cars and music with that new guy that had started hanging around with me.

In 1991, he came to my wedding and I went to his.

I wish I could say that we were still good friends but I haven’t talked to him since a phone call over two years. He was not doing well. My mom hasn’t seen his wife around town much lately. They haven’t seen Danny at all. I won’t pursue it and try to find out because even though we were all on good terms, there’s still something awkward about the fiery teenage long lost love coming back looking for him. So I’m staying out of it while we all hope, all of us, that someday he’ll call up my folks and let them know if he’s okay.

It was nice talking to him last time, even if he was having a difficult time. We laughed about some good times. I found myself apologizing for some of the nasty things I did and said way back then. He laughed softly. It was the same laugh from all those years before, only now it was even deeper than it was then, and roughed up with more years of smoking and drinking. “It’s okay Heidi. We were kids.”

He’s right.

Wherever he is... I hope he’s okay and like I said, I’ll always thank him for the Zeppelin.

My First Boyfriend

Donny and I had gone to the same grade school for as long as I could remember, and we knew each other. He was a grade older. He went off to high school and I spent Grade 8 not giving him another thought.

The next year, I was at the high school too. I chewed through a ridiculous amount of crushes, and in my 14 year old drama, believed by spring break that I’d never ever ever ever have a boyfriend.

I wish I could remember what got us together. I have a vague memory of a friend intervening with messages between us of liking and interest.

Soon we were holding hands and smiling at each other and writing pages of notes back and forth to each other.

He was painfully cute. He wasn’t much bigger than me. I doubt he was much more than 5’2” at the time. His hair was jet black and his eyes dark dark brown. His eyebrows were perfectly shaped and yes, he had those gorgeous black eyelashes. His skin was light brown. He was a little punk, seriously. His hair was chopped off in ragged edges and he wore those cheap rubber toe cap sneakers. His clothes were ripped up and held together with those iron on band crests.

I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I hadn’t noticed him in grade 7.

Probably because he was a total smart mouthed snot nosed little punk ass.

Which, by the time I got to Grade 9, had started to very much appeal to me.

This being 1985, he loaned me mix tapes with the Clash, the Sex Pistols, U2, and the Cure. We haunted thrift stores together and bought matching mustard yellow men’s shirts. We sat together in the school cafeteria holding hands. He kissed me cautiously at first, and eventually we were smooching under the stairwell across from the Agriculture classroom. I don’t know why he took Ag. He wasn’t from a farming family. He wrote the final exam with his fingers because he didn’t bring a pen. What a smartass. I adored him. I’d never touched somebody else’s tongue before. So, so careful. So curious and afraid.

We were darn cute together too. If we’d stayed together forever, we’d have had tiny petite brown eyed babies with olive skin and waves of thick dark hair. They’d have been gorgeous too. Just like him.

Never once in the four months of going together did I meet his parents. My sister knew them, because she was casual friends with his little sister. In a small place like that, you’d be friends with someone just by default, just from being in the same class. We heard weird stories about how detached the mother was and how rude the father was. There was a brother too, who was less than a year older, bigger, and way more badass. Donny sometimes dropped by our farm on his way hitchhiking down the road, but never stayed long. He was the only kid I knew of who was more poverty stricken than me. He also had more pride than he knew how to handle. If he couldn’t pay his own way, he wouldn’t go.

I broke up with him that summer.


I wasn’t as in love with him as I thought I was, and I felt like I had to let him go before things got too deep. I didn’t think it was fair to him to keep it going. But I felt awful. I felt like I broke his heart. I second guessed my decision but it was done.
He really liked me. All those summer days that we were alone together and I knew damn well he wanted more than kisses but he never forced anything.

I have no idea where he is now and I hope wherever he is, he’s okay. He’s a good guy, deep down, just a kid with no self esteem from a messed up family in a small town.

The last time I saw him, we were at a bush party. He looked different. His hair was longer, all one length, and he was about four inches taller than me. He still wore his beat up leather jacket and he was still beautiful. We stood there chatting while my boyfriend at the time was in a situation involving beer, shouting, punching, and the biggest meanest metal head in the area.

Little did I know at the time that I was in the company of my ex boyfriend, current boyfriend and future husband that night. But that’s really another story.

I’d like to see him again because I don’t know if he realizes how special he was to me. Wherever he is, I hope he’s found his way, and I hope he’s found a little woman to care for him like he deserves.

What's not to love?

Yesterday's last picture showed off something I noticed the first time I met the cute guy who would end up being my husband: his eyelashes.

He has got the most beautiful eyelashes in the world. Like, I fight to not be jealous of those killer lashes and just admire them instead. Long, black, curved, corner to corner. Almost incongruent on a big shouldered hulking guy like him. He slays me.

So that was one of the first things I saw the day I met him. I've always been an eye person. I used to spend a lot of sketch book pages drawing people's eyes. The best thing about young Jethro was that his lovely eyelashes framed a set of gorgeous greens.

He had shaggy long black hair and he was kinda chubby. Seems after the demise of his rock star career a couple of months before he'd hit the kitchen pretty hard. He had just turned 18 and very recently taken up jogging as a spare time hobby. He was just slightly cool in an offputting kind of way...just the tiniest hint of arrogance that I found inexplicably irresistible.

But he was cool. Casual. Unaffected. He leaned against the wall of lockers with one giant Converse sneakered foot resting on the other. We chatted. I wasn't instantly in love but I had a hard time deciding if I should stare at his eyes or his top lip. I already had a boyfriend. I wasn't looking for anything. But I liked him.

A few months later, he showed up at school all friggin hung over. He wouldn't take his shades off and I laughed at him. We were all hanging around in the corridor outside my classroom. Somehow I managed to break him down and slowly pull his mirrored aviator shades off his face. He was a little bloodshot and absolutely goofy faced.

But still way too pretty.

"Are you wearing eyeliner???" I asked stupidly. He stared at me blankly for a second and then laughed at me. He was done with the eyeliner phase of his life. The glam rock thing lasted about two months for him before he got really really sick of it. Those long black eyelashes were totally natural and god-given. I was very close to his face. I liked what I was looking at.

But I can't show you how pretty he is because it's almost unbearable.



No I'm serious. I cannot unleash his appeal on my readers, you are not prepared. You can never be prepared.





Oh heck. I hope you're sitting down.














I know. I know.



stunning.



Here's the amazing part: when I was 16, I had no way of knowing that this 18 year old guy would some day be a 38 year old guy with streaks of silver in his long dark hair... and that I'd find the silver streaks as irresistible as his green eyes.