“his name is Fuzzy!”

Living on our little farm, I have been blessed to witness my children’s love affair with animals. Other than a few snails found in the cat food, or the wolf spiders that stalk our swimming pool, my kids have a genuine affection for all of the hairy, furry, feathery, slimy and scaly creatures we are privy to on our land. Not only do my children love to witness, hold, and pet these critters, but they want to have them. As in, keep them. Inside my home.

My babies all grew up being licked and loved by two crazy dogs much bigger than their teeter-toddling selves. So it seemed natural that as the kids got older we would take the next step in pet ownership: we bought a gold fish. Things were running pretty smoothly at that point. The kids were responsible for feeding the fish and I was responsible for feeding the dogs. It was simple really. Then, on a cool and cloudy day when I was minding my own business, I discovered a very sick black kitten squeaking piteously under my van. Following equally pitiful squeals from my daughter, “Mama, pwease, pwease can we keep the kitty?” we decided to at least nurse the poor thing back to health. One week later and one bottle of eye drops down, much to the delight of my very responsible four-year-old daughter Brooklynn, we owned our first farm cat. Six months later, our kitten had kittens.

Watching our cat grow round and, for lack of a better word, leisurely, was great fun for us. We remembered seeing a large gray tomcat around the property a month or so back and guessed why our formerly playful, romping kitty was suddenly more interested in lounging on our porch steps. A gentle palpation of Miss Blacky’s belly confirmed our suspicions. We called our vet that very day in order to schedule for the post-pregnancy spaying, and our ultimate lesson in animal husbandry had begun.    

Four healthy kittens were delivered in the wee hours of a Friday morning, on a full moon. I remember this only because I had gone to a Harry Potter premiere with a friend that evening, and had arrived back home at 3am to see Miss Blacky standing in front of the garage meowing strangely. Her belly felt especially heavy as I picked her up and I could feel her little ones writhing around in there like earth worms fresh from the soil. I locked her in the garage that night and woke the following morning to the sweetest little peeps coming from the far corner of the garage. I found four squeaky clean kittens, sleek and talking, with one stillborn disturbingly silent and frozen beside them.

As a self-professed dog person, I have come to adore our cats. We still have Mama Cat, as we so fondly call her now, and a couple of her babies. Squirtle and Summer found a new home at a farm one town over, while Little Blacky and Nala continue to roam our property as if they own the place. Mama Cat thinks she is an indoor cat, though she has never spent more than fifteen minutes in the house. My allergies are not conducive to indoor cats and I also prefer to find her dead presents (moles, birds and the like) outside rather than inside.

So in the blink of an eye, our home became a little farm. In the past three years we have experimented with many different pets. We currently have two dogs, three cats, several chickens, a horse, a bunny and various snakes, lizards, turtles and pond minnows found on our property. We had ducks a couple of years ago, but have definitively decided we will never try that again. A Jurassic-sized turtle in our pond picked them off one by one, and I made the executive decision that that circle of life need not be repeated for three small children and a mother with a soft heart. (See my blog post from April 2012 love and lost: our duck hell http://www.todayisagooddayformarshmallows.blogspot.com/2012_04_10_archive.html

This spring we welcomed our first bunny onto our farm. His name is Carlos, and he has taught me the delight of rabbit ownership. Best bunny ever. He jumps around our screened porch from pillow to pillow, eating carrot bits from my daughter’s hands. Mama Cat naps next to the bunny hutch each afternoon, which only seems fitting since they are the two most docile and sweet natured pets that we own. The fact that they both belong to my daughter, the most sweet-natured person I know, also seems appropriate.

Toads hop in our garden, barn swallows nest in the barnyard, and a cute little bird family has set up shop in our fern outside the front door. Even with dogs barking, cats stalking from the roof, and the constant slamming of the screen door as people come and go, the little bird family seems happy enough. When I find myself lounging on my porch, surrounded by this menagerie of pets, loud cacophony of nature, and peaceful laziness of safe animals playing, I realize that this is exactly what I had hoped for when we bought this land. On a daily basis I find nests built with hair from Daisy Girl’s mane, collect fresh chicken eggs for our breakfast, and always have a dog or kitten willing to rest a tired head on my lap. It cannot get any better than this.

Here’s the zinger: when you open your arms and your home to so many animals, and consequently wind up with so many pets, there is bound to be the bit of wildlife that comes home to you that you wish had not. You know the type: slyly held in your kid’s hand or stuffed into their pocket, sneaked in when you are not looking. It is the critter you could have done without. Well... his name was Fuzzy.

It was seven in the morning on a school day, and I was in the shower. My husband was seeing to the last few minutes of breakfast with the kids before I was to pack them in the minivan and take them to school. As I was applying my conditioner I heard the bathroom door fly open with a bang and Brooklynn proudly announced with a happy screech, “Mommy!! His name is Fuzzy!!”

What?!?

I pull the shower curtain aside to find my daughter gripping one of my kitchen Tupperware containers. Inside is a ratty, grey fieldmouse. It seems that on her way out to feed her kitties that morning, Brooklynn heard squeaks of terror coming from the bushes that line the front porch. To her utter dismay she found her cat Nala with a little grey mouse in his mouth, playing with the mouse like a kid plays with a lollipop. Screaming bloody murder, she rushed to her daddy and insisted he save the mouse. He obliged. Then he put the mouse in a kitchen container, handed it to my daughter, and left for work.

From my position in the shower, hair conditioner still in the palm of my hand, I answer her, “Brooklynn...did you say Daddy just left for work?! After handing you a potentially disease carrying rodent to deliver to your mother in the shower?! I thought so.”

Needless to say, Fuzzy (as he was so lovingly referred to due to his disheveled and quite frankly nasty appearance) was dropped off a mile from our home. We found a quiet little spot in the woods with some shady trees, a little stream, and some pretty wildflowers growing nearby, which seemed the perfect place for a mother to convince her three children to offload an unwanted fieldmouse. Of course we still look for him when we find ourselves on that walking trail. He will forever be remembered as part of our farm family, whether he resides here or not.

“Homegrown kids” I call them. Kids who know that their breakfast eggs do not come from a Styrofoam container at a drive-thru; Kids who know that the cats need to be fed rain or shine, on warm or bitter cold mornings, whether you are sick in bed or not; Kids who know the songs of nature as well as they know the Top 40. Giving them these experiences is not without stress or hard work. In fact, it can be extremely stressful and is mostly hard work. No one wake up with the sun and wants to muck a horse stall. Yet our love for these animals endures and the wish for more never ends.

Today I received a letter from my son, Tristan. It read, “Dear Mom, I really want to have a bearded dragon for a pet...”

And so the fun continues.

sneak peek

The first thing I want to do is formally welcome all my new readers. The number of blog hits on my webpage doubled between January and today, even while I took a break from mommy blogging. Tracking where you have come from these past six months has been fun and educational.  It assured me that I still have my Top Mommy Blog status, www.topmommyblogs.com which is very important to me, and it also showed me what topics you are most interested in reading about: crazy farm fun and motherhood anxiety.

As with everything else in this great big beautiful world, motherhood is messy. It is equal parts stress and joy, frustration and love. Therefore, while brainstorming my next Big Book Project I discovered that I actually have two projects in the works.

The first, with witty charm and plenty of sunshine, will be called Homegrown Kids. This book will be a compilation of essays focusing on the pure joy I find sharing my life with three fun and lovely children and the crazy adventures we have on our little hobby farm. Brandon and I have chosen to raise our children with  an emphasis on healthy homegrown or locally grown food, animal husbandry, and downtime spent leisurely on our pond, in our porch, on biking trails and around a campfire. Just this morning my children found a baby red-bellied water snake, a rock lizard, a garden toad, and three disgustingly huge tomato horn worms in our backyard. In just thirty minutes. My “homegrown kids” are also videogame junkies and snack food fanatics. This book will hopefully set the record straight as to how we manage to live honoring both realities and also might explain how and why we choose to ”live like Aunt Jemima,” to quote a friend.

My other book project is near and dear to my heart in a very different way. Today Is a Good Day for Chardonnay - A Mother’s Admission, will be a painstakingly honest memoir about my struggles suffering with stress illness. Mine is a life where Xanax has become a reality; as has yoga, meditation, long walks, and the occasional glass of wine when nothing else works. My own health issues are complicated by the fact that although my children are lovely they are also terrible sometimes.  Yes, I said terrible. They bicker non-stop, commonly get physical with each other, and are obsessive compulsive over electronics. This is in direct contradiction to their mother’s desire to have a happy home, so you can imagine that conflict arises from time to time. I am acutely aware that 99.9999% of you can relate to these stresses, some of you are hardwired to find peace in the chaos, while the amygdala housed within my brain tends to head straight toward despair or anger. That complicates things.

So why do I feel the need to share the nitty gritty with you? Because in my heart of hearts I believe that no one wants to read about the perfect family. But everyone wants to know that the imperfect family can still be very, very happy.  Our kids antagonize each other endlessly while swearing their love and devotion to each other in the same breath. My husband and I have many differences of opinion and differing abilities to stay calm, yet we share similar hopes and dreams for the future and a deep desire to see this marriage through. I will cover it all. Unless my hubby deems it Too. Much. Information. Oh yes, I give him editing rights. That is part of the “seeing this marriage through” bit.

So to make this easy for you all future blog posts will be tagged either Homegrown Kids or Chardonnay, to guide you should you prefer one topic over another. Please keep in mind that although you may not suffer from a psychosomatic pain syndrome, most of us moms deal with stress in one way or another. I will cover topics both specific and broad. And although you may have never dreamed of wanting to muck barn stalls or grow your own summer vegetables, there will be much to laugh over and enjoy in my twenty-two pet farm-related posts.  

And remember, if you enjoy my blogs please share them with your friends.

Happy reading & God Bless,

Kristi

 

Cheesy-sausage legs? Hell no.

We are fourteen days into the New Year. That means we are fourteen days into our New Year’s resolutions. Some of us are making incredible changes, while others of us are fourteen days into failing to make changes at all. As my political lean goes, so go my resolution successes. I’m a moderate.

As I drive through town I notice that every gym parking lot is bursting with cars (not mine), and at the grocery store yesterday I was shocked to find the spinach and leafy greens shelf almost empty. Never ever have I seen that before. Like ever. (A shout out to Taylor Swift here, from my daughter.)

Ninety percent of Americans make resolutions for the New Year, while only thirty percent are still working on them come May. We all do it differently. Some of us set specific goals such as no late night eating, while others favor to-do lists to jumpstart spring cleaning or household projects. Regardless, our resolutions are all in the flavor of having a fresh start.   

I find that the New Year feels like the ultimate cleansing shower.  I begin by officially forgiving myself of the bad habits I fell into, leaving my pre-frontal cortex’s dry-erase board wiped clean. It is similar to the feeling I get after visiting my priest for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is definitely a “Yippee!” moment.

In addition to a sort of exfoliating shower, I begin the New Year with a stiff drink laden with bold hopes and dreams for the coming year. My goals this year are two-fold. Some are on an energetic level, or spiritual level. They are food for my soul. Others are purely physical in nature, and will inevitably give me a run for my money.

I decided not to be too overzealous this year with my resolutions.  In years past I would categorize my goals for the year, listing financial, spiritual, health-related , family, and personal goals. I even prioritized within the categories. It looked really nice and covered the gamut of things I wanted for my life but it felt very unforgiving. It was too black and white, with hard edges and tall cliffs to fall from. In the end I found it scary and repulsive.  So this year I am in a forgiving mood and decided to list only a couple of things that will greatly improve the general health and happiness in our home.  

I came across this quote the other day and have decided to make it my mantra for 2013: “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”  Thomton Wilder said it, and I am going to live it. So first I decided that my heart is not conscious of anything other than survival when I am pursuing high intensity, strenuous physical exercise. So this year, for my physical goals, I have decided to embrace some of my innate comforts. Slow, long, mindfulness exercise such as yoga, meditation, long walks, and farm chores are on my list. I am leaving triathlons to my husband.

As for seeing and appreciating the treasures around me I am looking closely at my precious little family and making goals for more ease and enjoyment out of each day. “Less on our plates” is a physical goal referring to ice-cream portion sizes, while it also encompasses the goal for our family’s calendar. Fewer afterschool activities will leave more time for cuddles with Brooklynn at bedtime, and testosterone-rich activities such as boxing and wrestling for my boys. Daddy gets to referee.  

Another resolution for the New Year involves my hubby. After seeing the movie This Is 40 together over the holidays, we have decided to bring the fun back. Tree climbing, skeet shooting, and trail riding are a few of the ideas we came up with to enjoy each other sans kids. Spending time together uninterrupted by Star Wars conversations will be good for us, I think.

So that is it. New Year, new fun, and happiness in abundance. Oh, and I am swearing off cheese and sausage because I ate so much of it in Wisconsin at Christmas time that I’m afraid my legs might begin looking like cheese and sausage. And no one wants that to happen in 2013.

Xanax has met her match

Dear readers, I have missed you. I feel as though I blinked a bit too long and sixty days of my life have gone by without a record of it having happened. No blog posts, few (if any) emails, and even Facebook has been eerily vacant of my witty ramblings, loveable links, and photo books of the ever-adorable Hellenbrand kids. October has a way of doing this to me each and every year. 

While I was busy running around with an errand list as long as Tolstoy’s War and Peace, girlfriends have begun calling me concerned I am home dying of some fatal disease because why else would I not have joined them for coffee!? TopMommyBlogs.com went so far as to send me an email implying I can no longer call myself a blogger with a recent activity of “None”. It happened when my kids were born, it is happening again: I have fallen off radar. This would be a good time to rob a bank and head to the islands.

Here is the thing…when I wasn’t running around with my To-Do list, I was actually relaxing. Sitting on my porch knitting toys for my daughter, trail-riding on Daisy Girl, leaf-blowing my yard… all of these activities require quiet time to accomplish them. All of them mean I must turn off the ringer on my phone and be in the moment. I wish I could say that I found balance in an otherwise full schedule, but at least I gave it a shot. And although a satellite could not find me these past sixty days, my children could.

For those of you still hoping to hear back from me… please know that I do not wish you ill will. Both my mother and mother-in-law have - in differing degrees of niceness - told me that they are fed up with waiting to hear from me. The tone of their voices suggested that I must be intentionally ignoring them, or trying to hurt their feelings. This is not the case, of course. I have just been detained by my overscheduled life and Keeping In Touch took the brunt of the hit.

Here’s the other thing… I feel guilty already. So guilty that Overscheduled has invited her friend Anxiety over to play. When your Gastroenterologist prescribes you Xanax, it is time to give up the guilt game and rob a bank and head to the islands. Or… schedule more quiet time.

My yoga DVDs are back out in full view, my blogging fingers are taking some time off to work on my next highly anticipated Big Book Project, and my dogs are thrilled with all of the long autumn walks we are going on. Xanax does not fit into my equation, so my phone will be turned off.

As fall rolls into town and trees burn with red and orange leaves, I wish you all peace. Take time to find your island.

sepia

Brooklynn lounges on the old stone steps, smiling at her collection of acorns and acorn bits. “Mama,” she says, “This one looks like a pear, but this one looks like an ice-cream cone.” She licks her lips as though she can taste the delicious ice-cream it resembles. My neighbor Cheryl, tired from a long afternoon of yard work, looks at my daughter with delight. “Oh, I love this girl.” she dreamily states.

Cheryl is a lover of nature, much like my little Brooklynn. With her home nestled amongst acres of Georgia pine trees and wild magnolia, Cheryl feels as though she is already in Heaven. Wild birds sing from the tree tops, squirrels skitter across her stony walk probably looking for the very acorns my daughter is now hoarding in the palms of her hands.

It is peaceful here in Cheryl’s yard. The gradual descent to her home on the long, meandering driveway with the gentle canopy of leaves overhead, feels protective. Miniature stone figurines of children and forest animals reflect a maternal touch, while long-rotten logs and mossy outcroppings suggest a respect for the natural order of things. Her home is suggestive of a carefree life, which of course is too simple an assessment to ever be true. Her yard is a little bit messy, and yet so very beautiful. In all likelihood, a good metaphor for her life.    

From the other side of the yard come the sounds of raucous laughter and the snapping of sticks and twigs underfoot. “Come here Tristan…,” taunts my son Blake.  My boys are having a sword fight, their royal blue school shoes crushing leaves and mushrooms while they chase each other through the underbrush. “No way, you dirty patootie!” Tristan retorts, barely escaping his brother’s blade. Giggles erupt.

My neighbor sits next to me with her hands on her knees, serenely watching my three children make themselves at home in her yard. Her eyes water a bit as she tells me about which trees her son used to climb, or which path a huge Snapping turtle once took back to the creek after laying a nest of eggs in her yard. Her husband, John, sweaty and tired from a day on the tractor, is ready to move from here. Maybe to a piece of land that is smaller or easier to manage, or possibly closer to family. But Cheryl will hear none of it. She grins and tells him to be sure to come and visit her.

We continue to perch on her front steps, the hour seeming to gently dissolve away. A dusty, old photo album now sits on my neighbor’s lap, filled with pictures of her once-little girl in her ballet leotard. My daughter is soaking it up:  the costumes, hair, and makeup, even the strong limbs stretched to impossible heights, puts her in awe of this young lady she has never met. Brooklynn has just begun taking ballet lessons herself, so when Cheryl insists that we buy her tickets to our first performance, my daughter spins her head in my direction.  A look of pride and excitement flashes across her face. Then just as quickly she softly resumes her study of her acorns.

Cheryl pauses for a moment, tilting her head toward my boys deep in her woodlands and then gently on my daughters bent form with quiet chitter-chatter heard barely above the sounds of the forest. “You will miss this one day, you know,” she states simply to me. I slowly nod, gazing at my surroundings. For a brief moment it seems the world is in sepia.

quintessentially my father

First, let me send out a sort of disclaimer. Some blogs have very clear target audiences. For example, If you want to read about couponing, this is not your blog. I spend way too much money buying really awesome food at Fresh Market, and I do not feel one ounce bad about it. Second, some blogs are more like twitter posts than personal essays. If you want to know what I ate for dinner last night, you won’t read it in my blog unless I am discussing hoeing, sowing or harvesting from my garden.

I think of my blog page as my professional portfolio. Full of Individual vignettes, reasonably well-written (we can only hope), about what moves me on any given day. I share experiences that have changed me in some way, or at least given me pause. Some of the moments I share are beautiful ones where I did something right, and others are extremely ugly moments where I seriously failed myself or the people I love. I put it all in there. Unless my husband edits it out. More on this in a future post.

Yes, I want an agent to find my blog page,  read It, and love it. So share it. Send it to your coworkers, your girlfriends, your neighbors. One of them might be an agent, or know an agent. Or a publisher. These are hopeful magazine articles, future chapters in my next book, and (admittedly) ramblings of a thirty-something woman who finds solace and inspiration from the act of writing.

Today I am going to share with you an essay featuring my father. He is my lifeline when I do not know who else to turn to, or when I feel too crazy and nuts to share my worries with anyone else. He listens when I need him to listen and he is brutally honest when I need that as well. He is flawed, but lovely. He is my hero. Enjoy the post, and may God bless all parents.

quintessentially my father

When I was fifteen, my parents decided to divorce. We had a yard sale.

Everything other than some necessities was sold: every Barbie I had ever played with, baby toys from deep in the attic, board games galore. In some way I think of it as my childhood having been sold. Twenty years later, my father has decided to move from his retirement state of Montana to my beautiful state of Georgia, in order to be closer to family. He is packing up his entire life on a small U-Haul trailer and moving into a place one mile from my home. Anything not deemed worthy to make the trip will be sold in a small-town auction next month, meaning that everything from my childhood that is quintessentially my father has a pretty good chance of winding up in a cardboard box being sold in a batch designated “man stuff”, for less than ten dollars.

Now, my dad is a collector. Of books mostly, but he also has many small knickknacks from various interests during his life. For example, he currently owns twelve different wrist watches. One is his father’s watch, having sentimental value. Another one he simply liked the blue color of the face, and added it to the pile. He changes which watch he wears on a daily basis, in the same way a woman changes her earrings. He hopes to add a deep sea diving watch to his collection, for no reason other than deep sea diving might be on his bucket list. I love this about him.

Back in his twenties my father was a navy man. He has saved several memorabilia from those fondly remembered years to include navy figurines, photos of ships, and various trinkets. He also collects things that move him. Some are garage sale finds that simply spoke to him, such as an old fashioned scale resembling his astrological sign Scorpio, or a statue of The Thinking Man that sat in his den for my entire childhood. These items are still in a box in his garage in Montana, from his move there ten years ago. The box is labeled “Dad’s Small Stuff”. These are the things that were not allowed to be on display in my childhood living room, but were allocated to his den, the bar, the garage. I can relate to this, as my husband’s Green Bay Packer stuff and bar paraphernalia is allowed shelf space in our guest room, but not in our living room. It is no wonder that men have man caves.

Thinking over this big life-changing move that my father is making is complex. My left brain books a one-way flight to Montana to help him drive the U-Haul. It calls the babysitter and sets up childcare seven weeks in advance. My right brain has a harder time with things. I am overjoyed at the prospect of having my father so close to us. I am picturing family dinners on Sundays, with Papa Roger in regular attendance. I envision him at the boys’ swim meets and I can picture him surprising my daughter at school for a lunch date. My right brain also has the ability to gallop off to a scary place where one day he won’t be here. Will not be on this earth. See, one day I will lose my dad.

One day I will only have memories and a few of those little knickknacks to remember a great man. A great life. One we shared. So now I see some value to all of that stuff that was only allocated to the den or basement. I feel sentimental about the prospect of him packing up his life. My husband, Brandon, understands. If his own father, heaven-forbid, left us suddenly or simply downsized to a condo for some retirement living, Brandon would be on the first flight to Wisconsin in order to make sure that the contents of his father’s tool shed and garage were not yard-saled away into oblivion. I need to do the same. I need to talk with him about those mementos and the memories they represent. One day they will be all that I have to remind me of the complex, complete man that is my father.

 I do not need a lot of material things, just a few special ones. It would be wonderful if some of the items were able to serve a function here, some book ends maybe.  I am also fine with them only serving as a spark for a dear memory, though: a votive holder from his old desk, or maybe a navy print of the ship he sailed on to show where his love of the ocean began. My boys are magnetically drawn to the ocean, to the endless horizon it offers each morning, maybe they got that love passed down a couple generations from my father. Maybe they will one day set sail themselves.  

So, today I will hunt down a few thousand frequent flyer miles, book a trip out to Montana, and reminisce a bit with my father. I can share with him a few of these memories while he is still around to hear them. He can gift those small items to me rather than some estate person doing the same after the business end of his life is taken care of. I’ll enjoy this more. Less bittersweet and more simplysweet.

So, Dad…get ready for some good times. A few tears, maybe, while we pour through your old stuff, but also an excitement as we prepare you for your next step in this life: where Georgia is your home, Montana is your past and Wisconsin is your vacation destination.

Dedicated to my father, who may inspire my bestseller one day.

Wine Book Barn

Okay ladies, we all read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Upon reading it, we realized that we all wanted to eat to our hearts content, that we should all be praying more, and that somewhere there is a hot Brazilian guy that would sweep us off our feet if this marriage thing does not work out. That is all fine and good except 1) my twenty year reunion is coming up and I want to fit into my skinny jeans 2) praying is hard no matter what and 3) I kind of like my husband and prefer to keep it that way.

So I have come up with Wine Book Barn, instead. This little cluster of words is far more than just words. They are the things that keep me from stomach ulcers, panic attacks and from ringing my kids’ necks. They are my refuge when I am overwhelmed and my lifeline in case I swim out too far from shore.

I know women who hit the pavement for a ten mile run with a group of their best gal pals, and others who seclude themselves in a quiet room and practice yoga. Moving, breathing, and exhaling our troubles are the general idea, of which most of us humans need to do from time to time. That is, unless we fall into the group of people who deny our troubles and worries and wind up stewing in them until we resemble green beans in a southern buffet: limp and lifeless, tasting only of the salt we have simmered in for the past twelve hours.

To read the full post, click on this link http://www.peachstatemomsblog.com/. I am their guest blogger today.  : >