Miss Wisabus » I’m From the Country

Wordless Wednesday – The Old Barn Doors

Elizabeth — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:13:29 +0000

Winter Snaps

Elizabeth — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:01:38 +0000

Sarah the Mule

Elizabeth — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:14:01 +0000

This is Sarah. Well, part of Sarah. She is a mule that has been living at my parents’ house for a little while now. She’s just visiting though, as far as I know. Dad borrowed her from a friend to take on a hunting trip. I visited her when I was home a few weeks ago. Mom told me that if I would just walk out to the south gate Sarah would hear me and greet me.

Greet me, she did, with a loud whinny. I gathered up a bit of dry grass and fed it to her, flat-palmed like Paw Paw taught me when I was little and he had those three huge white horses. Sarah is a friendly mule and has a lot more personality than some that I’ve dealt with in the past. We used to have mules at the house, but it’s been a while since Dad owned one. When I asked him, “Why mules and not horses?” he explained that a mule will not walk you off the side of a mountain. I don’t know much about riding and I’m certainly not going to ride a mule to the edge of a cliff to test this theory, so I’ll just go with what he said.

Dad and I are “phase” people. We get into hobbies in phases, stay there for a little while, then move on. Sometimes we come back to them, sometimes we don’t. With my dad I can think of a few phases that he went through in the time that I lived at home. Mules, noodlin’, sheep, backhoes. Me…crochet, collage, shadow boxes, hydroponic gardening. It’s funny. Okay, maybe just to me. But in this way I am definitely more like my dad than my mom, who can stick with a few hobbies for a lifetime and be absolutely content — and semi-professional at them.

I like Sarah and hope she sticks around. She’s the perfect subject to photograph because she stands there, eager to be rubbed on the neck, and doesn’t complain about the snap snap snap of my camera.

Down Home

Elizabeth — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:26:19 +0000

Granny and Paw Paw’s

I miss it when I’m not there.

Family Photo Outtakes

Elizabeth — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 04:13:02 +0000

While we were back home for Thanksgiving, I handed off my camera to my cousin Jessica so that we could attempt to get a decent family photo. Something that hasn’t happened since my wedding and before that probably not since…well, since my youngest brother decided to start making faces. So, like 1992.

Please note that my dad is not actually choking my mother.

He is, to her horror, picking her up.

I am doing the same thing I did at my wedding rehearsal.

Then it looks like my husband thought about picking up my mother. I don’t think he actually did it. Probably in his best interest not to.

Meh.

Trying to get out of the sun.

My little brother, Ryan, doing his best to ruin family photos since 1988.

Oh, so that gets a laugh out of you guys.

We eventually got a couple of good photos. The Christmas cards are finished and ordered and should be here in a few weeks. When I mail them out I’ll post the finished product here! Thanks again to Jessica. These wouldn’t have happened without you.

The One Where My Dad Gets a 29-Point Buck

Elizabeth — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:51:26 +0000

You probably shouldn’t go any further if images of dead deer (clean, unbloodied dead deer) disturb you. You have been warned.

Here’s your chance.

You can close the page.

Or go on to the next thing in your reader.

Just know that’s it’s not nasty.

I mean, I can handle it and I’m a weanie.

And I’ve seen Bambi.

Last chance.

I knew ya had it in ya.

Saturday, my dad got a 29-point buck that he’d been stalking for weeks. Wahoo! It was a proud day for him, that’s for sure. He says he doesn’t figure he’ll ever get another one like it in his life, so you better believe this fella is going up on the wall.

The other fabulous thing about this? DEER. JERKY. Mmm.

Wordless Wednesday – The Stink Eye

Elizabeth — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:04:32 +0000

Bimbo

Elizabeth — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:26:38 +0000

I promised you more stories about Paw Paw, so here you go.

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time 4 miles down the road from my house, at my grandparents house. Paw Paw is a farmer and a rancher (he’s literally a farmer and a cowman) so he was always a busy guy (still is), but he always had time for me when I was down there. I was often his cow feeding buddy and as I got older you’d sometimes find me belligerently standing in one of the lots, holding a gate, helping him direct cattle to where they were supposed to go.

No matter what, Paw Paw always has a song. The one that I remember him singing to me most often was “Bimbo” by Jim Reeves. Now, I only learned that it was by Jim Reeves a few weeks ago when I looked it up, and then I heard the actual lyrics and realized that all along Paw Paw had been changing them to fit me. Bimbo is really a little boy (Paw Paw made the pronouns feminine) and he had “big blue eyes” (mine are brown and Paw Paw noted the fact in his revised lyrics).

It’s a sweet little memory of mine that I cherish.

Planting the Garden

Elizabeth — Mon, 30 May 2011 10:00:06 +0000

A few weeks ago Kevin and I drove home to attend church with my parents and grandparents for Mother’s Day. We planned on planting the garden that evening, but Dad’s tiller still wasn’t out of the shop. Thankfully, Dad’s pal Buddy’s was.

“We’ve got three options,” Dad said. “I’ll ask Buddy if he wants to sell it, lease it to me, or let me borrow it. But he hasn’t answered his phone yet so we might not get to do anything.”

“There’s a fourth option,” I added.

“What’s that?”

“Steal it.”

They still don’t know where they went wrong.

Buddy answered the phone and I didn’t go to jail that day (hey, I was just really hoping to get the garden done!) and Dad used his tiller to go across the same area that Nannie always used for her garden. Mom and Dad haven’t had a garden in quite a few years, so the soil should be pretty good there now.

The day before, my mom and I had bought a number of plants for our little venture. A little over a dozen tomatoes (a few varieties), yellow squash, zucchini, tomatillos, okra, dill, cilantro, jalapenos, cayenne peppers, and a few marigolds for good measure. When we were picking out our plants, we kept saying to each other that we didn’t want to get too many plants because no matter what, Dad was going to think that we were in over our heads.

So, as we’re plotting out the garden that Saturday afternoon, what does Dad say?

“You didn’t get nearly enough tomatoes.”

We can’t win for losing.

Dad and I used the stakes and twine to make very straight, even rows. Symmetry makes me smile. And like a well-oiled machine, Dad and I went up and down the rows, him pulling back the dirt, me placing a plant, and him tucking it snug back into the earth. With dirt under our nails and a thin layer of dust on our faces from the harsh wind that day, we went back inside to a meal my mom had been preparing. Food tastes even better when it feels like you’ve toiled for it.

Kevin and I drove back home that evening, taking a few back roads to look at some homes that were for sale in the area. Now is not the time for us to buy and it won’t be for a while, but it doesn’t stop us from looking. (Psst…if you know someone in the area south of Norman, but north of Elmore City and accessible to I-35 that wants to sell a house or land to a young couple [who'd like to start their family in the country] for cheap, give me a call. We’d make your old homestead a proud place to behold.)

The next day, Mom and Dad headed out to one of our favorite gardening centers, Pick-Of-The-Day, and picked up a few more plants. I don’t know everything they got that day, but I do know our grand total as far as the tomatoes go.

FORTY-NINE.

Forty-nine tomato plants. I predict a summer of salsa.

The Passing Storm

Elizabeth — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:38:03 +0000

We knew on Monday that Tuesday afternoon and into the evening was going to be a little bit crazy. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m used to these things. Kevin came here from half way across the country and started storm-chasing. We’re not easily spooked by these things, but it was very clear from early projections that Tuesday could be really dangerous. I’ve heard, though I didn’t witness this first hand because I was at work, that certain other news stations in Oklahoma City were saying that conditions were right to produce a tornado that “if you aren’t underground, you won’t survive.” Thanks to whoever did that, because it made my afternoon really, really fun. (We can now see though that if one of these tornadoes had gone through a more populated area that the damage and death toll would no doubt be higher.)

Because there were no storms located to the south of us, nor where there any headed directly where we were going, we headed south to my parents’ house. I know some people think that was stupid. NEWSFLASH: Kevin and Elizabeth are adults capable of making their own decisions based upon a number of facts. We are not ignorant, nor are we children that you should talk down to. It turned out this was a good decision. Like we thought it would be. We grabbed our important documents, I got the wedding photos, my laptop, Blanket, and Clare. She sat in the floorboard and behaved herself all the way home.

We listened to KMGL out of OKC and heard as the tornado ripped through Piedmont and surrounding areas. It already sounded terrible as the storm chasers witnessed it mowing through homes.

There was nothing happening in the sky until we made it to Mom and Dad’s and even then it was just a little bit of rain. We sat around for quite a while, watching the news and waiting for some word on what might be heading our way. Here’s my itty bitty rant about coverage during a storm — just like some (most) people in the metro area get mad when there is ANY kind of break in coverage to talk about a tornadic storm in a rural area, it is equally frustrating when you are IN a rural area and your tornadoes are on the backburner when there is one anywhere in the general vicinity of Oklahoma County. I know there are more people up there. I know the meteorologists are doing their best. And I’m really thankful that Gary England did say something along the lines of there being something capable of producing a major tornado moving directly toward Pernell.

(We’re Gary people in my family. Only not Paw Paw, or so I’m told. But you didn’t hear that from me. My great-grandmother hung these tips up in two different hall closets back in the late ’70s or early ’80s. I think it’s fabulous. We’ve left them there.)

Cue text from Kevin’s brother: Where are you guys in Pernell?

FYI for the world-at-large: WE ARE PERNELL OKLAHOMA. The community is a little bit spread out and very rural and there are lots of people who live all around, but that dot on the map is my parents.

(Please don’t stalk them.)

By the time Gary said that, Dad was already parked on a hill south of the house, watching things roll in. It’s a spot where you can see everything as it comes in to the area. He thought the storm would go a bit north of us, but it ended up taking a little turn and going east.

It was then that we headed to the cellar.

(That’s the cellar on a sunny day, NOT when we climbed down into it.)

I need to tell you that the last time I went in this cellar for the purpose of seeking shelter from a deadly tornado was in 1989. I was four. My great-grandfather was alive and my dad wheeled him out there in his wheelchair. The only other times I was in there was when my Granny or Nannie allowed us to play in it, which wasn’t often. And the last time I personally lifted the door, I opened it to find the underside of the door covered in scorpions.

So, yeah. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about walking down in there.

The wind gusted and the rain fell hard and cold. Kevin and I went ahead and went inside in the fear that if there was a tornado it might be rain wrapped and we wouldn’t be able to see it coming. We were down there with both of my brothers, my mom, and one of my younger brother’s friends. Mom was doing pretty well considering the anxiety that these storms cause her. Here’s a little trivia for you — on the day that my mother first moved to Oklahoma back in the early ’80s, she and my grandparents and Aunt Robin were caught in the middle of a bad storm on the highway and had to seek shelter under an overpass. That was back when they recommended doing that. We now know you can get sucked out from those or seriously injured and they aren’t the best place for you.

The rain let up a little and Kevin and I ventured out to see what the sky was doing. About that time the rain completely stopped and the temperature went from cold to very, very warm. We looked up and hovering over us, super close to the ground compared to where I prefer clouds to be, was a tube-like formation circulating in the air. We felt the air pressure change and we knew — it was right on top of us.

There it was, just spinning above us. I have never been so close to one, let alone right underneath, but they are correct when they say that it’s VERY hard to tell what it is when it’s right on top of you. It’s nothing to play around with. This was definitely more than scud because the rotation was very clear and it was sucking the other clouds into it. I would like to know what it looked like from far away.

It passed over us and we were unharmed. Thank the Lord. That storm and others that occurred that afternoon had a lot of potential for serious damage and we were blessed not to suffer any. Others in Oklahoma are suffering right now and some have lost everything. Please keep them in your prayers and if you feel like helping out, seek out the Red Cross.

The sun came out and my dad and I inspected the garden we planted a few weeks ago (post coming soon!). She’s doing just fine.

Thank you to everyone who contacted us to make sure that we were okay and to those of you who were praying for us while we were in the middle of all this. We appreciate it more than I know how to express.