1.27.18

The land knows you, even when you are lost.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, 

Braiding Sweetgrass

     My sister Molly turned 22 this past Saturday. My mom, my other sister, and a few various relatives of questionable character made the 2+ hour trip to surprise her at college. I was going to go with the evening before, but as events unfolded I ended up making the drive up the next morning by myself. They told Molly I wasn't coming because I was called in to work at the last minute, so it was a surprise when I showed up the next morning, holding a giant pink troll pillow in front of my face at that. (I would have screamed too, had I been on the receiving end of that situation.)

     Heading out in the early morning by myself, heading eastward on I-86, I was reminded of the weeks last Spring when I drove my neighbor to her therapy appointments. She loved my little truck, and raved on and on about how wonderful it was. We would talk the entire hour it took to get there, and the entire hour back, stopping at the gas station on the Indian reservation to fuel up because at the time it was 30 cents cheaper there than at home.

     I thought of that, and then as I drove further into less familiar territory, through one county after another, I thought of the day two years ago when my sister Sadie and I went to visit my cousin where he goes to school. We took some of the very same back roads I was driving then.

     I flipped through local radio stations, caught some of American Pie on one, the tail end of Hotel California on another. I sped through areas where the speed limit wasn't marked. I was giddy with pleasure, because it was a beautiful morning and I was on the road where I wanted to be.

     When you're on the road, you pick up a little piece of every place you pass through. That's why I like to go the back roads rather than the straight, boring Interstate; you see more of the real world that way. Big farms, double-wide trailers, and pristine Amish houses lined the road at intervals. The poorest county in NY state is also the most beautiful. And maybe this is just me, but when I've been someplace, no matter how long ago it was, if I ever pass there again I'll remember. It's weird, almost like a sixth sense. The sense of direction.

     What is it about the land?

     When I was growing up, and still now (well, I guess I'm still growing up, :) I always had an acute awareness of the land. Maybe because I grew up working with it. People want a nice house, nice car, nice clothes. I want all of that too, of course, but I always wanted land. I wanted to see it and explore it and own it. The beautiful thing, too, is that you don't even have to own it; as long as you have feet, or wheels, anyplace you go to becomes yours. At least that's the way I've always felt about it.

     After being at school all week, and working, and trying to prove things to people that I'm not too sure of myself, it was life-giving to get behind the wheel and just go. The places I've been make me feel welcomed with familiar feelings, and the places I see for the first time offer me something I've never had before.

     It's the little things like this I think the Lord gives us when He knows we need to be reminded. :)

******

     The birthday celebration was very nice. I don't have any pictures to show for it because the storage on my phone is completely full, but it involved our first-ever experience with Air B'nB, shopping for a wedding dress (not for my sister) (for me) (JUST KIDDING), and trading keys and driving other people's cars. I didn't get to see my sister nearly enough but I'm still glad I got to see her at all. :) Mercifully they went to Panera Bread the night before I got there.

     Now it's back to the daily grind.... How was your weekend?

~ Emma

baptized by argon

I want to start out this post with a little picture of my surroundings at the moment, because I'm so grateful to be where I am right now: at home, for the first evening in a while, sitting on my desk typing and listening to John Mellencamp. I've been at college since 8 this morning, and while I love it, you can't go around blasting Petty and Mellencamp in the college library. It's not academically accepted. At home, I can do this, and since I don't find myself here as much as I used to be, I'm taking advantage of the opportunity.

Like I mentioned, I love college. In fact I'm completely shocked by how much I love it. Who would have ever thought that Emma, who used to scribble nasty things all over her math book at the kitchen table, would be this happy to go to school full-time?! I guess it just goes to show how many things have changed in a few years' time. I appreciate a lot of things I didn't used to, and going to college is sure one of them. 

 My intention in writing this is not to talk about how much I love school, because that's not a topic a lot of people want to hear about seeing as it kind of makes me sound dreamy-eyed and fake.

 What I really want to do is tell you about one of my classes in particular, because it's something way different than anything I've done before. Besides that I think I ought to write about it before I go back tomorrow, maybe give myself some fresh perspective and keep myself from freaking out prematurely.

************

I'm talking about my welding class!

Why, you ask, am I taking welding?

Welding is an extremely useful skill to have, especially for people who a) work on farm equipment, and b) work on cars, both of which things I want to know how to do. There's a pretty good welding program at my school, so I'd heard some about it, but to tell you the truth, the main reason I registered for Applied Welding this semester isn't why most people get into it. Last semester I took only three classes, one of which I loved but still breezed through easily and two of which were such a - well, joke - that I got the idea college in general was going to be a big travesty. So when it came time to register for Spring classes I really wanted to make myself work a little harder. And I liked the sound of 'applied.'

So I'm taking welding.

I'm getting used to doing a lot of things most people don't expect me to do. In my fire department I'm the only girl, and the only active member under 40 years old, and so it's not weird anymore to be surrounded by men who smoke and swear and act all tough. In fact it's getting to be normal. In my welding class there's one other girl; most of the students are men, past college-age, who work for the engine plant in town and are being paid by their company to take this "skilled trades" program. Even their books are being paid for, which isn't really fair, but I'm not complaining.

The first day of class, my teacher went over the syllabus, gave us some rough safety guidelines, and gave us a test on the kinds of light rays produced by metal arc welding that can blind you. This scared me a little, but I like being scared a little.

The second day of class, the teacher walked in and sat down with the newspaper in his hand. He then proceeded to read the headlines, as well as comment on the spelling and pronunciation of people's names. He then talked for a little while about welding techniques, and soon we were dismissed to the shop down the hall. This was when I started to get more than a little scared, because I realized we were actually going to start welding. 

I have never been in a welding shop in my life. I have never even seen it done. I barely know what it is, or that's what I was thinking then, when they handed me a leather coat and a helmet and some gloves about ten sizes too big for my hands. I looked at the teacher, but I couldn't figure out what he was going to make me do. He's one of those people who is so smart and knows what they're teaching so well, that they can't even remember what it was like to not know a thing about it, and so it's pretty impossible for them to go back to level zero and explain it to someone who's never held an electrode in all their life and doesn't even know which end to put into the clamp and which to touch to the metal. I realized that he had done all the explaining he was going to do. I followed the other guys into the shop and took my spot at one of the tables in between two of the screens. Behind me was a big electric welder and a cylinder of compressed argon, and on my workstation was a chipper, a brush, and a handful of electrodes. I was given a scrap piece of metal to practice on, and that was it.

Of course, some of these old-timers had done this before. In no time the sounds of torches and chipping and the forced ventilators over every station filled up the space around me, and the smell of  heated metal stung my senses. I looked at the machine behind me, set to 124 amperes (do you know how many amperes it takes to kill a person?), looked in my hand, at the clamp holding the electrode, and pulled the helmet shield over my eyes. All I could see was black.

My first thought was, I am going to die.

Either from asphyxiation, or the ultraviolet light rays when I accidentally looked at the torch flame, or I'd catch on fire from the sparks flying underneath the screen from the guy welding next to me. Or I'd inhale the gas fumes filling up the air around me and pass out dead on the floor before I could even scream for help. I'm going to die, I thought, and I'm not even going to know it.

In such a case, some would give up, but not Emma. Unfortunately the teacher had left the premises. My plan was to go find him and tell him to come hold my hand while I acclimated myself to the foreign surroundings.

But at that point I had the electrode in my hand, stuck in the clamp, and I didn't know how to get it out without squeezing the handle to release it. But wait, I thought, isn't that how you get it to light? I had watched the guy next to me do it and I thought so. How in the heck were you supposed to get the rod out of there without lighting it up and burning up your hand or your face or the whole building? I couldn't set it down, or the whole place for sure would go up. I stood there and pondered this issue for a few geological ages, until the guy on the other side of my screen poked his head around. Probably because he didn't hear any action from my direction and assumed I was dead.

"How's it going?" he asked, when he saw that I was, in fact, still standing.

"It's not," I said. "How do you get this thing" - I pointed, looking dumb, "out of this thing?"

He acted like he knew, but I don't think he really did either, because I saw him flinch a little as he yanked the rod out. He thought it might explode too. But maybe that was just because I looked so terrified.

With that small problem taken care of, I flopped in my oversized jacket out to find the teacher. The good-for-nothing son-of-a-gun was over in the other part of the room, having a good old time moving sheets of metal around with a forklift. I made myself known to him. 

"Do you have a piece of string I can tie around my gloves? They keep falling off," I said, because I didn't want him to know I didn't know how to light the rod.

He hopped off the forklift and looked me up and down. He scratched his head. "What size coat are you wearing?" he said.

After giving me some duct tape to wrap around my gloves, we went into his office. There I took off my coat, which was a 2XL. He looked around for a small, but, not being able to find one, gave me a large instead, which was some improvement. "How's it going?" he asked, which is the way men always say it, even when they don't give a crap.

I should have used the Monty Python line - "I'm not dead yet!" - but I don't know the guy too well and frankly, I wasn't in the mood to be funny. "I'm getting used to it," I said instead, which was partly true. I was getting used to the loud chipping all around me, at least, to the point where I could barely hear it anymore. In fact, I could barely hear anything. But I was gratified to find I still had my eyesight, which was my main concern because I had to drive home.

I went back to my little cubicle, with duct tape on my wrists, looking like an idiot and feeling faint. I thought, this is stupid. A lot of these guys have done this before; I'll just go watch one of them. I went to the guy nextdoor, where all the sparks were coming from. "Can I watch you?" I said.

"Sure, you can watch," he said. "I'm terrible at this. I've never done it before."

Well, I thought, you're sure going at it pretty hard for never having done it before. Sparks were flying like a forest fire over there. I decided he might not be the best one to observe and started to back away, tripping on the cord from the welder behind me.

"Luke over there is pretty good, he's done it before," the guy said. So I went over to Luke, who is shorter than me but wears a 2XL coat. "Can I watch you?" I said.

"Sure," he said, "I don't care."

The thing about welding is, you can't look at what you're doing, or you will go blind. You have to wear the helmet, and the thing about the helmet is, you can't see anything but the torch flame when you're welding. This means that before you light it, you can't see what you're doing, so you have to almost position the rod, then quickly flip your shield down before you touch it. That's what lights it, by the way - just the touch. You don't squeeze anything or push anything. They forgot to tell Emma that.

I watched Luke for awhile, and he seemed pretty chill. "Ok thanks," I said, and proceeded back to my own home base. I picked up the clamp and fit the rod into it. I took a deep breath, but that was a bad idea because all I got was fumes. I put my helmet down and closed my eyes, which was overkill because I couldn't see anyway, but I couldn't be careful enough. The rod hit the metal and it lit.

There! I could see it! It was green and scary, like the evil spirits in Disney princess movies. Suddenly the flame stopped. I tried to rip the rod away but it stuck. Well, darn, I thought. This can't be good. I tried ripping it again, and this time it disconnected. I flipped up my shield. There was a weld there, and underneath a big old black spot, like where a crater hits the earth. My weld looked like the one in picture examples where they say, here's a good weld, here's a bad one, this one's too long, this one's too short. Mine looked like the very worst of the worst. But I was flying on the wings of joy. I had actually done it!

No matter everyone else around me, including the other girl, had been practicing for hours now and had started on their projects. I had lit the torch! I had made a weld! And even better, I was still alive and breathing! I felt like celebrating. I didn't feel like trying it again.

I was still there for a few more hours though, so I figured I had better. I kept getting the rod stuck over and over again and I was getting rather depressed. After awhile my neighbor to the left stuck his head around again. "Getting the hang of it?"

 "I'm having trouble with it sticking," I told him. He turned my amperes up, which freaked me out, and then told me to try it. What a huge difference! "Thanks!" I said. What would I do without the working man here? Teacher-boy over there sure isn't giving me what I paid for.

My other friend, an older Italian gentleman whose name I feel just terrible for forgetting, came over to see how I was doing. He showed me where I could dip my practice piece into water to cool it off. I did, and it hissed from the temperature change and I felt just like a blacksmith. That made my day better.

Finally five o'clock came. I wouldn't have known, because I didn't have a clock. Suddenly a bunch of guys started sweeping the floor and picking up their stuff and leaving. I looked around and decided I'd better leave too. I held my breath before I flipped the switch on my machine off, but it didn't blow up. It stopped making noise and died down completely and I think I breathed for the first time in four hours.

"Start on your block yet?" one of the guys asked me, referring to the project we were to have begun.

I just laughed. Inside I'm thinking, are you kidding me? It's all I can do to weld a straight line! It's all I can do to keep the rod from slipping through my hands with these huge freaking gloves on! My ears are ringing from listening to the sounds of a thousand anvils pounding on metal and I've probably been inhaling toxic fumes and I feel like I've been in an underground dungeon for forty days and forty nights and no, I did not start on my block, because I have zero confidence that I can even remotely accomplish what is expected, and I don't want to completely f*** it up before I even begin, and this whole thing still scares the living heck out of me so bad I'm sweating under this heavy size large coat and I have brushburn on my wrists where I taped the gloves on. And I love it, I thought.

My first experience welding was what I guess you might call "baptism by fire." More like baptism by argon gas.

I stepped out into the cold, hard, sort-of clean air of Western NY and felt happier than I have in a long time to see the sky, even though it was gray. (I think I mentioned I live in Western NY.) The city was quiet compared to inside the shop. I could move again - I could feel my head, without that horrible thing strapped onto it. The air smelled fresh compared to the hard metallic smells of fire and gas and all those things that the textbooks say are "odorless." I saw the world through a new lense. In fact, it was a little bit foggy...

That was when I realized I was still wearing my plastic safety glasses.

*********

If you made it all the way through that, thanks so much for reading! I felt I had to expel some of that before I'd be ready to go back to class tomorrow. :)

~Emma

(I would like to add that *I* do not look like this when I'm welding, nor does anyone, nor should anyone. Sparks are going to burn her arms and then her ponytail is going to catch on fire. It's not going to be good. I took a class.)

back when I used to be a writer

(Oh, for green grasses and blue skies, and temperatures above zero!)

Lately a lot of things have been happening that are changing the way I roll. I used to write a lot - now I don't. And while most of these things that are happening are good, it doesn't change the fact that I really miss what I used to love more than anything.

I made the switch over to writing mostly nonfiction last spring, trying to blog more and leaving my fictional stories, short and looooong, languishing in my computer file unfinished. I still love fiction, and I still love every single one of those characters; if I opened those files and read them right now I'd probably start crying. That however might have less to do with the fact that I'm emotionally committed and more to do with the fact that I'm sleep deprived at the moment... but I digress. 

Something about nonfiction, though... For me, at the time, it felt more immediate, more professional. And it made me really excited. (I'm still going to write that book about homeschoolers and How We Will Take Over the World.)

Now I'm going to college, and the majority of everything I've written in the past six months has been to hand in to a teacher for them to grade. Which is good - because I'm thinking more about my audience when I write and how what I say will be perceived and understood. Bad - because college assignments are more often than not pretty flat. I haven't written a good family quarrel, or a mob drama, or - heavens! - a good kissing scene, in many, many moons. 

So lately (and probably having something to do with the fact that I'm going to college), I'm trying to conjure up ways I can write to make money. Probably sounds like a plan that won't hold water, but I don't have a whole lot to lose by trying! After all, I have all these dusty files of golden nuggets, rough but precious, just waiting to be dredged out and polished up! Who knows? Maybe some of them will see the light of day. At least going through some of them I remembered how good I used to be when I had the time to dedicate myself to it. But writing is like riding a bicycle - you never forget how, you just get a little rusty.

I also found this, a character interview that I used for one of my stories. I don't remember where I got it but it's the kind of thing I always liked to fill out. Just for kicks and giggles I thought I'd leave it here because that's what writers do on their blogs and it's what I used to do, back when I was one. :)

CHARACTER INTERVIEW - Memory Lane

Conflict with hero/heroine: 

External:  conflict with cousin Ty and Ty’s girlfriend

Internal:  conflict with desire to be a singer and anger over her mother’s leaving to pursue a singing career

Most outstanding physical feature: dark brown eyes

Why character stays or leaves home:  leaves home because her grandma dies; then stays home with aunt, uncle, cousins because she doesn’t want to leave; finally feels time to find a new home. The meaning of home changes.

Character’s deepest dream:  to feel wanted.

Character’s story goal:  to be at peace with her mother’s leaving, her cousin moving on, and to find peace with growing up herself

Externally:  getting along with Ty’s girlfriend, even though she doesn’t want to

Internally:   realizing the importance and sometimes benefits of change

Worst thing that has happened to character:  Memory’s dad died, but worse than that her mom left when Memory was seven

How character sees themselves:  unextraordinary, nobody special, strong enough to hold her own but not a person that anybody else would want

How others see character:  too hard on herself, quietly pretty, talented, 

Who has influenced character most:  her cousin Ty, later Skyler Wayne

How does this character differ from other characters:  she doesn’t want to be on her own -- she craves dependence, not independence

Character’s amount of self-control, self-discipline, judgement:  scale of 1 to 10 -- self-control, 8, self-discipline, 9, judgement, 9

Do you like Character? Why? Will readers?  YES. Because I understand her. And I think yes, because they will understand her.

Is character based on a real person? Sort of. 

Character’s secret:  she still hurts over her mother leaving, and her cousin giving her less attention. She longs to feel wanted. Also she’s in love with Hunter Hayes and she doesn’t really want that leaking out because she’s got a thing called pride.

Character’s handicap:  she thinks too little of her own resilience.

Character’s needs:  to be valued and useful and desired.

One true thing:  there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Secondary character:  Skyler Wayne

Symbol that expresses character’s personality:  Memory’s denim skirt

Scars:  physical or figurative? Emotional scars include -- dad’s death, mom’s leaving, grandma’s death

Safe Place:  Alan and Marty (aunt and uncle)'s house

Favorite Color:  blue

Favorite Music:  Broadway shows and Hunter Hayes

Favorite Food:  mint brownies

Favorite Literature:  Sarah, Plain and Tall books

Favorite Expression:  the heck

Favorite Expletive:  see above

We'll see what else I can find in the abyss of all this that has some merit. 

See ya on the flipside!

Emma

a "flaming testament" // 2017

(that's from a song by Mark Knopfler, just so you know the truth, I'm not that creative)

A year is over! As usual I feel myself a little stunned, but not very stunned, because I don't have time to be that stunned. I feel about a hundred years older after this one.

2017, let's see what happened....

// January //

• I try to write songs, but that never really takes off. :-P

• I apply for jobs, and start working Saturdays at a little store in my neighborhood.

• Sadie, Henry and I go bowling one night, and I discover how much I love something I used to dislike.

• I watch Texas Rising. And... yeah.

• I find Wind River Ranch, fill out a big fat application, send the dang thing, and wait for awhile without breathing.

• I take the placement test for college and start my first class there, which I didn't think I would like, but as per usual, I was wrong.

• Sadie turns 16 and we go sledding, then Molly turns 21 and we go bowling. 

"I didn't know Emma was going to be this girl."

 - Mama

// February //

• I turn 18 on the 2nd, and Sadie convinces me to have a party. We finally make the red velvet armadillo cake I'd been wanting ever since I saw Steel Magnolias for the first time four years ago.

looks like an armadillo, right? Don't say a rat.

• I start another job, working as a waitress. Scared the heck out of me but I was determined to try....

• I have a phone interview with one of the directors from Wind River, and I-kid-you-not I started to cry when he prayed for me at the beginning. Over the phone.

• I spend too much time disliking school and disliking my job....

• My mom and sisters and I watch Downton Abbey on Valentine's Day.

• I wake up to the value of a dollar when I spend way too many of them on a t-shirt with a logo on it, then think about it all the way home. I vow to be a better steward with my money. (Funny part is, I don't even wear the shirt anymore.)

• The Squad - consisting of Henry, Sadie, and Emma - go to an indoor rodeo with some of our super-duper cool friends. Emma doesn't get asked out like she always hopes for (used to) when she goes to rodeos, but we have a good time. ;-)

• Sadie and I start going to a friend's youth group. Why did I have to wait till I was almost too old to find the best youth group ever?

• Henry turns 17 and we redneck out as usual.

"Consider yourself on the team."

(I got the job at the ranch!!!!!)

// March // 

• I find out that Les Mis is my history teacher's favorite musical and start to like him a lot more.

• I really don't like my job, but I stick with it...

• We go bowling with Henry's youth group, play bloody wrists and Indian wrestle with kids younger than me.

• I drive through a lotta farmland and vineyards (I really do love NY) and dream about the future.

• My mom, my sisters and I take a mini-vacation to PA, stop at my aunt's where Sadie and I see a Gold City concert at their church. Then we go to a Florida-Georgia Line at Stage College. I've never seen so many people in one place in my LIFE. 

• I kinda wish I was Mennonite. For awhile. (Blame Pennsylvania.)

• I watch The Alamo (2004) again which reinforces my faith in mankind and, well, men.

"I know how you like to write and write and write."

- my history teacher

// April //

• I buy an iPhone and joined the modern age!

• I discover Ryan Bingham, which is noteworthy.

• I sell the cap that I bought with my truck! Yay money!

• I buy (I buy a lot of things don't I???) another pair of cowboy boots from the coolest Amish guy ever. Colorado here I come!

• Easter comes and we eat a lot of mini cheesecakes. 

•  A guy leaves his number on my truck door and I tear it up and throw it out.

• I start a job driving my neighbor to therapy appointments - might not sound like it but SO much fun.

• Sadie and Henry and I win a talent show with our little band!

• We go to a Cowboy's Spring Ball and two-step the night away in cowboy boots.

"Emma's cool - she's bold."
- my cousin Henry

// May //

• We have our own annual spring ball with the dance group, and it's SO nice because I'm not crushing on anybody this year.

• I plant stuff and watch it grow! Yee yee!

• Henry, Peter, Sadie and I go on a wild goose chase to find a dance we'd heard about...finally we find it, are not impressed, leave, and laugh all the way home, harder than I had in a long time.

• I quit my job...and then quit my other job.

• Henry takes us to a horseshoeing clinic with a bunch of Amish guys. Completely lit. (But kinda weird.)

• I have a plane ticket to Denver, Colorado!

• I also have a plane ticket to San Antonio, Texas - my uncle and I go down there to visit my cousin for a week. 

I never fell in love with a land like I did with Texas.

// June //

• I catch a fish for the first time in my life!

• I graduate from high school...sort of. I kind of missed that. But at any rate I finish!

• I get recognized at church for graduating and get a brand new beautiful Bible and almost die from all the love.

• As usual, change is the only constant.

• A bunch of people come over to our barn to celebrate Molly's graduation from college and mine from high school. Again, I almost die from the love. 

• My Grandpa writes some Bible verses in my graduation card, I look them up and some of them don't exist... ;-P

• We open the stand for the season and start picking strawberries every morning, and I'm in my glory.

• My cousins and I go to the Stateline Speedway for the first time and I fall in love with the smells of rubber and dust clouds.

• Sadie starts to drive more.

• I start to get sick of picking strawberries...

"Hey - congratulations."

- New Guy

// July //

• I get to sing the National Anthem at a 4th of July festival at my aunt and uncle's church. They say 5000 people were there. 

• My truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere on the way home that very same night...

• I find out that the guy I met at the fire hall, the one who showed up uninvited to my graduation party, is actually the same age as I am and not 20-something like I thought.

• I start to like the guy I met at the fire hall, the one who showed up uninvited to my graduation party.

• I read Roy Feek's book, This Life I Live. People should read that book.

• I have blood drawn for the first time and feel like I'm gonna die (but I survive)

• Sadie, Henry, and I go to see Chris Stapleton and I almost fall asleep driving home.

• I take off for Denver...and that was an ordeal. 

• Emma Jane Anderson arrives in Colorado!

// August //

• I work as wait staff, housekeeping, and even in childcare (AHHHH!) at Wind River Ranch.

• A few girls and I go to Redrocks Church in Arvada one night, and for the first time I feel glad I came to CO.

• I miss home something terrible and try to console myself listening to Brantley Gilbert at night.

• I learn a lot about service to others, faithfulness when I'm far away from people I love, and being my own person in a strange place.

• Glen Campbell dies :-(

• I finally make friends with the other girls, and my heart actually breaks when I have to leave.

"I love you, you little noise in the other room."

- Samantha

// September //

• I GO HOME!

• Sadie and I drive to Ohio for a homeschool graduate's retreat. 

• I start going to college, and am relatively unimpressed. My English teacher doesn't give out 100s. (wtf?)

• Sadie and I go to the Mother Earth News Fair with our friends and I get to meet Joel Salatin! Also I get a hotel room in my name for the first time. Pretty weird.

• We have a bonfire at the Brown's house and cook a squirrel, play Red Rover, and roast marshmallows.

• I decide to join the fire department.

• We go bowling, and I see him again, and it's good to be home.

"I saw a strike."

- New Guy/Mike

// October //

• Tom Petty dies and I start listening to his music for the first time.

• We find a kitty living in the upstairs of our barn and I name him Casper...until I find out he's a she.

• The shooting in Las Vegas happens and Eric Church writes a song about it.

• I start blogging again.

• Molly comes home from college for a visit! 

• We have a hayride. I leave a note on his truck at school inviting him to come, and he does.

• I buy a puppy from an Amish man, and name him Henley after Don Henley. 

• We go over to Mike's house for a bonfire. He shows me his turkeys and we play sneaks in the woods and afterwards he checks my arms for scratches with a flashlight and I'm not really sure why it sticks in my mind?

• We go to a Halloween party at the Brown's house, play sneaks in the dark, I lose my pocketknife, and as we're driving away Mike flashes his blue light.  

• We close the stand for the year and I buy a huge pumpkin from an Amish kid for $10 because ours are all gone.

"Emma doesn't act weird. She laughs really loudly."

- Sadie

// November //

• We go out, and say we'll do it again.

• My mom and Sadie and I go to see Molly at school and tour the city of Rochester. I sniff out a Carhartt outlet store and spend too much money.

• I get a job at Tractor Supply.

• We have our costume ball, and I go dressed up as Mia from La La Land.

• I fly to Indiana for a few days to visit my friend Allie. We go to see Only the Brave and it's the best movie I've seen in a long, long time. I think about Veterans' Day a lot more this year than I ever have before.

• I keep going to school, working on the other days, and seeing him.

• I have a day off and Sadie and I go Christmas shopping and just drive around in the country like we used to when we had no responsibilities. 

• I become a member of the fire department.

• Mike and I go to the rodeo at Sundance and listen to Firefall and Bread all the way home.

• I take a class for first responders on drug labs and get a little freaked out because the world is a messed-up place, but reassured too because there are people who deal with it.

• Mike takes me hunting, and I shoot his 20 gauge. We use his math homework as a target.

• My head is full of numbers, cash registers, fire engines, blue lights, and puppies.

• I go to my first call, a vehicle off the road after hitting a deer. I don't do much except carry the chainsaw back to the truck.

• I go to my second call, on Christmas morning. We lose the patient, but I'm extremely proud of my guys.

• We have an unexpected and sorta weird but happy Christmas :-)

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

- Philippians 4:6-7

Happy 2018 everyone!

Life and describing it

     Charles Lindbergh said, "Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it, but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance." For a few weeks now I've been trying to come up with a way to write something here - the blog post my mother has been asking me for, the one my writer brain, now much underappreciated, has been begging me to let loose. I wanted to describe life, in all its color and all its freezing-cold December glory. But lately, life transcends description, at least any I can come up with and communicate with my fingers. (Oh, how good it feels to type! And not even something expected to be graded by a teacher! Keyboard, have I missed you or have I missed you?!) My little world is a lot less little than it used to be, for a number of reasons. I can't describe it to you. But I can tell you about it, at least in a small part.

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     First of all, how was everyone's Christmas? As a retail worker, I'm happy to report that I survived, though it was close; as a new and very green member of my town's fire department, I was part of a scene that made me very sad but also gave me an even greater respect and admiration for the guys in my department, just when I didn't think a greater respect was even possible; as an Anderson girl I tried to be helpful and somehow, even though it was so snowy half of our family couldn't show up, we had ourselves a fine celebration. It was kind of like that one Christmas episode of The Waltons where everyone is somewhere different: Jason and Daddy are cutting a tree out of the church roof, Grandma and Grandpa are stuck in Charlottesville, John-boy and Mary Ellen are rescuing a little girl from a car accident, and nobody knows where anyone else is. In the end my family was all together in our warm little house and I was so, so grateful for them all.

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     In other news... The depreciation of my truck is becoming increasingly apparent. For about a month now I've had trouble with the driver side door, getting it shut and keeping it shut, which sounds like not so big of a deal when you think of other possible mishaps like losing a tire or smashing a headlight. Well, last night leaving work, the latch was frozen together and no matter what I tried with it, the door would. not. shut. I figured I could hold it on the way home. A simple plan...except it's no easy feat to hold your door shut, steer the truck, shift the gears, and operate the windshield wipers, all with only two arms. The bottom dropped out of the thermometer, the temperature was so cold, and I may have forgot to mention this but my defroster is under-functioning (translate: doesn't work for crap). By the time I slid into my driveway last night I had decided I need a new truck. By new, I mean, you know, maybe twenty years old instead of thirty.

    While I was defrosting myself on the hearth, I expressed these concerns to my mother and father. "I want another truck!" I whined. Mama tried to talk me down, offering suggestions, but I was so mad I wouldn't be reasoned with. "I can't drive this in the winter anymore! I need a new one!" I bawled.

     I would never, EVER get rid of my Ranger. Until I have a child I think I could never love anything more. But here's the thing. You need a truck you can rely on. You need your every day driver, and then you have your little Ranger, when the sky is clear and the roads are bare and the temperature is balmy. I tried to explain all this.
 
     "You're absolutely right," my dad said, and that was all he said.

     That is the difference between my mother and my father.

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     Before this fall, I had never been hunting. My daddy has never hunted. In the summertime he shoots blackbirds when they eat the sweet corn, but besides that he doesn't get into the whole sport of it. However, my guy hunts, and so I figured I'd better go along and see what it was all about. Besides a little pink Mossy Oak ball cap I bought on a whim once when I was trying to be all cute and 'country,' I don't own any camouflage, but he had a coat and a hat that he let me borrow, as well as an orange vest, so I wouldn't be mistaken for a deer and get shot. (I wouldn't have liked that, and I don't think he would have either.) We sat out in the woods for awhile and talked about things that do not relate to deer-hunting in the slightest. We did see one doe on that excursion, and he took a shot at it, but she got away. We named her Agnes and are still looking for her to this day.

     I guess I like hunting, but I like my guy more.

    **************

     A whole year has passed since...well, since I said that the last time. Some people think 2017 was a garbage fire, but I think it was amazing. (If you have a synonym for 'amazing' that is better, please comment and let me know so I can sound more original.) In the future, I hope I can be more diligent in a lot of things, and one of them is writing. Because ohhhh, does this ol' keyboard feel good under my fingers again. :-)

     Happy New Year friends!! Here's to a good one!

    <3 Emma

from me and Henley

I paid ten dollars for a pumpkin.

     It was Halloween, and we at the stand were all out of pumpkins.

     Not that tragic, I suppose, except for the fact that I had to force myself to direct customers looking for pumpkins to the competition for the last few days of being open (and nobody wants to do that). I tried not to be sad about it, which meant not thinking about last year, when we had so many pumpkins left over that we lined our entire street with them at 12:30 AM on Halloween night. Every year has to be bad for something; this is farmer logic. This year was crappy for pumpkins.

     I made peace with the reality, this being the adult thing to do, until Halloween came and I realized I didn't have one single pumpkin to carve. Then I started to think about crying.

    My sister was going to go trick-or-treating with my cousins, so I drove her over to their house. She had saved a pumpkin to carve. In fact, after carving a face in it, she put it on her head. It is a mildly disconcerting experience to have a pumpkin-headed person in your passenger seat. On the way to my cousins' house, we passed an Amish place where several pumpkins were sitting out in the yard for sale.

     "You should buy one," my sister said to me.

     And I'm like, "Buy a pumpkin from someone else? Are you crazy?"

     But pride, as you will learn if you read your Bible, is a counterproductive entity. I dropped her off, headed back down the road, and swung in the driveway at the Amish house. Because if I'm going to buy a pumpkin that I didn't grow from anybody else, it'll be from the Amish.

    I went to the door, and the two cutest little boys in the history of the world over appeared on the other side of the screen. I explained to them I wanted to buy some (or all) of their pumpkins. The older one did the talking, told me the prices, and gave me change when I paid with a twenty. I thanked him profusely and went to load the pumpkins into my truck.

    The small white one I managed with no trouble. Zeroing in on an enormous pinky-orange one, I had every confidence in my ability to pick it up and sling it into the truckbed. Farmgirl power and all that. My confidence went from a ten to a five as I slid my hands underneath the bottom, then down to a one when I tried to lift it, and finally plummeted to a zero when I couldn't get the thing to budge at all. Okay, I thought, time to call someone.

    The door slapped shut, and out came the older boy. I'm guessing he didn't need my feeble explanation to know that I wasn't getting it, but I explained the situation to him anyway, because I like embarrassing myself. We both put our muscles to it, and still couldn't move the pumpkin. "It's heavy!" my Amish friend said, laughing, because I guess it was funny. Me, I felt rather sabotaged. First I had no pumpkin. Now I'd found one, and I couldn't even get it into my truck? What was this?

     Then the Amish boy had an idea.

     I watched him run to a shed near the cow pasture, kick through a pile of assorted cast-off lumber, pick out an old door, and bring it back to the scene. When I caught on to his plan I opened the passenger side door, he laid the door against the seat, and together, the little Amish boy and I rolled that son of a gun up the ramp and landed it inside the truck. I think it weighed somewhere between 90 and 900 pounds.

     "That's clever!" I said. He just shrugged and gave me the most adorable smile I will ever see in my life. "Thank you!" he said, and went off towards the house. I wanted to get a selfie with him but the sensible part of me had a rare moment of victory and I got in my truck and drove back home, pleased as punch that I had overcome such incredible odds and procured for myself, not only a pumpkin, but the biggest one I'd ever had. And I paid ten dollars for that thing too, which is not too shabby.

     When I got home, I realized I was never going to get that sucker into the house onto my dining room table. Plus it would take me a good three hours to carve it. So I dumped it (literally) next to the front door, and instead carved the smaller white one, while listening to Warren Zevon sing 'Werewolves of London' and compulsively eating Heath pieces. No trick-or-treaters came to our house that night, and we weren't up to any of our old tricks like some years before.

    Nevertheless my pumpkins sat proudly by the door; never let it be said that Emma can't find what she's looking for.


     What did you do for Halloween? Did you carve a pumpkin?

      ~Emma

dancing & a very dark night

     ***the story of a very dark, scary night last June in which my sisters and I dance with old men, talk to strangers, get lost, find the holy grail (just kidding) and eventually make it back home without being kidnapped. (Warning: it's long.)

      It was early June. We went to the contra dance because Sadie was invited to play the fiddle. We might have gone anyway, just to see what it was like. We do strange things sometimes. And going to a contra dance in an old creaky building in a little college town on a Friday night, in the company of a bunch of middle-aged people who may or may not have criminal records -- I'm just saying -- could definitely classify as strange.

     The dance was held in the old city hall building. It had a tile floor and a high ceiling and pictures of prominent citizens from 100+ years ago on the walls. Most of the people there were over the age of fifty. I don't know about you, but if it's not somebody I know, dancing with a middle-aged man is not my favorite thing in the world to do. I don't believe that line "it's only awkward if you make it." That's awkward, no mistake. Far less awkward is when the little five-year-old boy there with his mom comes up and asks sweetly if you'd like to dance. I was pleased when he seemed to attach himself to me.

     We danced around in circles while the string band played Scottish reels that all sounded the same. You know when you go someplace you don't normally go, and it feels like it's not actually happening for real? Like it's just a weird dream? The later it got, the weirder the whole thing seemed -- except at the same time it seemed normal. My mom, who brought us, left to go home. We would ride back with my sister Molly. We were on our own.

     The crowd....talk about interesting characters. Everyone there could have been in a Dickens movie. There was the man wearing a t-shirt with a female country singer on it, which he told us he'd bought because she looked just like his dearly departed wife. That slippery older guy "Tom" who was giving out his 'card'....(Mama, where'd you go?) The couple with the tap shoes who seemed like they'd been dancing together since they were both a lot younger. I was a little terrified of everybody.

    The most intriguing were those two girls, about our ages. They both wore long skirts. They obviously weren't sisters. One had a cute face, hair in a ponytail and acne just like the rest of us. The other was taller and graceful, with hair way past her shoulders and a round, rosy face. She was more beautiful than any girl I'd ever seen. She was shy, but us girls introduced ourselves because we like to talk to people. I couldn't understand what she said her name was and I literally thought it was "Papaya" until I learned later what it really was.

     She was wearing a long brown skirt and ivory stockings. She was fascinating. From time to time I saw her sitting down at the edge of the room, bent over a little notebook. What was she writing? Was she a storyteller? A poet? A spy?

     It was eleven o'clock and high time to drive home. Poor Molly was exhausted. She'd been talking to the two girls, and learned neither one of them drove and they didn't have a ride home. They lived nearby, they said. I don't know if they asked or if she offered -- all I heard was we were going to take these girls home. It was past eleven. They didn't live too far.

     We got in the Jeep and it was illegal because we couldn't all buckle, but it was way too late to worry about anything like that. The only thing we worried about was Mama. She had told us to come right home. Surely she would understand, we thought, and Sadie called her just to explain what we were doing and let her know we'd be a little later.

    I almost heard her voice through the phone across the seat, she was so mad. Sadie tried to smooth it over.

     "They don't live very far," she said. And then,"Mama, they're nice girls!" All of this, while both girls were right there in hearing. The Jeep, the old Jeep, is not very big. I wanted to crawl under the seat but there wasn't room.

     Mama was livid. It was almost midnight; Molly was sleep-deprived; we didn't know where we were going, we didn't even know these people, and who knew what kind of dangerous trap it might lead to. I'm guessing there was something else wrong because on any normal day we wouldn't get that kind of flack just for giving two pleasant strangers a ride home. Finally Sadie got off the phone, but we knew we were in for it now. It made for a very heavy feeling in the air of that tiny little Jeep stuffed with six girls.

     "You turn here," the Papaya girl said.

     She said it probably twenty-five times in all. We turned off the main road onto so many smaller ones, up hills and then down again, around sharp corners, deeper into the woods, out again, until I was so dizzy and disoriented I had no clue in heck where we were. And they told us to keep going. You don't live far, hm? I thought. I'd say wherever we are is pretty far from anything in this world, and we're not even at your house yet. Maybe Mama was right. Maybe we are headed for danger. And that's when I started to be suspicious. Maybe they were luring us into a trap, and planned to kidnap us and hold us hostage. We drove farther and I felt more and more uneasy. Imagination is a terrible thing.

     "It's here," she finally said. I was sure we had come to the very ends of the earth.

     It was a place so far removed from anything that there was total darkness. The sky was clear and you could see the stars, without any light from any city pinking them out. The dark made their farmhouse fuzzy, but I saw the barn across the road, and a cat scampered across the path in front of us. I didn't feel any sense of time here, except that it was very late. It could have been the 21st century. It could have been the 19th. I looked around for men with guns and gunny sacks while the others pondered a very real problem: now how to find our way back to our home, approximately a million miles away?

     The Papaya girl said she'd ask "Mr. B." She went into the house and appeared a few moments later with a map drawn on a piece of yellow legal paper. It showed us how to get back to route 380. From there we could manage. She thanked us and dropped something on the seat. Sadie picked it up. "Hey, is this yours?"

     She didn't answer. She just went inside the house.

     We unfolded the roll and found it was money, with a note that said Thank you and the girls' names on it.

     Following the extremely rudimentary map, we made our way into the night. We were really out there. There were hardly any houses at all. Still worried about our mother, we decided it'd be good of us to call her. Nobody wanted to. I don't remember how I got nominated to do it.

    "Hi Mama," I said, trying to sound like everything was fine. "We took them home, and we're on our way back, and everything's okay, and we don't want you to worry."

    "Okay," she said. Still mad.

     It wasn't until after I pressed end that I realized, oh dear, that really sounded like a hostage call.

     "Where are we?" one of us said. I think we all took turns saying it.

      It's a terrible feeling to be lost, but it's an even worse feeling to be lost after midnight. Compound that with the unpleasant knowledge that your mom is thunderously angry with you, and you're not having that great of a night. But as bad as it is to be lost, it's that much more wonderful to see a sign and suddenly realize -- YES, I know where we are now! We're getting closer! We're almost there! I thought maybe we'd make it home by daylight, and I was ecstatic.

    By some miracle we made it home. I collapsed in bed and was dead to the world until the next morning when I had to face my mother; and it must not have been that ugly of a scene because it's funny but I don't remember it a bit now. The night before seemed now like a hazy dream, something out of a Tim Burton movie. The more the day wore on, the farther away it felt. Like we had all woken up from some kind of spell in which we all imagined the same thing, and it didn't really happen.

     But Sadie still has the thank-you note and the map, so we know that it did.

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<3 Emma