Nothing has struck me in a more profound way recently than these words, left in a comment on one of my sixes, by Teresa:

(who can marvel at a lady bug when mommy's falling down the stairs again?)

The following piece was written in honor of those words.  Teresa, thank you.  There are times when I stand in awe of the chance that brought me to 6S, that had me wait out the first few inane months, and stick around for you lovely…

Every time I have ever stepped into a round corral with a young horse, I have learned something about people, about parenting, about writing.

Training a young horse cannot be about rules, about methods, about ego, and in fact, if I walk in with something to prove about rules, about methods, about self, I might as well walk right back out because someone is going to get hurt.

It must be about the horse.

The horse has taught me that in parenting, I must make the desired…

We woke to lightning and thunder and heavy clouds and crazy light that said, "Extra, extra!  Today is plumb out of ordinary!"

As I was washing dishes and frying bacon I realized that I will always be in the middle of writing a book, because, after all, writing is my lifework and I will do it until I die.

At 11:20am an earthquake (3.6) changed the water flowing from the pipe into the dam, but we didn't feel the tremor.

The only hen who hasn't crowed laid a bluegreen egg,…

It would be a lie to say, "I am just a simple country girl," but that facet of me is irritated by buying "surf&turf" (or at least the surf part since the freezer is full of turf) for our company, and I am shocked by the fact that I almost left the store without buying the shiny silver magazine I came to town expressly to purchase (and the cashier didn't blink at the fact that I was buying five copies).

Three women stood in front of the package drop at the post office trying to…

The dog is practicing voodoo with the severed head from one of my roosters.

I clipped sprigs of rosemary to bake with the salmon last night, scattered capers on the flesh.

A Townsends Big-Ear showed me his face today as clouds obscured the sky.

I feel like one of the women in Mrosek's art,  pulled and pushed into true shapes by thoughts and dreams and poetry.

My red pen moves across…

I am feeling completely incompetent as a horseman here lately, and there is no way I could describe for you here exactly why since it involves so many intricacies, so many nuances, so many details. 

That feeling seems to be carrying over into other areas of my life like a dark purple stain.

I feel incompetent as a mother, as a lover, as a cook, as a housekeeper, as a friend, as a gardener even, as autumn dries the cornstalks into whispering blades and the tomato vines into…

He was all for dancing naked around the voodoo fire and tasting the forbidden wine, even getting drunk on it while he jerked in submission to the queen of all-that-is-sensual's hand; he was all for skipping along to a whale of a beat and seducing the princess with his eyes.

All for it, until his safe nest of comfort was threatened, until he feared the loss of his plate of everyday food.

He was that wild child climbing on the back of the couch until Mommy said, "Or else," and…

I tried to give my husband away, once, to a woman who gave off a real "wild child" vibe, who seemed to be exactly what he was always trying to get me to be.

I would watch while they bummed cigarettes from each other, drank long-necks together, leaned toward each other with that "I want you" body language while she put her hand on his arm. 

She'd look in her tiny mirror and smear on lip gloss and he'd tease her, promise to come by her house for various honey-dos since she was a…

I barely breathe, keeping my mouth tightly locked and my nostrils sucked inward.

The beep beep beeeeep never stops, rises above the sound of glass and wood and sloppy wet bags hitting the asphalt while the bigger-than-a-house caterpillar pushes and slides the piles of detriutus from a consumer society into the trailer of a truck parked below ground.

A man wears a bright orange vest while he rummages through, making sure the most precious commodity lately, cardboard, gets pulled…

The primary stars are hanging low tonight, taking bows against the curtain of secondary glitter until the black is awash with light.

Looking up, I think of satellites, man-made and natural, orbiting, swinging, tethered by gravity and pull and centrifugal force.

Ah, the metaphor, the metaphor of moons held in check by heavenly bodies, and my hand strays to the most imtimate touch of its own accord, centering me.

I am naturally a satellite, hanging on to energy and words…

She just doesn't understand, about the girl thing, you know?

I mean, how could she, being married and all, and never having had to, like, ask a girl out and hear her snicker to her friends about it later, or fumble around with "oh, uh, well, uh, sure, someday we might do something."

I tried to explain the other night, when we were sitting there in front of the fireplace, about how I read in a book once about a man who rolled over and pulled his lover into his…

The river bed is silent and dry.

The lovemaking is rote and aimed for release.

The pages of the book are blank, or might as well be.

The scissors are dull and the night is long and the fire is utilitarian and the names are Smith and Jones and the food is bland without spice.

The day is just hours and the clock is a black and white carousel of duty.

Is it any wonder that I am going to go intentionally insane?

The problem is that my lifework is WRITING, and when the project is done, I want to go back and back and back because I miss them, damnit, I miss them.

They peopled my days, my dreams, my angst, my screen, my hoping hoping hoping, my conversation, my imagination, and now they are down on paper, in pixels, and they live and breathe there, and I've actually given them to others to meet.

But they are were mine, all mine, for that…

Three weeks ago, Sam vowed to do one new thing each week to add some color to his khaki life, and so far he had taken a walk in the local park which felt a little gay and ordered a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks which ended up in the garbage.

The waiter at the semi-creepy sushi place had a Mexican accent, the bartender was a bored blonde who leaned over obscenely to chat with the bus boy, and the guy building the dragon rolls behind the counter was white, but this was where Sam's…

You can't make this shit up, and trust me when I say that I wouldn't even try, but there is something inside of me that puts it to words with rhythm like hoof falls, and I've made a million of them in the last few days.

We left on Monday evening and rode five and a half miles to camp where we sat in canvas chairs and drank whiskey and let the sun fade and wondered what we'd find the next morning.

We found a rough-assed mountain and big bunches of grass between stones and some…

The hallway of the Hilton is carpeted in a bright mosaic of pieces sewn together to look artistic, but only manages to be busy and cluttered and generic, but exactly three years, one hour, and thirty minutes after I moved in with you, I spot a baby lizard on that carpet, the just-hatched size.

You hold my cell phone and keys while I chase him on my hands and knees and hold the outside door open for me as I release him from my clam-shelled hands into the still-hot night of the desert,…