All I Want for Christmas is a New ACL

Sometimes it's good for me to do a little life-dump blogpost, just for me. It is a reminder of ups and downs, ebbs and flows, or perhaps themes of each year. For example, 2021- the year I got a new pony, tore my ACL, and got Covid…all within a few weeks of each other. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself…let's back up.

I began looking for a new pony-pal for Tristan in the summer. I use the term pony as an endearing term for a horse, as actual ponies are little demonic creatures that spend their lives trying to burden others. (But they do build character in children. Seriously, part of why I am funny is from the many satanic ponies I loved during my childhood.) 

In my search, I found the horse market was much like the housing market and horse prices were stupid high. 

• 2 year old, green-broke gelding - $10,000 

• 10 year old, one eyed, lame, appaloosa - $15,000

Not only was the price making me feel like Fred Sanford calling for Elizabeth, but none of the available horses were what I was looking for.

I exhausted all my resources looking for parameters I wasn’t even sure of myself. Then after a good night of chatting with God and Daddy, the ad for Roscoe popped up. A unicorn of sorts- a 10 year old buckskin gelding with a price that didn’t send me into cardiac arrest and a name already suited for Wanchese living. 

“Memphis, TN…hmm that’s a 14 hour drive. Not far at all!” I whispered to myself as I facetimed the owner, who in short, must be a long-lost relative because we hit it off immediately.

A facetime-ride and a hundred panicked facebook messages later, Roscoe was on his way to his island home. A shipper pal offered to deliver him at a discounted price so her kiddos could see the ocean for the first time, which saved me from that 2 day road trip I was planning. A trainer pal offered to host him for a crash course in collecting and de-boogering. (One of the things that ironically sold me on Roscoe was the fact that his owner said he ‘sometimes boogers at his own shadow’...me too, pal, me too.) All the stars aligned for this stunning buckskin to join our family. 

“You know your daddy loved a buckskin,” Mama said, as Roscoe breathed in his first few breaths of salty air.

“I do. He had his hands in this,” I replied, as we both smiled.

Days passed quickly as Roscoe learned about treats and snuggles. (‘New ma likes to put her face in mine…kinda weird.’) His trust grew and the first time I climbed on his back in real life, not via facetime, he was wonderful. I questioned even sending him to my trainer-pal…right up until I asked him to trot and he turned into a snorkeling seahorse, with his nose up to the sky as I giggled. Fixable issue, no worries.

After a few weeks at the trainer’s and glowing reviews of his progress, Little Miss and I made the two hour drive to visit and go for a little trail ride. I had ridden him a few times during his schooling and he was always a perfect gentleman. I brought Little Miss’s saddle since on this particular day, she was going to ride him for the first time. Before she climbed on, I decided I would take him for a quick spin first…

As I put my foot in the stirrup and began to pull myself on, something in the distance, maybe states away, spooked the bejesus out of Roscoe. As he leapt to the side, out from under my body, my knee twisted as I attempted to stick the ride. (Because instinctually, that is what cowgirls do…we turn into spider monkeys with thigh death grips.) At some point, my foot slid out of the stirrup and my leg, together with the rest of my body, ended up face down in the arena.

I heard whispers of oh my God, are you okay, as I made damn sure I could move my toes. (Bionic back, PTSD.) Once my toes moved, I knew I was fine…until I tried to stand up and returned quickly to the dirt. (Pain notwithstanding, badumchi!) My trainer pal and Little Miss carried on with Roscoe, who at this point was back to his normal, gentlemanly self, as I dragged myself over to a mounting block to get my wits together. (Really, I was just trying to figure out how I was going to mount from the right, since my left leg was useless. Logical thinking, you know.)

“I think I can ride. I can get on Bandit (one eyed horse, appropriately named) from the right side and be fine for a short ride. I’ll probably be grounded for riding after I go to a doctor so we better get a good one in,” I said.

No one argued. We had a great ride. (In my defense, what were the odds that something else could injury me on the same day? Plus, it wasn’t Roscoe’s fault. It’s never the horse’s fault. Also in my defense, cowgirls are admittedly insane people. Tested, proven, and proud of it.) 

Days or weeks, it honestly all runs together, went by with X-Rays, a knee brace, crutches, an MRI and multiple doctors visits…until it was reported that I had completely torn my ACL, sprained my MCL, and bruised damn near everything in their path. The most athletic thing I’ve done in my entire life and it is an injury of NFL proportions. I hope I get a phenomenal halftime show out of this.

Surgery scheduled? Check. Anxiety skyrocketing? Check, check. (Remember when I had the endoscopy & was sure I wouldn’t wake up? We are back there.) I had all the things planned that I could possibly need to get done before surgery, including a good barn clean out so I could watch the horses from our barn cams post-surgery without worrying about Charlotte with all her friends hanging around. 

Post-barn cleanout, I thought I had a sinus infection after inhaling dust and spider corpses but carried on about daily life since I had no fever or other Rona-like symptoms. Then it occurred to me that my head was hurting a little worse than normal…shit.

“Maybe I’ll take one of those home tests…just to see,” I mentioned.

And I’ll be flipping darned if it didn’t immediately pop up positive. No fever. No chills. No nothing out of a normal sinus infection type of pains…posi-freaking-tive for covid.

“Oh no…we will have to postpone your surgery for at least six weeks,” the nurse told me over the phone.

Now, in the grand scheme of things I completely understand that this is a first-world, cowgirl problem. But I felt like I’d been tossed off Roscoe all over again. An extra six weeks of not riding? What kind of groundhog blasphemy is this?

“Forget it. I’m just not having the surgery. I can walk decently enough and it doesn’t hurt all the time now. I’ll just f*#%&%* cancel the whole thing,” I said to my husband.

I was overruled. *eyeroll* 

So here we are…winding down 2021 and a week away from surgery, finally. (Lord willing.) Roscoe has settled in nicely and Tristan is still wondering when the new guy is getting sent back for breaking his mom. Both horses are enjoying what they think is retirement, loads of extra snacks, and a few ground-activated tricks. My saddles are collecting dust, thanks to the observant nature of my friends and family- which to be honest, I wish you guys loved me a little less so I could have ridden for the last several months with my leg brace like I wanted to. Only kidding! 

Other things happened throughout 2021, but the last several months of this year have been truly humbling. We have been so fortunate to have some of the best people in our life to be there for us, visit us, drop off food, offer to feed kids and pets…and mostly, pray for us. Hold onto the friends who pray for you, they’re pure gold and I thank God for mine every day.

Thanks for the thoughts & prayers, friends. Merry Christmas!

#alliwantforchristmasisanewACL #97daysuntilicanride 

How We Came To Be...

How we came to be…

While Half Fast Hauling & Grading may be a seemingly new business venture, the work itself has been in our family for years.

I am a farmer’s daughter- my daddy would affectionately refer to himself as a ‘dumb old dirt farmer’ when asked what he did for a living. Growing up, I would spend countless hours riding shotgun in grain trucks, dump trucks, tractors...anything Daddy was driving, I was his copilot. I was and continue to be so proud to be that dirt farmer’s daughter. 

When his health began to decline and dump trucking just wasn’t feasible anymore, he sold his truck. He hadn’t listed it anywhere and really never tried to sell it. I knew deep down he never wanted to, but he knew he needed too. There is nothing more useless and costly than a dump truck sitting still. The truck sold because it was God’s timing- that particular day something told Steve Farr to stop by my parents house and ask about the Peterbilt. And something told Daddy to sell it to him.

It was about a year before Daddy passed away that the Peterbilt pulled out of Mom & Dad’s driveway for the last time. After he passed, I would see the big red truck and catch myself waving even though I knew it wasn’t my daddy. There was just something about that truck that I felt like carried part of my daddy with it. Maybe it was the pride he had driving it- the love he had for hauling, shifting gears, and that jake brake that could be heard from miles away. 

When Kirk began doing land clearing and tractor work, I knew one day we would have a dump truck again and just wished that timing was a little different- so they could’ve worked together. They say daughters tend to marry a man like their father...and right down to the red beard, I can surely see it. I married a dumb old dirt farmer just like my daddy.

One evening, while looking through used dump truck ads online...we noticed a familiar name in a listing.

“Steve Farr is selling one of his trucks,” Kirk said.

“IS IT!?” I yelped.

“Not the Peterbilt...he will probably never sell that one,” he said.

“Why don’t you just call him? Nothing is for sale until someone offers to buy it...just see,” I encouraged.

A few days went by and he called. The truck wasn’t for sale but he shared a few stories about my daddy and said he would let us know if he ever decided to sell the Peterbilt. A few more days passed and I received an excited text from my husband.

“I’m going to drive your daddy’s truck after work today!” he said.

Something told the owner to let Kirk drive the truck. Something. The truck still wasn’t for sale but after Kirk’s first call, he could tell how much the truck meant to us. My eyes filled with tears. If this was it, if this was the only time Kirk would get to drive the Peterbilt, it was enough for me. It would mean that they had shared the same truck- my husband would have shifted the same gears my daddy did for years. To some, that might seem minuscule but to me...to us...it was everything. 

Weeks went by and Kirk kept running into Steve...even though prior to calling, he had never seen him before to speak of. Something kept putting them in each other’s paths. Something. I knew when he decided to sell the Peterbilt, he would call us and I took peace in knowing that God’s timing was everything. Then I got another lunchtime text- a screenshot that said...

“I’ve decided to sell the Peterbilt, if you’re still interested…”

The general consensus was...no matter what we had to sell, we were getting this truck, and that included body parts and organs- whatever we aren’t using goes because we are figuring out a way to bring this big girl back home.

In the next week, we prayed a lot. I talked to my daddy and God a whole heckuva lot, asking for guidance, knowledge, reassurance, all the things we needed to know that this was supposed to be happening. They showed me without any doubts that it was supposed to happen.

The morning we picked up the Peterbilt, we were both so incredibly full of emotion. The signs were all so prevalent during the entire process, that I wasn’t expecting more the morning of. Just as Kirk put our pickup truck into park, a huge monarch butterfly circled us, then flew over to the Peterbilt and circled it, before flying off into the sky.

“Did you see that?” I asked, as my husband nodded. 

I didn’t have to explain why the butterfly was flying on that chilly morning. Kirk had heard hundreds of times before about the significance of monarch butterflies to my parents. When they first started seeing one another, my mom would draw a butterfly on her calendar each time they saw each other. It was something that was meaningful only to them. It was their symbol of togetherness.

Later that afternoon, Kirk showed me the below photo he had taken after backing the Peterbilt into her new spot in our driveway.

“The sunbeam...doesn’t that mean something?” he asked.

I knew the significance of different orbs captured in photos, but such a prominent sunbeam- I wasn’t quite sure. I asked my trusty pal, google. A sunbeam often ​​symbolizes miracles, angels, and a stairway or ladder to heaven. 

Directly below my search, google had a suggestion of things I may be interested in: what is the meaning behind seeing butterflies out of season? Butterflies symbolize rebirth and resurrection, hope and life. 

God winks every time you turn around if you know what to look for. ;-)

And that is where we began...again. We are excited to shift through the gears of this new but familiar journey with an angel riding shotgun to tell us how it is done. 

Unicorn Tales & Eyes

My unicorn can get himself into some mess. It is no wonder he is afraid of his own shadow.

Two days ago, I arrived home from work to a big fluffy marshmallow standing at the gate with a weepy, swollen but beautiful blue eye.

"What have you done to your eye, bud?!" I ask.

"Has boo boo...needs tweats to fix it," he implies, while nuzzling me.

My mind immediately flashed back to two years ago, almost to the day. I was on day two of my current career coordinating boat construction when I arrived home for lunch to find what appeared to be Quasimodo in my pasture. (Truly, it looked like he was smuggling a softball under his eyelid.)

"What have you done, T!?" I ask, while panic-dialing the vet.

The vet arrived a few short hours later, cleaned his eye to be sure it wasn't scratched and left us with strict instructions to apply ointment directly to the eyeball daily.

After a few hours of attempting to doctor the unicorn's boo boo, I call reinforcement into the barn. (Unicorns play by their own rules and on this day, there was no rule in Tristan's rulebook that said he had to stand still for goopy-yucky-stuff in his eyeball.)

"Okay...so I need you to hold his head down- and I'm going to swipe this goop into his eye," I tell my husband, who takes my instruction very serious and bears down on the halter.

Tristan, the almighty unicorn feels the pressure and immediately begins to pull slightly back right about the time I jam (gently) my goopy finger into his eye. Tristan then rears up and shoves my sweet cowboy through the stall wall. (Through the wall...like from inside the stall- through the wall into the outdoors.) 

Now, let me stop here and say this- none of this was Tristan's fault. (My horse people will understand...it is never the horses fault.) He made a valiant attempt to avoid trampling his cowboy-father to death mid-rear. And truly, he didn't get hurt so...it's a win, in my book. #itisneverthehorsesfault

As the dust settled and my sweet, very pale husband rose to his feet, I squawked something asking if he was okay. 

"HIS PAWS!!! They were right here and shoved me THROUGH the wall!!" he yelled, placing his hands on his chest.

"Hooves. Horses have hooves."

"Never again," he said, giving me the look.

I chuckled to myself as I looked at Tristan's current swollen eye.

"It's just me and you with the eye-meds this round, T...be easy on your mama," I told him.

He was a complete gentleman and his eye is on the mend. I think he just wanted a little extra loving and to be honest, I did too. A little extra snuggle time was just what the doctor ordered for us both. 

College & The Older Gal

As another semester closes in my old-lady-online-journey towards my bachelor’s degree, I have to laugh. Being an online student in a recently remote world, I’ve had the advantage of not exactly feeling my age. I can correspond with my classmates, and they presume that I am just like them...taking an extra class here or there online to get across the finish line.

That is until this semester when I embarked on my Small Group Theory voyage, where we naturally had (thankfully only) one group project. I was one of six undergrads and the only adult of the group. I initiated the first contact with my group members as soon as I found out who we all were.

Nothing.

A few days went by and I sent another group message, thinking maybe my first message didn’t go through. Our project was to choose one of a handful of movies to review, each movie could only be selected by one group- meaning if we didn’t act fast, we would be wasting an awful lot of time in the selection process. (I quickly realized this is an old-lady thought...college kids have nothing but time. Waste it away! Not on my watch, hoss.)

Still nothing.

Finally, roughly 36 hours before our movie selection was due and almost a full week after my first message, I had received responses from 3/6. Well, shit. I thought. A mere few hours before our selection was due, one straggling response came in.

“Yes, let's review Mean Girls!” the classmate said. 

So fetch.

I’m not sure what happened to her after that post. Perhaps she was abducted by aliens or the flying murder hornets from last year found her, but it was the last we heard from her. Then there is the other classmate who never felt the need to respond at all. (How do people do that?! I cannot not respond or complete tasks. #oldladystatement)

As predicted, our movie was already selected so we went back to the drawing board. I encouraged my groupmates to check their email daily and please, for the love of worms and dirt, respond to your peers. They basically stuck their tongues out at me and made a farting noise. 

“Honey, they are in college...all they care about is hooking up and partying and...”

“Not doing what I freaking ask of them?!”
“You are the mom in the group, aren’t you? You’re mothering all these poor college kids that just want to go out and drink, barely get-by in this class...and..”

“AND I AM NOT HAVING THAT!! NOT ON MY WATCH!!” I said again, “We are not...and their parents are not paying GOOD money for them to go to school and have them fail. And I’m not failing this project just because I’m in a group with a bunch of half wits.”

“Poor kids,” my husband whispered.

I’ve never sounded more like a 36 year old mother in my life. I didn’t care. 

I sent messages out daily and finally, my group mates got tired of hearing the morris code of dings on their phones as messages came through, and 3/6 helped to choose a movie to review, selected topics, chose which portions of the paper they were going to work on, and had their portions of the paper back to me by the date I instructed. Praise the Lord.

After submitting our paper, I sent one final message to my group. I thanked them for their patience and let them know I was the oldest in the group and without some schedule, it was difficult to juggle two full time jobs, mom life, farm life, wife life, and college life. I received two responses.

“You kept us really organized. I figured you were older,” from one group mate. (Thanks...older. Ouch.)

“When is this due?” from the group member we never heard from during the entire.freaking.process. 

Small Group Theory - one thing is for sure, I learned the difference in myself on the first college go-round and now, during our time together. I am very thankful to be the somewhat obsessive, schedule oriented, straight A student that I am today. 

Why We Are Staying Remote

If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that you have to find your own groove and work it. (Actually, I'm not sure Covid taught me that...I've always kind of danced to the beat of my own drumline. But you know....still.)

Tomorrow, our county schools will return to part-time, face-to-face teaching. But we are going to continue our groove online. While we had a rocky start to online-life, we have found our rhythm and to change it up at this point in the school year just doesn't seem to make sense for us. Perhaps I would feel differently if face-to-face was full time, rather than part-time. Perhaps I will feel differently in the fall, if the schedule remains partly-remote and partly-face-to-face. But right now- I don't want to change one more thing in my kiddo's school schedule.

Additionally, and I am writing this while holding my breath because I know someone's head may explode while reading this next part...I don't feel like our daily Covid numbers are wildly different than they were in the fall when we attempted this same plan. Yes, I understand there is a vaccine now. I also understand that students aren't getting the vaccine. 

Also...selfishly, I enjoy having lunch daily with my daughter. Every single day, we sit down and talk about the first half of our day. She tells me about her morning's google meets and I tell her...well, mostly I complain that I've been starving since like 10:30am. (I mean, I do really think a coffee/pastries truck that circulates past the office, similar to an ice cream truck, would make a killing in our industrial park.) This little bit of extra time we have been able to share over the last year has been priceless. Given the option, I'm hanging onto that extra few hours. 

I know this plan won't work for every family. I know my opinion doesn't match the opinion of others. But what is great is that we can differ in our views and still be friends. I do hope and pray that the return to a real normal is just around the corner. But for now, cheers to blue-blocking glasses and pajama schooling.

Rugged + Bougie

Christmas Break.

My cowboy and I are fortunate to work together- literally. Aside from getting to flirt with each other at work, another perk is having the same days off around the holidays. This break, we found ourselves with a real-life, first-world-equestrian problem. Who gets the truck when one wants to use it for side-work, and the other wants to use it for horses. Side-work wins because it makes money instead of costing. (Rude, if you ask me...but nonetheless.)

"You need a truck of your own," he slipped up and said one evening.

The words no sooner left his lips than I had begun the hunt for the perfect, somewhere between rugged and bougie, cowgirl truck. And oh, did I find it.

The wheeling, dealing, photo-sending, and number-crunching was all completed via phone call and email- so when we arrived in Sterling, Va all we had to do was sign on the dotted line and head back home. (We like to do one-day, round-trip road-trips...this is how we live dangerously at 36.)

The ride north was relatively uneventful...except for the rock that cracked my otherwise perfect 4Runner/trade-in before we even got out of North Carolina and a sighting of Marine-One hovering over the interstate. The ride south included an incredible amount of excited giggling...and not just from me. 

"OMG!! This thing has wifi!? I'm setting up our wifi name..." 

"You should make it..." I cut him off, I already had the perfect name.

"PrettyFlyForAWiFi!! Do you get it?!"

"*eyeroll* Yes, honey...I get it." (He is really so lucky to have married a comedian.)

We were partially delirious somewhere around 7pm. (Hour 13 of our trip) We were desperately looking for a bathroom- and potentially, somewhere for dinner. We pull off the interstate and make an attempt to follow signs to a gas station? McDonald's? What was it we saw a sign for? 

"Fort Eustis?" my husband says.

"Ohhh!!! An army base! They totally have bathrooms," I exclaim. 

"They are not going to let us use the bathroom," clearly in a panic, "And I can't have a concealed weapon on an ARMY BASE." (Don't worry, he has a permit for it.)

At this point, we are fast-approaching the guard gate. 

"Probably best to do a U-Turn...they probably won't let us on the army base," I say, all while getting the look.

Due to Covid's blessings, most of the fast food restaurants weren't allowing patrons inside so ended up in the most magical place in all the land. Target. And what typically accompanies a Target? Chick-Fil-A. In the word's of the great Ice Cube...(it) was a good day.

A few days later, Little Miss & I set off for our first adventure in the new truck with our equine-babies. We had a great ride in the woods. The horses approve of the new truck, while Tristan wishes I would stop documenting his love for purple.  

Later that evening I dreamed about my daddy...one of those dreams, that are more like visits than dreams. He was leaning up against a fence post in the lawn of his church in Hyde County. I pulled in with my new truck, jumped out and ran to him.

"Daddy! I just wanted to hug you and show you my new truck!" I said, as we wrapped our arms around each other.

"I love it, Bud...I already saw it," he said with a wink.

I woke up and could still smell his hug on my skin. It might seem silly to feel like my daddy had a hand in me finding something like a truck- angels are just tasked with watching over us, making sure we are not in harms way. But my angel is a farmer...and nothing ever tickled him more than his little girl driving trucks and trailers.

Hindsight is 2020

This is the time of year for reflection...reflecting on the good, bad, ups, downs, positives and negatives of the previous 12 months.

2020 was definitely different, but I can’t say it was awful- at least not for our little family. We learned so much about ourselves over this last year, whether it had to do with the craziness of Covid-19 or not. We grew. We evolved. We figured out what and who mattered most in our life and what is worth putting in the work to keep around. Some things we waved goodbye to- alcohol, some friendships, and sadly, my waistline. As we waved goodbye to some things, we made room for others- a solid relationship with God, family-time, mother-daughter trail rides, motivation to work even harder, and a bigger drive to be better people.

I have always had faith and a relationship with God, but being able to share that with my spouse and have a solid relationship with God together is a whole new level of amazing. I found that in my worries, which...more often than not are ludicrous fabrications of tiny, little molehills that I have morphed into mountains...when I prayed or more-so expressed my concerns to God- I stopped feeling the worry I was originally overcome by and started feeling grateful. {Worry is just a lack of faith...you have faith...stop worrying about the unknown and be thankful for what is right in front of you.} 

Over this last year, I've been reminded that life is a lot like a horse pasture- it takes work to keep good footing. Without good footing, you're quite literally just stuck in the mud. {I relate every situation to horses- if you didn't know that, you must be new here. Welcome.} We have to tend to our life pasture, adding things to make it better each year. This year, we added a whole lotta Jesus to our footing and spent a little more time in our pasture. (If 2020 has awarded us anything, it is a little extra time at home.) 

For those who struggled during this previous year, 2020 was just a rock in your pasture. A new numbered year won't change the outcome unless you allow for it to happen...tend to your pasture, add to your footing- I promise, it is worth it.

Happy 2021!