You Don't Know Jack.

Pin It First: there was this Jack.



My dear husband, the Big Bison, and I went through an addiction to the show "24". Jack was always there, to save the day. No matter how dark or evil the terrorist, no matter how dear the cost to himself personally,  Jack was a hero on whom America could depend. We would stay up watching Jack on Netflix till 2:00AM some nights. It was hard to sleep with that much adrenaline pumping, too, even after shutting down the TV.

And then, came this Jack:



Jack Shephard from the TV show "Lost" was the hero who saved the Island. What a guy!

Don't you just love a hero?

Everybody needs a hero!

Which leads me to, now, a hero for the Boonies. Another Jack, too.

Coincidence??? I think not. But, you decide.

Jack. Jack in the Boonies. A hero for our time.

Jack in the Boonies
photo courtesy the Big Bison

It's My Day!!!

Pin It Happy Birthday to Me!

My dear husband, the Big Bison took me out to dinner last night where we were treated the way you OUGHT to be treated on your birthday: with sumptuous food and drink, with warmth, and concern for our every need. They even showed concern that the load that our pocketbook was carrying might be too heavy, because it left the restaurant considerably lightened. We were greeted by name when we walked in the door, and by no less than 3 others of their wait staff.  They took our picture, and catered to our every whim. Hooray for Morton's! If you go there between now and March 31, they have a special Steak and Seafood for two deal that includes two salads, two seafood appetizers (scallops for hubby, crab cake for me) two entrées (prime beef: I had the filet, my hubby had the ribeye) one potato to share (HUGE), one veggie to share (grilled asparagus for us) and two desserts, for $109.00 (although my hubby's steak was a slight upgrade). For Morton's, that's a savings. So, I heartily endorse the deal!

Here's the birthday pic they took of us:

The Last Supper of my 52nd year.

Yesterday, my dear, dear Bison made me a birthday cake with the help of our daughter and a recipe borrowed from the Barefoot Contessa. The Barefoot Contessa, she can throw down on some birthday cake, and aside from a bit of a  CRUNCH from the coarse kosher salt that the Bison used (Hey! He was just following the recipe!) it was a fantastic cake! So, this morning, we all had birthday cake for breakfast. Is there a better way to start off your next year of life? I think not!

Breakfast of Champions

Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy my birthday, won't you?

Foxy Loxy

Pin It I bet you thought I was going to talk about me, again.

Well, while I am still on my sardine eating/fishy burp producing binge/experiment to improve my hair's condition and thus give myself incredibly glorious hair, we are not going to talk about my own personal foxy locksies. Which would have a different spelling than this title, anyway.

No, we are going to talk about a little adventure that occurred at my house, earlier in January, when, you will recall, I was sicker than a dog, and had lost my zest for living, and my aspiring blog-author-mojo. This blog was not named Wild Life in the Woods for naught, and in this little tale, where you will actually see some wildlife tail, you will also see that I do, on occasion, live quite the little wild life in the woods, with the wildlife. Wordplay! I love it. I live for it! Well, I don't ENTIRELY live for it. Figure of speech. Anyway...

Our story begins when my daughter was going across the street to play with my neighbor's granddaughter who comes by to play on a fairly regular basis. They were walking up our driveway (which, if you looked at the pictures in yesterday's post, you will remember is quite wooded), when my daughter said she heard something rustling in the leaves. Over near where the propane tank used to be. We used to use propane to fuel our cooktop when we first moved here, and so we had a lovely, decorative, huge white/partially covered with green mold, torpedo shaped fuel tank in our yard, which the previous owner of our home had attempted to camouflage with some lattice work. Natural gas arrived in the Boonies last summer, the propane supplier hauled our ugly propane tank away (Yay!!!), but the little lattice work "faux fence" has stayed up in our yard. Why? Well for the same reason that our giant Christmas bulb sidewalk lights (purchased this year at Costco for that festive holiday feel) still grace the sidewalk leading to our kitchen: because we live deeply back away from the road enough that we're not particularly ashamed enough to take them down.

So, ANYWAY, my daughter heard a rustling in the leaves. Her eyes, she tells us, got big as saucers, and she came running back into the house and called us to come see, quick, because she knew what she saw wasn't going to last long!

So, here's what she saw:

My ear! My EAR!!! If this keeps up, Van Gogh's gonna wanna paint me!

No, seriously, there has got to be some way out of this dilemma. But my head is so wide and my brain is so TINY!

Ow! Ow! OW!!! Oy, I got such a headache!

Note my lovely Foxy Loxy Locks. Susan in the Boonies is so jealous, because I don't have to eat sardines.

No, we don't know how FoxyLoxy got his lovely locks stuck in that stupid faux-fence. Maybe he saw a mousie through the hole and decided to pounce on it, sneakily. through an opening in the latticework, and then couldn't get through, or back out. We don't exactly know. But well and truly stuck he was, and my dear husband, the awesomest Bison EVAH (!) , first got his camera and snapped some shots, and then got some kind of crowbar and pried one of those pieces of wood loose from the latticework, and freed dear FoxyLoxy. FoxyLoxy promptly ran around in circles in our yard for about five minutes. Our neighbor theorized that perhaps he ran around like that in circles because he was oxygen deprived from hyperventilating because he was STUCK (who knows how long he had been there before my daughter saw him!), and all these people were quietly creeping up on him, looking at him. Poor feller! Anyway, within a few minutes, his right mind seemed to return to him, and he trotted off to do foxyloxy things in the Boonies.

So, now, children, you know the story of How FoxyLoxy Got His Head Stuck in the Faux-Fence in the Boonies. Show your kids these pictures. They won't believe it. I almost didn't! And I saw FoxyLoxy with me own eyes.

Breathtaking Beauty o'the Boonies

Pin It It snowed last night in the Boonies. I thought I would treat you all to a glimpse of the breathtaking beauty that we saw when we woke up this morning. All pictures were taken by my extraordinarily talented husband, the Big Bison, who totally rocks.

P. S. You can click on them to make them bigger. And they just get better!

The overlook of the creek.

The backyard.

A bit of blue sky.

The driveway.

From the road.

From the backyard.

Packed In Like ....

Pin It Finish that expression.

Sardines, of course!

Yesterday, I was watching Dr. Oz, who was touting a book that looks mighty interesting to me called the 4 Hour Body. How could you not be interested in a book that promises Rapid Fat-Loss? Holy Moly, I just called up the Amazon link, and it also apparently promises incredible other stuff, too. I REALLY might need to order this book!

I think I just lost my train of thought entirely!

What was I talking about anyway?

Oh, yeah.

Sardines!

Dr. Oz and the guy who wrote that book, Timothy Ferriss say that if you eat 30 grams of protein 30 minutes after you get up, that it gets your body's fat burning hormones cranked up first thing. To get 30 grams of protein, you could drink a protein shake of some sort. (I've never drunk one of those things...they seem so artificial...they kinda worry me.) Or, you could eat 5 eggs. WAY too many eggs.

Then later in the show, he was talking about foods you can eat that will help your hair, if it's dry, and he mentioned sardines.

So, when I was googling high protein foods, there was the lowly sardine on the list! Full of protein, and Omega 3 oils.

Maybe I can become a fat burning machine with a glorious head of hair.

Ya think?


Well, this started quite a furor on a message board that I frequent. Apparently, there are a lot of haters out there. Sardine haters.

Harumph.

Mark Bittman, The Minimalist, a food columnist for the New York Times, cookbook author, and one of my favorite foodie go-to guys, praises the lowly sardine. Check out tip #74, here.

I really like Mark Bittman a lot, by the way. Despite the fact that he went with my arch-enemy, Gwyneth Paltrow, the woman who has stolen the worldly fantasy life that I should have had, They traveled all over Spain with my other favorite chef, Mario Batali.  The fact that she is beautiful, talented, charming, intelligent, funny, gets to sing with Vince Gill, eats brunch with The Barefoot Contessa (another heroine of mine in the food world) and never puts on an ounce of weight while eating gourmet food is all just salt in the wound. Honestly, it's almost too much to bear. Like sardines gone bad.

(Gwyneth, if you're out there reading this, and you'd like for us to be reconciled, call me next time you make it to Music City, and you can work on making it up to me.)

Anyway, back to sardines.

I'm thinking about eating them for breakfast...but they seem a little strong for breakfast....
I don't know if I'm up for it this morning, after eating a whole can last night. With Dijon! And Triscuits! I eschewed the Tabasco, Mark. But they were great! Then. But first thing in the morning? I dunno.

What about you?

Are you a hater?

Leave me a comment, and let me know your feelings on this important issue.
Or, you can let me know how you feel about the 4 Hour Body. Or Dr. Oz. Or Mark Bittman.

Or.....Gwyneth...

Draggin' Heart

Pin It

The last month or so has been hard. Really hard. I caught a bug the day after Christmas, a really evil bug, that caused me to lose my voice from 3 weeks of coughing day and night, and sapped me of all energy, physical and  emotional. During that time, I also allowed myself to become just about drained spiritually, as well.

So, while I was down there in the gutter, I took some time to contemplate the future, which contains some huge challenges. What challenges, you might ask?

Well, for one, I am the mother of a 16 year old son, and a 13 year old daughter. And this parenting of adolescents thing is not for cowards. Now, my kids, in relation to lots and lots of kids their age, are wonderful kids. They really are! Everyone (who doesn't live with them) says so! So far, in fact, I've probably gotten off really easy. No one has gone to Juvie. I'm not in the pen sporting a non-fashion-forward orange jumpsuit, for having killed one of them. Hey: life is good! In fact, in light of not having to wear an orange jumpsuit, it's not just good, it's great!

So, anyway, I was talking to my friend the other day about what was dragging me down, and she said, "You know, I'm pretty sure it sounds like a lot of what is getting to you is fear." And then she said a lot of other stuff, which probably registered on my brain as "Blah, Blah, Blah, Ginger" (That's a reference to one of my favorite Far Side comics that compares what we say to dogs, to what dogs actually understand.)  A light bulb had gone on inside my brain. I AM wrestling with a lot of fear. Because, I HAVE seen some of the most wonderful Moms I know, some of the finest human beings I've ever met, watch their children make some stupid, stupid choices. And it has finally really and truly registered with me how incredibly little control I actually have over my kids lives and choices. And while you may think, "Well, duh....", nevertheless, if/when it ever happens to YOU, you may find yourself remembering that somewhere in your distant past, somebody might have mentioned to you reaching this stage in parenting is terribly, terribly hard. I have found myself second guessing some of the most basic decisions I have made on this journey, including whether or not homeschooling was actually the best thing for my kids.

While I was down in my cozy little Pit of Despair, the Lord, bless Him, stopped by to have a chat with me. (He's awfully good about remembering those who find themselves in prison, whether it's an actual, real life prison, or just an emotional prison that we have built for ourselves.) Which is sure a good thing, because I really desperately, desperately needed a bit of Divine Tail-Kicking. I was working on my BSF lesson, in Isaiah chapter 35, and I believe the Holy Spirit made a verse come alive for me in a way it never had before. In that chapter, in verses 3 and 4, God tells the prophet Isaiah that Isaiah is to "Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, 'Be strong, do not fear, your God will come.'" Now, before my friend had mentioned that I was wrestling with fear, I really hadn't thought of it that way. I just thought I was depressed in light of the probable reality of my situation. Adolescents make stupid choices. They just do. Over the doorway to adolescence, I read the sign that I myself had hung, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".

 And there IS an element of letting go of cherished hopes that I've had to do, lately. And that IS hard. No doubt about it. But somehow or another, as parents, even as we're letting go of some of our old dreams and hopes for this child, paradoxically, at the very same time, we've got to be the ones who look that child square in the eye and let them know that we have the GREATEST hope and belief in them. So, we let go, and we hold on, all at the same time. No wonder so many mothers I know are in agony. Day by day we try to navigate as best we can these shoals, fraught with uncertainty, and even danger.

God does not call us to be in a happy little place of denial in regard to our children and their choices. He asks us to look at the reality of the situation, face the facts, and then offer up our fears to the One who loves us so deeply that He chose to die for the love of us. The promise is there for us that if we strengthen our feeble hands and steady our knees by casting our cares on Him, because he cares for us, that He WILL come. He will not leave us to face whatever may come alone. He will be with us. Always. Even to the end of the world. We are not alone. We are loved. Our children are loved. He loves them more than we love them. He WILL come.

And as my heart realized that His Spirit was speaking these words to me, I felt like He was kneeling down, leaning over my ankle, and unlocking that ball and chain of fear I'd been dragging around. It's a beautiful thing how much lighter my spirit feels! Not that trouble won't come. In this world we WILL have tribulation, right? Comes with the territory. But we are to take heart, for He has overcome the world.

So, I don't know if I've exactly exchanged my draggin' heart for a dragon heart (bold, courageous, fearless), but I'd at least say that God came to me in my prison, and reminded me to whom I should turn when I am afraid. He's so good!

Fears can be fiery, due to real and present danger, or more of a slow simmer, due to a dread of what MIGHT happen. Whatever the case, they always reveal in whom or what we have placed our trust. Are you struggling with fear? Maybe God has something He'd like to whisper to your heart as well. Cast all your fears on Him, because He cares for you.

I have been sicker than a dog.

Pin It

However.

I didn't want to let TOO long go by without wishing you a Happy New Year , even though this, the longest-lived virus in the history of mankind, has really kicked my tail, and left me feeling like the holiday has gone to the dogs.

I hope you will forgive me for my absence, and this post is a promise to me and to you that I WILL get better soon, and before you know it, I'll feel well enough to write something worth reading.

If you want to give me a shout out, I'd love a few encouraging words in the comments section. Or a prayer. That would be even better.