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The last of the Christmas cookies have been eaten, and I find myself thankful that it is coverall season, which is also bulky sweater season. If you cannot follow this line of reasoning, then you aren’t one of those people who gains weight every winter! The best part about winter clothes is that they hide weight--at least psychologically. Coveralls are lifesavers. Everybody looks 20 pounds heavier in them, so no one has to feel self-conscious wearing them. You can wear sweat pants in them and be really comfortable. Then t...
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter in late November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa’s reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl. We should have known... ONLY females would be able to drag a fat man in a red v...
This is a tough time of year for working mothers. I know this, because I was one for 21 years. Now, both of my babies have long since left the nest, but I still remember the perpetual state of exhaustion that is the normal state of being for working mothers. Now I look into the haggard faces of working mothers, and I wonder how I survived all those years. Working mothers do not get a lot of sleep, because there just isn’t time for it. They have to put in a minimum of eight hours at the job site and still plan menus, shop, c...
“It takes a village to raise a child,” is is an Igbo and Yoruba proverb that exists in many different African languages, and we in rural America have borrowed the phrase. This proverb became reality in our village a couple weeks ago when my guest columnist, Gayle Grosfield Callinan, encountered my grandson Jasper on the sidewalk in front of our store. To help her overcome the trauma of that encounter, I encouraged her through my tears of laughter to write it down in the following guest column. As one of my former stu...
As another general season deer and elk season ends, many hunters are contemplating robbing a bank or at least a convenience store to make ends meet AND stay within the hunting budget their wives have given them. You see, phonier than any hunting or fishing story you have ever heard is the myth that hunting saves money. At our house, the hunters definitely boost the local economy and the economy of several brick and mortar sporting goods stores and a couple online sites. I figure that every meal of wild game we consume costs...
The best part of writing a weekly column is that readers love to help me out. This week I have Bobcat/Grizzly jokes as the cross-state football rivalry looms this Saturday. I am sure you will be able to tell that the jokes were sorted by a Bobcat fan, but of course I will give equal time to Grizzly fans if they send me some great jokes. Albert Einstein met a Bobcat alumnus at a party. He asked the Bobcat if he knew his IQ score. The Bobcat replied, “240.” Albert and the Bobcat had a great conversation about physics and the...
This weekend is Veteran’s Day, and while war rages in the Ukraine, Israel, and fifteen other countries around the world according to Wikipedia, we honor the veterans of all wars. The World War II veterans are becoming fewer in number every day, so we have little time left to honor and thank them for their sacrifices. I want to thank all veterans for their service and assure them that their sacrifices do not go unappreciated. There are so many poignant stories that have been shared by combat veterans of the horrors they e...
Parent teacher conferences are traditionally held after the first quarter of school ends, and I have to say they are one thing I didn’t really miss about teaching. Now, having returned to the classroom after 16 years off from parent teacher conferences, I find myself facing upcoming conferences with some trepidation. The parents of the good kids always show up, but the parents that you would really like to meet to give you insight into the reason their children are the way they are coincidentally don’t show up. My hat goe...
Since my faithful mare, Tinkerbelle, died, I have been looking for the perfect old lady’s horse. Actually I found him in Ekalaka, Montana, but I can’t wrap my head around the asking price. I have come to realize that the perfect bomb proof Grandma’s horse is going to cost me about a trailer load of calves, but I am struggling with writing a check that size for something that could die the next day. Several years ago, I realized that I no longer had any desire to hit the ground coming off a horse. After the cows were all w...
The long awaited general season rifle hunting season starts this week. It has been an important weekend for me ever since I was born into my parents’ outfitting business, and I have spent many years as a hunting camp cook, so I have always revered hunting guides. I love to listen to hunters’ tales of how their guide darn near killed them off dragging them to the top of every mountain but how it was worth it in the end to shoot an elk on a wilderness hunt. However after all those years of observation, I have come to the con...
As I come to the realization that I am playing in the fourth quarter, my perspective on life has become more retrospective. I am rather baffled by the speed at which I arrived in the fourth quarter, and I am determined not to sit it out on the bench. In fact, as a person who spent many years in the adventure vacation business, I loved the movie, The Bucket List. It was an inspiration to many of our older guests to get out of the recliner, climb mountains, ride horses, shoot elk, or go trout fishing, and we were happy that...
“Is your mom ok?” our Crazy Peak Boutique employee, Larissa, asked my daughter, Brooke, last Wednesday morning. “Define ok,” Brooke replied. In her defense, Brooke has lived almost 38 years of her life realizing that her mom is not exactly normal. “Why do you ask?” Brooke laughed. “Well, customers are asking about her and some incident that happened at the Family Dollar, and I am not sure how to answer. She was gone yesterday, so I don’t know if something happened to her,” Larissa continued. “Oh, she is fine, but that’s a...
With gas and diesel prices through the roof and inflation hitting our wallets month after month, there are many people who are having to get creative about providing food and shelter for their families. Urban camping is now a thing in places like Bozeman, Montana not just Seattle or Portland, and many families are resorting to multi-generational cohabitation. In fact, I have a whole lot more respect for the television family of the Waltons after living with three generations under one roof. I remember watching the Waltons...
Fall is an anxious time of year on ranches, because pre-conditioning, weaning, and shipping are the dreaded days of the year when ranchwives are called upon to sort a lot of cattle with their husbands. It is my hypothesis that there are many ranchers who go to bed at night this time of year without the benefit of having ingested a nice warm dinner. More likely they cooked themselves a frozen pizza or just had cereal. If you have not sorted a lot of cattle with your spouse, let me explain the dynamics of it. I know that when...
Many readers commiserated with me in my pack rat war that I recently recounted, but to be honest, the pack rat war was not the most fierce battle I ever fought as a camp cook. Now, hunting camp cooking is ordinarily a delightful experience!In fact, this week is the opening of the early season rifle, and I am homesick for the smell of wood smoke and kerosene lanterns and the bugle of bull elk. Hunting camp is a fine and pleasant misery where I get up at 3 a.m., try not to singe my bangs lighting the kerosene lamps, fire up...
Social media is changing our lives, and it just might have the power to change the course of history. Everything we do now is chronicled on social media. World leaders are offended by each other’s tweets. Perhaps Twitter and Facebook won’t alter the course of history, but I cannot help but think they would have changed the perception of historic events if they had existed back in the day. Let me hypothesize a few historical examples to prove my point. #1. Christoper Columbus posting on October 12, 1492: “Yo, ho, ho, Isabe...
“All creatures, including me, get grouchy as summer turns into fall. Perhaps it is because we know winter is coming. The yellow jackets, hornets, and even honey bees become aggressive. And then there are the rodents that seem to want to move in before winter. I despise mice and rattlesnakes; however, there is no creature on earth more irritating and detestable than a packrat. I believe it is because they mark everything, so they ooze as they move, and they build a huge nest called a midden, wherein you might find e...
Going back into the classroom has forced me to start going through the tubs of teaching materials that I have collected over 41 years in education. I have dusty tubs of outdated teaching materials that I could not possibly part with when I stopped teaching English and then again when I stopped teaching guidance and library. Seventeen years ago, my husband who has hauled those tubs around for 17 years, told me they should just go to the burn barrel, and he was definitely right. One summer I had to move and downsize my County...
“You are probably eligible for some kind of award from the Governor,” my husband commented one morning over coffee. After 41 years of marriage, I should have known better than to bite on that, but of course, I had to find out where this was going. “For what?” I asked even though I suspected the answer was not going to be a self esteem booster. “For being the oldest first year Home Ec teacher in the universe,” he answered smugly. “Well, it’s not Home Ec anymore. It is FCS, and you are right I should get some kind of award but...
I recently accompanied a friend to choose a swimsuit for a cruise she has booked. I do believe the economy must be in much worse shape than we have been told, because the swim suit mannequin was wearing a total of 20 square inches of fabric. Either that fabric was ridiculously expensive or Oakley Inc. must be manufacturing on a very tight budget. The other conclusion was that generations from now, some anthropologist will unearth this fragment of fabric and use it to conclude that global warming had to have been rampant in...
The cucumbers are coming on strong in the garden, so it seems like a good time to share some ideas for utilizing them. It is also pool and river floating season, so Tip #3 below is particularly timely. I absolutely love tips and hacks, so I try to pass them along without too much commentary, but sometimes I just can’t resist sharing comments about the actual practicality of those tips. Tip #1. Cucumbers contain Vitamin B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc. F...
Our county 4-H Fair is this week, and it brings back a flood of fond memories of my own 4-H years and those of my children and grandchildren. When I transitioned into the role of 4-H Grandma, it was way more fun and less work than the role of 4-H mom or 4-H exhibitor. I got to show up, watch, visit with everyone in the county, celebrate the thrill of victories, and of course dry the tears from the agony of defeat. One of my not so fond 4-H memories was my daughter Brooke’s 4-H cat project. As a first year 4-H’er she had alr...
The writers in Hollywood are all afraid of losing their jobs to Artificial Intelligence, so I decided I better try to find out if my writing jobs would be in future jeopardy. I researched how to use ChatGPT 4.0 and decided to have AI write something for me. Like most writers, ideas ferment in our brain--sometimes for a long time. I was always going to write a poem about forcing our youngest child to wear his sister’s hand-me-down boots even though they were red or pink or turquoise until he finally got old enough to rebel. I...
The Big Timber NRA Rodeo and the high school rodeo were successful as are all rodeos due to the planning, preparation, and just plain hard work that goes into putting on a rodeo. The Big Timber Rodeo has a rich history which began with Leo J. Cremer (1891-1953) and his family who built a rodeo legacy based out of Melville, Montana. He established the greatest string of bucking horses ever owned by a single person. After his death in 1953, his business became part of Gene...
Every time I hear a story about someone who has to be rescued from a mountain adventure by Search and Rescue, I think back to a few years back when we set out on a wilderness trek that was not well planned. It started out with the fateful words, “Let’s go to Blue Lake! I have never been to Blue Lake.” The whole family agreed it would be an adventure, and that turned out to be an understatement. My father was an outfitter for many years, and he tried to instill in us a need to be prepared for anything to happen in the mount...
