happy pride

from your favorite buff cowgirl

HOWDY

Spent most of my day off today lazing about but I am sitting down to write this even though my brain is trying soooo hard to turn off permanently.

My brain is off but my body is ON, welcome to the gun show everybody. Yes it’s true my ‘labor muscles’ are already coming in and I’m probably starting to look like a fiddler crab, as Dad warned I might from doing all my work right-handed. It has honestly been a delight getting reaquanted with manual labor and I’m trusting that my mind is just going into a nice little medatative rest, not dying… right?!

The sudden switch from full time student to full time ranch gal is obviously a little bit confusing and strange BUT I have had some thoughts (!!!) amid all my grunt work. Some of those thoughts are ABOUT grunt work. I’ll share them now.

Let me set some scenes.

Scene number one: Carly and I are doing Saturday chores in the barn while the other wranglers handle kids’ rodeo. We check off ‘sweep stalls’ on the white board and move down to the next item: clean windows. We gather our supplies— newspaper and ammonia spray. I pour some concentrated ammonia directly into a gash on my thumb while I’m trying to fill our spray bottles and I scream and we giggle. Carly’s giggle is silent with eyebrows raised- I’ve been hearing more and more of it lately, especially towards the end of the day when we get either delusional or grouchy. She works on the outside of the windows while I clean the inside. We work at the same window, same pace, so we are one another’s mirror image as we scrub. Occasionally we exchange a few words or hold up our newspaper and point out a headline before we crumple it up to wipe away the dust from the glass.

Scene number two: After we finish chores one day Ryan asks if I want to be done or keep working and I say it depends, what are we doing. He says harvesting lettuce and I say okay. He drives me and Big Dog in a big white van to his home down the road, where we stop inside to say hi to Ellen and Scotty and wash our hands before he leads me to the re-furbished shipping container that is their aquaponics garden. It’s like a space ship when we step inside— the door whooshes open and reveals red/ purple “star trek lighting” and rows of surgical looking metal, which reach floor to ceiling and take up most of the space. On the three leftmost rows, leaves of all different kinds of lettuces stand alert in full green rows. He takes down a panel and shows me how to pick of the rotten leaves and pack the heads into boxes to take to the ranch. As we work the fan hums loudly and the false but heavy humidity makes my skin tacky, and we talk. My voice is weird and quiet at first but I gain confidence and we sustain a pleasant conversation for most of the harvesting. The dark close space makes it feel overly intimate, but not in a weird way. I find myself asking him questions with less and less abashment, and we laughed a little, and the silent moments are peaceful.

These two scenes are basically how most of the manual labor on the farm passes for me. Silences are not awkward or tense but quite pleasant, in an alive way, if that makes sense. You can lapse in and out of conversation as much as you want, and almost without thinking about it. The funny thing is how opposite it is when working with someone who I feel tension with, or who I don’t really like, or who I feel doesn’t really like me. Maybe it’s something about the forced intimacy of working side by side that makes it so horribly awkward and viscerally uncomfortable for me to do tasks like the ones I just described with certain people here. It could totally be one-sided and all in my head but I swear to god you can cut the tension with a knife.

Whatever company I’ve had throughout the day, I’m finding it vital to get a little solitude in, either with my morning coffee or evening beer. It just depends how busy the mornings/ evenings are; I’ve developed little rituals for both. If I have time in the morning, I hike up a little ways and sit on a stump with my coffee, and the air is cold and the birds sing. If it’s the evening, I walk down to the creek, peel my boots and socks off and stick my feet in the creek, splash my face and crack open a cold one. Both of these have been really nice and necessary opportunities to let my mind wander. Not that it really goes that far at all. But a little poke-around does wonders.

My mind may be happy to sit where it’s at, but at least it’s in a place of relative progressiveness. There have been a couple instances with my coworkers recently that were pretty dissappointing— guys using slurs and making threats when they found out there was a trans guest this week, grown men talking shit about a girl who didn’t shave her armpits last year, a girl freaking out that they’re making the white witch Black in the new Narnia….Nottttt giving pride month. It’s funny but not, like always with those things. Thankfully there are plenty of people who think like me, and while the comments happen they don’t go without at least a little pushback.

The like-minded and I took a trip to the lake last weekend and it was such a treat. I rode with Kristina in her red Fiero with the T-tops off which was glorious, and had a lunch of avocado Asian salad and cherries and canned wine on the beach. Talked about disturbing dreams and Fosha drama with Natalie and Alex, and swam in the cold cold water and read a good chunk of the beautiful Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson and got re-burnt where I’d just healed. Later that night Carly and I talked— me in my top bunk, she in her twin bed accross the room— about how lovely the afternoon was and how we both did a ‘sense check’; closing our eyes and taking in, one by one, sound, smell, feeling. The sounds of the lake water crashing and pines creaking in the wind and murmers of conversation and laughter was what came to mind for me.

I was on kids this week, which was so silly and entertaining. This little girl named Fiona trauma bonded to me on Monday because (this is my theory anyway) she was sooooo nervous and scared and I was the first one to make her feel okay on her horsie Clifford. She did her hair like me and has been following me around and literally would not stop asking everyone if she could go on a ride with me… then yesterday her dream came true but twenty minutes in she’s all “I’m hot, are we almost done, I want to go back.” Like girl what. But she’s still cute lol and most of the kids were sooo sweet and fun. Went on two ‘man rides’ with all the little boys and they were so into my stories about the fairies and trolls and dragons and witches of the forest. Buncha happy campers. Tiny little Chip said if he was a horse his name would be Chocolate Chip, and asked me in his lispy voice, If Sage (his horse) gives birth can you name the baby Chocolate Chip? Sure Chip!! I said. I obviously wasn’t about to tell him that girl is about 40 years old and has tumbleweeds for a uterus by now.

What would your horse name be if you were a horse?!

Yesterday marked my first consecutive week here FINALLY and it feels like it… little by little, like I’m settling in.

Thank you for reading this <333

With looooooove,

Mary