Heather Huffman's Blog, page 19

The heart on my sleeve and Dean Cain therapy

Sometimes, you just have to immerse yourself in something else – something entirely different from your own reality.

Every now and then, I stop my perpetual motion to admit to myself this thing called life is flippin’ hard. There are so many choices to make and I forever seem to be making the wrong one. While there are some people who appear to get free passes on their bad decisions, I am not one of them. If there is a consequence to be had, I’ll find it.

Whenever I hit a low like the one I’m in this week, I’d like to say I go to my Bible or spend time in prayer, but the truth is, I bury myself in romance for a few days. Whether it’s a good book, a romantic comedy marathon, or a TV series that’s caught my interest, I immerse myself in it for a good two days, I have a bit of a pity party, and then I pull myself out of it and move on with life. (That’s usually where the Bible and prayer come in.)

Even on days like today, where I’m full-swing in my blah-a-thon, I can see the blessings in my life. But if someone were to start pointing them out instead of letting me have my time to wallow, I’d probably want to flick them in the forehead. I don’t want to hear that someone else thinks my world is sunshine and lollipops today. I want to watch Dean Cain look at Teri Hatcher like he could eat her alive, or like he’d move mountains for her to love him back. (Lois & Clark is the current marathon happening in my house.) There’s just something about the way he cups the back of her head when he holds her in his arms. Sigh. Yeah, okay, his looks don’t hurt either.

It’s launch week for me. My blog – and my world – should be filled with excitement and happiness and talk of Cat and Cody. I’ve waited almost 20 years to see these two in the spotlight, for crying out loud!

But I have a terrible poker face. My entire life, I’ve been accused of wearing my heart on my sleeve. I got tired of apologizing for it a few years ago, so I had a heart tattooed on my arm. Now it’s out there for the whole world to see – it’s who I am. If I’m happy, I’m ridiculously happy. When I’m sad, I’m heartbroken. If I’m angry at someone, they’ll know it. I’m pretty sure it’s physically impossible for me to hide any strong emotion.

That’s why my blog goes silent sometimes – because I’m sad or angry about something and I can’t find a way to temper the words flowing from my fingers. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned to control the ebb and flow of my emotions 90% of the time, but every so often, they bubble up and refuse to be silenced. It feels like a lie to not share them.

I’m probably breaking every marketing rule known to man with my blog post today. I don’t really have a point – guess I should have warned you that at the beginning. Just know that with me, what you see is really what you get. If I’m happy on my blog, I truly am filled with joy. If I’m quiet, I’m most likely wrestling with something you don’t want to see up close. (Though you’ll most likely get to read about it in a novel at some point.)

And if I’m not around as much as I should be this week, I’m busy, busy sighing over Dean Cain.

Tweet

 

Every Once in a While

It’s a time in my life I don’t think about often. Like a special treasure kept in a box, and every so often you gingerly take it out, dust it off, and admire it, the summer I spent in Florida at 19 is a memory I keep tucked away in the back of my heart. Partly because it’s more magical that way and partly because I’m too busy living the life I have now.

But every once in a while, those memories nudge their way to the front of my mind, and I smile.

My best friend at the time was the inspiration behind Ella in Fool’s Game. We were roommates and we had a tiny little apartment in a suburb of St. Louis. When our lease was up, we decided on a whim to pack our matching Ford Escorts with all our worldly possessions – along with our dog and cat and her boyfriend – and head to Merritt Island, Florida, where an old friend of mine lived. He’d agreed to let us crash on his couch while we found a place of our own.

Maybe old friend isn’t the most accurate description. I was 11 when I first met Andrew. He was my cousin’s Air Force buddy, and he’d tagged along for a family camping weekend. He was handsome, with blond hair and blue eyes, and he was nice to me. As one of the youngest members of a large family, I wasn’t used to the older ones treating me with that kind of respect. He really listened when I talked.

The combination proved deadly to a young romantic’s heart; my crush on him was immediate and it lasted throughout my teen years. For the next couple of summers, we’d see him when we’d go camping, and he became an adopted part of the family. I looked forward to it more every year.

Shortly after my family moved to St. Louis, my grandpa passed away and the big summer camping trips stopped. Both of my sisters married. My oldest sister’s wedding was the last time I saw Andrew for a long while. Those were some really dark days for my family as a whole. They’re memories I don’t revisit often for an entirely different reason. Those memories I deal with incrementally in my novels.

Fast forward a few years. I’m 19, have a wild idea that Florida is the place to be, and a long-lost friend has agreed to give me a spot to sleep while I apartment hunt. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a part of me wished he’d see me in a whole new light now that I was grown, and we’d ride off happily into the sunset together.

It didn’t exactly work out that way, but I did spend an idyllic summer on the beach in the company of some of my dearest friends in the world. As for Anne and I, we had adventures, got really hungry because we were so broke, probably overstayed our welcome, and had the darnedest time finding an apartment we could afford that would allow our dog.

But oh, how we laughed. Anne and her boyfriend, Andrew and me. We had moments of complete and utter silliness. We had moments of trials and tears. We had moments of quiet peace. And lots of really big spiders I always made Andrew save me from. The spiders in that part of the country are the stuff horror films are made of. I swear one chased Anne and me across the Denny’s parking lot.

As it so happens, my parents’ best friends were living in that area at the time as well, so when their son married, I was invited. Andrew was my date. I wore my favorite dress – it was emerald green and had a ribbon that laced down the back. The top was fitted and the bottom flared prettily. I felt like a princess. Cliche, I know, but that’s the only way to describe it.

It was an evening I scarcely could have dreamed of, perfect in every way. The night ended with a barefoot walk on the beach, with his hand resting lightly on the small of my back. Then we got ice cream cones and sat with our feet dangling off the tailgate of his truck.

I can’t say really why I came home at the end of that summer. My mom’s health wasn’t doing well.  We never did find an apartment that would let me keep my dog and I knew that having so many house guests was wearing thin for poor Andrew. It felt like such defeat, returning to Missouri after such a grand adventure.

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if, instead of coming back to Missouri, I’d stayed and enrolled in school in Florida, like I’d initially planned. But those are the kinds of thoughts that don’t really lead anywhere, so I put them aside. There’s so much joy in my life now, it seems silly to wonder about what-ifs.

I only heard from Andrew once after leaving Florida. When he found out I was getting married, he called to ask what my dog thought of the idea. He always did like that dog.

Fool’s Game was the book I worked on all that summer. In the evenings, I’d sit with my typewriter at the coffee table and type during commercials. He’d read over my shoulder and offer random comments. The four of us would get into long, winding, crazy conversations that usually wound up as fodder for the novel. So much of this book is a monument to that time in my life, it’s hard not to reminisce just a little with the book being at the forefront of my current world.

It’s crazy, the paths we take – some by choice, some we just stumble across. All the paths I’ve traversed in my life have contributed to making me who I am now and to the words that find their way into my novels. And every once in a while, I guess it doesn’t hurt to stop my busy life and dust off a treasured memory.

Tweet

A day at the zoo

It’s been 25 years since I stepped foot in the Dickerson Park Zoo. As a child, I had the place memorized. I took classes there over the summer and every chance I got, I was there, memorizing every nuance and fact about the animals. When I was about 8, I was pretty sure that if I didn’t grow up to be an actress, I’d work at the Dickerson Park Zoo. (Come to think of it, the menagerie on my farm isn’t that far off…)

Last Friday, after a really long, hard week of building fences, I’d promised my kids I’d take them to the zoo. My children have been raised on the St. Louis Zoo, one of the best in the country, so I was worried they’d turn their noses up at the beloved zoo from my childhood. I should have known my kiddos better than that.

We had an amazing day. Maybe our new zoo is smaller in size, but it more than makes up for it in the beauty of its park-like setting and the nearness of the animals. We were able to interact with the wildlife, and that’s something my kids and I love.

I took 352 pictures in our 4 hours there. (Maybe I went a little crazy.) Promise I won’t share them all, just my favorites!

Of my 352 pictures, a lot were of peacocks. They pose when you walk by; I couldn’t help myself.

My oldest, Dylan, and my youngest, Chris. Chris was taking a picture of me while I took a picture of them.

 

Feeding the swans was definitely a highlight for us.

Elephants are one of my all-time favorite animals, so watching them get their daily bath was a huge treat for me! This girl is smiling because she found the orange her keeper threw for her.

We all kind of giggled at how excited Chris got over the goats. Too bad we don’t have any of those at home or anything…

Our favorite part of the entire trip was feeding the giraffes. This particular giraffe had a ginormous tongue, which he used to grab food out of people’s hands.

 

Blake, my middle son, has just been slimed by the giraffe tongue.

My oldest son loves wolves, so he was thrilled to be able to watch them up close. Who am I kidding? I was, too.

 

 

Fool’s Game

I can’t begin to express how excited I am to be announcing this: Fool’s Game will officially release June 27, 2013!

This book has been almost 20 years in the making for me as it first began with a dream when I was 17 years old. The summer I turned 19, I lived in a friend’s cottage on the beach in Merritt Island, Florida. By night, I worked at the Denny’s in Cocoa Beach. I’d watch the sun rise over the ocean while Andrew surfed. And during the day, I wrote, determined to finish my first full-length novel.

There have been so many revisions to the book I initially called Cat and Mouse. Every few years, I’d get it out and take another pass at it. (The first version was done on a typewriter, so rewrites were a joy before it was put on computer!)

I think what I love most about this book, which is now officially titled Fool’s Game, is that its characters fit so neatly into the world initially created when I wrote Throwaway. (Look for more on that shared universe in the next week or so!)

So, without further ado, please allow me to introduce you to Cat and the rest of the characters of Fool’s Game…

At the request of the U.S. Government, Caitlyn O’Rourke faked her death years ago, only to be reborn as the Cat—a deadly black-ops agent tasked with working for the shadowy organization Chameleon and doing the jobs that can’t be done in the light of day. Now, on the verge of taking down a notorious drug lord and rescuing a captured Chameleon agent, Cat is targeted for assassination…from within. But who’s making the call, and why?

As she attempts to uncover answers and stay alive, Cat finds herself working alongside Cody Kingsley, the mysterious senator who broke her heart and betrayed her long ago. Along with an inner circle of fellow agents, Cat and Cody must untangle the web of lies that surrounds them before it’s too late.

From the sultry streets of New Orleans to a secluded plantation in Ecuador to Washington, DC, Cat must elude an agent hell-bent on her destruction while figuring out how high up the ladder the conspiracy reaches. At the same time, she must work through her tumultuous and conflicting emotions where both Cody and fellow agent Galloway—who may or may not have her best interests at heart—are concerned.

A thrill ride of emotions, suspense, and action, Fool’s Game intertwines matters of the heart and survival …and the only thing certain is that Cat will never be the same.

Tweet

Watching Him work

I’ve been debating putting up this post because I’m not even really sure what it is I want to say or how to say it without getting way more into my personal life than you probably want to be. I’m just getting that out there now, so if I ramble or am incoherent, you’ve been fairly warned.

Moving twice in a year, straddling two houses for a couple of months to accomplish this, and having to do so much work on the new place has my family on a fairly tight budget at the moment. We’d been waiting for one check in particular to come in so we could place a hay order and buy a fridge, which we’d been living without for several weeks now. The hay we needed because our new place is so overgrown, it’ll take a season or two to reclaim the pastures and get good grass in.

When the check finally came in, it was about half the promised size. Adam (my husband) and I debated pursuing the people for the money but realized that in the long run, all it would result in was a lot of frustration, hurt feelings, and heartache. There was also the fact that our children were watching us intently, wondering how we’d respond because they know these people have a unique ability to get under my skin. (We’ll just leave it there.)

So, we decided that if God felt we needed the other half of the money, He was smart enough to get it to us. We let the issue go.

By this point in my week, I was kind of getting a little teary. The move has been exhausting. I have a lot of days where I wonder if I’m cut out to be quite such a pioneer woman. Building fence is hard enough. Building fence from trees we’ve felled is even harder. Taming this lovely homestead of ours is a daunting task and I was beginning to wonder if I was as up to it as I like to think.

Bright and early Sunday morning, about a day after the aforementioned decision about the check, one of our neighbors was on our doorstep with a small refrigerator. He said they didn’t use it anymore and he wondered if we wanted to use it until we got ours.

That afternoon, another neighbor showed up on his tractor with a round bale of hay on the front. He wouldn’t accept any money for it and said he knew we’d need the hay and that should get us through until we can find a supplier with the spring cutting. That evening, our pastor let us know he’d have plenty of extra to sell us for a good price. (I’ve been so worried about buying hay from the wrong person, from someone dishonest, that having a source I trust is a huge relief!)

As if that wasn’t enough, the first neighbor showed up again that afternoon with an old dog house he’d planned to get rid of. He wondered if we wanted it for our goats. Building another house for our goats was on my to-do list this week!

I shouldn’t be surprised. God always comes through in a big way when I need Him to most. He’s cool like that. But it never gets old, sitting back and watching Him work. I wonder why I don’t do it more, rather than trying to plunge ahead on my own as I often do.

So now, thanks to a couple of awesome neighbor families who listened to the prompting in their spirits to do something nice for no reason, I feel like I can breathe again.

Breathing is good.

Tweet

 

Alpaca Cuteness

I realized this morning that I haven’t blogged in a bit – the days have sort of melted together. I have about seven posts I want to write, but they’ll have to wait for the next rainy day. (I’ll be building fences until then.)

But I did want to share a pic of my favorite little alpaca, Aolani. She’s small for her age because she had a bout of illness when she was younger, but she is such a delightful, curious, sweet little muppet that I completely adore her.

My boys have informed me I should let her be a house alpaca. I’m not sure I’m up for that. She probably wouldn’t be too keen on it, either.

Tweet

Broody hens

I was a little sad yesterday when I unplugged the incubator. Sure, I have 26 duck eggs in the hatcher, but unplugging the incubator means they’re the last batch for the season. (Yes, I could plug it back in, but I am at least trying to be reasonable with how many I hatch.)

As it so happens, my girls have decided to help me out.

I haven’t seen eggs from my Easter Egger in a while, so I kinda figured she’d gone broody on me somewhere. I found her nest today, and the 20 eggs in it. Three of my cochins have also decided it’s time to hatch some eggs. Two of them are trying to share the same spot. Even with two girls on the nest, they’re still spilling over.

From the looks of things, we’ll have even more babies wandering around in a few weeks! Since the last batch hatched in the incubator wound up being the cutest chickens ever to exist, I’m pretty excited to see what these ladies hatch out. (And yes, I’ll eventually get around to posting pics of the aforementioned adorable chicks.)

There was a time when I gave my girls nesting boxes. I gave up when I realized their favorite spot to lay was an old burn barrel.

 

Tweet

Bring your goat to school day

When I was researching goats, one piece of advice that came up more than once was “if you want them to be friendly, get a bottle baby.”

I think it’s more accurate to say “if you want them to be friendly, be nice to them. If you want them to be surgically attached to you, get a bottle baby.”

Our little goat herd now stands at 6 goats: 1 buck, 3 does, 1 wether and 1 soon-to-be-wether. Four of these were not bottle babies, and all of them – even the wildest among them – became pretty danged friendly once they discovered the joy of getting their neck scratched. I’m sure figuring out who carried the feed bucket had something to do with it, too.

Two of our goats were Nigerian Dwarf bottle babies. Raising them was a delightful experience, but not one I’m super keen to repeat any time soon because they were a handful. Goatsy and Snickers go beyond friendly to the realm of “more loyal than any dog.” They run to greet the bus when the boys come home, they try to sneak in the house (and sleep on the porch when they don’t succeed), and if I sit down outside, I will have one of them on my lap whether I want to or not.

The way our little homestead is set up, the house and pastures are completely surrounded by woods. There’s a 1/4 mile bumpy little dirt driveway that leads to the larger dirt road where the boys’ bus stop is. Because of the way it’s situated, the goats roam free for the most part and the dogs are almost always loose so they can protect all of the animals.

The only time this is a problem is when you want to walk away from the house because then the dogs and goats all think it’s time to go on an adventure. So, if someone’s walking down the driveway, someone else usually stands outside to keep them at the house.

This morning, my boys decided they wanted to ride the bus instead of being driven to school. Don’t ask me why. So they go tearing down the driveway at 7:30 to catch the bus while I stood on the porch, calling out to any animal that looked inclined to follow. Once they were gone, I went back in to make some coffee.

Then my phone rang. It was my neighbor, and she was giggling. Never a good sign.

The bus couldn’t leave because all four of my dogs and five out of six goats were swarming it. (The sixth goat wasn’t being well-behaved, by the way. He’s just on solitary confinement until he’s a wether because he’s a little too friendly with the girls.)

By the time I got there, the bus had managed to pull away, and my neighbors were kind enough to help me walk the goats and dogs back down the driveway. (This is not an easy task because a butterfly has a better attention span than a goat.)

Turns out Snickers, one of those bottle babies, had not only gotten on the bus, she’d jumped in a seat and looked at the bus driver like, “Okay, we can go now.”

Luckily, he thought it was funny. I almost wish I’d been there to see it, except it’s bad enough that my neighbors got to see me in my PJs with my hair unbrushed chasing down goats. I’m not sure the boys social standing would have recovered from the entire bus witnessing that.

Snickers, the learned goat

 

Tweet

 

Mr. Tanner

Love Harry Chapin and I love, love, love this song…

Farewell to Chicken Shanty

As we prepare to hand over the keys on the farm that taught my family so much over the past year, I can’t help but take a little time to acknowledge some of the things I’ll miss about the little gray house. Silly as it may seem, one of the things I’ll miss most is Chicken Shanty.

When we moved into the gray house, there was a decrepit old hawk house the field. Granted, the leather ties the boys discovered had a certain cool factor, but as the designated worrier of the family, I was concerned the building would collapse on one of my kiddos. It had been quite a few years since the structure had housed anything other than wasps, spiders or mice. I could tell there was still useable wood in there; it was just a matter of getting to it.

We got in as a family and worked together to dismantle the old hawk house. It was a daunting task, but we dove in and little by little, the building came down.

Until we were left with a pile of wood and tin for me to sift through. The wood that was no longer useable, we burned. What was left, we pulled nails out of (or hammered the nails flat when they wouldn’t come out).

I reassembled the useable pieces into a structure we would lovingly dub Chicken Shanty. A pretty big storm came through that summer and pulled part of the roof off, but we were able to fix it easily enough. Other than that, the Shanty held up surprisingly well against both predators and weather.

Even if it did look a little odd with doors for walls and a random hodgepodge of wood pieced together like an intricate puzzle.

All in all, the Chicken Shanty served us well. We were able to make two more small coops out of the leftover wood, along with pallets I picked up for free.

Those, I dismantled and brought with me. But the Chicken Shanty is our gift to whoever moves into the gray house after us.

You’re welcome.