My sister really nailed the descriptions of everyone we met, so I feel kind of repetitive saying anything else. But what the heck… I’ll give it a go.
Marlboro Man – Exudes a quiet confidence. Laughs easily. Makes bacon. Does the dishes. I was really amazed at the amount of time he spent with us. Why? Why? WHY? I kept asking myself over and over. Why is he hanging out with us? Surely he has a cow to inviscerate or a horse to excavate or a pasture to fumigate. I mean he was really there, you know what I mean? He was in the moment. He was friendly and open and not afraid to boss people around if we looked lost and helpless… which we did most of the time.
He answered all of April’s nine thousand questions without flinching. He spoke of his kids with pride. He told us about some of the projects they are working on. He laughed at my ascerbic comments. Yeah… I made Marlboro man laugh, but like I said… he laughs easily... not loudly like April and I do. He doesn’t bray like a donkey like my sister and I. It is more of a heh, heh, heh. In fact, it’s not really a very impressive laugh at all. It doesn’t even make your ears ring. I bet he never even got a stomach ache from laughing… or cracked a rib… or gave the person sitting next to him a brain aneurysm. Still, it is a laugh and it came to him easily. I really liked Ladd. He was my favorite.
Pie Near Woman – Now Ree is harder to describe than MM is. She is more complicated. Typical of a woman to be more complicated isn’t it? She is a writer and a photographer and a cook and a homeschooler. These are her passions. These are the things that make her tick. If I had not been there, I am sure that my sister, Jenni, and Ree would have talked homeschooling the entire weekend. Sadly, I was there and that made everyone a little nervous about exclaiming over the virtue of homeschooling your kids versus taking advantage of that little brick building in the center of town that educates your kids FOR YOU! This resulted in me asking myself… why? Why??? WHY am I here? What am I doing here? How did I get here? What is going on?
It was kind of a surreal situation. In some ways, I was lucky, as I actually knew half of the party there (my sister and Clay). For Ree, Ladd, Jenni and Dan, everyone at the lodge was a complete stranger. Of course, us girls had blogging in common. Lord knows, we could talk blogging. We all had children, so we could talk about our kids. The ranch is an interesting place, so Ladd patiently answered all of our questions about his job, but ultimately, Ree was our hostess and she had six people to take care of that she did not really know from Adam and Eve. PLUS – (with the exception of April) we are all kind of quiet people.
I have always been amazed at people who can swing their jaws open and closed, ninety miles an hour, talking about whatever pops into their heads. All of my closest friends tend to be ‘talkers’ and I tend to be the ‘non-talker’. I can’t really call myself ‘the listener’ as I am usually flying off into the milky way on a unicorn, while they are blabbering on and on and on and on. For the sake of friendship, I have learned to grunt and nod my head at the right time and to discern the exact right moment to exclaim,”Hey! Let’s go get a latte!”
What’s weird is that the Country Doctor is also a non-talker. He may talk slightly more than I do, but only because he asks so many questions! In our house, our youngest son, Jack does all the talking. The rest of us exist in a shroud of delicious silence.
So Ree’s job was kind of hard. She had to draw out five non-talkers and try to distract April long enough to let someone else have a say. I occasionally heard her saying, ”April… April… look… outside… about a half mile down the road… there is a chicken! Why don’t you go catch it and bring it back and then you can tell us all about it!”
Or maybe that was me that was saying that…
Here is the run down on the talking versus non-talking of the other people that were there.
Jenni – non-talker and when she does talk, she whispers.
Dan – non-talker who occasionally tells a good story in hushed tones.
Clay – expresses himself primarily through the art of ball room dance.
April – TALKER! Thank God! Someone had to do the talking at this shindig.
The Country Doctor – non-talker except when asking questions of his wife.
Me – hostile non-talker… because of all those years of questions…
Ladd – non-talker that was forced to talk to answer all of April’s questions. He actually talked so much, his voice grew hoarse.
Ree – Talker… but the question is… is she really a talker? Or was she forced to talk because of the circumstances? She didn’t talk the way a real talker talks. You know… the whole whatever pops into my head I say out loud to whoever is within hearing distance … and whatever I just said will lead me to say something else… and that will make me think of something else… which I will have to tell you… which will remind me of this one time…. and then we went to…. and that’s where I met… because she is related to…. who has a gimpy leg…. heart condition… psoriasis…. crick neck… rodeo clown… died in a bull fight… orphaned in Pakistan… leeches… tractor accident… knee replacement surgery… puppet show… head lice…
She wasn’t one of those kind of talkers, but she did talk. She attempted to cook and talk at the same time which was difficult for her. She kept losing count of how many cups of flour she had put into the cinnamon roll dough. She couldn’t remember whether or not she had added the salt, the baking soda, the eggs. April and Jenni began keeping track of what she had added to her recipes, so that when she got lost, they could tell her exactly where she was. It made me wonder what would happen if she ever tried to do any cooking videos on her blog? She might have to film herself cooking in silence and then have someone at Pixar animate her lips to move in sync with her overdubs. Sounds like a lot of work to me! I was completely unable to help Ree keep track of her cups of flour as I was too busy nodding towards the talkers, and grunting at appropriate intervals, while mentally practicing modern dance steps across the patterns of light on the floor of the lodge.
Sometimes being a non-talker is physically exhausting.
Especially if you are a non-talker that is forced to make other non-talkers talk.
It is almost like performing a one-woman puppet show… except that there are eight puppets and you have to make them all talk at the same time. Trust me, as the world’s most reluctant puppeteer, I can tell you that this is virtually impossible.
Unless you know how to use photoshop.
I really don’t know where Ree falls along the spectrum of talking and non-talking. All I know is that she struggles with cooking and talking at the same time.
And since she loves to cook… she must not talk that much.
Oh… and Ree was my favorite.
Cowboy Josh - Tall, lanky, perpetual smile, his eyes sparkle with laughter, walks like someone who spends most of their time on a horse. He glows… he radiates a sort of joie de vivre. What can I say? I only spent a few hours with him and I fell hopelessly in love. Please don’t tell the Country Doctor!
Cowboy Josh was my favorite.
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