A Saturday Ramble Thru Cigarette Smoke & Poly Ropes

Happy Saturday, Dolls and Gents!

It’s overcast and grey here, the clouds heavy and saturated looking. Mornings like this I wish that I could paint, that I could perfectly capture the right blend of grey and blue on a canvas and so keep that wild and windy feeling forever.

I am brimming with ideas and ambition this morning, my list sitting here in front of me, items waiting impatiently to be checked off throughout the day. I woke up this morning feeling as sick as a dog…I’m thinking that if I only notice it in a sideways manner the feeling will slink off like a stray…that’s what I’m hoping for anyway.

Adrian and I are home for a week or so, and the days to be spent here at home with the mums and dad and dogs and horses, stretch out in front of me like a red carpet, inviting and full of possibilities. I want to use this time to catch up on things I miss when we’re on the road, gypsying it from show to show…like my braiding, shooting clays, riding my fat horse and roping the dummy with dad. It’s an odd feeling, bouncing back and forth between traveling, being on the road, going from show to show, to being home where the rhythm of life is different, a little calmer maybe. When Adrian and I are on the road, we wake up sometimes at 2:30am so she can get to TV and radio interviews on time, then she has sound checks in the afternoon and a show at night, which generally lasts until the early morning while she talks to fans and visits with people about bucking horses, guitars and singing. Then there’s a day of traveling and the process in some form or other repeats itself. I love being on the road with Adrian and she gets really restless when we haven’t seen the blacktop in a while. When we’re home, we’re home. It’s lovely. I wake up and have coffee with dad, he tells me about his business and I tell him how Buckaroo Barbie is coming and what we hope to achieve with it. I go on runs, lift weights, eat whenever I want, do massive loads of laundry, cook with my mums at night and get caught back up on my sleep quotient. It’s like two polar opposites and I love both in different ways.

“These are the good old days.” I keep reminding myself.

The sounds of an Italian voice drift around my head like the cigarette smoke I haven’t smoked in months, lilting, lyrical sounds that I feel my tongue used to know before it knew the English I speak now. I’m trying to learn Italian, and the voice coming from my computer has me repeating, “La donna quida una macchina!” “Cane” and “L’uomo mangia.” Adrian got the amazing opportunity to preform in Italy last spring, and I got to go as well! We hadn’t been in Europe since we moved back to America from Scotland and the experience was wonderful. I hadn’t flown an international flight since I was 12 and either the seats have gotten smaller or my butt has gotten bigger. I’m afraid it’s the latter that’s to blame. I didn’t understand why people in ITALY wanted to hire Adrian to sing cowboy music?! At a ranch roping, no less! But then we got off the plane, I hugged Drew and Natalia, and it was like coming home. The appreciation and love the Italian buckaroos have for cowboying and the West really reminded me of how I felt when we lived in Scotland. I missed it so much that it felt like a hole had been punched out of my middle somewhere, and that hurt, that aching desire is what pushed me to learn as much as I could about cowboying again when we moved back to America. I admire these buckaroos who desperately want to find a better way to get a long with their horses, finding times and places to rope when roping is looked upon as cruel in Italy. They have a certain spunk and desire that I admire, that I want to cultivate in my life. So I work on my Italian here in my California bunkhouse, in the hope that one-day I will go back and be able to communicate and live in Italy for a time, a Buckaroo Barbie in an old land.

I shove my bare feet into sheepskin slippers (I hardly wear shoes when we’re home), and walk into the saddle shop to start organizing my rawhide, so I can start braiding again. My head is full of electric guitar rifts, red/white/blue poly ropes, painted and quilled elk hides, new cowboy boots and dreams of a Van Norman colt….dreams and goals and happenings all mixed up in a jumble of happiness.

I am home.

It is good.

xo xo Liz