Josh Ritter

I've also been really obsessed with Josh Ritter recently. Here's a few songs. His songwriting combines a sort of sweetness, a sort of brutal honesty, and fantasy. Here are some of my current obsessions. And I have decided to just hit you with the crazy right off the bat.

The Curse
      
Hopeful
     
Lillian, Egypt 

Hiking

 

I went on my first long like a couple days ago. It was supposed to be a 5.5 mile loop. But there is a trail that is two trails at once (the Maah daah hey trail goes on for 96 miles so it combines with in park trails) so I thought I had gone to far and booked it back the way I came so I would make it to my show on time. I then got super mad when I realized I walk almost to my next trail change for the loop but I turned around because my trail was not labeled the same as it is on the map. But as it turned out I'm glad I did turn around because I saw a wild horse. And the wild horse saw me and neighed  happily and started running towards me (I was wearing a black baseball cap and grey t-shirt and am about the right height from the front and the horse's view was a little obstructed, so I assume I looked like a friend). Which scared me because I was a little on high alert because I almost stepped on a rattler earlier. But pretty quick the horse realized I wasn't another horse but it kept walking towards me slowly. So I put my hands in the air and tried to look large and imposing. I would actually LOVE to have a horse come investigate me but if it got upset and hurt me by accident I would have had a 2 mile hike to my car and a show to play at 7:15. So I gave the horse a wide birth.
Other than the horse my hike involved:
1) Almost stepping on a rattle snake and waiting for it to make the first move so it didn't get scared and then watching a good 2 1/2 ft of it slither off.
2) Wading through the Little Missouri River
3) Jumping over a smelly muddy crick and not quite making it
4) Balancing on a tree branch to get across another muddy crick
5) Doing it all again (except the rattler) because I turned around and came home a 1/4 of a mile from where my turn would have been. The lesson here is to compare the trail app on my phone to the in hand map and find mistakes like that.

More to come later, my Ambien is kicking in pretty well right now. If I kept writing it would just make less and less sense.

The Little Mo River

The others screamed while this little porker posed for me

It's possible to do it without getting too muddy, but you have to take off your shoes so you can balance on the underwater part of one of the logs.

Health and injuries

My fingers look like this all the time now. After a show they have streaks of black to the first knuckle. This is post face wash, toothbrushing, cooking and dish washing if that gives you an idea of how deep those black lines go

 We had a serious injury two nights ago. Steve threw his back out doing a lift in the first song. Apparently he has an old injury that flared up when he did a lift (which is, apparently, a dead weight lift that is hard even if your lifting itty bitty Carolyn). He was a trooper and stayed on stage and sang his songs but he was out of the dances and most of the second act for that show. The next day they changed a lot of the blocking and who sang Steve's songs. We even cut Folsom Prison Blues. When I asked Chet how things were he said "Well, all our blocking is totally different and I'm singing a song I only know one verse to...... so it's great." Tonight Steve hopped on stage for his solos and otherwise stayed highly drugged in the dressing room. He is under doctors orders to not lift anything over 20 lbs. Actually I'm just assuming he's super drugged by the fact that yesterday he was on a stretcher going to the hospital and tonight he was on stage. That boy's a trooper.

I feel like I'm doing a decent job of staying healthy out here, at least considering how awful the food is. I have been hiking or running as much as I can and obviously performing a lot. Tonight I made chili again (Chris said my chili tastes like her mom's home cooking, which is like the best compliment ever from a Mexican, talking about your chili) and pigged out on it big time. But when it's my food I know that it's just beans and veggies and salsa and spices and the only butter in it is for sauteing the onions and garlic. The Chuck Wagon on the other hand might be anything. Really. Anything. No really. I found chicken in the mac and cheese the other day. I screeched in horror and ran to the trash to throw it away. I honestly thought I might have a Chuck Attack before the show. A Chuck Attack is when.... well when you eat bad food and your intestines feel the need to expel it. The food in Medora is so questionable we have a word for a sudden poop due to bad food. I think the main reason I am so into the chili making is that my body keeps screaming "I want nutrients!!!!" I find myself hungry like ALL the time, I'm assuming it's not a calorie deficiency, so it must be all the other things I'm not getting.

Zombie Prom

A group of people organized the Zombie Prom. At first I wasn't sure how far to go make-up wise. Then Carolyn showed up already all bruised and bloodied and I figured I might as well go for it. It turned out everyone delivered. I just worked with what I had but some people went out and bought stuff to rip up. Also, a HUGE thank you to John for bringing out his nice camera and taking the fantastic shots!

Kayla and Gerry

Kevin and Mark

Hannah, Carolyn, Patti and Lauren

Lauren and John will be great parents

This may be the greatest picture that will ever be taken of us. Also, I was really proud of my bloody leg

Patti, Dan and me

Dana hid her bite for most of the party then turned

Mark won prom queen (john won king)

Birthdays, riding and babies

Wednesday was Patti's birthday so Thursday most of the cast was a little worse for wear. It was a fun evening. We all dressed formal (I wore heals and a dress that has a petticoat!) and went to Boots (one of the bars here). Then we came back to the compound, built a fire, played flip cup (I didn't play, it's some relation of beer pong that I understand even less than beer pong. I don't like beer so beer drinking based games are lost on me). It was a lot of fun. All but maybe 3 people in the compound stood around near the fire and made bad jokes and shouted about nothing. Basically it was a frat party without all the frat guys and theater nerds instead, which is highly preferable in my opinion.
I went riding with Chris (female stage hand), Maddi (stage hand) and Anna (who I don't really know) Wednesday as well. We ran the horses hard. I've got the canter down pretty well so it feels solid and safe and I don't hold on, but when we run I hold onto the saddle horn like it's my life line. Which it pretty much is. At one point we were all running and we came to a little dribble of a creek. I don't know about the other horses but Bojangles jumped it. I was absolutely not prepared and screamed like a little girl. It was SO MUCH FUN though, and I did not, in fact, receive a saddle horn to the crotch and can still have children.

Speaking of children, one of the cast members in pregnant! I don't even like babies and I'm excited. She's basically already all of our moms anyway. We are all really happy about it. She and her husband set up this great reveal where they had everyone walk into a back stage area and then pulled a towel off a cake that said "we're having a baby" and everyone screamed. It was perfect. So there is going to be a Medora baby! The most amusing congrats was when Dana said to John "Well, at least now you know your penis works." Lauren sings "here for the party" and another girl came up to john and said "When Lauren said she was here for the party, I didn't know she mean she was here for the party." We are a classy bunch.

Veteran's day and hiking

Looking awful sassy on my part

We played a "veteran's day" concert on Sunday. I know it's not veteran's day, but Medora has their own. On it they have a free concert for veteran's (that's the third time in a row I've written verteran's... vertebrate veterans?) and then they get into the musical for free as well. They were a GREAT audience. That's the thing about country music, the kids who should be up and screaming don't give a crap and the old foggies are clapping and smiling and even dancing sometimes.

Today I went for a hike at Painted Canyon. It is UNREAL. I swear it's not really on planet earth. It's mars mixed with middle earth. (actually there is a butte that I call Weather Top in my head that I see on my drive home.....) Again, I took a bunch of pictures but they are on a disposable. I'm feeling less and less silly for having brought three of them. I did about 4 miles in about 70 minutes (I ran the flat parts) in 80 degrees at noon. Maybe one of those miles was flat, the rest was up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and oh god I'm cold and think I'm going to puke I think I have sunstroke! I'm exaggerating a bit but I did actually get chilly at one point on my final ascent back up to the parking lot. Maybe that was just horror when I realized I was only half-way up and my so-called in shape thighs were burning and I couldn't drink from my water bottle because I was gasping too hard. I came home, ate till I was ill and fell right to sleep until I had to go to fondue.

I'm super proud of myself but also think that maybe I should start hiking earlier to avoid the sun. It's not that hot, but perfect blue clear skies mean blinding sun. I've also discovered a medium sized gray fly that loves the taste of my blood, mostly notably from the backs of my knees. It and it's friends have found me on both of my hikes. I am running on the theory that it is a horse fly but mostly I have been calling it "Jackass." This name could be used in a sentence like "GET OFF ME YOU LITTLE JACKASS!!!! GAHHHHH! EEEK!" Usually accompanied by childish flailing.

I tacked a trail map to my wall and I've starting marking off where I have hiked. I've got this crazy idea in my head that I'm going to hike the whole thing. on the one hand I think I could actually do it. On the other hand some of those trails are really long and you can't start in the middle so I would be looking at a 5 hour hike. Part of me is all "I've got this!" but the reasonable part of me is reminding myself I have to play a show every night. I've got 2 months so I'll see how much I can get in.

New book, Massage and hiking pictures!

Left to right: girl I don't know, Mark, Mathew (Carolyn's man), Carolyn, me, Nick, Kayla, Kevin, Girl I don't know, Chet, Candi, Gerry. All at Little Missouri's bar.

I think I forgot to mention my 75 minute massage. It was a full body and about 10 minutes into it I was laying there on my face thinking "god this is restful, I hope it helps my shoulder." And right then she said "I'm using extra essential oils on your shoulder since my darling, you are tense." It was amazing, she would work on my right shoulder arm or peck and it would just feel nice then she would do the same thing on the other side and it would hurt like blazes. She said she could feel the difference in temperature on my left shoulder so it's probably constantly inflamed.
So after the massage and stagger into the reception all relaxed and completely confused with my hair all messed up and this guy who has been chatting with the masseuse says "Oh hey it's the fiddler!" Then they start talking about my shoulder and he had me try a couple things that pretty much proved that my left shoulder is totally weird. It turns out he is a chiropractor and he offered to fix my shoulder right there. He said he wasn't licensed in North Dakota but the masseuse seemed cool with him so I said go for it. And I'll be damned, he actually did fix it. I mean it's still weird and always will be, but the range of motion improved by about half an inch. I probably should have someone do that every 6 months or so...

I started Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley last night. I'm so hooked. I love her so much I didn't even read the back, I just started reading (that's always the most fun anyway). It turns out it's an urban fantasy about a 15 year old boy who lives with his dad on a national park that has...... DRAGONS. It's such perfect timing to be reading this! I was sitting on the Chuck Wagon patio reading it and he finds a dragon (unusual since they are notoriously hard to sight despite being as large as a decent sized house). But she is dying and his mom died two years before and he and his dad are still dealing with it and then his dog died six months after his mom and then there is this big beautiful animal that was killed by a poacher and he loses it and so did I. So I was sitting there with all the tourists around me reading about a teenage boy crying with his head against a dead dragon's giant scaly nose while I covertly dab at my eyes and then I discovered Carolyn and Mathew were sitting right behind me and I hadn't even noticed. When I say that it sounds really melodramatic but they way that the book puts it is really not. His voice is so kind of funny and self deprecating that it actually took me a while to realize that the protagonist is really depressed.

Here are Hannah's picture's from our adventure:

And don't forget cute little Hannah!