Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee
My mom is visiting this week. She hails from St. Louis, where I grew up (mostly) and I get her for alternate holidays. One year I get her for Thanksgiving and the next year I get her for Solstice. My two sisters live in St. Louis as well; since I get her all to myself on my alternate holidays, I like to think that I’m getting more of her than they are, since they have to share.
Before she moved to a smaller place, Nonny’s hobbies included gardening and redecorating. We moved quite a bit when I was a kid, so every new house got the once over. When I was in high school, they stayed in the same house for several years so you would think that the redecorating would subside. Nope, there were a couple of rooms that got new looks every couple of years! I have a very clear memory of her scraping off old wallpaper and to this day, I have a horror of painting over wallpaper that I absorbed directly from her.
But Nonny’s favorite hobby is tennis. She and my dad learned to play tennis when I was in 1st grade and it quickly became a passion. I have many memories of sitting around the tennis courts waiting for my folks to finish; it wasn’t until they were done that my folks would hit a few balls with us kids. When Nonny was pregnant with my baby sister, she played tennis up until the day before Karen was born and tennis was behind both of her knee replacements. If you get in the way of tennis, you are history. She plays in three leagues these days – one senior women’s league and she is the alternate on TWO senior men’s leagues.
I look a lot like my dad but I always wanted to look like my mom, as she is very beautiful. But I like to think that I get much of my personality from her. She doesn’t like to dwell on things; once something has happened, you have to accept it and move on. She is quite stubborn (as was my dad, so I got a double dose) and she likes things the way she likes them. Nonny is also a very kind person and still works at helping others and volunteering. This is the area that I strive to be the most like her.
For years I have tried to get her to move up here, but she won’t budge. “It’s too cold up there.” I tell her we have this great invention; it’s called the furnace. “You can’t stay inside all the time.” I tell her that we have another great invention; it’s called the coat. Nothing works. She has lived her whole life in St. Louis and is still good friends with a kindergarten buddy. I know in my heart she won’t ever move up here, but I’m looking forward to this week of trying to convince her anyway.
What would you say to convince Nonny to move to Minnesota?
Trail Baboon 
Lie: tell her Ted Drewes is closing and there’s nothing left for her in St. Louis.
She is a pretty lady, mother of at least one fine daughter, we know.
Maybe if you leave a trail of tennis balls up the Saints Highway . . .
Tell her the weirdos are only up in the middle of the night in this state.
Fake that she’s living each day over again when she’s here, like in the movie Groundhog Day.
Mostly she looks old enough to live her own life, admittedly a sad life if not in MN.
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Ted Drewes closing would indeed be bad. I thought that Minneapolis might have a shot when the Lake Forest Bakery closed down about 15 years ago. When I was a kid, Nonny and I would go before opening and sit in the car; that way we would get toward the front of any line that started to form at the door!
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We are off to MI to visit my mom (Bonnie) this afternoon. Bonnie chose to stay in her town rather than move to us because of her friends, too. These friends helped a lot when she had her stroke and still help drive her to church, etc. Friends are really important.
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Yes – I couldn’t agree more!
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Nice story about your mother, VS. Show your mother some places she could move to here that could use her skills at redecorating. With a little luck you might find a place there she would very much like to do over. It would be like old times when your family moved from place to place and she had the opportunity to apply her decorating skills to each new location.
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William Shakespeare
“Sigh No More, Ladies…”
(From “Much Ado about Nothing”)
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh nor more;
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never;
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,
Or dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so,
But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into. Hey, nonny, nonny.
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One of the most beautiful moments in film, who else but her to read it.
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Speaking of Shakespeare, does Nonny like theater? Where better than TC.
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Rise and Shine Baboons,
Pull out all the MB(Michelle Bachman, aka cruela D’ville) clips you have and make her watch them without end. Then explain to her tHat MN NEEDS her living in the 6th district by 2014 to vote AGAINST MB and for Al Franken next election. Hours of MBshould do the trick.
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or send her running away screaming
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Jacque – your comments got a laugh out of Nonny. She can’t stand Michelle Bachmann either!
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The tennis bubbles on Nicollet? (or whatever those things are called at ML King park?) You’re walking distance from a fabulous library? Seasonal updates to decorating ideas at the Bachmann’s on Lyndale?…Because she needs a new hobby and we have both Northern Clay Center and the Loft Literary Center to help her out with that?…
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Don’t forget the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center and the Textile Center. Maybe Nonny would like to experiment with fabric arts, glassblowing or blacksmithing. I’m betting our State Fair and Fringe Festival are orders of magnitude better than St. Louis’. Our food co-op network is pretty good, too, and I’m sure there’s at least a few restaurants she’d fall in love with here. Depending on Nonny’s personal habits and beliefs, perhaps our burgeoning craft beer community would be a draw!
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I’m looking forward to living in Minneapolis because of some of the things you mentioned , CG. Apparently Nonny likes good places to eat and I think that this is a strong point of the Twin Cities. Does Nonny like music? There certainly a lot of good music in the Twin cities area.
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Just don’t let her get confused about the different Bachman(n)s…
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different kinds of fertilizer
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different fertilizers
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multiple computers is killing my wp identity
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Great minds think alike.
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it didnt show up the first time i thought it was because i wasnt signed in
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When you’re not signed in, sometimes it can take a few minutes for the comment to show up.
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im learnin
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the first time i went to st louis i was very surprised that there was no roads from here to there. you have to kind of back road it through iowa or go to des mones and take a left. st louis is a town i am not very familiar with. i went to a couple of trade shows there and got to see the downtown area kind of with dinner at steak joints and drinks in the bar , the blues around the brewery are one thing i got to experience a bit too.seemed lke a nice enough but kind of lacking in something you get used to coming from minneapolis.. there is a soul to minneapolis you cant put your finger on but cant escape. the cold associated with minneapolis is a smoke screen to keep out the faint of heart. the population would be 12 million if it weren’t for the cold. thank goodness for the cold but too bad for your mom. i tell people that in minneapolis we have ten hot days a year and ten cold days a year. you can live without ac in the summer but you cannot live without heat in the winter. makes you feel kind of strong to know you can hold up. if she is into tennis she would absolutely enjoy cross country skiing. the ideal temperature for cross country sking is around zero, a little below is better. if you are going to go out for a cross country skiing workout the ideal is minus ten degrees. thats a bit of a stretch but may be worth a shot. outdoors with those new knees in the greatest quiet time of the year there is. in the summer you share the outdoors with other enthusiasists in the winter you revel in the solitude of the world you and three other people enjoy.
you can get bad beer here and we have sports owners that support ht e city instead of taking the money and running, football then beer. bidwells suck…
all in all our short lived cool vs st louis and the extended sweltering sauna summer seems a fair compromise.
all in all maybe enjoying the fact that you mom comes up 10 days a year and you get to set it aside and revel in the the glory vs getting to it after the schedule clears and she has a free week with no tennis infringing on the possibilities of getting together . heck just enjoy it and enjoy the holidays this weekend. what a nice time with the teenager almost all grown up and the two of them able to have such a nice visit together. the three of you have a magic chemistry that wasnt possible 10 years ago and wont be the same 10 years from now. day before thanksgiving at 64 degrees and we are talking about minnesota cold. al gore says forgettaboutit. we may have a different conversation a short while form now. remember when minnesota had winter?
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There now is a highway, called the Saints Hwy, the last big gap in the interstate system.
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i think i remember coming back form florida to get one kid or another back from our vacation for a new years celebration thye had lined up. i remember coming through iowa in the wee hours on a 1-10 its up to a 5 from a 3
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It used to be awful, but now it is slick. I once drove it three or four times a year. Except, there used to be a shortcut you could take on which you had to cross a small river right at the Iowa/MO border. They charged you 25 cents to cross the bridge, which was how the town funded everything. It was worth the quarter. (Big trucks were 50 cents.)
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good old days with 25 cent tolls. reminds me of gentler times
recent trip to chicago toll went from 40 to 50 cents a few years ago. now they have the i pass so its painless but the price just went to two or three dollars. a trip to downtown now costs an extra 10 bucks or so. round trip to michigan ave3 is now an extra 20? i think maybe chicago was told they could pay for stuff too
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This quarter toll was 10 years ago.
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ahh where things move slowly and time stands still
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Many good ideas above. Remind her that she could find a place with an attached garage – makes whatever going out in the cold that much easier. I tell people they just need to add to their wardrobe a longish down coat and something like Sorels. And maybe Yak Trax.
Thanks for a great portrait of your mom, VS.
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You have to get her up to MN in the summer an early fall. The humidity is so much lower in MN than in MO.
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its so interesting that we all get used to the way life is supposed to be. when i first started traveling it never occured to me the things i looked for in minneapolis would be scare elsewhere. i was disappointed with bad cheese selections in la were not as extensive as in minnesota. salt lake city, san fransisco all poor imatations of tc. the woods and mountains and streams in the west were beyond compare. you need to be allowed to feel good about home and the novelty of the things the otherworld has to offer.
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I’m curious about your mom’s name, VS, especially since all 10 of my grandchildren call me “Nonny”. Since this is your mother, not your grandmother, how did this name come to pass???
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When I first read it, I wondered how VS knew about the little angel (who looks like he’s wearing white footie pajamas) that gets hung at my mom’s house every Christmas…he started at my grandparents house and I’m sure is a product from the 50s or so (maybe a bit earlier), given his silver foil wings. My brother somehow translated “angel” to “nonny” (though in our family it gets pronounced noh-nee) in his toddler-learning-language logic.
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CB & Anna – my greatgrandmother (my mom’s grandmother) was the youngest of eight children and the only one of them born in the US. When she became a grandmother, she wanted to be called Nonny, because that’s what she had called her grandmother. So when MY mom became a grandmother, she also announced that she wanted to be called Nonny. 28 years later, we ALL call her Nonny now. If I’m lucky enough to be come a grandma, I will use the name of MY grandmother… Nana.
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Very nice Sherrilee.
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Thanks. After we read through the comments a bit ago, she asked who all these people were on the blog. So I summarized a bit about how we all got started and how we’ve branched out. I told her that one of the things I appreciated was how nice everyone was and how some good works have gotten done by the group. So I pulled up the blog about the day the chainsaw party met in Steve’s back yard. She was amazed to learn that you don’t even live in the Twin Cities, but drove up to be part of the demolition crew. She said “he sounds very nice.”
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Happy Thanksgiving!
I will be offline for 2-3 days. Going to my daughters.
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enjoy
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Very nice story about your Mom, VS. She is lovely and has such a nice smile. I think your smile is every bit as nice.
We can’t do anything about the weather here but embrace it. I guess you have to be willing to try. Everybody has already said everything that I would have said to try to coax your mother to live here. I might add that the walking trails are outstanding in Minneapolis and it’s beautiful here for all four seasons. Another point to make is that she would be welcome to join us here and that there can be no friendlier and accepting group anywhere!
OT: I need to write a book called “Cooking on a Ceramic Stove Top for Dummies.” DO NOT start the wrong burner under your favorite dutch oven when it is empty. Have you ever seen a steel dutch oven melt? I have. It happened today. The holidays have begun!
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I meant to add “Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!” I’m grateful for all of you.
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Hope it didn’t reck the stovetop too, Krista? Bad enough to have your favorite dutch oven melt.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I arrived in the US on November 23, 1965 so this will be my 48th anniversary coming up. Have had many, many memorable Thanksgivings, my favorite American holiday.
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better than irving r feldmans birthday?
happy anniversary almost
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Happy anniversary, PJ!
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saw the linc to cool planters from tea pots and volkswagons the other day from crow girl. melted dutch ovens certainly have a flower pot appeal.
leaks its ok
doesnt leak its ok
warped a lot it ok
warped a little its ok/
new baboon flower pot collection has begun
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It’s warped badly and my fingers got burned. I used it but the cover no longer fits.
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Krista – don’t worry, you’re not alone. Three Christmas Eves ago I was witness to the same conflagration – luckily it wasn’t my stove or appliance, but the flames were startlingly high and the smell… ish!
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sorry i hate burned fingers
cover fit matters
hope the ho;idays are good in spite of it
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Tell her that with global warming, Minnesota isn’t as cold anymore and in the summer the heat and humidity can rival Missouri.
How about being closer to the beautiful North Shore? So many things to do there.
Maybe a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters.Or a sled dog trip in the winter.
If she’s a baseball fan, a couple of years ago I could have said the Twins are better than the Royals – but I can’t say that any more.
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And of course there’s the biggest attraction – her favorite daughter!!!
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everybodys better than the royals but st louis has a good baseball team,and still has ozzie smith as part of the deal.
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Duh – I forgot about the Cardinals. Can’t compete with that.
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Here’s the other thing that Nonny said after we read through the comments. “How long do you all go on?” I told her sometimes we spill into the next day!
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why would you stop?
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`xactly
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Pardon me for being late to enter this terribly important discussion, VS. You have quite a few enticing arguments to lure Nonny north. You might add to them that one of your friends finds her “hot” and would be delighted to squire her to various delightful places in the area. Tell her that this man is educated, progressive, creative and sensitive . . . and of course, he has the good taste to appreciate her.
Then, if Nonny falls for that argument, I’ll help you try to find someone who fits that description!
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just what i want in a visiting city. blog stalkers
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Ha ha. Unfortunately Steve, as each year goes by, the memory of my father becomes more and more saintly. Nonny is convinced that there is no other man alive who could possibly live up to him. Although we (my sisters and I) thought there might be a chance for a romance about 5 years ago, it came to nothing as it turned out the gentleman was a Republican. I think Nonny’s words were “a bigot and a Republican” as if she couldn’t decide which was worse!
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thats typically redundant isnt it.
i could take her to the eden prairie dem meetings everyone is white haired. our prejudice is against tea partiers
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And here I thought you were talking about yourself, Steve! She is going to be so disappointed.
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that it’s not you, I mean.
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I am not worthy, but thanks for the kind thought. She is missing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to sit by my queer fireplace before a fire and hear endless stories of pheasants bagged or missed.
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Straight people can sit by the fireplace too can’t they?
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I am very tolerant toward straight people. I even believe they should have unfettered rights to get married.
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Greetings! Lovely blog, VS and and a hearty hello to Nonny! Welcome to our beautiful state. Don’t forget about the Renaissance Fair, MPR, all the theaters and the 10,000 lakes — one of which is my town! An executive recruiter shared with me that once an executive moves to Minneapolis, they typically love it and stay; or have an extremely difficult time recruiting them to move out of MN state for a different position.
Anyway, don’t have much time as I have to get ready and pack tonight so we can leave early tomorrow for Thanksgiving repast in Fountain City, WI. Did I mention how close we are to the greatest football team ever — the Green Bay Packers?! Have a lovely Thanksgiving everyone and safe travels.
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Boooooooooooo
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Safe journey, all you who are traveling!
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Agree with Edith on the climate change aspect. We saw a map at the State Fair this summer that showed where Minnesota would be climate-wise over time. If she moves now, she can beat the rush that will happen when Minnesota is like Kansas.
Lovely that you have a Mom you wish lived here, Sherrilee.
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welcome back mig. nice to see you are among us
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It’s been a long time, mig. Nice to hear from you!
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MiG — I was just pointing out S&H in a photo to Nonny earlier today (well, the back of S&H anyway). Nice to hear from you!
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mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes done, turkey in brine getting ready for am kitchen wonders and smells to begin. i love thanksgiving.
enjoy all
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