2021, animals, books, Farming Update, holidays, Theatre, Uncategorized, Weather

That Crazy Minnesota Weather

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Today’s post comes from Ben.

Last week this time we were preparing for a blizzard, and this week we had record high temperatures and tornadoes and extreme winds. If you’re smart enough to pay attention to the weather extremes going on you would call it global warming. Or you could just shake your head and say, well that’s different. Oh, it was different all right. I’d rather not have to go through that again.

I was glad the snow melted, I really just wanted the banks to melt down on the sides of the road. Guess I should be more specific about what I wish for. White Christmas or brown Christmas won’t bother me.

From the winds, we have a lot of branches down. We have an old maple tree in the front yard. A branch falls off if you look at it funny so it lost several in the winds. I have some trees down around the fields, some minor damage to some of the buildings, and most of the snowfence is gone. None of that is serious. I spent a few hours out with the Townboard guys clearing trees off township roads. I saw a couple trampolines folded in half, I saw metal roofing of a house peeled up over the top. You know if it’s windy down in our valley, it’s really windy out in the open.

I was supposed to have a choir concert at the college last Friday night. We postponed it to Monday. It was a very nice concert. The photo up top is my view from the booth with the Lighting Console as I programmed.
It was nice of Santa to stop in at the concert on Monday.

End of the financial year here so I am settling up with the neighbors. I mentioned a week or two ago about pre-paying some fertilizer and doing tax planning for next year. My neighbors that do the combining and hauling of my crops sent their bill. Combining soybeans is $38 per acre. Corn is $39 per acre. And it’s eight cents per bushel to haul. They also made some round bales of straw at $13 per bale and I sold them 200 bushels of oats at $3.58 per bushel. I’ll be writing them a check for $7310. It’s a lot of money, but it’s cheaper than owning my own equipment and having the time to do it. And the neighbors with the cattle here, they pay rent on the pasture, I pay them to combine the oats, and they will buy the round bales of straw. I did some work for them and we pretty much balance out at the end of the year.

The chickens appreciate the snow melting. You can see them here gathered in a bare spot last week.

They don’t like the snow, they’ll walk over a little, but nothing deep. Except one white chicken. Evidently her feet don’t get cold. There were a few days last week when she was the only one out. Maybe she just doesn’t get along well with the others. She is kind of ornery, biting Kelly twice when she tried to collect eggs. Bad move chicken, bad move.

The MRI on my shoulder last week showed massive tears. Still waiting on the surgery consultation. Some days it hurts more than others. If I’m going to have surgery done, I’d really like it sooner than later. In the meantime, I wait. I remember reading in a John Irving book a phrase something like, “Does anyone in love ever want to ‘wait and see?’ “

How do you feel about waiting? How many other heteronyms do you know? 

68 thoughts on “That Crazy Minnesota Weather”

  2. It depends – If I’m in a big hurry, I don’t like waiting – if not, I kind of like the time to slow down and just be for a bit. If I know I’m going to have to be waiting on a busy day, though, I bring a book or a magazine with me.

    I had to look up heteronym:
    “Heteronyms mostly come in pairs. Heteronyms are words that have the same spellings but have different pronunciations. They have different meanings according to pronunciation. Two words never are homophones but can be homographs. For example “Row” when a row is pronounced as “ROUW” its meaning is “a fight” and when we pronounced it as “ROH” its meaning is “a line”.

    So this might be an example: As I was watching, the dove dove into the snowbank.

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  4. OT: Can’t resist – just came upon one last quote for the worry day a couple of days ago:

    ““If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it’s not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” The Dalai Lama

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  5. I am impatient. I go to work each morning with wet hair, because I am too impatient to take the time to use blow dryer. Doing that is too boring for me to tolerate.

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  6. When I first read this, I read it as 😭.
    In college a friend of mine from both theater and journalism asked me to read over a review of a play done by theater department. I read first sentence. “Polish. That is what this play lacks. Polish.” I reread and reread it and could not see what Poland or sausage had to do with it. As I read on I got it. I suggested he not start that way. He did not change it. The editors rewrote it.
    What is the name of the U student paper? Can remember the u of chi name, The Gadfly, UMD’s, Statesman. Not the U’s. In what form does it exist today? Bet not on paper.

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  7. Above was Clyde of course.
    I’m learning patience in old age. Never was before. Impatience was my father’s weakest point. I have not been with Sandy for two weeks. I am patient but unsettled.
    In most situations today in in person situations when I have to wait I say, “I’m old. I have nothing but time now.”

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    1. My mom says that about her assisted living location now. “It teaches you patience.”

      I’m bad at waiting. In the theater, of a show I’m working on, that half hour of waiting for the show to start after doors open to the audience drive me
      Crazy. I just want to get on with it.
      I learned in school projects, let’s just go first and get it done.

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  8. I feel like the internet has robbed me of “waiting time”. There is always something I “should” be doing RIGHT NOW or failing that, ASAP!!!

    My personal winter break starts on Monday afternoon. I’d say “I can’t wait”, but the truth is, if I were to “wait”, it would never get here.

    Long ago, I heard the phrase, “all things come to he who hustles while he waits”. I’ve been hustling so I fully expect at some point “all things” will come.

    Even the s&h came into the world 5 weeks early and had me starting motherhood way behind.

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  9. Like Clyde, I’m no longer at a place in my life where I urgently need to be somewhere else and I don’t see any reason to pretend otherwise. Especially these days, service people—clerks, etc.—are often harried and attempting to multitask. It’s my pleasure to reassure them to take their time. I consider it a little gift I can offer.

    On the other hand, waiting on the phone for a live person is singularly infuriating. It’s bad enough that you know you are in a queue and if you give up the wait you will just have to start over another time. On top of that, you have to listen to the obnoxious music of their choice, you sometimes have to listen to promotions of their other products or services, and you get those maddening assurances that your call is important to them ( but not important enough to employ adequate operators). The voice-simulated calling trees are almost always aggravating and unhelpful.

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    1. It’s not even the waiting so much as it is that, after having signaled their disregard for you as a customer, they then proceed to rub your nose in it that’s infuriating.

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    2. Thanks for the head’s up, Ben. It really is a lovely piece. The obit is nice too.

      Here are the links to both:

      https://www.startribune.com/steve-grooms-outdoorsman-minnesota-iowa-oregon-dies-more-than-being-in-the-field-covid/600127998/

      https://www.startribune.com/obituaries/detail/0000410240/

      One of the things he was giving away when he moved was a big Christmas wreath that must have been on the outside of the Hobbit House along with those big old-fashioned glass bulbs. It’s on my front window right now, and very grand it is on my little porch.

      I may have to see if I can get the new version of those old lights.

      Liked by 5 people

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        6. Turning off “Java” on your browser will let you into sites like this. But it’s different for each browser and device so I hesitate to try and tell you how.
          Remember to turn it back on.

          Liked by 2 people

      6. I got a paywall too but I kept stubbornly clicking the link and it finally let me read the article. Try hitting it a few more times – maybe it will let you read it.

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        1. I think seven tries is enough for me. BiR, if you could email it to me I would really appreciate it. I know I told the story of the support dog that I met on the day after Steve died. The woman with the dog give me a little business card with a picture of the dog (whose name is Gideon). I have it up on the wall in the kitchen where I see it every day. Makes me smile.

          Liked by 6 people

  11. Ugh, I am having a difficult day. I awoke with a very painful migraine, then received news regarding a family issue on which I set a limit. My limit will be disregarded. Of course. There will be more conflict to come.
    The avatar of a reader named above as “Gary” is a woman screaming. That is how I feel about this.

    Reading the article about Steve, and the lovely obit, though, made me feel better. And now the migraine is receding so my head does not hurt much.

    Knowing that I am waiting for the family conflict to emerge in some way is not something I want to wait for. But here we sit in our family sh**. Generally, when waiting I have to distract myself a lot and convince myself that I do not need to know whatever RIGHT NOW. Then I forget about it and move on until whatever happens.

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  12. I’ve never been very patient. Now that I have more time I use meditation and breathing to help myself relax when I’m forced to wait for something or someone. I do like to put the time spent waiting to some good use. I almost always have a book on my phone so I can read. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found waiting to be a little easier.

    I sometimes have difficulty with heteronyms, especially if they are proper names. For example Lead, SD. Is it pronounced as lead, the heavy metal, or lead like a good president should? I don’t know. I haven’t been there. I avoid saying these confusing words out loud because I don’t want to say it wrong and look foolish. I guess I should use the dictionary while I’m waiting.

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  14. I am generally fairly patient about waiting. This is very helpful in my crafting and cooking. I do find that I am very impatient about meetings at work and I have been for many many years. I am really sure, although my brain understands that physics rules this out, that time actually goes slower in a couple of these meetings that I have to go to on a repeat basis.

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  16. i am so good at waiting that my idea to be gotten to eventually has become one of my most prized possessions
    i am afraid i realized a short while ago i had better kick it in the ass and to knocking of the items instead of adding to it
    i can romanticize myself to be leonardo divinci 21st century soulmate but his painting and books of inventions are more than i can hope to aspire to. maybe not but more than i expect to accomplish
    i am hoping to get 15 or 20 items in my list knocked out though

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  17. OT – Good morning, baboons. If your spirits are flagging (mine have been for weeks) viewing this little gem of a film from New Zealand might help. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is an utterly charming romp; laugh-out-loud funny in places, with some gorgeous scenery and a little Haiku poetry thrown in for good measure:
    “Me and this fat kid
    We ran, we ate, and we read books
    And it was the best”

    It’s available on Netflix, and it’s “fantastical.”

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        2. It’s really a sweet movie in so many ways. A little over the top in places, and that’s part of the fun. Now I want to read the book.

          Liked by 1 person

        3. OK it turned out OK. I was just a little worried when they were in the truck going through the dirt, I just couldn’t see any good outcome. And spoiler alert there is no good outcome in Thelma And Louise

          Liked by 1 person

  18. OT – A propos our recent blog on anxiety, one of my friends posted this on Facebook last night: “It’s almost time to switch from my everyday anxiety to my festive Christmas anxiety.”

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  19. By the way I love the lighting of the set ben

    on farm stuff
    if you plant and fertilize and get it all ready and hail ruins crop or torrential downpour floods the lowlands does that just end up being an expensive year or do you have insurance and the like ?

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    1. Thanks tim-

      I do have insurance on the corn and soybeans. There is hail insurance and a separate “multi- peril”, basically meaning lower yields than the county average by a certain percentage. I buy 80% coverage. There are certain restrictions regarding planting dates (can’t be too soon or too late) and of course more coverage is more money.
      Insurance is not available on oats. So it’s better than nothing.

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        2. One just never knows! I might get a half inch of rain the neighbors don’t. And that might make the difference.

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        3. I interpreted mig’s comment to be more general than related to crop insurance. I wish it were possible to insure against the general “multi-peril” throes we are in at the moment.

          Liked by 3 people

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