I made it home from South Dakota early yesterday afternoon. There were lots of newspapers waiting for me to go through. We subscribe to print editions of the Bismarck Tribune (6 days a week), the Dickinson Press (1 day a week), and the Rock County Star Herald (1 day a week). They are usually delivered on time. I was only gone 4 days , but that still left a lot of news to read.
I was tickled by an article in the Star Herald about Luverne’s recent High School Homecoming and the ABC Parade (Anything But A Car), which challenged students to drive on a parade route from the ice arena across town to the high school in unusual vehicles. Motorcycles were the most common, followed by tractors, lawn mowers. scooters, golf carts, a race car, a bulldozer, and a dump truck. How fun!
My first vehicle was a very old Nash Rambler my dad got very cheap from someone in 1973. I graduated to a Chevy Chevette when I got to college. I would probably have driven in an ABC Parade in one of my Dad’s U-Haul trucks. No CDL needed for that!
What did you drive to school in? What was your first vehicle? Ever been in a parade? What news outlets do you subscribe to?
Today is driving day for me. I am heading back home to ND. It is about a seven hour drive. I will stop once or twice on the way. It will be good to be home. I have travelled more than usual over the past six months, with three trips to Brookings SD, and one trip to Boston.
I have to fly to Dallas, TX the last week of October for a conference of Psychology regulatory boards. I am truly dreading the trip, mainly due to the destination. I put off making plane reservations until last Monday, and was quite relieved when I got it done. I did it online as usual. One of my worst fears was realized yesterday when I took a look at the reservation and saw that I had misspelled my first name. This entailed a text conversation with someone at the airline who fixed it up rather handily, much to my surprise. I am not afraid of flying, but of the preliminaries to the flights.
I don’t know why this all makes me so anxious, as I have never really had messed up reservations in the past, and things can be fixed. I suppose I could do this all through a travel agent, but we don’t have many in our town. I am happy that the Dallas trip looks ok on paper, at least. After that I just want to stay home for a while.
What about traveling makes you anxious? Tell about good trips and less than good trips.Any tips about Dallas?
I have been thoroughly enjoying myself here this week in Brookings. Son’s surgery went well. He is home recuperating. Yesterday I roasted a chicken and made slow cooker Bolognese sauce and chicken enchiladas. I also got to drive six year old Grandson to school, which is terribly fun. One morning we listened to a number from Cats on the Sirius XM Broadway station, and he was rather astounded when I told him that the performers were singing and dancing in cat suits. He also liked the number from Hamilton that we heard.
Son and Daughter In Law are good parents with quite appropriate limits and expectations. I tend to call Grandson out more often for minor infractions, though. It was pretty funny when, one evening at supper, Grandson announced, with a huge sigh, that Oma’s eyes saw everything, and there wasn’t anything he could get away with that I didn’t see. This was after I reminded him to eat his penne with his fork and not his fingers. He made a point of showing us his fork skills after that.
What is the first Broadway musical you remember hearing or seeing? What is your favorite musical now? How was your relationship with your grandparents?
It has been in the news, but if anyone didn’t hear, last Septmber, a young man driving between Fargo and rural Minnesota had some car trouble. His Honda Pilot took on a mind of its own, speeding up to 113 mph, not letting him brake, and not allowing him to shut he car off. He was able to phone 911 as well as his mother while driving, and the Highway Patrol and county sheriff figured out how to stop him. A Deputy sped past him going 130 mph, stopped the patrol car in front of the Pilot, and instructed the young man to crash into the rear of the patrol car. He did, the vehicle stopped, and no one was injured.
The whole story is amazing, but what astounds me is that the driver was using his phone all through the ordeal. My phone is in my purse when I drive and is on silent so I can’t hear it or be tempted to answer it. My son has his phone set up so that it sends him calls and allows him to call while driving without taking his hands off the wheel. I imagine that is what the driver of the Pilot did, too. I don’t know if I would have had the presence of mind make the calls and drive and flip all the switches to try to turn the car off.
What would you have done? Is your phone connected to your car audio system? What is the fastest you have driven?
I got a lot of work done on my shop wall. It’s basically all framed up. I need a few more boards and a lot of finishing bits, but it’s getting there. I’ve purchased insulation to install myself, the LP tank has been installed, waiting on the heater and the big garage door to be installed, and the steel siding has been ordered. Going for gray on this wall. Might make it before winter yet.
I sure do appreciate my friend at Red’s Electric letting me use his lift. This would have all been much MUCH harder without.
I sure have been dropping things and knocking things over with working on this. Good thing I’m working alone; I wouldn’t want to be around me the way it’s been going. And there’s barely room for me in the lift. Cause you know, I need all the tools.
Saturday will be adoption day for Luna. And back in 2007, it was about the same time of year we acquired Allie.
Last weekend I burned a brush pile. I need to dig the metal out of it and then I’ll have the ash pile buried after that.
It was time for a new ‘everyday-in-town’ hat. Not so dirty to be a farm hat, and cleaner than the farming hat, but dirtier than my ‘going-to-church’ hat. This is a hat I got for free at the theater conference USITT. It’s a seating company that I won’t be able to afford anyway.
I lost half the ducks last week. Friday afternoon I counted 22 ducks. Saturday morning I saw something white laying down by the barn. It was a dead duck. And there was another. And another. I picked up 6 carcasses. Four outside and two in their pen. And we have 11 ducks remaining. We’re pretty sure it was a weasel as there was a bite mark on the back of their heads. I have found some piles of feathers out in the fields. The dogs never reacted, and I never heard a fuss, so I’m not sure what happen. But it’s very discouraging.
The mallard ducks have discovered they can fly. And if you think about it, how would you know you COULD fly, if no one told you or showed you? You’d have to figure it out by accident. Maybe instinct, but again, no examples… so… what will they do?
I often listen to a 1940’s station and one of the things I enjoy are the songs you don’t hear anywhere else. I heard Hogie Carmichael singing ‘Huggin’ and Chalkin’. It’s considered a novelty song.
“I gotta gal who’s mighty sweet
With blue eyes and tiny feet
Her name is Rosabelle Magee
And she tips the scale at three o three
Oh gee, but ain’t it grand to have a girl so big and fat that when you go to hug her
You don’t know where you’re at
You have to take a piece of chalk in your hand
And hug a way and chalk a mark to see where you began”
….
….
One day I was a huggin’ and a chalkin’ and a beggin’ her to be my bride
When I met another fella with some chalk in his hand
The National Day folks have determined that today is National Kids Music Day, to emphasize the importance of music education for children.
My first music teacher in school was Miss Roesetter, who studied music in Paris at the Sorbonne. How she ended up in a small, rural school in Minnesota I’ll never know. Our school was blessed with wonderful band directors, most who had been educated at Luther College. Husband played cello in his school orchestra. Son played trombone. Daughter played piano, French Horn, and violin. Grandson is to start piano in a year ago. He loves to toot on his great grandfather’s bugle.
Grandson loves our recording of Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals, narrated by Hermione Gingold. He listens to it on a cd player in his bedroom. His parents value music education as much as we do. His mother was a vocal performance major, so perhaps he will have a voice, too. It fun to watch how much children benefit from music.
Daughter is currently on vacation in Maine with a former Suzuki violin student she studied with in Bismarck as a child. Last year they visited their violin teacher who had moved to New Mexico. How fun is that?
Tell about your experiences with music teachers and music lessons as a child. What was your favorite music as a child? As a teen? Any instruments in your home now?
The temperature was predicted to get down to possibly 29 last night. We were in a Freeze Warning, the third in the past week. I didn’t cover the garden during the the last two warnings, but I decided I didn’t want to risk it last night. Covering the garden with blankets has never really worked well for us, given how windy it can get here. It also leaves you with tons of laundry to do.
I spent late Wednesday afternoon bringing in all the produce that still had the potential to ripen. There are tomatoes and eggplants in boxes in the garage. For some reason, you aren’t supposed to can tomatoes that have been through a hard freeze.
The Swiss chard is in buckets keeping hydrated until I can clean it, wilt the leaves, and freeze them.
Husband wants to make more pepper jelly from the red serranos, and will freeze the green ones.
The carrots will be better after a freeze, and our cold hardy spinach is good down to the low 20’s. Those can all stay in for a while.
The end of the garden is bittersweet but also a relief. Now comes all the work of taking up hoses, taking down bunny fences, removing spent raspberry canes, and trimming things up for winter. November through February are our least busy months, even with the holidays, as there isn’t any gardening to do except dream of next year.
What are your busiest and least busiest months? What would you use to cover your garden from frost? What are your fall yard tasks?
Monday we drove to Bismarck to meet with the State Retirement people. That went well. My official last day of work is 01/31/2025. I had lots of questions answered and was very relieved when we left the office.
The day was utterly stressful and overwhelming, however, because of the wind. I drove. We travelled east to Bismarck with a full tank of gas and a steady 36 mph northwest wind with 49 mph gusts at our back. We used very little gas on the 90 miles to Bismarck. The indicator was still on full when we arrived. We ran several errands after the Retirement appointment, always making sure the wind didn’t take the vehicle doors and rip them off, and struggling in and out of stores. The air was full of dust that was being blown around. It was a cold wind. Sunday the temperature was 95. Monday it barely reached 61. When those big temperature swings happen, the wind always starts up.
The drive back home was the worst. Passing on the interstate was really tricky because the northwest wind blew vehicles toward me in the passing lane as I tried to get around them. There seemed to be a large contingent of rackety campers and motor homes, all high profile vehicles, traveling west, all going way too slow and needing to be passed, all swerving into the passing lane. The wind was so loud we couldn’t hear the radio playing, I was so tense when I got home I could hardly move. We used half a tank of gas going west into the wind. I know there is wind in Minnesota, but I don’t think it ever gets as bad as we had here on Monday.
What is your favorite music, poems, or literature about the wind? Favorite wind band music? What is the worst wind you have had to travel in? Ever had to drive a “High Profile” vehicle in the wind?
A couple of months ago I was the assisting minister at our Lutheran Sunday service. Part of that job is reading, with the presiding pastor, the prayers she wrote for the service. I read through the prayers and found some grammatical errors which I corrected. I explained to the pastor what I had done, and she was grateful. Our senior pastor overheard me and got really excited and asked me if I liked editing. I told her I did. She asked me if I would be willing to edit a book she was writing, and I said I would.
She has written and published a book already. The current book is a series of twenty four devotions for Advent. The basic premise of the book is that our families of origin hand down all sorts of unhealthy expectations to us that make the Christmas holidays onerous. She is using many of the theories of one of my favorite family therapists, Murray Bowen, in the book. What could be more fun?
I have edited the first five devotions, and she plans to get the next installment to me next week. I am a devotee of the Oxford comma, and I like active verb usage. She writes well and it will be nice to see the final product when it is printed.
What kind of a manuscript editor would you be? Name some authors whose styles you like and dislike.
In order for me and Husband to maintain our licenses to practice psychology in ND, we need to complete 40 hours of approved continuing education every two years. At least twenty of the hours must be from live presentations (which can be accessed either in-person or on-line). At least three must be on ethics. This is pretty standard for most licensed mental health professions.
We needed to have our 40 hours completed by this October 31. I started out September with only 12 hours, so I had to scramble to get the rest completed. It wouldn’t look too good if the president of the licensing board didn’t have her hours done on time. I spent time doing some on-line trainings, and spent most of last week in Bismarck at a conference that got me to a whopping 51 hours for the biennium. Husband was ahead of me in terms of hours, and completed his final three hours in an ethics workshop last week.
This is probably the last time we need to complete the continuing education requirements for licensure, since we plan to be fully retired two years from now, and have no intention of remaining licensed after we move to Minnesota. Husband commented that now we can do whatever trainings we want, whether in psychology or other topics, and this made me wonder what I want to continue to learn about. I want to learn to speak German. i want to delve more into my family history and the history of Ostfriesland. This could be really fun. I might want to learn more about the history of psychology, but we will see about that.
What are you learning about now? Did you have to attend required trainings for your job? If so, what were the best and the worst?
Trail Baboon 