All posts by reneeinnd

2026, Business, Government, home, Uncategorized, work

Natural Consequences

27 Comments

Six months after our move into our home we continue to get mail addressed to the former owner. He still lives in town in a lovely refurbished apartment on Main Street just above his satellite communication business. I know it is lovely from the gossip of some electricians who were at our home and had been in the previous owners’ new place.

I always let him know when we get his mail. Sometimes he picks it up. Sometimes his elderly mom picks it up. She lives one block from us. About a month ago we received the property tax statement for his Main Street property along with some other mail from a finance company. I could tell what it was since the property tax envelope had been conveniently torn enough in transit for me to peek inside. I let him know via text that we had it. He texted that he was currently in Arizona and would pick it up when he got back to town in early April.

I saw him in his Jeep last week as I was going to the grocery store. He still hasn’t phoned to pick up his mail. I decided I am not going to remind him. The more we learn about him and his ways of dealing with things I think that he has been cossetted and coddled far too much by this community, and if his property taxes are delinquent, well, that may be a good lesson for him.

What natural consequences have you seen people deal with? What natural consequences have you experienced?

2026, Family, Health, home, Uncategorized

Waste Not, Want Not

23 Comments

This is clean up week in our town, and people have loads of debris piled on the curbs outside their houses. The city will come this week to collect it all and take it to the landfill.

We moved a twin bed frame and mattress/box spring here from ND with the hope our son and DIL could use it for their daughter in a couple of years. It was the bed our daughter slept on about 25 years ago. Despite its age it is very clean and in perfect condition. Well, the offer of the bed was politely declined, which is fine with us, but now we are left with a twin bed in our basement with no one to sleep in it.

No charity organization will take mattresses. I understand their reluctance given hygiene issues. I don’t have the energy to try to sell it, so I decided to pay the city $30 to haul away the mattress. It just burns me to have to do this, since it seems like such a waste. When did bedbugs and vermin become such a problem?

Had we more friends and family in the I know we would have found someone to take the mattress. I am keeping the headboard, footboard, and bed frame to either give away or sell in the future. It disassembles nicely and doesn’t take up much room. It is a lovely Ethan Allen piece. I know my ancestors are looking disapprovingly at me now. What a waste!

How did your family practice frugality? In what ways are you frugle?

2026, Food, home, Technology, Uncategorized

Getting To Know You

23 Comments

In the last 12 months I have cooked and baked on four different stoves/ovens. Each has been very different from the others, and the cooking experiences have been challenging.

In Dickinson we had a quite old GE electric oven with a glass stovetop. We decided we couldn’t in good conscience saddle new owners with it. The glass top was scratched and uncleanable. The oven baked really slow and we needed to increase the temperature to get things done. We replaced it with a Bosch electric stove/oven which worked very well. It definitely was a positive selling point for the house.

As soon as I had figured out all the niceties of the new stove we moved to our current home. It had a 15 year old Kenmore gas oven with gas top burners. The previous owners had no problem saddling us with it, even though the control panel shorted out everything we started a top burner when the oven was lit. I didn’t like baking in the gas oven since things singed on the sides of the pan closest to the burners. I struggled baking with it, trying to adjust rack levels and temperatures. This was quite a trick in November and December for Christmas baking.

We finally got a brand new, dual fuel LG oven/stove that I really like. The oven is electric. The stovetop is has gas burners. Saturday night I made a apple pie with a crumble topping and found the the oven must burn hot as the crumble topping and crust got too dark, and I probably have to lower the temperature about 10-15 degrees when I bake. Sigh! I suppose most appliances have their individual quirks, but I am pretty tired of trying to figure all this out.

What would you feel you had to in good conscience, replace in your current home before you sold it? What have been the easiest and most difficult appliances/machines to learn to use?

2026, Family, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

King Of The Toys

31 Comments

As an only child, there were very few occasions when I had to share much with anybody. I always seemed to know that no matter what, any friends or cousins would eventually leave and I would have sole possession of my toys. That made it easy for me to share.

It has been interesting watching our older dog struggle with sharing dog toys and chews with the puppy. He wants her to play with him, but just can’t seem to figure out that if he would just let her play with or chew on a particular toy, he could just get another toy or chew thingy and they could both be occupied. Oh no. Any toy or chew she has, he has to have. Why? Why does he need to be King of the Toys? I suppose it has to have something to do with his need to be the Alpha. Why can’t Alpha characters be magnanimous??

Our older dog is only 4 years old and seems solemn and careworn beyond his years since the puppy came home. I will watch with great interest how things change as she matures and becomes stronger and more assertive. Until then, we shall have to referee the distribution of dog toys

How easy was it for you to share as a child? What were your most precious toys?

2026, animals, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Mood And Weather

42 Comments

Last Saturday was really rainy here. It seemed to rain all day. In ND, rain was a discrete event that only lasted for a little while until it stopped completely. Our rain Saturday seemed to last for hours.

Husband has been very anxious about the weather here, getting pretty worked up during snow/rain storms and wind. He just isn’t accustomed to the way it goes here. Our very active terriers were surprisingly sleepy all day on Saturday. I assumed this was due to the weather. Husband napped. I find the only weather that gets me real excited is snow storms. I love blizzards if I am home. I find it hard to sleep!

We usually had very low humidity most of the time in ND. Here it is so variable. I find my arthritis gets worse as the humidity and air pressure change. We all have a lot to get used to.

How does the weather impact you? What weather do you find exciting or distressing ? Post some weather music.

2026, animals, home, pets, Uncategorized

Up! Up!

19 Comments

The Cesky Terrier is a dog short in height but long in length. Our puppy is now five months old. She had gained three pounds since we brought her home. She is perhaps a couple of inches longer, but no taller. She can’t descend or ascend stairs yet. She is extremely fast and can keep up with our 4 year old male Cesky and can wrestle with him like a pro.

Our dogs love to be together, as close to one another as possible. They like to sleep cuddled up closely. Older dog can jump up on the sofa with ease. He likes to nap there. Young pup is just a couple of inches too short to jump up on her own. She hurls herself off the sofa with great abandon, though. I don’t mind the dogs on the furniture.

Mitzi comes to us multiple times a day imploring us to lift her up to be on the sofa with Kyrill. We say Up Up to teach her the command for jumping up for when she finally gets long enough to jump up on her own. She tries her hardest to jump up now, but to no avail. I don’t want to clutter up the living room with graduated step stools so she can ascend on her own right now. I predict predict in May she will Up Up on her own.

What is something you had to strive to accomplish that seemed impossible at first? How do you feel about pets on the furniture?

2026, Family, Food, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Garden Plans

17 Comments

Yesterday we had 120 bags of organic raised bed soil delivered to our driveway. You can see them in the header photo. A retired guy who was the head of the city solid waste department picked them up from Bomgaars and brought them to the house. He has a forklift for just such loads. He knew my dad. The raised beds will ship this week. We have enlisted the help of a young man to move the bags of soil into the back yard. The gate on our fence is too narrow for a tractor, so he will move the bags with a big wheelbarrow. He is a cement worker for his day job and used to date one of the daughters of the former owner of our house. Everyone seems interconnected here!

Best friend is excited to plant chard, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. The raised beds are 32 inches high and will be good for plants that need deeper roots. I am planting a late crop of spinach and lots of basil for pesto. We will have herbs in separate pots on the deck. We saw two large deer roaming our neighborhood a few nights ago and I am glad our yard is fenced.

I want to get some Canadian roses to plant around the house, as well as some hydrangeas. We thought about putting in a raspberry bed but it would be too complicated due to underground wires and such. We also have a Birch tree badly in need of pruning, but we will leave that for the fall, as well as planting spring bulbs.

How are your garden plans coming along? What are your experiences with raised beds?

2026, Art, dreams, Theatre, Uncategorized

Community Theatre

13 Comments

There is always something going on at The Palace, the restored Vaudeville theatre here in town. They schedule movies every week. This week there were kids’ movies. This weekend there is a murder mystery play put on by The Green Earth Players, our local community theatre group. A TR Roosevelt reenactor from Medora, ND is coming on the 16th, and a concert pianist is coming at the end of the month.

One of my former psychology colleagues from ND is obsessed with the Titanic disaster and has put together a one woman show of a Titanic survivor, complete with an authentic period costume. I plan to connect her and The Palace organization so perhaps she can perform here. She is a perfect fit for the venue. I also plan, in the fall, to avail myself to The Green Earth players as a volunteer and perhaps an actor. We shall see what I end up doing. I should really love to act.

You live in a small community that needs actors and tech help for its theatre company. How could you help? What roles would you play if you had to be on stage? Why are they called The Green Earth Players?

2026, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Palm To Pine

36 Comments

Highway 75 runs north and south through Luverne. It is a major highway in the region. Many years of my life were spent along this road. My first house as an infant and young child was right along the road. My parents built a house along 75 south of town when I was17. My undergrad college in Moorhead was along 75. The University of Manitoba was right along 75, as was my first Winnipeg apartment, although it was called Pembina Highway north of the border. It was called the Palm to Pine Highway, as I think it started in Texas.

On April 15, Highway 75 through the center of Luverne will be closed for several months for resurfacing and new sewer pipes. This is described as progress. They culled 100 year old trees for the project. The MN road department has assured residents that homes and businesses along the route will not be hemmed in. We shall see. It will be huge problem for the marching band festival in September. Much of the diverted traffic will go on the Blue Mound Avenue, just off our street. I know this needs to be done, but what a huge pain to live through.

Any annoying road conconstruction by you this summer? What are your most sentimental highways?

2026, Family, Food, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Easter Dinner Disaster

23 Comments

Our Easter menu consisted of scalloped potatoes, roasted butternut squash with apples, raspberry cream pie, and smoked farmer’s ham with a plum glaze.

Since we had to sing in the choir at both services on Sunday, I decided to make the potatoes and the pie on Saturday. I got the pie crust made and the pie assembled, and then started on the scalloped potatoes. I used Julia’s recipe, which she describes as “ambrosia”. It consists of two cups of heavy cream and two cups of half and half, bay leaf, salt and pepper in which you simmer on the stove two pounds of very thinly sliced Yukon Gold potatoes. They simmer for 90 minutes, and then you put them in a gratin dish. They can be made ahead of time to this point, then baked the next day in the oven for 20 minutes after you sprinkle them with grated Gruyere cheese.

I put the simmered potatoes in the 14 × 9 ceramic Le Creuset gratin dish to cool down preparatory to putting them in the fridge for the night. Husband was looking for ingredients for a cucumber salad in the cupboard just above the gratin dish when he accidentally knocked a bottle of avocado oil off the shelf. It landed in on the potatoes, and the gratin dish shattered into about eight pieces.

The pieces seemed pretty intact, and after we had scraped all the potatoes into another gratin dish we reassembled the busted dish in the sink to see if we could salvage the potatoes and serve them on Sunday. We were able to account for all but a quarter inch piece of ceramics.

I was really torn about what to do. Should we serve the potatoes and warn our guest about the possibility of a ceramic fragment? Should I throw it out and make it again on Sunday? I decided to decide in the morning.

The chance of our guest breaking a tooth or swallowing a sharp glass fragment was too great for me to deal with, so I tossed the potatoes and made more after church. They were ambrosial. I remembered a conversation I once had with the wife of one of our ND psychiatrists. She admitted that when her husband was in his residency in Texas she invited several people over for dinner. She really wanted to impress, and wanted to serve liver pate. They were quite poor at the time, so she bought a can of liver cat food and served it with crackers. No one was any the wiser, and her guests liked the “pate”. Well, we certainly could afford more cream and potatoes, and I am glad I threw the first batch of potatoes away.

What kitchen disasters have you had? Ever served a dish that you knew had something wrong with it?