All posts by reneeinnd

2025, animals, Family, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Traveling Kitty

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Today as you read this, Husband and I are making the first of two trips to Luverne over the next two weeks. The main purpose of this trip is to go to our 2 month old granddaughter’s baptism in Brookings on Sunday. The other reason for the trip is to bring to the new house as much food from our freezers and liquids the moving company won’t transport.

Wedged in the back of our van, surrounded by coolers filled with frozen food, boxes of home canned tomatoes, cans of olive oil, and jars of fancy vinegars will be our cat, Luna, in the dog crate. We decided to move her on this trip since it seemed rather too stressful to move both the cat and the dog at once.

The last time Luna made this trip was nine years ago when she was a kitten and had been rescued by our son and daughter-in-law from underneath a deck in Brookings. Our daughter was visiting them at the time and drove the cat to Dickinson after staying with Daughter and her college roommates in Moorhead a few weeks. Her only trips since then have been excursions to the local vet. It is a 550 mile trip to Luverne. Once we get her there she will be boarded at the Rock County Vet Clinic until we are moved into the new house on the 22nd.

We are going to try to make her as comfortable as possible with a litter box, soft blankets, and a small water bowl in the dog crate. I am not optimistic about her being happy at all with this trip and then being subsequently boarded. I will let you all know how it is going as the day progresses.

What are your experiences traveling with pets? Any advice for us today?

2025, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Fermentation

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Sunday night I received a cryptic message from our daughter that said “Breaking News: I love sauerkraut”.

She had an out of town friend visiting a week or so ago, and the friend just whipped up some sauerkraut and left it to ferment. I like the taste but not the texture of sauerkraut, but I never had it homemade. Maybe it is crisper than the store bought variety. Husband sneaks a jar into the fridge every so often. I think that this is perhaps the only time Daughter may have eaten sauerkraut.

I stopped making pickles quite a while ago, since we always ended up with too many to eat in a year. My favorites now are cornichons from France. They come in a small jar so you aren’t left with too many. Husband occasionally teases about home brewing beer. He never has fermented anything on purpose. I wonder if Daughter’s discovery means she is going to start making her own kraut.

What are your favorite pickles? Ever done any fermentation?

2025, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Quilts

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Last Sunday, we sang in the choir at the 9:30 service, and were acknowledge for 38 years of musical service to the church in both the choir and bell choir. They even had a God’s Speed blessing for us, which I had no idea they were going to do. After that, we were expected to sing a choir anthem all about leaving and journeying. It is awfully hard to sing when you are choked up.

We have committed quilters in our various musical groups, and they gifted us with a queen size quilt with musical motifs. It is gorgeous, and you can see it in the header photo. As soon as I took the photo, our dog jumped on the quilt and snuggled in, claiming it for his own.

What motifs would be on a quilt someone made for you to commerate your work and life? How do you keep yourself from crying?

2025, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized

Tradition!

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I wrote on Wednesday about getting moose meat from our next door neighbor, a moose his brother-in-law had shot last year. The reason for the gift of moose was to make room in their freezer for the venison from a deer that Neighbor’s 12 year old daughter shot over the weekend.

Neighbor comes from an extended family for whom hunting is really important. Last Saturday he and his daughter drove to the sparsely inhabited grasslands south southwest of us, and she got her deer. It wasn’t a clean shot, and they had to chase it. It took a while for the deer to expire. They gutted it out, and loaded it in the truck. On the way back, the girl told her dad she didn’t want to go hunting anymore.

Neighbor spoke proudly of how courageous his daughter was for telling him how she felt about an activity so important in their family, and how he was supportive of her decision. He said they had great conversations on the way there and back about all sorts of things like boys, her plans for the future, etc. He is a good dad, an educator, who spent are least one summer in San Francicso coaching swimming for Stanford. His daughter is a lucky girl.

What family traditions have you kept or dropped? What qualities do you think make for a good father?

2025, animals, Family, Nature, Uncategorized

Hiss!

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Tuesday Husband and I took the dog to the groomer in a little town about 10 miles west of us. I drove, and on the way back I had to swerve to avoid running over a very long rattlesnake that was slithering across the highway. We estimated it to be about four feet long. We have Prairie Rattlesnakes out here. Their markings are unmistakable. We have seen them all lengths, from tiny ones no thicker than a pencil to the long one on Tuesday. The weather has been so warm here I suppose it was a good time for the snake to check out the available mice in the ditch. We have never seen any in town.

I had some clients years ago who had to move out of their rental home on the south side of town because there were dozens of garter snakes in the walls of the basement. The house was later condemned and torn down. We heard that the lot the house was built on was a noted breeding ground for garter snakes. No other structure has been built there.

The town of Narcisse in Manitoba interlake region is well known for the tens of thousands of garter snakes that emerge from their nests in the spring and return in the fall. I guess it is quite a tourist attraction. We never visited there when we lived there. Snakes aren’t my cup of tea. I have a second cousin who I love dearly who lives near St. Peter and who loves snakes. He has bred snakes for commercial sale in the past, and loves it when his cats find garter snakes in the basement and bring them upstairs.

What are your experiences with snakes? Do you have any friends or relatives with interests you find odd?

2025, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Fingers Crossed

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A month before we closed on our house in Minnesota, the realtor phoned me to let me know the hot tub had sprung a leak, and the current owners were told it wasn’t worth fixing. Did we want them to replace it or remove it? I told her to remove it.

Now that we are three weeks from our move, and four weeks from closing on our North Dakota house, I have become very watchful and worried for anything going wrong here and needing to be fixed or replaced. I had a scare Sunday when I noticed that the dishwasher wasn’t draining, but a quick application of a plunger cleared whatever was plugging it up.

I have to calm myself and tell myself to stop when I start worrying about one of our vehicles breaking down, the plumbing exploding and ruining the drywall, or one of us getting injured or dropping dead. It is stressful enough to move, but we sure don’t need a last minute disaster.

What last minute disasters have you experienced? How do you get yourself to knock it off and stop fretting?

2025, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

Going Buggy

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The other day our terrier came into the house with a large, green caterpillar in his mouth. We got it away from him before he could eat it but it was clearly dead.

Our deck off the back of the house has a pergola that is covered by layers of grape vines. It provides nice shade and also harbors birds who like to eat the grapes. A night or two ago I was sitting on the deck when the green wiggler in the header photo dropped to the floor right in front of me. I guess the vines also provide a nice environment for caterpillar development. The caterpillar was still alive, so I moved it into some bushes so the birds and dog would have difficulty finding it. I hope it gets a chance to form a cocoon.

One of my favorite memories from Grade 3 is finding a really big cocoon and bringing it to class. My teacher let me keep it in the classroom, and a couple of days later we came to school to find an enormous Cercropia moth flying around the room. I don’t know what kind of caterpillar our green one is, but I hope it doesn’t turn into a destructive moth.

Any idea what kind of caterpillar this is? Ever have an insect collection?

2025, Uncategorized, work

Wrapping It Up

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On Monday I let my administrators know that October 3rd will be my last day of work. I have been gradually reducing my work load. I conducted my last two psychological evaluations last week, and now my main tasks are to write up the reports for those and three other evaluations I conducted in August. I stopped seeing clients in March.

I wanted to be a psychologist and play therapist since I was 12 years old. I was able to do a huge amount of testing for all sorts of issues for clients through the lifespan, and learned how to use a plethora of different tests. I had a wonderful play therapy room and also did family therapy and individual therapy with children, teens, and adults.

I was quite calm and happy as I finished my last testing session last week. I love to do evaluations, but I am ready to not do them anymore. I will miss doing play therapy with preschoolers, but I won’t miss picking up the toys. (It is a cardinal rule that the therapist, not the child, picks up the toys after each session.)

It has been a good run. I am very proud and satisfied with my professional life, but ready to move on.

If you are retired, what do you miss the most from your old jobs? What do you miss the least? What age children are the most fun for you to be around?

2025, animals, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Dishwasher Mystery

36 Comments

On Saturday we had our plumber over to fix a couple of leaky faucets preparatory to our home inspection. He did a good job, as usual, and then I had him look at the dishwasher.

I noticed about a couple of months ago that I could pull the dishwasher forward and back almost 3 inches. This was a new development. It never moved like that before. Daryl the plumber took a look and noticed that the four screws that secured the dishwasher to the sides of the cabinets had all been pulled out. He also showed me how short they were. He got four much longer screws and secured the dishwasher back in place. He was at a loss to explain how the short screws could have been pulled out like that.

On Sunday I was loading the dishwasher with the usual assistance of Kyrill the Cesky Terrier. He likes to do the pre-rinse on the dishes on the bottom rack and lick any delectables off the open dishwasher door. He has done this since we got him. Kyrill is a short dog of great length who can only get to the farthest dishes and door surface by standing with his front paws on the door. Sometimes he even jumps up so his whole body is on the open door. Did I mention he now weighs 30 lbs? Bingo. Mystery solved. I believe Kyrill, in his selfless attempts to help us as much as he can, stripped the dishwasher screws by putting his weight on the door. I am afraid he isn’t allowed to help us with the dishes anymore.

What repairs have you had to make due to animals? Any mysteries in your life lately? How are you at setting limits with pets?

2025, Art, gardening, home, Uncategorized

A Lightbulb Went On

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As of last Sunday we had our house on the market for two months. We had many showings, but no offers.

Our real estate agent couldn’t understand why. The house was clean, well kept, and nicely updated, with lovely features. We knew that our rather wild yard with the mass of raspberry canes, the large strawberry bed, the front veggie bed, the large flower beds, and the rampaging rose bushes just didn’t appeal to some viewers. Others wanted a larger yard, something we really couldn’t do much about.

Our agent wondered if the basement, which we had extensively remodeled and updated. was just a little dark. She advised us to try ro make it brighter, so last Sunday we replaced all the basement light bulbs with Bright White LED bulbs. We did the same to the upstairs lights for good measure. The whole interior was somewhat brighter, with uniformly tinted bulbs.

The next day, Labor Day, was somewhat trying as we had two showings, and that meant keeping the house beautifully pristine and having to leave for about an hour with the dog. I don’t quite understand this, but both of the viewing parties on Monday gave us offers immediately after the showings!

Was it the lightbulbs? I seem to think it was, and I find it ridiculous. I am grateful and relieved, though. Now we can focus on wrapping things up here.

What would you look for if you were buying a new house? What decorating trends, past or present, have you loved or loathed?