All posts by reneeinnd

books, Family, Health, Nature, Uncategorized

Pushmepullyou

52 Comments

I have lumbar scoliosis, along with years of cruddy posture. I even slump when I drive. I had physical therapy several years ago, which really helped my lower back pain. Like many, I stopped doing my exercises after the pain went away.

A few months ago I started to have chronic sciatica in both legs, and got a referral for more physical therapy. My new therapist assessed the situation and told me that she was surprised I could even walk, since all the muscles in my lower back and hips that ought to hold me upright weren’t doing their job, and the hip flexor muscles in the front of my body were doing it instead. Sitting at a desk all day in a bad chair only made things worse. (The ergo guy at work ordered a really good office chair with great lumbar support for me last month, so that problem is solved.)

I am currently in a lot of pain all over my back and legs since, as my physical therapist told, all my muscles are mad at me as we are doing exercises to get the back muscles to do their job and the front muscles to do their job. I am also being very mindful of my posture, even when I drive, and that has also stirred up some muscle pushback. All of this has reminded me of the Pushmepullyou from Dr. Doolittle.

My mother constantly harrased me about my posture. Ok mom, you were right! I should have listened! I don’t remember ever liking the Dr. Doolittle books much. I found the writing kind of stuffy, but the plot was fun. I appreciate the tug of war concept with the Pushmepullyou. My hips can relate.

What animals would you like to talk to? Ever had physical therapy? What did you parents tell you that you should have listened to but didn’t.

2022, Business, Family, Health, Kids, Uncategorized

Irony

36 Comments

I was quite amused yesterday on my way to work to see our insurance agent presumably driving to his office. He was riding a motorcycle. HE WASN’T WEARING A HELMET!

It seems to me that being an insurance agent means you exemplify caution and careful living. I remember the conversation we had together with our son when he got his driver’s license, and our agent told him to never hesitate to phone him any time, night or day, if he had been drinking and needed a ride home. Well, I wonder what he says to young motorcycle drivers he insures about helmets?

Our agent goes to our church and has a lovely tenor voice and sings with us in the choir. I can hardly wait to tease him about this.

What do you like to tease people about? What irony have you noticed this week? Any stories about insurance agents or companies?

2022, Family, Travel, Uncategorized

Airbnb

28 Comments

Husband and I spent four days last week in Fargo with our son and his family, joined for two days by our daughter. She was on a week long visit from Tacoma to friends in various parts of Minnesota. We picked her up in Alexandria on Friday. She hitched a ride back to the Minneapolis Airport on Sunday morning with her best friend who lives in Hopkins but who was in Moorhead visiting her sister. Her trip took a lot of planning!

Son booked an Airbnb with five bedrooms in the historic section of Fargo on 8th St. It is only the second time we stayed in such accommodations, our children far more accustomed to booking these lodgings. It really worked out well, especially since our 4 year old grandson was pretty happy not having to eat in restaurants and could run around and play and make more noise than he could in a hotel. We ordered out from our favorite Thai and East Indian restaurants, and son grilled lovely lamb kebobs on Saturday night. My only complaint was that our mattress was far too soft and gave me a backache.

Fargo was surprising, even after all these years of living in this State. We went to the downtown farmers market on Saturday. It was wonderful, and we scored some fresh, local sweetcorn. There are very few places in North Dakota where you would see many gay couples walking around in public holding hands, but there they were, happy as they could be among the produce stalls. It was also far more ethnically diverse than I remember it being in years past. It was so nice to see.

I imagine there are Airbnb nightmares, but ours worked out swell. We will more than likely do it again, but will have our children help us figure out how to choose them.

What are your Airbnb experiences? What cities have pleasantly surprised you? Where are your favorite places to visit?

2022, Food, Uncategorized

Weird Food

34 Comments

Over the past month, Husband and I cleaned out and reorganized our kitchen cupboards preparatory to ordering a fresh supply of the lentils, beans, and other kitchen staples we were getting low on. I am sorry to say there were things we found I had forgot about completely, and I have only vague ideas what I planned to do with some of them.

When we lived in Winnipeg, our Italian landlady would serve us preserved lupini beans whenever we came over to pay the rent. They were a real delicacy to her. This was a very formal occasion during which we would drink her and Emilio’s homemade red wine and eat the lupini beans she had done something to that made them savory and soft, sort of like olives. A couple of years ago I saw dried lupini beans on a website and ordered a pound, thinking that I could replicate those beans and those fond memories. I had no idea that lupini beans are toxic unless you soak, rinse, soak, rinse, soak rinse, ad nauseam. Well, they still are in the bag, unopened, as is the pound of fava beans that I ordered because I wasn’t quite sure if Angela used those or lupini beans. I didn’t figure it out until after they arrived and I actually looked at some recipes. Neither bean interests me now but I am too Dutch to toss them and I know no one around here who would use them.

More recently I bought a pound of red Italian rice, which seems to be different than Asian red rice, and is reportedly quite hard to digest if you eat too much at one sitting. I have looked for recipes but they are few and far between. I bought the rice because I was buying other things from the company and thought “why not” when I ran across it. I am determined that the rice will actually get used up. Maybe it goes well either lupini and fava beans . Husband wants to make salad out of it.

What weird foods lurk in your kitchen? What would you do with fava’s, lupini beans, and red Italian rice? Any good landlord stories?

2022, Uncategorized, Weather

A Perfect Storm

16 Comments

Last Monday around suppertime we had a perfect Northern Plains storm. Usually our storms come after it is dark, and the wind blows things over and you hope it doesn’t hail.

This storm was perfect. There was very little wind. The sky clouded up, the clouds billowing, and you could see the lightening strikes and hear the thunder approach miles away from the west. The thunder became gradually louder as it neared town. It took a good 30 minutes to get to us, and then there were loud booms and lightening all around and over us, but still no wind. Then the rain started, and we got .20.

The storm left town just as it came, traveling east with gradually diminishing flashes and booms. Then it was silent. It was perfect. We appreciated the rain.

When have you been in a perfect storm? Use any meaning of the phrase you would like.

2022, Family, gardening, Music, Poems, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

They Call The Wind. . . .Annoying

57 Comments

We just can’t get a break with the weather. Our home garden got planted late due to freezing temperatures in May, and then we had a hail storm in June that took out the tomatoes and peppers and shredded the beans and peas.

Our church vegetable garden is planted in six, waist-high raised beds. We planted bush squash, peas, beans, and savoy cabbages there. We planted the squash and cabbages in raised mounds just to give them ample depth for roots. That garden didn’t get the hail we did at our house several blocks away. Last Sunday the bush squash and cabbages at church were looking spectacular. Then, on Tuesday, the wind hit.

I never realized how shallow squash roots are. The wind gusted up to 50 mph, and almost entirely uprooted the squash. Husband frantically placed cedar shakes around the squash and cabbage mounds to block the wind, and piled more dirt over the exposed roots. Many of the squash stems were bent and the leaves broken off and wilted. By yesterday they looked a little better, but, again, this sets back possible harvest.

Our home garden wasn’t affected by the wind since the plants are at ground level, not in waist-high raised beds. I think we will have ample cabbages and squash to take to the food pantry if the church garden doesn’t produce.

Let’s have some weather inspired songs and poems today.

2022, gardening, Uncategorized, work

Thanks, I Think

26 Comments

Last Thursday was Psychologist Day as well as Bastille Day. I advised my coworkers to not be alarmed if I and our psychology resident stormed the barricades because we weren’t getting the guillotine out until next week. Only a couple of my coworkers knew what Bastille Day was or what I was talking about.

In honor of Psychologist Day, a Ukrainian coworker gave me a china plate emblazoned with pysanki. It was a lovely gift and much appreciated. I can use it. I am perplexed, though, about the gift from our psychometrist.

My Human Service Center and the Center in Bismarck, where Husband works share the services of a go-getting and spunky young woman who administers and scores our psychological tests. She is very efficient and works quickly. She is also very impulsive, and professes to know nothing about plants. In honor of Psychologist Day she bought large, potted fig trees for each of the four psychologists she works with. She hoped we could keep the trees in our offices. These trees need bright light. I am the only one with a window in my office. Husband brought our two trees home from Bismarck on Wednesday and they are sitting on our kitchen counter for the time being until I can get them to my office. There they will sit on a table by my window along with a large potted rosemary plant. I can’t use the table for much of anything now. It is covered in plants. I don’t want to crush the exuberance of our psychometrist, so I will do my best to keep these trees going. I know that when she drives out to my Center she will want to see how they are doing, so I don’t feel that I can give them away, either.

What is the oddest or most awkward gift you ever received? Who is the most impulsive person you ever worked with? Any advice on how to grow Fiddle Leaf Fig Trees?

2022, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Flash Flood

52 Comments

We had around 2 inches of rain on Sunday night in the space of 70 minutes. That is pretty unusual for us, and resulted in a lot of flash flooding in town. The photo below shows a flooded underpass. You can see the railroad bridge at the top of the photo. The street goes under the bridge, and the flood waters are about 12 feet deep.

Photo by DJ Miller

The following photo is of a main street in town that I drive on every day to work. I never really noticed the low spot where the yellow car is sitting. There are apparently lots of these low spots on the street, and they all flooded briefly. I have lived here for 35 years and I never noticed them. Now I notice lots of these low spots all over town.

Photo by DJ Miller

Someone from the fire department also took a photo of the underpass. The fire department is always called when the underpass floods, as it seems someone tries to drive through the underpass during a flood, and they like to have a rescue truck available.

Photo by Dickinson Fire Department

We had another .20 inches today, and it seemed like it soaked in much better than the downpour on Sunday night. It is interesting how less can be more when it comes to rain.

Have you ever been in a flood, flash or otherwise? When, in your experience, is less really more? What are some experiences when you have seen but not really noticed ?

2022, gardening, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Summer Garden

31 Comments

In most summers, we would be at the height of flower and fruit production. The roses and peonies would be at their best, the veggies in the garden would be thriving, and we would have an abundance of strawberries and rhubarb . Well, this summer is different.

Our garden beans are finally setting out new leaves after the hail storm last week. The rhubarb was shredded by the hail, and it has been pulled and cut back. The strawberries that we just planted in May survived the hail, and are in their first year of setting out runners. We are clipping the flowers off to stimulate runner production, and there will be no fruit until next year.

Depending on where the flowers and shrubs were planted, they either were shredded or are in full bloom. Prior to the hail, Grover Cleveland, our earliest and most lovely peony, was in bloom.

I love his very deep red color, which is rare in peonies. Grover was hailed out. We also have some Japanese peonies in the front yard, which are spare and ascetic and a contrast with more traditional peonies. They were protected from the hail by the house.

We planted more traditional peonies in the church garden a couple of years ago, and they were protected from the hail by some Siberian elms.

I am happy that our raspberry bed was protected from the hail, and we anticipate a stunning raspberry harvest in a month or so. They are only a few feet from the rhubarb, but they were protected by the hail by our neighbors’ awful ash trees. How ironic!

What are your favorite summer flowers? If you were to redo your yard, what would you plant or change? Any good raspberry recipes?

2022, animals, Family, home, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

Baby Gates

26 Comments

Puppy training is going well. Kyrill bops his potty bells when he needs to go outside. He sleeps soundly with us for five hours at a time before he needs to go out. He even stayed close by us, unleashed, in the front yard for more than an hour on Sunday as we gardened. (That is highly unusual for most breeds of terriers, but typical for Ceskys. )

We have lots to work on in terms of thievery and his refusal to drop objects he isn’t supposed to have. He has yet to learn that our wine glasses and coffee cups are off limits on the lamp tables. He also has a love of cat food, and that requires a baby gate.

Our baby gates are somewhat decrepit, and hale from when we were training our second Welsh Terrier about 20 years ago. It was surprisingly hard to find new ones in town, and I had to order one from Target. We feed our cat in the basement. She, poor thing, has been sorely neglected since Kyrill’s arrival. We need to restrict his access to the cat food but allow her access to the upstairs. We have a strategically placed gate that allows her to jump over but keeps him out of the cat food and litter box. We also have a gate on the backyard deck so he can be outside when we work in the yard and be safe. He howls in frustration when he spies us and can’t get to us. It is hard to meet every creature’s needs these days.

When I was about 3, my parents had an enclosure in the back yard that they put me in so I could be outside but they didn’t need to watch me continuously. My mother said I got so upset when I saw the other neighborhood children running around that the let me run with them all over the block. No disaster ensued, but that was brave of my parents. Of course, this was in the early 1960’s, and things were different then.

What were your boundaries for roaming when you were a child? Did you have curfews? What are your experiences with baby gates?