Went to Trader Joes to pick up a few things from their flyer.
I’m sure the pasta tastes just like, well, pasta – but the colors were so pretty that I bought TWO! I felt like a crow attracted to a shiny object.
What bird would you be?
All posts by verily sherrilee
If the Walls Could Talk
Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.
My youngest child, Steve, is a 45 year- old single father now. Two years ago, his then wife broke his heart by divorcing him. They’d just finished building their “forever home” which he’d been designing for years. My thoughts about why this 13-year relationship deteriorated to the point of no return are that he put in 80-hour weeks working, partly on his four businesses and partly on building this masterpiece of a home. He’d come home and just collapse in exhaustion night after night. It may also have been compromised because of her career as one of Minnesota’s finest actresses in small theater and the Guthrie. Acting was always her greatest passion in life. She wasn’t even sure that she’d want to add motherhood to this lifestyle. At 41, she agreed to have a baby, and another one at 44.
The thing about relationships is that they, too, need to be tended to and worked on. He more or less, in his zeal to create the perfect home for his family, put too much energy and time into it and too little into their relationship. Any relationship can slowly die through neglect, and by the time she finally admitted her unhappiness, it turned out to be too late.
The first year without her was devastating for Steve. At the time, they had a brand new baby girl and a 3-year old son. He’d yearned to be a daddy for years, and finally was. The custody arrangement is 50/50, every other week end and 2-3 nights a week. He loves Charlie and Leo so much that to this day, he weeps at night when they’re not with him. I personally have never seen a more loving, involved, and devoted father in my life.
He designed this home around making it an adventure for his kids. Wall panels, when pushed, open up to tunnels and secret spaces behind the walls. Under both staircases, there are hideaways, some with little ladders going up to the second floor with more hidden spaces. A large book shelf is a hidden door to a kid-sized space, too.
In the second-floor master bedroom, he had a door installed just for a rope swing bridge out to an elaborate tree house. In the backyard, he installed a 100-foot zip line. His large sun porch has a high brick fireplace. On the second floor, behind the back side of the fireplace, he built four small bunk beds for sleepovers. These, too, can only be accessed through hidden doors.
The most special project of all, however, is a 25-foot long spiral slide which goes from the first level down to the lower level. He even put LED lights in it so that the darkness wouldn’t scare the kids. They come shooting out the bottom of it at fairly high speed. Many an adult has accepted a dare to try this slide, but usually after having a few drinks first! It really is scary.
Steve, having only been in this home for a few weeks before he and his wife began living apart, wanted badly to sell it. There were no positive family memories in the new walls and it was far too large for just one guy. For months, just being in it alone created heartbreak. He even spent a few months mostly living in a close friend’s cramped apartment to avoid the painful feelings of being in the family dream home he’d built. None of us wanted him to sell.
Over time, friends and family began to fill the walls with posit
ive, joyful energy. He’s hosted every family gathering in almost two years, and we’ve established a tradition of everyone being involved in making meals together. The kitchen’s so large that a dozen of us can have plenty of room to prepare our own part of the meal. Even the little kids contribute by mixing things or cutting up veggies. Last fall, after being asked by a neighbor if he’d have the annual neighborhood party, the home was filled with 70 people and had room to spare. Inch by inch, month by month, this is truly becoming Steve’s home. When asked if he still plans to sell it, he always says,” I don’t know – we’ll see”. My hopes that he’ll stay increase with every new project he does for his little ones. He just got a black lab p
uppy, so that’s also encouraging. No one more deserves to occupy this grand home than the man who built it.
Note: The Strib was doing a feature about homes which included fun spaces for kids and asked if they could take some photos and do an interview for their Home section. We were all kind of surprised that his creations took up the entire front and back pages. His now 6-year old Leo is standing in the slide’s opening and Steve’s the one at the bottom of it. Another photo captures the clan in the potluck line after preparing our meal together.
How have the walls of your home helped you through life?
Behind the Curtain
today’s post comes to us from our tim
we begin month 3 of trail baboon part 2. he has been mia altogether now for most of the past year or two but he is the invisable man for 60 days running. are you out there dale??? send me a sign….or an entry…
then you to vs and renee, to jaque to volunteer to make it happen as a perpetual motion machine. the tragedy of the end of the late great morning show was buffered by the trial balloon and we were able suck it up and be thenakful that we had a remnant of the morning show with dale as the man behind the curtain then the essence or our mpr world got shut down and the closing of the dale connelly as an omnipitant leader. i told dale he didnt need to be an enigma and he said something to the effect of “theres nothing wrong with being an ieigma”
i love dale, i love the trail, i love the history and i love the fact that we made it… we transitioned to the next level.
my dad moved to leach lake and spent the first year looking for his coffee group. the good old gang who laughs at your jokes and cries at you pain and understand the difference. the trail is actually the closest group of friewnds i can imagine.
my first wife talked to her mom on the phone every day for 20 minutes and im sure she had a tough time when her mom died because of the gigantic hole it left, my current wife talked to her grandma every sunday and when her grandma started losing it and had to move from the farm to town and then to the nursing home it was a smoother transition to prepare for the inevitable end.
dale and his guest blog weeks — remember how important it was that we never miss a day? 5+ years and never a missed day. how did he do it? and timely and so creative. the jusice that required must have been an interesting premise to life for all that time
now steve writes one, clyde, vs, renee, jaque, bir, all of us.
thanks for the new start and rebirth of the original joy of the morning show the trial baloon and the trail baboon
other than the rebirth of the trial, what new start in your life has been the best?
Battle of the Boulevard
Purple is my favorite color; you’d think that purple flowers would be my favorites as well. And for the most part, you’d be correct, except for the aromatic little purple flowers that are taking over my front boulevard. Creeping charlie, also known as ground ivy, creeping Jenny, catsfoot and run-away-robin, is the bane of my existence.
In general I don’t care for ground cover unless it only covers the ground that I want it to cover. Unfortunately that’s not how ground cover works. I think of it as a virus that I’ve caught. I’ve gotten plants from so many places, that I’m not even sure where I caught the virus but based on where I first noticed it, it probably came from something I purchased at Bachmans. Tsk tsk.
I tried the easier poisonous route last summer and not only did it poison one of my peonies, it didn’t really work. So this summer is the battle of YA and I against the CC. On Sunday we spent about 5 hours weeding and half of that was an all out attack on the purple menace on the boulevard. I did the tedious around-the-flowers/bushes weeding while YA went for a more scorched-earth policy of ripping up whole chunks of sod, roots and shoots and all. We talked about the fact that we’ll have to do this all summer and probably some of next summer as well. YA must have concurred; I came home today to find a pile of CC pulled from the side of the house near our raspberries. So I guess it’s official – it’s the two of us versus the creeping charlie!
When have you had to do battle?
A Day at the Zoo
It was a beautiful day for the zoo. In the morning, as many families were still hunting for eggs and chocolate bunnies, we headed off. Starting off in the Tropics we discovered that every morning they simulate a little thunder shower near Gibbon Island. Since Young Adult and I have easily been to the zoo 50 times in her lifetime, it was quite a surprise that we’d never encountered it before.
The moose and bears were in fine form and the Amur leopards were all three putting on a fine show. We happened upon coyote feeding and, of course, sat through the bird show. We packed a partial lunch which was supplemented by waffle fries and then wandered up to The Farm for baby goat, piglet and calf petting. And then there was the obligatory 20 minutes of watching YA pet sharks in Discovery Bay.
But the most amazing display was YA, who suggested the outing to the zoo in the first place, willingly posed for several photos, engaged in conversation about our straw bale gardening over lunch and even said thank you after I purchased popcorn for her. It was a beautiful day.
What is a favorite haunt of yours?
I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation
I stopped at Bachmans early on Saturday morning to get a few tomato cages, in a hopefully not vain effort to keep Guinevere out of my lily garden. It took me quite some time to find a parking spot; it was amazing to me that so many people were there with so many uncertain weather weeks ahead of us. I made an offhand remark about how crowded it was when I was checking out. The cashier nodded and said “People were lined up outside this morning when we opened. It’s the Lily Society weekend.”
I purposed don’t keep track of this weekend because goodness knows I have enough lilies. In the looks department, irises are my favorite but in all the other departments (sturdiness, variety of color, quickness to spread), lilies take the cake. And I have plenty. Last summer my neighbor said “it looks like the lilies are having a color war in your yard”.
I almost turned back twice before I got to my car, thinking of the varieties, the colors, the low price. Bachmans was in my rear-view mirror before long and I breathed a sigh of relief.
But I still have to get through Sunday!
What tempts you?
A Bed a Day
Today’s post from the keyboard of Verily Sherrilee.
Nobody has ever accused me of being OCD about cleaning. I can leave a paper towel on the dining room floor for days and just walk around it (especially if a kitty is sitting on it). I can put a sweatshirt on a chair and ignore it for a week. Dishes stack up in the sink just like at everybody else’s house.
But many years ago I got the idea that I should make my bed every day. No matter what. Now it’s such an ingrained habit that the room looks bad to me before the bed gets made up. Even when I was sick last month, in the morning I made the bed and unless I was going to take a serious nap, I sat on top of the comforter while reading or watching tv.
So it was a little startling to look into the Young Adult’s room over the weekend to see that the laundry baskets had thrown up all over her bed. I tried to channel my mom; I pulled the door closed and walked away!
Do you have an every day habit?
Stories We Tell Ourselves
At my book club (my other book club) last weekend, after we had lunch, my friend Rita brought out some fabulous-looking brownies. As if that weren’t enough, she then brought out vanilla ice cream. As she scooped the ice cream onto the plates with the brownies, she said “the ice cream helps cut the sweetness.” We all laughed and then someone commented that if we had Diet Coke, it would counteract the calories as well. And we laughed some more.
What “story” do you tell yourself?
caution – brains at work
today’s musings from our tim.
words on a page
sounds in your ear
images in your brain either put before to absorb or conjure
it is all there is
be careful of what you put in you queue,
you are what you think about all day long
what are you thinking about these days?
The Mystery of the Boxes in the Field House
Today’s post comes to us from Steve.
Few of us encounter mysteries, I think. Life is usually dull. But now and then something seems wrong. Something doesn’t make sense.
As a hunter and fisherman, I always had a secret dread of being the person who would discover a corpse. Murderers often discard bodies in remote areas, I’ve read, and I spent much of my life blundering about in remote places. In the back of my head I always worried I would be tramping around looking for a grouse when I would find someone’s decaying arm sticking out of the ground from a shallow grave. For example, a murder victim was once hidden in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area, and I used to hunt there.
My sister once became curious about family history. By snooping around in old boxes she turned up old court records revealing the existence of a legal half-brother that our parents had never mentioned. It seemed a shocking family scandal.
The truth turned out to be much less exciting. My father was accused of fathering a child by a young woman who became pregnant out of wedlock in the 1930s. The charge was false, our parents explained calmly. At the time there were no scientific ways to prove or disprove paternity in what lawyers called “bastard cases.” My dad’s lawyer told him to plead guilty and to pay the unwed mother, who wanted $200 to cover maternity bills. The story was funny rather than shocking, and it involved a cow sculpted from butter. Some friends of this web site know the whole story, for I wrote about it in my unpublished book about my family.
I have led a mostly boring life, and yet there once was a mystery that excited my imagination.
In my home town of Ames, Iowa, there was a curious round brick building near the high school football field and track arena. The “Field House” began life as a shelter for Chautauqua attendees in 1928. The Chautauqua movement was a fascinating development that flourished in early decades of the 20th century. The building was later built up to form an odd round brick structure that hosted athletic events. By the time I was a kid in Ames the Field House was boarded up and unused.
One day in 1960 some friends and I happened to look in the windows of the old field house. It was filled with an astonishing number of cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. We had never seen so many boxes in one place. Each one was identical, and each bore the word “Crest.” What was in those boxes? Why would anyone stockpile many thousand boxes in an abandoned building? Was this some secret government program?
Before long, we understood the mystery of the Crest boxes. For decades Procter and Gamble had been experimenting with toothpaste formulas. In the 1950s P & G learned that adding stannous fluoride to their paste would radically reduce cavities among people who faithfully brushed with Crest.
But consumers were slow to pick up on this. In the absence of truth in advertising legislation, people hawked miracle products to cure everything from cancer to arthritis to “wind in the belly.” Our family doctor once confessed that he went to medical school on the profits of some “snake oil” cure-all that his grandfather sold in little bottles. If such little bottles were filled with flavored alcohol, they usually sold well. In my own childhood the marketplace promoted such dubious products as Geritol (a cure for “tired blood”) and Carter’s Little Liver Pills.
Crest toothpaste, which actually reduced dental disease by 40 percent, only claimed ten percent of the toothpaste market in the 1950s. Then the American Dental Association conducted studies that confirmed the effectiveness of fluoride. The ADA had never endorsed a product before. In 1960 the ADA officially named Crest as the only toothpaste that reduced cavities. Knowing that this announcement would hit the market like a bombshell, P & G went into feverish production and filled warehouses with boxes of Crest in the months before the announcement was released. The old field house in Ames was one of many such stockpiles. Crest dominated the toothpaste market for decades until the practice of adding fluoride to drinking water reduced the need for fluoridated toothpaste.
Have you ever discovered a mystery?
Trail Baboon 