i sell stuff, i love my family, art, music, political involvement, intellegent discussion, low stakes card games, guitar jams and a hat that fits just right.
the igsnats is raggled and sort of bedraggled and ferbuffing aballa chome
but just as she twizzled the homdong bedrizzled yo wassled im baxters liloam
it’s maxish ro traxish sel codee bulaxes faranda buttu or benigh
this eeps quite bittully lets not get unruly, erick and betook and oligh
ley boonk the bitussal because its refusal will dibble the gartz quite aboonly
if carblish is true then bortookly ri blue is the obvious ash to the junetree
i fear that nuressel quips inside my vessel and higgles to felton arral
if westleward ginkles leave bitelshear sprinkles amid levelosh divinthol
a quasterly mumfly domes flamen tumumkly emfatably worsle benee
ip waller gnishby sees more of the kish he rekembles his farberly wee
1987 a little guy popped into the world and forever changed my life. his routine became my routine, his reactions to stuff i did positive and negative became the criteria i used for going forward on this planet. he wanted to do it his way. we did it his way. he wanted a vote. we gave him a vote. he reacted to the song on the radio or my guitar or in the car we filed it away for future reference. he was full of weird stuff , phobias and needy stuff little kids bring along and I didn’t know how to recognize or deal with it very well. his mom had it timed so she could have the kid, take a 6 week summer break and then head back to life as a school counselor . i inherited the details. morning bath time with little potato, dancing with bears and other memorable morning tunes affected his life to the point that when he went to the daycare he would choose the raffi or peter paul and mommy music selection to guide the group. we went out to visit my sister in california when he was 2 and i remember him being in love with the joni mitchell blue album and the rolling stones with ruby tuesday on it.
i can still hear his: good bye ruby tuesday, who could hang a name on you , when you change with every new day still im going to miss you…. in the most perfect 2 year old presentation ever witnessed.
well tara came along about that time, mom had broken her leg month 8 of the pregnancy and the planned march birth that would give her the 6 weeks, stick your head back in to school and then take the summer off plan was a challenge with a needy one and a couple of kids too.i officed out of my house and the daily stuff was a challenge.
wife one had my job description altered and i was out the door. half time with the kids everything was fine til i got involved in another relationship. the x didn’t like my taking my affections elsewhere after dumping me. the new babe and I had an interesting first 2 ½ kids and ten years later we were married.
first kid with her is my son spencer is now 19 at st thomas and nice young man, olivia is 13 going into 8th grade, emma is 11 and going into 6th grade and i am all done having children with this wife. we checked into adopting haitian orphans a while back and were told we are too old. they may be right. the old bones are cricking and cracking these days and the stair steps are like an obstacle course some days.
devin is heading off to california later this month to follow his dream. he has a room with a buddy in the a capella biz and will take a run at rock star ism. wish him luck, he could do it. here is a clip of his college stuff.
i get miffed that there are no traces of the other things he has done and i can blame myself for not being as camera ready as i should have could have been . i have a great memory and at times I think it is even a more convenient method of getting it to come out right than having to rely on accurate portrayals.
one more with his a capella gang:
daughter is off to the wedding planner to finish up the wedding in july august to the foreigner from kosovo. moving into her first suburban apartment with the hubby to be. she is a multi tasking maniac who has a huge heart and a nice perspective on the world. she did a good job of picking out the good and learning from the other how to put your life priorities in a row.
middle kid, first in second marriage, actually first 10 years before second marriage is enjoying summer with his buddies home from school. washing windows and with a house to party on the weekends at down in the college area of st paul he is enjoying the first bennies of adulthood. wish him luck
the 8th grader is writer, actor, neat kid who sings piano and oboes her way along and is as nice a person as is possible in a volatile house like she comes from. she will find a way to make it work i am confident.
6 grader is a pistol. keeps me hopping and the idea that in another 5 or 6 years i will be sending her out the door is enough to make me realize the circle of life is a reality. my dad always said i hope you get one like you just to pay you back. oh he laughed and said you have a whole house of little yous, I didn’t know that was possible.
my kids all understand and partially inherit through osmosis my love of art and music and plants and cooking, chatting with strangers in the checkout line and on elevators, screwing around in general and a love of drink and cigars, a well spun phrase and a good hat, cards with friends and an opinion on the topic at hand.
life can be simple. put it all in perspective and realize its not a test run this is the real deal and kids are like pancakes. the first two are just for practice.
my moms visit to the hospital was a good reflective time for me. she has been spending her life as the caretaker first for the students she taught while shuffling family matters then for my da when they retired up to leach lake and now she has been slow to realize that it is ok for her to be on her to take care of list too. we went a funeral for a student of hers and a classmate of mine and she felt poorly and we ended up going to urgent care, the emergency room and then checking her into the hospital where they found a tumor after deducing that her weakness and feeling poorly was due to blood loss. the doctors looked at her charts and saw that she had a do not resussitate order on her history and the doctor asked if they were going in to do the explority stuff to find where the internal bleeding had its origins and she happened to have a failure did she really want to keep the do not resussitate order in place? well…… she said that maybe they should change that. she still had some stuff to do. i thought that was a nice milestone. to realize youve still got stuff to do.
while sitting up in that god awful dressing gown
my mom found life had an attraction
she wasn’t quite done with the stuff she wrote down
her to do list still needed subtraction
she just moved back to town after living on leach
trading lakeshore for retirement stuff
she had boxes to organize and pictures to sort
shed done some but not nraly enough
she just got diagnosed with sleep apthia syndome
she just started dong the machine
just think how life could be in her freshly painted new home
with a good sleep and days in between
with brain cells and group stuff thats offer each day
the choices are endless it seems
and now she has chosen to come back and say
howdy partners life is made out of dreams
its good to be happy to just be alive
what one greater gift could there be
to count all your blessings there are at least five
on the left hand alone yip yipee
i remember being asked one how much for your sight?
how much would you sell your eyes for?
appreciate small things like having the right
to get up and walk out the door.
life throws us curve balls and flattens our tires
i hate it when whacked in the face
but theres no where that i rather be to aspire
to win out there in this rat race.
get up splash some water on that tired old smile
say helo to the friend in the glass
could be that today is the best one in a while
get up get on out there kick ass
life can be simple and life can be grand
or a conniption is yours for the giving
get out there and leave your footprints in the sand
and be glad that life is worth living
Last night I had a strange dream that the leaves falling off the trees in my yard were actually words. When I gathered them up they seemed to make an indecipherable mound of text, but when I allowed myself to fall into the crunchy sentences, it all made a surprising amount of sense. In the spirit of autumnal thought collection and the pleasures of diving into a seemingly random word-pile, today’s guest post comes from that master raker of notions, the one-and-only tim.
the trick to it is not to believe that you have any idea where you are going. the times i get into trouble is when i think I know something. i really do much better when i am aware that i am lost. my thinking brain goes to sleep on a regular basis and the difference between me in a new surroundings vs me at the kitchen table is night and day.it is not only perception, it is fact that the stuff that comes out of my brain in a comfortable setting is not nearly as creative as the stuff when i am looking at the surroundings and soaking in the environment at the same time as i am trying to function. i do love my rituals. the morning bath with the blog in front of me is much preferred start to my day vs the wake up grab a tea and hit the road for an early morning meeting on my way to stop 1 2 3 and 4 before the dust clears. but i am not convinced that comfort is the best mode to exist in. i am often times jealous when I see a person who takes no chances and knows how everything is going to come out in every situation they run into or put themselves in a position to deal with but I know for certain I can not be that person. I cant sit in a chair and enjoy the scenery or a thought for no more than a short stint before i start twitching and needing to find a different angle on my presence. computers are a blessing and a curse. i remember when i started on my computer side of life and i was reading about peter or paul of peter paul and mary and he was saying that he would get on the computer after dinner and get involved in a conversation with someone in a chat room and the evening go by unnoticed and by the time he looked up it was 4 am and he was cranked up and had a hard time getting to sleep. i am little bit that way although i don’t go to chat rooms. (yet) i do get on the computer and one step leads to the next and before you know it i am studying sleeping bags and the differences between down filled bags and the new space age materials. oh yeah space age… what was the date of the explosion that killed the school teacher and I wonder what henry bien is doing who I met that day and came back from lunch to discover the tragedy that had occurred as we walked back in to the land of cubicles….cubicles… oh yeah, dilbert cartoon receptacles. and before I know it i am so far away from the trip to the boundary waters I was contemplating i am looking up henry bien to see if he is still in texas where he was last time i saw him 10 years ago. not likely he moved around a lot. how do people who move around a lot do it? make friends, make a life, find the assets of the area and start over one more time. where would i like to visit for an extended stretch? iireland? new orleans? mexico? new zealand? wouldn’t it be cool to be able to just go? what would it take to make that happen today? and it goes on and on and on…. i used to have trouble reading a book because i would realize as i looked at the page in front of me that i had no idea when i tuned out but i had never seen or registered any of the words on this page before. i could go back 2 or 3 pages and still not recognize anything. i had been on a day trip while my trained eyes went from line to line and turned the page as we progress through the story in the book i am holding. i wonder sometimes if dementia is a ride that takes you away from the thoughts you are trying to get to or if it just is an out of control hodge podge that makes no sense to the victim as well as the helpless onlookers who get to deal with it.
august is the month to get ready and to act. the seasons are rolling by and august marks the end of the summer. april is a distant memory june and july were an hour and a half ago, august is wonderful but if you had a summer action planned and haven’t quite gotten it down in ink now is do or die time. the state fair is here in a couple weeks and that marks the end of summer for sure. the kids are going back to school in the new colors of the season. where did pink and chocolate as a combination come from? and the backpacks carry the current rage. i had a beatles lunch box the baseball season is almost over and here comes football then basketball then hockey thanksgiving and xmas followed by february and spring training and the renewed hope for another season . but take a minute and enjoy this while we re here. don’t miss it because it is what we all wait for, what we all hope for what we work to get to and then are so absorbed in our work that we miss it because the distractions that surround us can leave us oblivious to the reality that september is a mere breath away when the leaves start turning and the sweatshirts come out, first for the evening then in the house for comfort then under a fall coat then winter coats and the return to spring.
what did you get done this summer?
what were you hoping to get done?
what are you going to get done before the year is over?
the newness of vacation has the kids all a flutter and the weather is always pretty darn close to perfect. the birds are singing and the flowers are blooming. this is the way the world is supposed to be.
minnesota which gets a bad rap december and january could not make you prouder than it does in june. loons and ferns and thunderstorms and lakes and outdoor festivals and art fairs and parades and celebrations.
june was the beginning of the time of year that meant growth. when i went to school i would leave the day after school ended. vw van for the westward trip. the best travel happens before the 4th of july. It is like having an exclusive on all the wonderful places in the world. Ely, leach and dl are the spots that come to mind but I enjoyed the duluth blues fest for a couple years 20 years ago and the kayak trip to brule every first weekend in june for 20 years.
Years later it was Montana on route to many other places Canada. west coast zig zagging the rockies ( my favorite ) and all the while realizing I had the great luck to be able to do this and should savor it now before the responsibility of life aced me out of the ability to go. I realized later that I have a responsibility to pass on the ability to camp and vagabond to roll with the vibes of the moment in whatever moment you find yourself in. it is where I truly excel and among the best stuff I teach to my children.
Winding through the back roads I often don’t know where I am while I am there. It doesn’t matter to me at all. It is the moment not the details . Montana Idaho Utah Wyoming Colorado Arizona New Mexico then finish it up with the Washington Oregon California part of the trip wonderful places all but I realized after al my travels that Minnesota is the part of the world is where I have the perspective I enjoy. Never realized it more than hanging in Atlanta for a couple of weeks.
I haven’t gotten out much in june for a couple years with baseball and other summer commitments but I do love the memory of taking my oldest kids out on the road 3 or 4 days after school ended and road tripping it for three or 4 weeks to nowhere in particular for our time together. Nice way to do it. Maybe its time to put an x on the calendar for this summer before it all gets spoken for.
but june is the best.
what do you prize most about this time of year?
what do you make certain to make time for and never miss?
this weekend we will do an excercise in improv blogging.
the art of improv is cool but there are a couple of rules to have success.
never mind what you had in mind if the person before you throws a different direction at you you have to accept it totally and go from there.
i will put a final line on it at 12:01am and you can catch it on the next morning or if ben is up in the middle of the night he can read it then.
so heres a test of the group poem:
i write: i am a blogger and i’m ok anna writes: he blog all night and i blog all day clyde writes: his poodles named fido because its french steve writes: his ex wife is an awful evil wench
the rest goes off to lord knows where…..
its ok to change the tempo and go with something new
one fish two fish red fish blue fish
or the midnight ride of paul rever are ok to throw in…
take a line or a stanza and run with it.
if while you are posting the poem gets responded to by someone else it could get confusing but i think we can follow multiple directions with this group. follow one or the other ort both
cmon in the water is fine
for real this time:
i’m a baboon blogger and i’m ok
i blog all night and blog all day….
this year the dems took a serious hit and the economy is in the tank and the global warming has us living in san diego mn through mid november (not everyone is with me on feeling this is a bad thing) …but the world just keeps on a turning for the better or the worse and all we ever get is older and around (kris kristoferson)
the blog is a thing i inherited from my dads tendencies i guess. my mom tells me he was just like his dad. they would both be at their happiest just wandering into a group of friends and chewing the fat. my dad would shut off the radio in the car on car trips calling it the conversation killer. my grandfathers wife died in a car accident 15 years before he did so he had 15 years in retirement in a house by himself and his response was to go out visiting. he would go have coffee at people’s houses, he was a teetotaler (son of an alcoholic) so the elks club and the corner bar held little interest but instead he developed a route where he would pop in and stay for 45 minutes and be gone, visit and move on.
my dad joined all the local community organizations not so much to make the world a better place but because the camaraderie was so special to him. the laughter and conversation at these events was wonderful to behold as a kid and thereafter it felt like the way life was supposed to be. i worked with my dad for 30 years and the biggest deal in his day was lunch. he would search out people who like to have lunch and discuss the world and business and the state of the state and after a couple of years i asked why we always went out. we could save 10 dollars a day by bringing a sandwich. He made it clear that some things in life have a value that a dollar amount could not be plugged into the equation on. we formed great friendships with many people exclusively because we had lunch with them 20 times a year for 5 years or more. the conversations always ranged from the state of the world to the state of the business, politics, family, life’s challenges. i was a bystander in many of these conversations but i learned the tricks of the trade.
Conversation… giving a bit of yourself and getting the same back in return. when my dad retired up to leech lake he was a lost soul for the first year looking for a coffee group in the morning and lunch group in the afternoon and a golf group during those summer months we all live for here in minnesota. as his health deteriorated and his brain went off to lala land he hated most of all the loss of his drivers license and his ability to get to those coffee groups. my mom would take him but my mom runs late and has errands to run that mean when she drops you the return may be in 40 minutes or 3 hours and 40 minutes. not the same as controlling your own destiny. he was put in two different nursing homes before he passed and his only comment about either was how nice the people were. you would always find him in the lunch room having coffee or in the tv room chatting.
so I come by my social blogging honestly. this group seems stronger today than when it was when it was tied to the morning show. the conversations go on into the day and night regularly instead of being done at 9am. i have great new friends and i keep learning more from and about everyone as we go along.
so on this thanksgiving day/week i want to give thanks for the people of the world that make you look forward to getting out of bed, our friends here and gone, and the ones yet to come. there are pluses and minuses to a blog. i can get up in midsentence and handle something that needs to be taken care of right now and i can also check in at night before the end of the day.
i laugh and cry and get to feel the pain of the season changes with clyde and jacque and the pain of having your husband laid off before the joy of the new job comes around (long wait joanne we are all elated) and bens trials with the sets and barb and Barbara, mig and jim and krista and elinor and kays return, tgith chitrader alanna and sudbury are always special to see on the good lol blog when they stop in, mike from albert lea, , joanne, and all. steve gives us a deep reaction tounge in cheek or heartfelt, dale keeps messing with us, i am amazed at how clyde keeps it all sorted out he remembers the little details of everyones lives.
and the world just keeps on turning for the better and the worst and all I ever get is older and around. words to live by. happy thanksgiving,
the blog for my day will have to do with the arts. this group more than the norm seems to have an appreciation for the arts or at least an acknowledgeable acceptance of it.
the photographers the drawings the painting the discussions are something that remind me I am not living in a vacuum.
art is the difference between the walls of the walker art center and the walls of super 8 motel. the difference between seeing a sunset and adjusting the rear view mirror to get that annoying bright spot out of your eyes. the difference between walking seeing listening to the poetry of the forest and the mindless preoccupied walk with to do lists and the agenda of the day clogging up the brain arteries.
art is what makes life beautiful. years ago i was in italy buying tile with a colleague who taught me to the ropes. he is a great business mind, a multi millionaire, the guy who taught me that it is not the age or experience that allows great things to happen but the mind, the vision and the ability to recognize how to make the opportunity of the day happen. a remarkable man with a heart the size of all outdoors but with an artistic set of blinders on that allow him to enjoy beauty and the world around him only in the rarest of moments. he prefers mcdonalds and kfc to fine dining in world venues because they are familiar . he prefers ramada and holiday inn to world venues because they cater to americans. we were in line to see the last supper as it was being restored in milan , and he wanted to leave because the line was 30 minutes long.i said are we going back to the hotel for a beer 30 minutes earlier than otherwise? art for him and many others is a nice thing and i am glad they have an appreciation of art but the understanding and appreciation of the world of the arts is not something they get.
this group gets that the artistic side of life is a very vital part of life. the poetry, the drawing, painting, the music, the photography is what makes the world go round. It used to drive me crazy to go to china because they had such bad music. the mtv equivalent was on tv everywhere over there but the music was horrible. It was like chinese people trying to be madonna with cutesy little tunes that were bubble gum and bouncy or toooo dramatic. today when I go i can stream the music of my choice of just hit the shuffle button on my itunes and listen to my music. I feel like my friend eating at macdonalds in one sense but I feel like I am doing it to make my world better, more beautiful.
Trail Baboon 