Well, today is my last day of full time work. I will be off for a month, and then start part time work at my agency doing evaluations after March 1. I am quite happy about this. I have no unfinished paperwork, and my therapy clients have been transferred to other therapists. Husband will keep on with his part time work. He is housed at my agency but is employed by the Human Service Center in Bismarck.
The past several months have been stressful because of getting all the necessary paperwork in to the the State Retirement office, applying for Medicare B and Social Security, and tying up loose ends. I had to formally apply for the part time position that was only advertised at my agency. I was the only applicant, as expected, and I had to dredge up my old resume, something that I haven’t had to use for a couple of decades. My colleagues are upset, and I find myself comforting them and reassuring them that I will only be gone for a month and then I will be back. That is getting tiresome. I feel like a parent having to reassure anxious children. They also kept asking if I wanted a retirement party, but I said that since I was returning in a month that would be sort of silly.
Everyone keeps asking me what I am going to do when I retire. My stock answer is “Clean the house”. I have discovered that at my age I can either have a clean house or work full time. I can’t do both. People seem to expect that I will do exotic travel. My new normal will be to have more time to sort through our things preparatory to moving and feel less stressed.
How do you handle life transitions? What do you miss the most from your longest held job? What don’t you miss at all?
When YA was seven, she wanted to be a “horse girl” for Halloween. Took me a bit by surprise because she hadn’t shown any particular horsey interest up to that point. We had fun putting the costume together. Nonny bought the cowboy boots, I got her a hat and a stick horse. The jeans and shirt she already had. I still have that stick horse in a corner of my bedroom.
Imagine my surprise last week (while I was wasting time on my phone while Nonny did her morning exercises) when I stumbled on a website for Hobby Horse Championships.
This is a real thing. It’s called “hobby horsing” and if you look it up on Wikipedia there is a note at the top, in italics, that says “Not to be confused with Hobby Horse polo”. That made me snort coffee up my nose. HHing was apparently born in Finland and started to make waves in 2017. Most participants are young girls, between the age of 12-18. Classic horse-loving demographic. These days there are quite a few national competitions (most in Europe) and the largest gathering of 2024 was at the end of August in Finland. The United States’ games were the beginning of August.
I doubt YA will be interested in this; her infatuation with horses ended after a couple of summer horse camps when she was in Girl Scouts. But you never know.
Most days on my drive to work I travel on Villard Street, which is the main east-west route through our downtown area. It is also known as Old Highway 10, the route that ran from Detroit to Seattle before the interstate highways were built.
Villard runs parallel to the BNSF railroad tracks through town, and the street and the tracks are no more than 20 yards apart. There are always trains, either chugging through town or parked, waiting for who knows what.
I get a good glimpse of the train cars on my way to work, and I am always amazed at the intricate graffiti on them. Last week there were very nice Boris and Natasha portraits on one. I never observe people painting on the cars in our town. They would be seen, given that the cars are parked in the middle of town. It makes me wonder where on the train route the cars can be parked long enough for people to paint them without getting caught.
It seems that the graffiti is inevitable. I think it would be terribly fun for the railroad to have train car decorating contests, and legitimize what is going to happen anyway. Think of the fun!
What would you like to paint, or see painted, on train cars? Any memories on Old Highway 10?
We typically spends New Year’s Eve staying home, drinking in moderation, and going to bed before 9:00. Tonight will be no different. The New Year has never meant much of a change for us, but this January forward will be much different than in the past.
I retire from full-time work January 31. I will be out of the office for the month of February, and then start part time in March. I hope to put in no more than 20 hours a week, doing two evaluations a week and writing the reports. I am a little concerned my agency wants me to do more than I have imagined, as I have been asked to supervise two counseling interns and to continue behavioral consulting at Head Start. They also want me to continue as a consultant to the Youth and Family team and to train staff in diagnosis and treatment planning.
All the while this will be going on, Husband and I will be downsizing and preparing ourselves to move to Minnesota. I think the move will be no later than the spring of 2026. It is very strange to have so much uncertainty in our future after 36 years of much the same activity, people, and tasks.
What does the New Year hold for you? What have been your most uncertain times? How do you celebrate New Year’s Eve?
The chickens might be coming around, slowly, to laying eggs again. Friday we got five eggs. Three on Saturday, and that’s normal to have more every other day.
Still have three guineas. They sure seem like bullies; they’ll chase roosters away from food. And they don’t even necessarily eat it, just stopping someone else from eating.
No sign of ducks lately. I’m really bummed about that. I’ve been wondering if next year I got mallards, would that help? Would being able to fly help them escape whatever it is that’s been taking ours? Don’t know. But I sure miss having ducks around. I noticed today my pond has sprung another leak and there’s not much water in it. No need to fix it at the moment.
We had a nice quiet Christmas Day. I made cinnamon rolls from scratch the night before. Never made anything with yeast that had to rise before, so that was fun. I’d like to try biscuits, too. Then Kelly made lasagna for supper and it was really good. When we were first dating, lasagna was the first meal she made for me, showing me that she knew how to cook. Well, readily admitting lasagna was the only fancy meal she knew how to cook. What did we eat when younger? A lot of potato chips and dip, I remember that. I don’t remember what else. Maybe we ate out a lot.
I was working on the shop the other day and pounding in some trim nails and caught myself with my tongue out.
I must have been concentrating, but I hate the tongue thing.
The shop is really coming along.
This past week I installed a trim piece along the top to protect the insulation and keep the birds out of it. And with all the rain and warm temps the last few days, I cleaned up some stuff, got the trailer for the scissor lift in the shed, and the four wheeler inside so I can try and get that running again. (I think it needs new fuel. Take off the carburetor, again, and dump out the old fuel, and clean the tank, and try this for a 3rd time).
My friend Doug sent me a photo had had found. He titled it ‘mentors’. The two guys left and middle were his mentors and all three were/are mentors to me.
That’s Donald on the left. He was such a cool guy with a great laugh. And such a craftsman. Besides theater he would fix furniture and make vases out of old fence posts. And he was an actor. One of his roles, he played the butler, ‘Firs’, in Chekov’s play, ‘The Cherry Orchard’ and he had a great death scene. He also told me, “If you think about it long enough, you’ll find an easier way to do something.”
In the middle is Gary. He was at the Civic Theater when I first started to volunteer there in 1983, but then he became the technical director and speech instructor at the Community College. We discovered we were distantly related: his Grandfather and my Grandfather were brothers. He retired from the theater technical director position, but continued to teach speech, and that’s when I got hired as the college TD. We shared an office for a couple years. He was a fantastic designer. And did his best to impress that upon me. Some of it stuck. He passed away the same day as Prince, which is why you didn’t hear about his passing.
On the right is Doug, the man who sent the photo. He is also so creative and such a great designer! I talk with Gary or Doug sometimes when I need inspiration. In the way back days, Doug and his wife Joan created trophies to give out at a theater award banquet. I received ‘Best Director’ for sitting in the booth trying to get actors to stay in their light. (Talking to myself: “Don’t go there! Come over this way! No, not up there! C’mon, one more step!”) I was young. I didn’t know that wasn’t a thing.
WHAT ARE YOU GONNA WRAP UP IN THE LAST TWO DAYS OF 2024?
We went to a very early Christmas Eve Service at 1:30 PM on Tuesday. It was nice to be in the congregation instead of being a church musician. Nice, that is, aside from the three very naughty children in the pew in front of us.
The children in question were apparently cousins sitting between their mothers. One was an 8 year old girl in a green, spangly dress. The other two were brothers, ages about 8 and 4. The girl’s mother was somewhat attentive. The boys’ mother was somewhat inert. Their father was seated on the other side of her from the boys, and he didn’t seem to notice what they were doing.
No one sat still. There was constant movement and activity. The four year old was the major instigator of trouble. The adults had wisely provided crayons and papers to color on, but the four year old decided crayons were weapons to draw on his brother and stick in his brother’s ears. He blew raspberries at his brother and cousin and they pushed and shoved him. Sometimes they tried to ignore him. There were snacks and crackers all over the pew. The boys’ mom sometimes whispered to them to settle down, but did nothing to stop any of the activity. This went on the entire service.
It wasn’t until the four year old decided to start smashing Goldfish Crackers in his brother’s hair that I intervened. I tapped him lightly on the shoulder with my bulletin. He spun around, saw my glare, sat down, and didn’t move for the rest of the service. I am happy to say that our grandson colored quietly for the majority of the service.
What were the most difficult venues for you to behave in? How would your parents have handled the naughty ones I encountered?
I am amazed by the wonderful art kits and projects that are availble these days for children. We got our grandson something called Paint By Stickers. You can see one of his creations in the header photo. We also got him this amazing art kit:
It has water color pencils, pastels, charcoal pecils for sketching, and things I can’t even identify. He loves doing art projects. He set straight to work with it after opening it on Wednesday morning.
I sure can’t say the same for me either now or when I was a child. I despised art class and art projects in school. Sewing and embroidery made sense and I enjoyed them. I still do, but drawing? Forget it. My fingers don’t do what my brain tells it to do when I have an art implement in my hand. My hand writing is and always has been awful. I think it has something to do with a lack of patience.
One of my favorite college classes was Art History. I love other people’s art and learning about artists and their lives. .Just don’t make me create anything. I will leave that to the proficient.
What art projects did you like or not like as a child? How about now? Who are your favorite artists?
My parents and I always opened our presents on Christmas Eve after church. That was a German tradition from my mother, and also cleared the way for Christmas with family on Christmas Day.
We usually headed for Magnolia, MN late morning on Christmas Day to either my paternal grandparent’s farm or the farm of my dad’s younger brother a couple of miles east. My dad’s sister and family would come from Sioux Falls, and we would have a huge meal (usually turkey and all the fixings), and then we children would have to wait until after the dishes were done to open presents. That was a long wait! Late in the afternoon we would head to Pipestone, 25 miles north, to whichever of my mother’s family would host Christmas. There usually were no presents, just a big meal and lots of desserts.
Yesterday we spent time in Brookings opening presents, taking turns cooking, napping, reading, doing art projects with our grandson, and listening to grandson read aloud the various books he received (Cat Kid, Wild Robots, or Dog Man). He also received some pretty wonderful art kits which he started to use right away. It was very foggy outside, and we didn’t go anywhere. We watched The Muppets Christmas Carol after eating the French Canadian tortiere that grandson and I assembled and baked. He was a good dough pincher. It was a restful day. The Westie and cat napped on various soft blankets. No one had to wait for the dishes to get done before opening presents. We cleaned as we cooked. We listened to Christmas music on MPR all day. It was a great time.
What were your family gatherings like when you were a child? What were some of your favorite presents?Who did the dishes?
YA is waiting for a package. I’m not sure what’s in the shipment, but it left Columbus on November 20. Then it hit St. Paul, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Puerto Rico, Jacksonville, Chicago. Four days ago it got back to Minneapolis but apparently has moved from one Minneapolis station to another. Supposedly it’s out for delivery today (Tuesday).
I had a trip once that went really awry. It was supposed to be Minneapolis to Chicago to Barcelona. The ship was departing Barcelona at 5 p.m. Chicago got delayed so I jumped onto a flight to New Jersey. Was going to taxi to LaGuardia but the flight I wanted was also delayed. So I ended up on a flight to Frankfurt. I literally missed the flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona by minutes. The door had closed but they plane was still sitting there. I even tried bribery. It was now noon. They put me on a quick jump to Munich where I thankfully got on the plane on time to Barcelona. Luckily no delay. I got to Barcelona at 4 p.m. Managed to talk my way off the plane first and my supplier rushed me to the port. Unbelievably they held the ship departure 10 minutes for me. I was shaking a little when I checked in on the ship. The rest of the trip went very smoothly but I had to talk through all my itinerary changes a couple of times with accounting when I submitted my expense report.
I’ll do a quick update if the package actually gets delivered today. YA seems supremely unconcerned about it so I’m guessing it’s not for Christmas.
When has something gone spectacularly sideways for you?
I am feeling incredibly grateful today. I am comfortably ensconced on my son’s sofa. I am listening to my 6 year old grandson read aloud. It is amazing how his reading has taken off since September. Our 8 hour trip yesterday had some of the worst driving conditions I have dealt with for a very long time. I am so grateful we didn’t crash, we didn’t end up in the ditch, and we don’t have to go anywhere until we choose to. We made it here about 6:00 pm last evening.
Son bought a standing rib roast that we will cook and eat today. We will go to church tonight for the late service, and we will open presents after church. Life is good.
How are you spending Christmas Eve? What are you grateful for?
Trail Baboon 