Category Archives: 2025

2025, Mysteries, Nature, Weather

Earmuffs and Mittens

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Although I grew up in Missouri, I spent many summer and winter vacations in northern Wisconsin, either at the family homestead or at relative’s cabins on the Eau Claire lakes.  When it was time to pick a college, I announced to my parents that I would only apply to schools in Wisconsin or Minnesota.  When I had been in Northfield for two months, I took my first trip to the Twin Cities.  All it took was that weekend – I knew this was where I wanted to be.  After wasband finished graduate school in Milwaukee, we hightailed it here.  After 40+ years, I’d like to consider myself a Minnesotan rather than a Missourian. 

It is partly the weather that drew me here so I’ve been surprised by what seems to be a trend the last several years of many Minnesotans over-reacting to the weather before the weather even gets here.  So many times there is an alarming forecast and people almost burrow in, stocking up and preparing not to leave their homes.  Then, of course, 8 out of 10 times, the dreaded weather never arrives.

This has happened to me once already, when snow was forecast for the week before Christmas.  On that Tuesday, my book club baled on our rare in person meeting which was scheduled for Thursday.  There was snow on Thursday but not nearly what was threatened.  Main road and highways were fine.

Now I’ve gotten an email from a friend with whom I have concert plans in March, asking if I’d rather get online viewing tickets instead of driving downtown to see the show in person.  Because it’s March, when we often have snowstorms. 

This is a trend that mystifies me.  Does this make me a tough Minnesotan?

How do you handle weather where you are?

2025, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, Seasons

NOVUS INITIUM

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A NEW OR FRESH BEGINNING

The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

Asking Google for a Latin translation for a “new beginning” turned into more questions than answers, so it’s something like the title. Or maybe not. One of you will have a better idea. I just didn’t want to give this a tired or cliched heading. I thought of PT Barnum and “This way to the Egress!” but Ingress wasn’t what I wanted. 

I went around on Wednesday morning and recorded the mileage and hours on the cars, truck, tractors, gator, lawn mower, and the pump on the diesel barrel. 

Everything was pretty average. Kelly drives a lot less miles now that she’s working at home of course. We spent 34 hours cutting grass. 140 hours between the two tractors, slightly less than normal for me. No snow to move last winter, and less weeds mowed last summer. I moved 488 dozen eggs, which is pretty impressive. That’s 5856 eggs! Jeepers! Well done girls. Other than December when I got maybe 5 dozen, they were over 40 dozen / month with May being the highest at 63 dozen. 

We are starting 2025 with the bathroom and laundry room remodeling project. Our contractor, Joe, called on Tuesday afternoon and said he could start Thursday if we wanted. Well, with my family Christmas at our house on Saturday, January 4th, and already having the theme of “A YMCA Construction Christmas! Dress as your favorite Village Person”, we figured ‘why not!’ and also, then we don’t need to clean so much. I’ll put a sign on the front door: “Pardon our mess”. 

We spent New Years Day cleaning out the laundry room and bathroom, taking pictures off the walls, and doing laundry. We delivered several boxes to Goodwill, and created a couple bags of trash, and it felt good to purge.

Everything is in disarray and is going to be a pain in the butt for a couple of weeks. They have been starting in the mornings before daughter is awake. We’ve warned them she’ll probably come out and yell at them and slam her door at least a few times. Sure hope it’s worth it. Kelly has been planning this for about a year and she’s still going through the catalogs and watching home remodeling shows. Pretty soon it will be too late to change her mind. SO MANY DETAILS! Tile, finish, walls, flooring, knobs, door styles, lights, hooks, towel racks, shower door, should this be here or here, oh my goodness. It makes my head spin. She’s enjoying herself.  

My 2024 To do list: It’s fun to put it in Excel just to count it up. I had 212 listed items. And some were pretty mundane, such as ‘haul in garbage’ or ‘cut the grass’, but that’s what I needed to do that week, and it’s always satisfying to cross something off. There were 58 items I carried over to 2025. Like having the septic tank emptied (carried over from 2023) and shingling the feed room. Plus, a few more shop things. My big project for 2025 is to build a lean-too off the back of the shed to make up for what I’ve lost in storage space inside with the shop project. I’d love more concrete inside the shed, but I need to pay down what I’ve spent the last two years. 

 Honestly, I think the best thing we did was add the hot and cold faucets in the garage. That is just so handy. The point was to be able to wash the dogs, which we’ve only done about once, but filling their water buckets just makes that Worth it. And all the buckthorn that Kelly cleaned out the last two summers! That makes me happy every day! The view that it has brought back, both from the road above, and from below looking up. Even the neighbors commented on that. So many of the things on the list was just work that had to be done. Kelly and I were talking one day about so much of the last 30 years we can’t even remember. As the phrase goes, ‘Life is F-ing Relentless’. it’s so hard to remember every-day special moments because you’re so busy just existing. Milk the cows, go to work, do chores, feed the kids, repeat. It’s hard to remember all the little day to day stuff.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LATIN PHRASE?

2025, animals, Family, Fantasy, holidays, Movies

Our Holiday Movie

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All autumn I was dreading “the Christmas movie”. On Christmas morning, YA and I have almost always opened stockings and then gone to the movies. We did skip a couple of years due to COVID and one year we just couldn’t find anything at theatres that we liked so we streamed a movie and watched it from the comfort of the sofa.

I knew from YA comments that she wanted to see Wicked. And you all know from my rant last summer that I was not that interested. The thought of seeing a 2½ hour movie (that is just Part I) of a musical that I’m not crazy about just didn’t seem like a fun way to spend a morning, much less a holiday morning. So when I saw a poster at Southdale for Red One, I thought we might find a compromise.

Two weeks before Christmas we went to see Wicked at the Riverview. I always like the Riverview, even if I’m not that wild about what’s showing and that’s exactly how it turned out. We had a nice enough time, I didn’t have to close my eyes over anything gory. Since I’ve gone on and on about Wicked already, I won’t get into it here – suffice it to say it was a good decision not to see this as our Christmas Day movie.

Red One turned out to be at the end of it’s run before Christmas Day (how does this make sense that a Christmas movie stops showing a couple of days before Christmas?) so we decided to see our holiday movie on Solstice this year.

The movie lived up to my expectations. Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans are the main stars. Johnson can’t act his way out of a paper bag but his charm is that he knows this and doesn’t try. A bit refreshing actually. I only know Chris Evans as Captain America, but he gave a creditable performance as the guy who gets transformed by Christmas spirit.

It’s almost impossible to do spoilers for a movie like this… if you don’t know where it’s going, then you’ve never seen a Christmas movie. Here are a few things I thought were particularly fun:

  • • The reindeer are all female.
    • Johnson is the commander of E.L.F., the groups that “guards” Santa. He explains this to Evans at one point saying that as far as Evans is concerned, it stands for Extremely Large and Formidable.
    • Toy stores are the portals to the North Pole transit system, which reaches all over the world.
    • Santa is a smallish, muscular guy who works out a lot and loves cookies, except for macaroons.
  • And, of course, there is a massive polar bear named Garcia on the E.L.F. team.

By the time we got home from the theatre, YA had discovered that Red One is already out on Prime Video. I’ve watched it twice more since then!

Do you have a favorite holiday movie?

2025, animals, books, Food, work

Not a Chance

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In a conversation yesterday afternoon, YA was telling about some woman online who has quit her job to be an influencer.  Apparently this woman is garnering a lot of negative attention right now and shedding followers like a Samoyed in summer.  She then went on to suggest that I could become an influencer.  When I stopped laughing (quite a bit later), I asked her what I could possibly influence.  She said baking or book reviews. 

While I do think my baking is usually top notch, I am not meticulous.  A co-worker way back in the day said once that “done is better than perfect” and if I have a motto in life, this is it.  I also do not think that I am a discerning enough reader to do book reviews.  I like what I like and would be the first to admit that I’m probably not consistent in how I allot my praise or criticism.

My comment to YA was that I’d be ashamed to leave the house if my job title were “social influencer”. 

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

2025, Business, education, Uncategorized

Out With the Old

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Most of my adult life, the new year has come with the headache (mild) of having to remember to write the correct year on forms and checks, mostly checks.  I can’t even guess how many times into a new year I have still been writing the old year in the date.

As I changed out all my calendars this morning, I thought was thinking about this problem and realized that it’s not much of a problem anymore.  I write almost no checks anymore.  I still write a check to Bachmans most months since they do not have any kind of online billing yet.  And the place where I pick strawberries in the spring and raspberries in the fall still needs a check.  Even the apple picking place accepts cards now.  Since I write so few checks, writing the date isn’t as automatic as it used to be either.  Of course, I haven’t had to order checks for a couple of years now.

When I got my first checking account, my mother spent a couple of hours teaching me how to balance my checkbook, which I did religiously for decades.  These days I check my bank stuff online every few days so even balancing the checkbook has gone by the wayside. 

Do you still write many checks?  How do you remember the new year’s date?