Category Archives: Family

Family, Kids, Nature, The Future, Uncategorized

The Doldrums

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It is a slow time of year right now. Clients are waiting until school begins to resume therapy The garden is in a “wait and watch” stage, with beans developing, the third crop of spinach growing, and tomatoes slowly reddening.  Who knows what is happening beneath the potato plants. They just keep flowering.

This is the first time since 1991 that we haven’t had a child in school or college. I feel as though I am in the doldrums, just waiting for something to happen.  The wait isn’t necessarily refreshing or pleasant. Husband’s father goes to a Memory Care Center this week. We are sort of waiting for things to happen with him, too. Who knows how he will adjust. This time of year is usually busy and forward looking. Not this year.  Send in the clowns!

How do you handle the doldrums?

 

Family, Technology, Travel

The Trouble with Ratchets

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Today’s post comes from Chris, Reneeinnd’s husband.

Due to an anomaly at birth, I am partially ambidextrous.  I learn to do simple tasks with my left hand and complex tasks with my right.  I allow other people to demonstrate their mechanical prowess while I stand aside to lend assistance.  Attempts to tackle jobs with moving parts commonly end in frustration, absurdity, or disaster.

In July, Renee and  I traveled to see our son and his wife in Brookings, South Dakota so Renee could do a therapy presentation and we could help the kids move into a new apartment.  The new place was quite a step up: it had three bedrooms on two levels, with two and a half bathrooms!  Son and his wife had bought new furniture and had it delivered to the new apartment.  They had to leave several pieces of furniture, including a huge, dilapidated sectional sofa, in the old apartment so it could be removed and hauled to the landfill with my pickup.

We arrived on Friday evening, delighted to see the new apartment. Renee and Son would be at the presentation the next day.  After a pleasant meal, the four of us went to the Lowe’s to get what would be needed for the big move– a big tarp and a set of ratchets with straps.

Son and I went over to the old place and proceeded to load the bulky pieces of the sofa into my pickup and cover them with the tarp.  The next step was to secure the load with the straps and ratchets.

Son and I usually work well together, but he has dexterity problems of his own.  Secretly, I didn’t have a clue–I’d let him take the lead.  Neither of us knew how to spool the straps through the ratchet.  Son used the expedient of the young–he looked up the procedure on YouTube.  By this time, it was getting dark and he  had to use his phone as a flashlight.  He figured out what to do, and we threw the hooked end of the strap over the top of the load.  At that point we inadvertently violated the cardinal rule of ratcheting–always keep the strap straight!  If you don’t, the strap will  twist and get stuck in the spool while you’re tightening it with the ratchet.

Of course the strap got tangled, and the strength of two big men was not enough to unwind it.  Fortuitously, Son’s upstairs neighbor, a veteran  of multiple collegiate moves, arrived.  He was able to pull out the strap so it could be spooled back in to the ratchet.  We tried again, secured the load, and drove the truck to the new apartment, tired but satisfied with a job well done.

On Saturday, Daughter in Law  and I got to do the fun part–driving the pickup to the landfill so we could dispose of the sofa.  We gleefully flung the cruddy pieces onto a smelly pile of rubbish.  We were very careful to wind the straps back into ratchets without twisting them.  I had not repeated the same mistake and was proud of my newfound competence.  I could now use a ratchet on my own–without help!

We showed Son the neatly spooled ratchets when he got home, only to find that the straps were horribly stuck! You’re not supposed to rewind the strap through the back of the ratchet!  Son pulled with all  his might and was able to get one of the spools unstuck.  He had to resort to cutting the other one.  A mysterious third strap was involved.  Although  Son remained calm and patient, he was  clearly disgusted by the situation.  He advised me to ask one of “my mechanically inclined” friends for assistance in the future.

The straps and ratchets are stored in a compartment of my truck.  I am too embarrassed to show my incompetence by asking a casual friend or neighbor for help.  I vowed never to use an  unspooled ratchet and strap again– if I can avoid it.

Have you ever had a guilty secret?  What did you do to conceal your shame?

 

Family, History, Stories, Technology, Uncategorized

Long Lost Relations

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I received an unexpected request for family tree information last week from a woman in Canada.  According to Ancestry. com, she and I are DNA matches and are likely 5th to 8th cousins. Her great grandmother and my Great Grandfather Lunzmann were siblings. I never knew he had siblings, but there he was on her tree, the youngest of about six children. I had never really ever looked for his siblings, and searched  instead for earlier ancestors.

I am very happy that my long lost relative contacted me, since I know very little about the Lunzmann family.  I know about my great grandfather’s life after 1900, but not in the 30 years before that and not his family life in the small village he came from in Mecklenburg , Germany.

This is one time that I welcome the intrusion of new technology in my life . I don’t always feel that way about it.

What about the latest technology do you find charming? What do you find alarming?

 

 

books, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Wandering Thoughts

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I heard Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition last night, and a convoluted trail of thoughts led me to Baba Yaga,  Jack and Jill magazine, Lloyd Alexander, and the first time I tried to buy a book by myself.

My mother subscribed to Jack and Jill magazine for me when I was a child in the 1960’s.  I was fascinated by the stories in the magazine about Baba Yaga, the Russian witch who flew around in a mortar and pestle, and who lived in a hut on chicken legs. Mussorgsky portrays the witch sailing fiendishly through the air in her mortar, and  the hut walking around just like I imagine such a hut to walk.

There was no book store in my home town, and Sioux Falls didn’t get one until I was a teenager.  My mom always let me buy books at school from Scholastic, Services and I took out as many books as I was allowed  from the public and school libraries.  I discovered a wonderful book series by Lloyd Alexander called The Prydain Chronicles one summer in the public library when I was in Grade 4. The stories are based on Welsh myth, and I was disappointed to find that the library was missing one book in the series.  The librarian told  me that she had no intention purchasing  it, either.  Without telling my mom, I found the name and address of the publisher (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston) from inside one of the books in the series that the library had, hand wrote a letter in my horrible handwriting asking about the price of the book, addressed and stamped the envelope, and mailed it off.  A couple of weeks later I received a very nice reply kindly letting me know the price, which was more money than I had at the time, and thanking me for my inquiry.  I dropped my search, and finally found the missing book a couple of years later in the book store that opened up in the first mall in Sioux Falls.

My love for Jack and Jill magazine prompted me to subscribe to it as well as Cricket magazine  for my son and daughter. We found Baba Yaga stories in Cricket, too.  Imagine my delight when I saw that Lloyd Alexander was one of the editors of Cricket. Both children loved The Prydain Chronicles, as well as other stories by Lloyd Alexander. Funny where listening to Mussorgsky will take you.

What magazines did your family subscribe to?

Family, Stories, Uncategorized

Chasing Tales

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It is almost a year since our youngest cat came to live with us.  She was found by our son,  abandoned at about 8 weeks of age in his neighborhood.  She is one of the nicest cats I have ever met. She is loving, affectionate, and playful. She always thinks inside the litter box, and has excellent manners. She fetches paper balls and carries them back to us so we can throw them again.  She follows us around the house like a dog would. She is utterly charming. If she were a middle school girl, she would be the one who you hated because she was pretty, everyone liked her, and she seemed too perfect.

Daughter recently got a new kitten, a real terror, who was bottle fed after being found abandoned in Tacoma, and who demands constant attention and loves to attack and scratch. She even jumped into the bathtub with daughter one night.   Daughter won’t listen to tales of our kitten, and says “I know, mom. Luna is the perfect cat. Don’t remind me!”

One of Luna’s more endearing games is to sit on the arm of a dining room chair,  reach her paws under the chair arm, and try to catch her tail. She appears to derive a great deal of pleasure from this.   She is oblivious to the silliness of it, playing catch and release with her tail and then attempting to catch it again.

PG Wodehouse wrote some terribly funny stories about cats. Luna reminds me of one who Wodehouse described as being owned by a C of E bishop, and who liked to sit in the pools of light that streamed through the stained glass church windows and listen  to the organ play. Such perfection is always a sham in these stories, and the cat was eventually outed to reveal feet of clay.  I wonder how Luna will slip up and show us some imperfections.  I think I will find our Wodehouse compendium and read about some cats.

 

Tell some good cat stories.

 

Family, Kids

Teaching a Toddler

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Today’s post comes from Cynthiainmahtowa.

Joe asked his 2 ½ year-old son, Jack, if he would please take his empty coffee cup to the kitchen. Jack said no. Joe then explained to Jack that when he asked his father to help, Joe always did. So it was only right and proper that Jack should honor his father’s request and help him when asked. Jack thought about that for a while, picked up the coffee cup, held it up to Joe and said, “Help me.“

I’ve heard that smart dogs are not for everyone. Neither are smart children.

Have you ever been outsmarted by a toddler…or, any child (or, dog)?

Family, Fifty Words, News, Science, Stories

Crutches!

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A week ago Friday, Husband went, able-bodied, to play volleyball at the Y. He returned hobbling on a right leg that had sustained, as it turned out, the rupture of its Achilles tendon. One Urgent Care and three visits to Winona Health later, his leg is wrapped and he has been on crutches all week. Luckily the location of the tear means that he will not need surgery… just three months of not walking on said leg as it heals. SIGH.

As I prepare to mow our (admittedly miniscule) lawn, I recall the days (just a week ago) when I had only my tasks on my plate. (Poor me.)

Have you ever had to get around on crutches?

If you were on crutches, what activities would you have to give up?

 

Art, Baboon Achievers, Family, Stories

Skill Set

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We spent the weekend in Brookings, SD visiting our son and daughter in law. They moved to a new town home a couple of weeks ago, a place they will reside for a couple of years while they financially position themselves to purchase their first home.

Every time they move to a new place, they request my assistance hanging pictures. They insist that I am the only one who can hang the pictures straight, at the correct height, perfectly centered, and do it virtually error free. They say they make too many extraneous nail holes if they do it themselves.  So, I scramble on top of the sofas, chairs, beds, and other furniture, measuring, marking, stretching, reaching, and pounding nails and picture hangers.

Each time they ask me to do this, I demonstrate, one more time, how to figure out where the center is, how to make sure groups of pictures are evenly spaced and at the same height, and I show them the tools they need. I also demonstrate how to hide extraneous holes with tiny screws of tissue and/or toothpaste. It isn’t rocket science. I learned this from my mother, who was a meticulous picture hanger, measuring side to side, ceiling to floor, to find the perfect spot for the nail.

They were so happy to have the pictures on the walls, and declared that the art and photos made their new place truly home. It could have looked like home much earlier if they did it themselves.

What skill set does your family depend on you for? What is your plan for teaching them to do it without you?

 

 

Art, Family, Media, Music, Words

Baby Talk

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Today’s post comes to us from Bill.

I was driving somewhere the other day and my iPod was playing randomized tunes. Patsy Cline’s “Back in Baby’s Arms” had just finished and was followed by John Pizzarelli singing “Be My Baby Tonight”. That started me thinking about the use of “Baby” as a term of endearment. It’s probably the most common way of addressing one’s significant other in popular music. More popular, I suspect, in songs than in real life.

In the 47 years Robin and I have been together, I’ve never called her an infant. But, as one who can’t let random musings pass unconsidered, I wonder: How and when did infantilizing one’s partner become desirable? Why would that be considered romantic? Is calling someone a baby ever the basis of an equitable adult relationship?

And isn’t it sort of creepy when you think about it?

Baboon Achievers, Family, Stories

Living through Adversity

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Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.

I’m in the process of publishing a book that is a compilation of a year’s worth of journals on Caring Bridge during my battle with cancer. I thought I would share just the introduction with you.

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It was a day like any other, getting up to drink coffee, check out the news on digital reading online. Two days earlier, I’d seen my primary care doctor for a complaint about chronic constipation.  As he was exiting the exam room, I thought to mention that, once in a while, my daily medications got stuck in my throat.  He turned around and said, “I want you to have an endoscopy this week. Don’t worry – 99% of the time it’s nothing”.

On January 20th, two days after the endoscopy, the gastroenterologist who’d done the procedure called me. She said, “I’m sorry, but you have esophageal cancer”.  Just like that. No “Come in with a friend or family member because there’s a concern about your test results”. Only, “I’m sorry but you have esophageal cancer”.

Never having heard of this kind of cancer, I immediately googled it. What I read in the first few articles basically informed me that I would be more likely to die than to live with this highly fatal type of cancer. This didn’t scare me; it astonished me.  Reading something which basically says you’ll probably die is surreal.  From this moment on, I never dwelled on this probability.  I still haven’t.

For me, seeing a small white spot on a PET scan was in no way a threat to my life; it was just a white spot. How could a little white spot on a scan kill me???

This whole thing made me intensely curious and I researched endless hours to meet my new, unwelcomed internal guest. Never once did I grasp, much less react to, this as a real threat to my life.  It was simply a white spot on a scan.

What I did realize almost immediately was that this diagnosis was a very big deal and that most people hearing it would trip them into fear, panic, anxiety, and generally into feeling powerless. I recognized that this would be a “normal” reaction to hearing a diagnosis of the big “C”, regardless of which type.  For some unfathomable reason, my gut rejected falling into a victim space.

I’d learned a long time ago that the story we make up about any situation will determine how we deal with it. I decided right then and there that I’d make up a story which would carry me through as best as possible, and it sure as hell wasn’t the version of crumbling into fear or depression. No. Not me. Not my style.

Crafting a story of my choosing, I decided that this would be the journey of my lifetime no matter how it turned out. I decided that my greatest responsibility was to my children, grandchildren, and friends.  I don’t have many friends, but have many dozens of acquaintances from my years of being the local “Dancing Grandma”.  With a vision of everyone who knew me in mind, I crafted this story:

I would soldier through with humor and curiosity. I would remain fiercely independent throughout. I would model how to face adversity. I would, if I died, show my loved ones how to do this with gusto and a semblance of dignity. I would not cave into despair no matter what. If I was going to die, I did not want people’s last vision of me to be one of a person victimized by this odd invader. No, I would not allow this to diminish my spirit even as it diminished my physical being.

Making up this story freed me from all of the emotions most cancer victims would feel. This story was so much bigger than me, and I knew it. It was about the people who loved or liked me witnessing a way to make this cancer journey without angst or helplessness. It was bigger than me, and this realization was exactly how I faced cancer with acceptance.

There’s a belief out there that we must view cancer as the “enemy” and envision it as a marauder to be conquered. A very wise friend told me, years after my encounter with esophageal cancer, that I probably survived because I didn’t make cancer an enemy.  For me, it was simply a white spot on a scan, nothing more, nothing less.  It wasn’t a friend or an enemy; it just was.  Its discovery would embark me on a journey that would enlighten me and bring gifts no other journey ever could have.  I learned how resilient I was.  I learned how to accept – even ask for – help.  I’d never before been in such a physically compromised condition that I couldn’t take care of myself. I learned that others instinctively and whole-heartedly respond when they see another human in dire need. I came to understand something I’d taught many clients but never applied to myself: helping someone in need is a gift to the giver.  I hope that I can hold onto this part of my enlightenment.

 

Has adversity brought unexpected gifts to your life?