The other night Husband was preparing to use his Neti pot after cleaning his CPAP hose. There were any number of things and implements and Q-tips involved in the processes, and when he was all done, he couldn’t find his hearing aids, which he had purposely taken out. I guess you can’t wear hearing aids when doing what he was doing.
We looked all over, in every room and drawer. I had him retrace his steps as best he could as he had got all the things he had needed for his tasks. He mentioned that he had gone into the bathroom I typically use when he got the Q-tips. I didn’t see them anywhere on the counter, but something caught my eye when I glanced in the bathroom waste basket. Sure enough, there they were!
Husband has lots of numbness in his fingers from carpal tunnel. He must have gathered the hearing aids up with the rest of the cleaning supplies and inadvertently tossed them, too. I felt like I imagine a detective feels after a successful solution to a mystery. I should add that despite his health issues, Husband is a busy and active guy.
When have you felt like a detective? Lost anything recently? Read or watched any good mysteries lately?
I returned home from South Dakota last week to find our refrigerator filled with some odd foods. There was a huge coil of liverwurst, a new bag of cornmeal, and fluffy biscuits. These are all things I dislike. I asked Husband what was up.
It seems that while I was gone he had a sudden longing for the foods of his childhood, particularly the foods of his family from Eastern Ohio and West Virginia. Their foodways were quite Appalachian, with a great love of cornmeal mush. His Ohio forebears were also butchers and made lots of sausages, hence the liverwurst. He insists he got the liverwurst because he wanted to make sure he had an adequate red blood count. Sure, sweetie.
I don’t get particularly nostalgic over food, unless I consider my Aunt Norma’s chicken. That was always a treat, and I have learned to master it so it tastes just like hers. Daughter is nostalgic over my pasta sauce, which she thought for years was my own creation until she saw the recipe online realized it was by Marcella Hazan.
I don’t know if I should consider it a compliment that, if Husband couldn’t have my company, he found solace in cornmeal mush. Oh well, there are worse things, I suppose.
What foods, activities, or things do you get nostalgic for?
I have been thoroughly enjoying myself here this week in Brookings. Son’s surgery went well. He is home recuperating. Yesterday I roasted a chicken and made slow cooker Bolognese sauce and chicken enchiladas. I also got to drive six year old Grandson to school, which is terribly fun. One morning we listened to a number from Cats on the Sirius XM Broadway station, and he was rather astounded when I told him that the performers were singing and dancing in cat suits. He also liked the number from Hamilton that we heard.
Son and Daughter In Law are good parents with quite appropriate limits and expectations. I tend to call Grandson out more often for minor infractions, though. It was pretty funny when, one evening at supper, Grandson announced, with a huge sigh, that Oma’s eyes saw everything, and there wasn’t anything he could get away with that I didn’t see. This was after I reminded him to eat his penne with his fork and not his fingers. He made a point of showing us his fork skills after that.
What is the first Broadway musical you remember hearing or seeing? What is your favorite musical now? How was your relationship with your grandparents?
You all know my weakness for seasonal goodies – so does Trader Joes. There is normally a slew of new items each season, most of which won’t be back when the season is over. YA and I went out a couple of weeks ago, right after the latest Fearless Flyer (Trader Joe’s newsletter) arrived in my mailbox. There are plenty of things we like to shop for but looking at and maybe picking up some of the seasonal stuff adds to the fun. In this respect, the YA apple didn’t fall far from the tree!
We tried fall leaf tortilla chips and potato crisps in the shape of ghost and bats. A big jar of harvest soup, a bag of apple granola. Pumpkin pasta. At the last minute we tossed a box of apple shortbread cookies into the basket. Normally the seasonal items we pick up are nice but nothing that makes me sad knowing they won’t come around again. But this year is different. The tortilla chips, the ghost potato crisps and the apple shortbread were all winners. I even whipped up some fresh salsa to have with the tortilla chips. YA ate most of the apple shortbread before I even got one.
Over the weekend, I had to pick up a couple of things at Michaels… and when I came out of the store and headed toward my car, my eyes lit on the Trader Joes on the other side of the parking lot. I didn’t even hesitate; headed right over and picked up more of the chips, crisps and the shortbreads. YA was very happy to have two more boxes of shortbread but thought that my extra bags of chips and crisps boarded on “hoarding”. She also suggested that I shouldn’t be eating the ghost/bat crisps until it’s a little closer to Halloween.
Considering that the world has been celebrating Halloween for a couple of weeks; the scary movies started up on October 1st on the dot. I like the fall and Halloween, but I prefer not to have my wits scared out of me by scary movies and creepy designs. I do like most folks yard decorations at this time of year; how do they keep those giant skeletons standing up?
So we’ll be enjoying our fall goodies for a few more weeks; I’ll probably have to make more salsa!
Do you prefer the cozy side of Fall or the spooky side of Halloween?
I got a lot of work done on my shop wall. It’s basically all framed up. I need a few more boards and a lot of finishing bits, but it’s getting there. I’ve purchased insulation to install myself, the LP tank has been installed, waiting on the heater and the big garage door to be installed, and the steel siding has been ordered. Going for gray on this wall. Might make it before winter yet.
I sure do appreciate my friend at Red’s Electric letting me use his lift. This would have all been much MUCH harder without.
I sure have been dropping things and knocking things over with working on this. Good thing I’m working alone; I wouldn’t want to be around me the way it’s been going. And there’s barely room for me in the lift. Cause you know, I need all the tools.
Saturday will be adoption day for Luna. And back in 2007, it was about the same time of year we acquired Allie.
Last weekend I burned a brush pile. I need to dig the metal out of it and then I’ll have the ash pile buried after that.
It was time for a new ‘everyday-in-town’ hat. Not so dirty to be a farm hat, and cleaner than the farming hat, but dirtier than my ‘going-to-church’ hat. This is a hat I got for free at the theater conference USITT. It’s a seating company that I won’t be able to afford anyway.
I lost half the ducks last week. Friday afternoon I counted 22 ducks. Saturday morning I saw something white laying down by the barn. It was a dead duck. And there was another. And another. I picked up 6 carcasses. Four outside and two in their pen. And we have 11 ducks remaining. We’re pretty sure it was a weasel as there was a bite mark on the back of their heads. I have found some piles of feathers out in the fields. The dogs never reacted, and I never heard a fuss, so I’m not sure what happen. But it’s very discouraging.
The mallard ducks have discovered they can fly. And if you think about it, how would you know you COULD fly, if no one told you or showed you? You’d have to figure it out by accident. Maybe instinct, but again, no examples… so… what will they do?
I often listen to a 1940’s station and one of the things I enjoy are the songs you don’t hear anywhere else. I heard Hogie Carmichael singing ‘Huggin’ and Chalkin’. It’s considered a novelty song.
“I gotta gal who’s mighty sweet
With blue eyes and tiny feet
Her name is Rosabelle Magee
And she tips the scale at three o three
Oh gee, but ain’t it grand to have a girl so big and fat that when you go to hug her
You don’t know where you’re at
You have to take a piece of chalk in your hand
And hug a way and chalk a mark to see where you began”
….
….
One day I was a huggin’ and a chalkin’ and a beggin’ her to be my bride
When I met another fella with some chalk in his hand
The National Day folks have determined that today is National Kids Music Day, to emphasize the importance of music education for children.
My first music teacher in school was Miss Roesetter, who studied music in Paris at the Sorbonne. How she ended up in a small, rural school in Minnesota I’ll never know. Our school was blessed with wonderful band directors, most who had been educated at Luther College. Husband played cello in his school orchestra. Son played trombone. Daughter played piano, French Horn, and violin. Grandson is to start piano in a year ago. He loves to toot on his great grandfather’s bugle.
Grandson loves our recording of Peter and the Wolf and The Carnival of the Animals, narrated by Hermione Gingold. He listens to it on a cd player in his bedroom. His parents value music education as much as we do. His mother was a vocal performance major, so perhaps he will have a voice, too. It fun to watch how much children benefit from music.
Daughter is currently on vacation in Maine with a former Suzuki violin student she studied with in Bismarck as a child. Last year they visited their violin teacher who had moved to New Mexico. How fun is that?
Tell about your experiences with music teachers and music lessons as a child. What was your favorite music as a child? As a teen? Any instruments in your home now?
Monday we drove to Bismarck to meet with the State Retirement people. That went well. My official last day of work is 01/31/2025. I had lots of questions answered and was very relieved when we left the office.
The day was utterly stressful and overwhelming, however, because of the wind. I drove. We travelled east to Bismarck with a full tank of gas and a steady 36 mph northwest wind with 49 mph gusts at our back. We used very little gas on the 90 miles to Bismarck. The indicator was still on full when we arrived. We ran several errands after the Retirement appointment, always making sure the wind didn’t take the vehicle doors and rip them off, and struggling in and out of stores. The air was full of dust that was being blown around. It was a cold wind. Sunday the temperature was 95. Monday it barely reached 61. When those big temperature swings happen, the wind always starts up.
The drive back home was the worst. Passing on the interstate was really tricky because the northwest wind blew vehicles toward me in the passing lane as I tried to get around them. There seemed to be a large contingent of rackety campers and motor homes, all high profile vehicles, traveling west, all going way too slow and needing to be passed, all swerving into the passing lane. The wind was so loud we couldn’t hear the radio playing, I was so tense when I got home I could hardly move. We used half a tank of gas going west into the wind. I know there is wind in Minnesota, but I don’t think it ever gets as bad as we had here on Monday.
What is your favorite music, poems, or literature about the wind? Favorite wind band music? What is the worst wind you have had to travel in? Ever had to drive a “High Profile” vehicle in the wind?
In order for me and Husband to maintain our licenses to practice psychology in ND, we need to complete 40 hours of approved continuing education every two years. At least twenty of the hours must be from live presentations (which can be accessed either in-person or on-line). At least three must be on ethics. This is pretty standard for most licensed mental health professions.
We needed to have our 40 hours completed by this October 31. I started out September with only 12 hours, so I had to scramble to get the rest completed. It wouldn’t look too good if the president of the licensing board didn’t have her hours done on time. I spent time doing some on-line trainings, and spent most of last week in Bismarck at a conference that got me to a whopping 51 hours for the biennium. Husband was ahead of me in terms of hours, and completed his final three hours in an ethics workshop last week.
This is probably the last time we need to complete the continuing education requirements for licensure, since we plan to be fully retired two years from now, and have no intention of remaining licensed after we move to Minnesota. Husband commented that now we can do whatever trainings we want, whether in psychology or other topics, and this made me wonder what I want to continue to learn about. I want to learn to speak German. i want to delve more into my family history and the history of Ostfriesland. This could be really fun. I might want to learn more about the history of psychology, but we will see about that.
What are you learning about now? Did you have to attend required trainings for your job? If so, what were the best and the worst?
YA and I had one of “traditional” weekends. We spent a day at the Zoo (new zoo), mostly to see the baby tigers. Two Amur tigers were born in the end of May, one little girl and one little boy. They’ve been out on exhibit for three weeks and are a cute as can be. We started there, at Tiger Lair and after walking through all the rest of the zoo, we circled back and watched the babies some more. Packed our own lunch and ate outside in the sunshine. Lovely.
In what is our most enduring tradition, we headed out to pick apples as well. I picked apples even before YA was born; she was three when she went for the first time. We’ve done this almost every since then. No apples picking in 2019 when she broke her foot and had survey for plates and pins. And no apples in 2020 when most of the orchards didn’t open for ‘Pick Your Own’. Even her first year at University of Wisconsin Eau Claire we did apples. She called me the end of September and asked if I could come visit the next weekend and could we find a place to pick apples. No problem!
So now we have a peck of Connell Red, half peck of Honeycrisp and half peck of Kinder Krisp. Since I refused to go down the pumpkin spice trail, which is rampant at this time of year – time to ramp up apple recipes. I’ve already made an Apple Manchego salad – apples and Manchego cheese sliced into matchsticks, tossed with a bit of lemon, olive oil and chives. The crumble topping for Apple Crisp is done as well – two recipes of it – in the fridge for use in the next week or so.
I have some really cute molds to make hand pies. The pie crust is thawing in the fridge. If I’m remembering correctly, one package of pie crust should make six hand pies. Just the right number for the two of us. Mixed Berry & Apple bars are in the running, although the recipe doesn’t use too much apple. I found two savory dishes. The first is a Brussel sprouts apple salad with a citrus maple vinaigrette and the second is an apple cabbage sausage back (using vegetarian sausages). Not sure if I’ll be able to tempt YA with Brussels sprouts, but I might try. We’ll probably end up freezing some of this stuff, otherwise we’ll both start looking like apples ourselves!!
Any favorite apple recipes? Or have you succumbed to pumpkin spice this year?
At the end of her work program in London, YA took a couple more days just for herself. She transferred to a hotel in the City (the group program had been in Hampshire) and enjoyed her time walking around, seeing the sights, doing a bit of shopping.
On Friday I got a text asking if $120 was too much money to spend on a Hamilton ticket. My first response, as a cheap, miserly old mom was to discourage her from blowing a wad on anything. It’s almost always my go-to position, sorry to say.
But as I thought about it for a bit I realized a couple of things. #1 – she is a grown woman, enjoying time in London. If she has the money for it, this would be a wonderful memory of her trip. (And truth be told, I’ve been to the theatre in London and remember it fondly [although I didn’t have to pay for it myself].) #2 – paying $120 for a ticket to Hamilton in London is basically stealing it. I sent her a text telling her to go for it.
She chose the Saturday matinee so she could walk to/from during daylight. Then she texted me that her ticket was in a box. When I asked why, she said it was the best deal at that showing. She got there pretty early so was able to sent photos of her box (the header photo) and this photo showing the view from the box.
Apparently her box price included a drink and a snack, which was provided by the butler, whose services were also included as part of the box. My goodness. And then, as if enough fortune hadn’t already given her a wink and a nod, the other three seats in the box remained unsold. So for $120 she got a private box, a butler, a drink and snack, a walking transfer and, of course, Hamilton. What a way to go!
I’m so happy that she was able to have this marvelous experience and so so glad that I got over myself and didn’t spoil her fun.
Can you ever remember a time you’ve given dubious advice? Taken dubious advice?
Trail Baboon 