Category Archives: Family

2024, Family, Health, Medicine, Uncategorized

Fainting Away

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Every eight weeks we get a call from the Memorial Blood Center.  I assume it’s because her name is before mine in the alphabet; YA gets the first call and usually before I even get my call, she has come to me to pick out a good date for us. 

We went down to our local center as usual but unlike usual, YA got light-headed afterwards and instead of grabbing a snack, put her head down on the table where we were sitting.  This was like an alarm bell going off in the center.  Suddenly there were five folks around us, one bringing a cool cloth, one bringing a wheelchair, two helping to get YA into the wheelchair and one poor gal, who was just hovering but didn’t seem to have a specific job.  YA actually lost consciousness for a second in the wheelchair.

The phlebotomist (what a great word) who had done my draw was the one who appointed himself as YA’s guardian while she recovered.  He was very knowledgeable and answered all our questions.  OK, all of my questions.  He was very clear about what he was doing and how long before the next “check-in”.  It was very comforting for the anxious mother.  YA stayed reclined for about 45 minutes before we took off.  She wanted Taco Bell on the way home and then she spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, watching tv. 

I asked if this has soured her on giving blood.  She said she doesn’t think so.  Guess we’ll know in another six weeks or so!

Have you ever seen those fainting goats? 

2024, Family, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons

Summer Heat

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The weather is changing. The rain has stopped and the temps and humidity are up. I’ve turned on the chickens fan, and got the ducks in their outside pen.  The ducks are at that awkward stage where a gallon of water last them half a day, everything‘s wet, and they chewed off the string on the bottom of a brand new sack of feed so then I had an open tube that used to have 50 pounds of feed in it. It was time to get them outside.

This was a mixed assortment of ducklings so I don’t really know what I’ve got yet, although six of them are all black, a couple are twice the size of a couple others, and like most teenagers, we just gotta get through this phase. 

It takes a while for the ducks to learn how to get back in again at night, which means for now, Kelly and I have to wrangle them back inside. Everything is still wet down there, and it is stinky mud, and they’re not the smartest animal on the farm, so it’s kind of a whole big thing, but this too shall pass. Eventually. 

I went out with the tractor and loader and moved the downed trees off the edge of the fields. The soybeans were sprayed with fungicide and broadleaf preventer on Thursday. I wanted the tree in the bean field out of the way for that. I’ll be mowing weeds in a week or two, and oats will be ready in 3 weeks or so. I moved two trees out of the oats field.  I saw the neighbors cornfield just starting to tassel Friday afternoon 

I’ve been spending a lot of time rebuilding the stage at the Rochester Repertory Theater. The old stage had been there since we moved there in 2007, and it was built of used lumber then, so it was squeaky and kinda wonky and wore out. Last year’s ‘Give to the Max’ campaign raised money for this new stage. I had a good group of volunteers come in to cut up and haul out the old one. We loaded it on a trailer and I hauled it to the recycling center. I didn’t expect it to cost $450 for disposal. Ouch. There went my budget. 

 Of course, what’s a project without a few extra items thrown into the mix? We are creating a tool room out of the former elevator room, we are insulating some windows, and we are making the control booth window larger too. All good stuff! 

Except that I’m not getting much done on my machine shed shop project. I get a little done, it’s just slow going.  I got steel wrap and the window trim done on one window, so I can get back to the steel siding. I did change the windshield washer pump on my truck and I need to replace one nozzle. And I cut off a tree root and reset some rocks interferring with the wellhouse door. And I got to use a pickax and a grub hoe. 

I’m just not getting the shop work done. 

Thursday, Kelly and I took a road trip to Golden Valley to ‘Monkey Wrench Productions’ and picked up some lighting stuff.

A new lighting console for the Rep theater (thanks to a very nice grant from the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation) and with all the construction on Hwy 52 that we ran into, we decided to take a different way home. Came back through Hastings, and had lunch at the ‘Lock and Dam Eatery’. Walked down to the river, and had a nice talk with a photographer. 

A few days ago we took the four wheeler down through the woods. There’s a trail that a neighbor keeps mowed and I had been on part of it, but not all of it before. Although there were places I remembered checking fence 35 years ago when I still had beef cows down there. Like this gate; people would open it in the winter and if not closed again, cows ended up in their yards and they didn’t like that. Guess they never learned the rule to leave the gate like you found it. But that only works for the first person. 

You gotta take your adventures where you can get them. 

What’s the most money you’ve paid to get rid of something?

2024, Family, Food, home, Kids, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Melting

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I received a text from Daughter on Tuesday in a panic because it was 93° in Tacoma, her apartment was hot except for her bedroom, where she has a portable air conditioner, and her refrigerator had stopped working and everything in her freezer/fridge was melted. She had to throw out eight grocery bags of food. Only the cheese was salvageable.

I immediately went into problem solving mode, inquiring about rental insurance, repairs, etc. This was not what she needed or wanted. She just wanted me to commiserate and console. It turned out to be a problem with the fridge shorting out the fuse panel in her apartment. She just needs to keep an eye on it.

Very few people in the Pacific North West have air conditioning because it rarely gets that hot there. There have been unusual but increasingly frequent heat waves there. I am a person who is always cold, so no matter how hot it is, it rarely bothers me. I could probably do ok there. I remember how excited my parents were when we got an air conditioner installed in the dining area of our house when I was in about Grade 1. It only kept the livingroom cool, but it sure made them feel good.

I have never had to deal with a freezer or fridge that went on the fritz. I often wonder what we would do if we had an extended period of electricity loss given all the freezers we have in the basement. I think I would gets lots of ice to keep everything cold and get a gas powered generator to fill in for the loss of power.

When did you first have air-conditioning? Ever had to deal with a freezer or fridge that malfunctioned? What kind of help do you want when you are upset?

2024, Automotive, Family

Taking Up Space

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When YA was four, my folks sold their house and moved into a condo, a small condo which necessitated some serious downsizing.  Quite a few items went into storage in my aunt’s basement but there were other items that my folks wanted my sister and me to take.  One was a lovely china hutch that had always been earmarked for me and a nice side table that my mom thought would look good with the hutch. 

Since I’ve always been a small-car person, driving down to get the furniture was out of the question.  Renting a truck to drive all the way down and back didn’t seem too appealing either.  We decided to take the train to St. Louis and drive the rental truck back.  It was a fun trip.  We took an atlas and a big batch of stickers which we affixed at every town we sailed through.  YA spent a good couple of hours playing with two other little girls and their large collection of Barbie dolls.

Driving the truck back wasn’t too bad although it wasn’t a good truck for sightseeing as it was not easy to park due to it’s size.  A couple of times we ended up parking in a lot that was quite a distance from where we wanted to go (especially in Hannibal).  Eventually we got home in one piece, unloaded the furniture and returned the truck with not too much fuss.

I hadn’t thought about this trip for a while until yesterday at the post office.  Now that my post office has re-installed the drive-through, I find myself there a couple of times a week.  Yesterday as I was coming down the street, I saw a HUGE RV kind of thing trying to make the tight turn into the little parking lot.  The woman driving had to scuutch it back and forth quite a bit, only getting 2 or 3 feet each time.  Eventually she got straight but had to get out of the vehicle to put her letters in the mail box because the door was too high for the slot.  It would have been much faster to double-park on the street and jump out quickly to mail her envelopes. It reminded me so much of The Intimida and I hoped she didn’t have too many more errands to run driving that beast.

Tell me about a time you drove a vehicle much larger than you were used to!

2024, Family, Food, home, Poems, Uncategorized

Hiawatha’s Pork Roast Smoking

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I really can’t explain how the idea for this post came together. All I can tell you is that I was sitting at my desk at work on Wednesday when The Song of Hiawatha, Lewis Carroll’s parody Hiawatha’s Photographing, and Husband’s plan to smoke a pork shoulder on the 4th all converged in my brain.

Husband has planned to get his smoker going for weeks, and he has been fussing about the fuels he needs, the type of rub and mop he would use, and the pork shoulder he intended to smoke. I guess that might have reminded me of Carroll’s parody of the photographer fussing to set up the camera and get the photo subjects to cooperate. My Uncle Harvey’s farm in Pipestone. MN bordered the National Monument where The Song of Hiawatha pageant was performed (my tall, blonde, cousins were often extras in the production), and my parents took me to see it several times.

I have never been a fan of Longfellow’s poetry. I also have a hard time reading epic poems like The Kalevela that have been translated into a sing-song cadence. It dawned on me that if I could write a parody of Longfellow, anyone could. Here goes:

Husband Chris got out the smoker,

Like an iron lung, the smoker

Filled it up with logs and wood chips

Double checked that it was perfect

Set the contents all on fire

Waited for the embers glowing

Then he made the pork roast spice rub

Covered all the roast with spice rub

Closed the lid and smoked the shoulder

Sat for hours by the smoker

Feeding logs and chips as needed

Doused the roast with special mop sauce

Drank some beer to pass the hours

I had to stop there. The eight syllable pattern was getting tedious. It could go on and on, just like Longfellow.

What are your favorite/least favorite epic poems? What activities turn you into a fuss pot?

2024, Family, Kids, Travel, Uncategorized

Amusement Park Blues

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Our daughter phoned the other day to tell me that her friends are shocked and appalled that we never took her to an amusement park when she was little. To make up for this neglect, Daughter and three friends are planning a trip to Disney World next April for Daughter’s birthday.

We live rather a long way from any amusement parks. Even the Cities was kind of far to go just for that. When we traveled, we visited family, and they lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin. There aren’t that many amusement parks in those locations. Summer was for work, summer activities, and gardening. We just weren’t that family that has big summer vacations. Husband remembers being unutterably bored on his family vacations, usually taken by car. My parents drove to Florida when I was about 12, but there was no Disney World then.

Two of the friends going on the April trip did college internships at Disney World, and they are devising elaborate spread sheets for daily schedules and activities. We agreed to atone for our neglect by contributing to lodging expenses, so it is shaping up to be a pretty fun trip.

What kind of vacations did your family go on? Any vacations with friends?

2024, Family, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Bugle Boy

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Yesterday morning I received the following text from our son:

Your grandson just woke me up with a bugle. I hope you are proud.

I told him I was very proud! Son said he was in the middle of a pleasant dream in which he was eating gelato when the bugle went off .

In March of 2023 our then 4 year old grandson was stranded at our house for three weeks due to weather. While he was here we let him play my father’s bugle. He got a pretty good buzz on the horn. My dad was a bugler in the Army Air Corps. Of course, the bugle went back to South Dakota with him. I hadn’t heard that he was doing much with it until yesterday. I am delighted he woke up his dad with the bugle. That just made my day!

My first instrument was the clarinet. I quickly switched to the bass clarinet and played it all through high school and college. Piano lessons started at age 8. Son was a trombonist. Daughter played piano, French Horn, and violin. Husband has his cello and also had piano lessons as a child. I don’t know what grandson will play, but at least he has a bugle to make great noises with for now.

What were some mischievous things you did as a child? Did you learn to play an instrument?

2024, Family, home, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

33-1/3

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Today marks the anniversary of the introduction of the 33-1/3 LP album in 1948 by Columbia Records. It was so popular that 78 rpm records soon were out of production.

My parents had scads of 33’s, many of which I still have. We have loads of CD’s, but as you can see there are some 33’s that Husband and I will never want to part with. It means that we will need an actual turn table for the rest of our lives. At this point, we have three of them.

As I contemplate moving in the next year or so, I groan at the thought of moving those record albums. They will have to be moved in our minivan since it will be too hot in a moving van and we don’t want them to warp in the heat. Many of these albums have moved with me from Moorhead to Winnipeg to Columbus, Indiana to western North Dakota. We have reduced the number of LP’s by about three quarters, so we will have far fewer to pack and move. The photo shows the bulk of them. There are a few more, plus some really old 78’s, in the basement.

I don’t remember what LP album I bought first, but I imagine it was one by the Monkees or some other late 1960’s music group. I remember reading the MPR Building a Classical Record Library and getting lots of the suggested recordings. Husband has lots of classic jazz recordings that are still wonderful to listen to.

I believe there are Baboons with hundreds of albums, far more than we have. We are a musical bunch, even if our musical medium is pretty old.

What were some of your favorite 33’s growing up? How many albums do you still have and what are your plans for them? Any favorite cover art?

2024, Family, Food, Games, Mysteries, Nature, Uncategorized

Strawberry Patch Games

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Friday was my strawberry day.  I got to the fields just a bit after 6 a.m. and was a little surprised to see a mother/father/daughter combo in the strip next to me.  6 a.m. is normally not a kid-friendly time; I know I would never have dragged Child at that time of day.  (Of course, after she turned seven or eight, I never dragged her berry-picking again.)

The young kid in the next row was adamant that her dad (not her mom, just her dad) get every single good strawberry on their side.  She let him know, in a fairly loud voice, when he had missed one.  She would then pick it and show it to him before putting it into their flat.  The rate at which she was finding good berries led me to think that Dad was doing it on purpose.  Basically keeping her busy and allowing her to think she was “winning”.

When YA was young, I did occasionally let her win at some games.  Yahtzee, Cribbage, Aggravation – all those were fairly easy to lose.  Monopoly was a little harder because she could spot if I was doing something stupid.  Same with Checkers and Risk.  It wasn’t constant – just every now and then so she wouldn’t lose interest.  My dad NEVER let us win; in fact he sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to keep us from winning.  He thought it was a good lesson for us to learn how to lose – that classic “character-building” thing. 

Eventually I didn’t need to let her win anymore and it was about that time that she came home from daycare wanting the game “Mancala”.  It looked interesting so I got her a set and then lost every single game we ever played.  It took me forever to even figure out the rules and I never did really master it.  I think we will have it downstairs but it hasn’t been out of the box in years!

Have you ever purposely lost?

2024, Family, Travel, Uncategorized

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and . . . Campers?

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“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.”—Robert Burns.

Sandra and I recently went on an eight-day camping trip to explore several of the state parks in southwest Minnesota. We paid extra to rent an Airstream trailer—Bun Bun, according to the owner—to see if Airstreams are superior to other, cheaper trailer brands. FWIW, the Airstream wasn’t worth twice the rental price of other similarly sized trailers.

As we started the trip, we imagined bright sunny days and moderate spring temperatures. The plan was to enjoy new hiking trails and explore the historical significance of parks like Ft. Ridgely, Blue Mounds, and Pipestone National Monument. What we got didn’t quite match “the dream.”

I won’t bore you with the details. I started this post with that in mind, but decided the post would be far too long. So here’s the plan in a nutshell compared to what actually happened.

  1. THE PLAN: Beautiful spring weather in MN. REALITY: Six days with rain out of eight total.
  2. THE PLAN: No illness, injury, or other issue to hamper our “fun.” REALITY: I got bitten by a wood tick during my first hike of the trip. Fortunately, Sandra noticed the nasty little bloodsucker as I prepared for bed. After she performed “emergency surgery,” we wasted two-plus hours the next day finding a clinic and having the bite checked for Lyme Disease. So far, I’m fine.
  3. THE PLAN: No mechanical issues with the trailer. REALITY: The electric cord that connects the SUV lights to the trailer lights came loose on an annoyingly bumpy section of highway and dragged on the pavement for at least an hour. We didn’t notice until we stopped at a rest area. Luckily we got it fixed within two hours (in the rain! At 5:30 pm on a Friday!) by the owner (and his employee) of a fantastic small business, Eric of Riverside Trailers in Rock Rapids, IA. The other downside of that was neither the travel insurance I bought, nor AAA covered that expense, so I paid the bill, plus gave generous tips to the men who did the work. Told them to have a few beers on us.
  4. THE PLAN: Minimal bug issues and lots of eating around the campfire or at the picnic table. REALITY: Horrendous bugs at Ft. Ripley State Park. Head nets required. Three days lost of enjoying the outdoors. Blue Mounds was better. The rain fell early or overnight, so we enjoyed four campfires on our last four nights.
  5. THE PLAN: Visit and at least do one hike in each of eight state parks—Ft. Ridgely, Lac Qui Parle, Upper Sioux Agency, Camden, Blue Mounds, Split Rock Creek, Lake Shetek, Kilen Woods. REALITY: Rain washed us out at Lac Qui Parle, USA was closed (given back to the tribe), didn’t go to Camden. But we compensated with a rain-soaked visit to the Jeffers Petroglyphs and a tour of the Rock County Historical Society (home of the 6000+ nutcrackers reneeinnd mentioned.

Mound Lake Dam, Blue Mounds State Park

Interpretive Center sign featuring author Frederick Manfred, Blue Mounds State Park

Jeffers Petroglyphs

Nutcrackers at Rock County Historical Society Museum

Quarry at Pipestone National Monument

Author at the falls at the Pipestone National Monument

Overall, we still had a successful trip, just with lots of memories we would have preferred not to remember, along with some pleasant ones as well. Sandra loved the nutcrackers, and a few of the hikes were excellent. Pipestone National Monument and the Jeffers Petroglyphs are pretty cool too.

When have your best laid plans “gang aft a -gley?”