Category Archives: Family

2024, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Making Funny Noises

31 Comments

Last April when our 5 year old grandson was stranded at our house for three weeks due to the weather, I took it upon myself to teach him some very important life skills, namely, how to make funny noises.

I don’t know why I think these are important skills, but he has really enjoyed trying to perfect them. When we visited him and his parents after Christmas this year, he proudly showed me how he could snap his fingers. He also learned how to make the loud popping noise you can make with your little finger on the inside of your mouth and lips. He is starting to whistle. He has yet to figure out how to make the trilling/purring noise that sounds like a motor by vibrating your tongue against your front teeth. 

My father loved making funny noises, especially bird noises to confuse small children and pets, making them think there was a small bird in the vicinity. I don’t know if noise making is encouraged in other families, but it sure is important in my family.

What important things did you learn from grandparents or other older relatives? What funny noises are you proficient making?

2024, Family, Health, home, Mysteries, TV

Verily’s Pity Party

16 Comments

The last time I said “I think I’m the only person left in America who hasn’t had covid” I should have knocked on wood.

Went to a party on a Saturday night 10 days ago and had a great time, met up with some current and former neighbors for a 70th birthday celebration for a friend.  Good food, drink, company.  Had a wonderful time.

On Tuesday morning as I was starting to get ready to go to the art museum, one of my Saturday night friends texted a group of us saying that she had covid and was pretty sick.  Even though I felt fine I thought it would be the responsible thing to do to test before I went on a tour at the museum.  And there it was… a big pink “T” line.  I’ve taken a lot of tests since the beginning of pandemic and I’ve never gotten the “T” line before.  Shocking.  The good news is that I am still asymptomatic so all those jabs did pay off.

The bad news is that I’m feeling sorry for myself – although I’m not sure why.  Except for cancelling my museum tour with my friend at the last minute, I haven’t really done anything differently the last week.  Thank goodness for the Target pick-up, the Aldis pick-up, the post office drive through and the library drop box.  I did send YA to the library to pick up a book for me on Friday so I wouldn’t have to go in.  YA is avoiding me like… dare I say “the plague” and seems fine so far.  I’ve done stuff around the house, read a lot, worked in my studio, labored on a 1000-piece jigsaw of a dragon in a “dragon forge cave” (it’s a doozy) and binge-watched the Colombo marathon on Sunday.  I’m not sure why I’m feeling weird about this… but it does feel like the first couple of weeks of pandemic when I remember feeling trapped in the house.

As of yesterday, still positive but the “T” line was very faint so I expect in the next 48 hours I’ll be clear and free to break out and roam the neighborhood again.  I’ll have to shut the pity party down.

Ridiculous, right?

2024, Family, History, Media, Uncategorized, Words

Cheater

29 Comments

I love crossword puzzles. I subscribe to the New York Times online, and get their crossword puzzles all week as well as the one in the New Yorker each edition.

I hope none of you think of me as a cheater, but I feel it entirely within my rights to look up crossword clues on line. Given the number of sites I see for just this purpose, there must be many like me. I view these puzzles as research projects, not as measures of my intellectual acumen. It is so satisfying when they are completed and correct!

Today would be my mother’s 100th birthday. She didn’t mind bending the rules at all! She got secretly married at 19 against the 1942 rules of Mankato State that students couldn’t be married. Ha! She showed them!

What are your favorite puzzles to solve? When do you bend the rules?

2024, books, Family, home, Uncategorized

My Archivist

48 Comments

I am not a really neat and organized person when it comes to putting away books, recipes, and media such as LP’s and CD’s. I will eventually get around to to when the volume of clutter starts to bother me. Husband, on the other hand has taken it upon himself to be the archivist, reveling in putting things way alphabetically and with similar content. It has got to the point that he doesn’t want me to search for recipes in the binders he has created, insisting that he get them and put them back. He has them organized just so, with the categories just the way he wants them.

It has been quite hard to have all our books in boxes in the furnace room while we wait for the mitigation company to send the guys to put the basement furniture back where it belongs. They said they would be at the house on Monday, but didn’t show up. I plan to send a pitiable text to the foreman pleading with him to speed things up. The bookshelves are behind a bunch of other heavy furniture so we couldn’t get to them and move them if we wanted. We are going to dust off every book before it goes back on she shelf. There are a lot of preliminaries before the archivist can get to work and arrange the books to his liking. I don’ t know what his plan is for organizing them on the shelves, but I am sure that whatever he comes up with will make sense to him, at least, but not necessarily to me.

What job would you want if you worked in a library? Tell about the best library you ever visited.

2024, Business, Family, Fantasy, Technology

Cyber Highway

33 Comments

Yesterday YA had to leave her car at the dealership for a recall of some sort so I picked her up there and delivered her to the office.  When we pulled up, the front parking area was blocked off on both sides.  This, in and of itself, isn’t too extraordinary.  The building in which the travel division resides is also the “client building” and occasionally the front will be blocked off for a client arrival (which is usually accompanied by the cheering throngs).  But it soon became clear that something else was up as there were just a few parked cars on the side of the building and a couple of people were lounging about their parked vehicles. 

Turns out the company internet was down.  There were a handful of times that the internet was done in the past twenty years, the most notorious being when a squirrel committed suicide on a power line on top to Building 3.   A few times the power went with the internet which always led to flocks of folks at Caribou down the street, colloquially known as Building 7.  Most of the time though we just muddled on, working on documents, jumping into quick meetings or making phone calls until cyberspace was clear.

But these days it’s a different story.  EVERYTHING is tied to “the cloud”.  The phone is through the internet, document storage is on the cloud, the meeting platforms are online.  If the internet is down, there is no point in even going into the building.  So YA and I headed back home, with a quick stop at the Dunkin drive-through, and she quickly got her laptop fired up on the dining room table.  Luckily her using our home wifi for work doesn’t increase the cost.  And it was a shorter drive to take her to the dealership later in the day than to pick her up at the office.  Win-win!

If the internet were a real person, would they be a friend of yours?

2024, Family, Gatherings, Mysteries

Family Fuel

39 Comments

Back to the macaroni gathering.

I’m sure you’ve all heard me say “why spoil a perfectly good holiday by spending it with my family”.  Sounds harsh but when my whole family is together, it gets weird fast.  The last time we were all together before my father’s death we were asked not to return to an Embers.  An Embers!

I wasn’t looking forward to the macaroni gathering but it’s one thing to `dis your family for decades behind their backs and another thing entirely to `dis them to their faces.  So Nonny and I got the condo ready; Nonny made her salad and I heated up the macaroni. 

The group included both my middle sister and her husband, my little sister, my niece, my niece’s partner, two nephews, one nephew’s partner and two boys. Oh, and Nonny and me.  It started out a little strained.  Even the St. Louis group doesn’t gather all that often and I know that my two sisters don’t approve all that much of the other one’s choices. 

At one point my middle sister starting telling a story about baby possums that had gotten into their house and how they had to catch to them release them outside.  My youngest nephew is all about animal rescue, trap/neuter/release and knows quite a bit about wild animal relocation.  He was horrified by my sister’s story, jumping in to express indignation and to educate us all about how most people handle relocation incorrectly.  My brother-in-law (let’s call him David) is a very nice man but in the dictionary, out in the margin next to the phrase “pours gas on the fire” is David’s picture.  As soon as he realized he had a captive audience, he was off and running.  There was an outrageous story about trapping possums under a trash can followed by his exhortation that you can’t keep possums in the house because when they grow up, then there is “possum mating”.  This was accompanied by him stamping his feet and slapping his hands together to illustrate how this mating would keep you up at night.  It was the funniest thing ever; it was a good thing I was sitting on the floor at the time because I would have fallen off my chair laughing. 

Unfortunately the one person in the room who did not get the joke and wasn’t laughing was my nephew.  He looked horrified.  I had to ask him if he understood the phrase “yanking your chain”.  Even once I explained it, you could tell he wasn’t too thrilled to join in the hilarity.  But the gas on the fire did the trick and loosened some of the tension.  Not perfect, but we did manage to spend another hour together without any incidents!

My middle sister is already asking when I think I’ll be visiting next year so we can do it again!  Oops.

Do you have any “gas on the fire” friends or relatives?  Or “gas on the fire” stories?

2024, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Travel

Macaroni Conundrum

39 Comments

The last time I was with my whole family for the holidays was 1978.  Some years they gather without me, some years they don’t gather at all.  So when I announced that I was visiting Nonny two weeks ago, they decided that January Christmas festivities would be a grand gesture.  By the time I got the first text the week before my trip – the plans were so far down the road there was no turning back.

It was a potluck at Nonny’s little condo (truly the best choice considering the options) and all the obligatory dishes had been claimed.  My baby sister had three things on her list and since I knew she would be starting a new second job that week, I volunteered to do the macaroni and cheese.  She immediately sent me a recipe that is apparently my nephew’s favorite. 

Now I’ve made many a dish of mac & cheese over the years, using many different recipes, but looking at this one made me put my head in my hands.  It was two fully-typed pages and included four kinds of cheese, two kinds of pasta, garlic, green onion and quite a few spices.  In addition to the fact that Nonny has next to nothing in the way of kitchen utensils or baking dishes, I wasn’t even sure if she had the spices.  (I mentioned this last week when I was thinking of taking the spices in a bag in my luggage.)  I confirmed my suspicions – no big pot for pasta, no casserole dish to bake or serve it in, no grater for the four kinds of cheese.  In a funny turn of events, she DID have all the spices.  We could purchase an aluminum casserole, a grater and all the ingredients, but unless we also sprang for a big pot, I’d have to make two batches to have enough for everybody.  Not to mention the cost.

That’s when I remembered that YA had purchased macaroni and cheese from Costco for our Thanksgiving gathering and it had been pretty good.  I know there is a Costco about 5 minutes from Nonny’s place so the day before the party, we headed over there and picked up a pan of the stuff.  I doctored it up with some garlic powder, onion powder and paprika.  Via text that morning YA kept asking me if I had told my sister I was buying instead of making the mac & cheese.  I know my audience.  If I had fessed up that I was going to get it from Costco, my sister would have thrown up her hands in exasperation and said “Fine… I’ll just do it.”   One of my mottos has always been “it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission” so that’s the route I decided to take.

Turns out my sister didn’t care at all…. but my nephew did.  He kind of made a big deal about the fact that I should have let them know so HE could have made it. Of course, when we were divvying up the leftovers, I noticed that he heaped quite a bit into their Tupperware!  But I was happy to have not gone to too much trouble and Nonny was happy to not have more utensils in her teeny weeny kitchen.  And truth be told, the macaroni and cheese was really good.

I expect it will have to be another gathering for us to buy it again – it’s way too much for two folks, even folks who like macaroni and cheese as much as YA and I do.  But now I aware it’s there, you never know!

Do you have a favorite pasta dish?  (Either made or bought…)

2024, Family, home, Nature, Seasons, TV

Freak Out!

24 Comments

I spent a week with Nonny in St. Louis the second week of January.  While I was there, they had some bad weather.  First there was “wintery mix” the night before I arrived which necessitated my brother-in-law picking me up from the airport instead of Nonny.  As far as I could tell, the wintery mix was a dusting of snow.  But a dusting of snow in St. Louis is a much bigger deal than it here.

Then as we headed into the weekend, the forecast was for “bitterly cold” temperatures – in the single digits with some below zero wind chills.  Again, for St. Louis this is out of the ordinary and very alarming.  St. Louis was freaking out.  On Friday night, Nonny had the tv set to local news for about 90 minutes and at least 60 of those minutes were spent on the weather.  What the temperature had been, what temperatures were predicted, instructions to stay in, recommendations for how to be prepared if you need to go out. 

As a Minnesotan of 45 years standing, it struck me as funny although I kept my mouth shut.  If we’d had weather in the Twin Cities the last few days like Renee experienced last week, we’d be freaked out too.  It’s all about what you’re used to. 

My sister, who has appointed herself the arbiter of what Nonny should and shouldn’t be doing, made sure to give me advice about keeping Nonny inside and making sure Nonny had enough food “stocked up”.  This was even funnier; if you know Nonny then you’d know that even at the age of 91, nobody gets to be Nonny’s arbiter except Nonny.  In fact, when I did a quick run out to the hardware store for some magnetic catches (fixing her bathroom cabinet doors), she insisted on coming with me.  So then we went to the grocery store as well.  The roads were pretty well deserted, even at noon.  St. Louis was indeed staying inside!

Caroline sent me this picture that day – what a great laugh since I was actually in St. Louis.    Of course it’s photo-shopped.  While ice does form on the Arch (and is actually a danger as it sheets off – they sometimes close the area underneath the Arch because of this), it never looks like this.  Too bad, it’s pretty this way!

Anybody remember who said “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”?  How do you keep calm when everyone else is freaking out?

2024, Family, Games, Health, home, Mysteries

I Will Not Finish the Puzzle….

46 Comments

I will not finish the puzzle today.  I will not finish the puzzle today.  I will not finish the puzzle today. 

I have an obsession problem when it comes to jigsaw puzzles.  I have trouble stopping once I sit down in front of a puzzle.  There have been times that I have not walked away for hours.  I’ve skipped meals, I’ve been late to work, I’ve lost sleep.  YA has inherited this from me.  During the pandemic holidays, we worked 8 hours on a puzzle, taking turns picking movies to watch on tv.  Sad (although we DID finish before bed).  Because of this, sometimes I shy away from starting a puzzle if I have things that need getting done.

Over the holidays I did an Advent jigsaw puzzle.  It was 24 little boxes of 42 pieces; one little puzzle a day that made one big puzzle at the end.  It was wonderful… it was a fun and relaxing start to my day throughout the season and the fact that each day was in its own box kept me from jumping ahead.  I will definitely do it again.

So when I started a new puzzle last Thursday I told myself that would have a two-hour limit.  I figured if I set a boundary, like the little boxes had been boundaries, then I could avoid sitting at the table for hours and hours on end.  I even wrote it down on my daily “to-do” list.  Thursday turned out fine; it took me right about two hours to sort out all the edge pieces and put them together.  I spent 2½ hours on Friday; aided and abetted by having my Zoom book club for close to three hours. 

On Saturday, I was making good progress and watching tv and I felt myself sliding down the slippery slope.  The two-hour mark came and went.  “I’ll just work until this tv show is over”.  Then the next show.  As the next show started, I began my mantra.  “I will not finish this puzzle” today, I will not finish this puzzle today”.  This worked; I stood up from table after a little over five hours.

You know how this is going to end.  I spent 5 hours yesterday and finished it as it was started to get dark.   And just what happened to the two hours yesterday?  I excused myself from the rule because I was feeling sorry for myself… still coughing a bit much to hang around with healthy folks.  I can  come up an excuse with the best of them!

Do you ever have to set limits on yourself?

(Thanks to Jacque for the puzzle!)

2024, animals, Family, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Seasons, Weather

Almost There

72 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The chickens and us survived January’s cold spell and the only casualties were my truck batteries and the electric bill. The truck, being a diesel, takes two batteries. I’ll replace them next week when it’s in positive temperature digits. Last Friday, as the storm was winding down, Kelly and I took the truck up the road just to see how bad it was. (It was only bad in spots) Then Tuesday when I needed the truck, it cranked pretty slow, but I ran it for a few hours and figured it would be fine on Wednesday. Nope. Just the dreaded click. Changed my plans and took the dog to the vet in the back of the car. (Humphrey tore a toenail and needed that trimmed off).

The chickens did fine hanging out inside and waiting for me to bring them more food and water. They didn’t seem to mind either way. Egg production went down a bit; 18 eggs per day rather than 24.

From this photo, you’ll see many of them seem to prefer this one nest box. They still like their groups of 3 and I often find nest boxes with three eggs in them. And nine is a variant of three, so it still works I guess. Production will recover as it warms up. I was taking corn to them by their pen as they didn’t venture outside very far. Above zero and a nice calm, sunny day and they do pretty good. Below zero and they just stand peeking out the door.

Kelly saw five male pheasants down by the barn and it’s always so fun to see them. There should be about 10 or 11 or, at least, there was last year. I assume the rest will find the corn eventually as word spreads in the pheasant community.

The deer community has come together in this cold weather. Here’s a picture of a herd spotted in our fields this week.

And a little further down the road, another group this large. I’m telling you, we have too many deer. Stupid deer.

This fall I put a smaller tank heater in the water tank down by the barn. It works fine when it’s above about 10 degree’s. It isn’t worth diddly in temps below that. When I put a frozen water bucket in the tank, I have to chip it out of the ice again in the morning, but the bottom will be thawed and I can knock the ice out and refill for the chickens.

I think by Monday I’ll be able to turn off the wellhouse heater. (see electric meter) I put 25 bales of straw around it last Thursday before it snowed.

Doesn’t seem to help hold the temp above freezing when it’s less than about 10 degree’s outside. Which makes me wonder: I’d think with the cement floor, the ground inside should be warmer, so am I losing that much heat out the roof? Should I put bales on the roof too? I rebuilt three of the four walls in 2013. The fourth wall is against a tree so it was too much trouble to rebuild.

I am lucky I didn’t need any tractors this week, but I kept the one plugged in just in case. (again, see electric meter). Kudo’s to all the people working in this weather and doing what needs to be done.

Next week I’m going to wash the car!

WHAT WILL YOU DO NEXT WEEK?