Category Archives: Family

2022, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Kids, Travel, Uncategorized

Your Order, Please

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Our daughter is flying home next Thursday for a week of rest and relaxation. It has been a big year for her, getting her independent clinical social work license and starting a private practice. She is very excited to be home and her phone calls are becoming more frequent.

One of her joys visiting home is choosing the menus for our meals. She wants Turkey Chipotle Chowder and homemade cinnamon rolls. We have settled on Horseradish Encrusted Beef Tenderloin garlic mashed potatoes, cheesy baked asparagus, and apple hand pies for Christmas Day. Sometime during her week here she wants Croque Madame Casserole.

We love to cook for her, and it will be good to have her home. She will lie on the sofa and knit an afghan for us as our Christmas present. She also wants to play cribbage with her father. She doesn’t want anything from us this Christmas except a quiet and good food.

How are you planning to spend the holidays? What would you like to eat ? How were your visits home when you were in your 20’s?

2022, Family, Health, Uncategorized

Sartorial Dilemmas

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Husband has always taken great pride in his leather belts and favorite buckles. For Christmas he asked for a black braided one with a silver buckle. His old braided one is wearing out.

Husband is very fussy about having what he considers just the right belt with just the right trousers. He is concerned, though, about the increasing difficulty he is having keeping his trousers up. He is turning into a skinny old guy. Pants and belts don’t fit the way they used to. He is thinking seriously about investing in suspenders.

He is worried that with suspenders, his shirts won’t stay tucked in the back. He used to wear suspenders in college in the 1970’s, considering them a badge of hippiedom and free thinking Now they are an old guy’s solution to drooping drawers.

What articles of clothing are you particular about? How do clothes fit differently now than in the past? Ever worn suspenders?

2022, Family, holidays, home, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Advent Party

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These weeks before Christmas are a time of waiting and anticipation for many Christian believers. In our community for the past several days we have had an additional anticipation event in the form of a “monstrous” snow storm predicted to last from Monday night into Thursday. We may get 8-11 inches after a spate of freezing drizzle.

Like most everyone else in town, Husband and I have been planning what we will need if we are stuck at home. We have been to the grocery store three times since Friday. A young couple was buying many gallons of paint in Ace Hardware yesterday in anticipation of finishing a home project if they are snowed in. There is a party atmosphere in the grocery stores, people chatting to each other in the checkout lines, strangers smiling at strangers. Excitement is in the air. People want to be snowed in. Husband insisted on buying a large quantity of dog toys and treats since no one wants to be cooped up with a bored terrier puppy. Kyrill is supposed to be neutered on Tuesday. We shall see if we can get to the vet office on Tuesday morning.

I had planned to finish all my Christmas baking by last night, so that I could get all the goodies we are sending to the UPS store today. The storm anticipation has helped me slow down, and I plan to finish everything in the next few days and send them out on Thursday or Friday. Being this frenetic isn’t good for me. It is interesting, though, how staying at home necessitates so much planning.

What is the most elaborate party you ever planned? What would you need to stock up on if you were to be snow bound and had time to plan? What is the allure of being snowed in?

2022, Art, Family, Health, History, Travel, Uncategorized

Draw Two Sketches and Call Me in the Morning

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Today’s post comes from Clyde

For twenty years I have been using various kinds of activities to ease my pain, especially rhythmic activities, which is why I rode a bike for so long. Which is why I drew/painted with pastels. I still don’t know if that is drawing or painting. I guess painting. However aging has taken both of those activities away from me. Life has added monumental stress and a diagnosis of migraines, which my neurologist says I have had for 30 years at least.

So I went back to art, at a much more forgiving level, sketching, in other words, at a level where I can accept the sudden jerks of my hands and my poor close range eyesight issues. I can be in a severe headache and force myself to sketch, get lost in the process, and then realize 15-30 minutes later how much lower my pain is. My neurologist is surprised by this. I pointed her towards the medical literature on it.

I sketch from photographs, some as old as 75 years. I get lost in the memory of the people, places, and events. Among my favorite are travel photographs, which I group together. So I thought I might spin off VS’s game. So can you identify, despite my poor hand where I was? Some are specific places, such as 1, 6, and 7. Or maybe you can identify the area or a similar area in 2, 3, 4, and 5. Two places should be easily identifiable to two Baboons, but then there is my weak art skill. A hint: I have only traveled in 46 states and four Canadian province.

December is proving to be a hard load to carry. How does December go for you?

2022, Family, holidays, Music, Uncategorized

December Music

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We have sung some hymns in church set to Welsh melodies lately, and Husband says he gets the shivers whenever he hears them. He attributes this to having some Welsh ancestors, and thinks the melodies tap at some deep primordial aspect of his collective makeup.

I tend to be more opinionated rather than shivery over church music. I like Advent music in church. One isn’t supposed to have Christmas music in church until Christmas. Advent music tends to be quiet and contemplative, which is fine with me. I find my teeth on edge when our church music gets too boisterous or when we sing hymns that have a lot of lyrics in the first person. How Great Thou Art is an example. Our Worship and Music director really dislikes Blessed Assurance, but was gracious enough to sing it the other day at the funeral of a 103 year old parishioner. Our recently retired choir director couldn’t stand Amazing Grace and refused to perform it or sing along when the congregation sang it. We have one song coming up on our December choir schedule that sounds like it should be in an old time western movie. The left hand piano accompaniment rhythm sounds like a horse ambling slowly on the trail. The congregation has loved it when we have sung it other years. I try to think of funny lyrics to it while we practice it, which reduces my irritation.

I really do like to sing in our church choir, and we have some fun performances coming up this month. Husband will play a duet on his cello on Christmas Eve with a flute player. We will do A Festval of Lessons and Carols like they do at King’s College on December 18. We won’t sing How Great Thou Art.

What gives you the shivers? What December music do you like? What December music do you loathe?

2022, Family, Uncategorized, Weather

Wusses and Weenies

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Our daughter lives in Tacoma, WA. The last two days she has texted and phoned me several times about the school and business closings because of snow. “Mom! It snowed half an inch and they closed my agency and local schools. This is ridiculous!”

I patiently tell her that West Coast has very little snow removal equipment, no one has snow tires, and few people there know how to drive in slippery conditions. It was the same way when we lived in southern Indiana, and everything stopped when it snowed. Daughter is a tough North Dakota girl and these arguments do little to change her attitude that she is living with a bunch of weenies.

A friend of ours is a retired college librarian, and she tells of a time when she taught Middle School English at a rural South Central North Dakota school when they had “mud days” when the rural roads were too muddy to run school buses and they called everything off. It was perfectly understandable to her. She grew up in Bison, SD. She also lived for a while in Nashville, TN, where everyone just drove as fast as they could when there was cold, icy weather so as to get home more quickly . She said that didn’t work so well, and she marveled at their foolishness. I am just glad I don’t have to go anywhere for the next month except to Bismarck to pick up my tough girl at the airport for Christmas.

Are you a weather wuss? What is the worst weather you ever experienced? Who are the biggest wusses you know?

2022, animals, Family, Food, holidays, Nature, Uncategorized

Tasty Eats

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We celebrated an early Christmas with our son and his family over Thanksgiving. I was quite excited to get a new cookbook from them, The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson. We have his Nordic Baking Book, which has hundreds of wonderful recipes. The book I just received has 700 recipes from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Finland. Some recipes are pretty traditional ones for meatballs and stews. I am happy to report, though, that if I ever run across Pilot Whale in the store, I shall know how to cook it. It may be a while before I am brave enough to cook with seal entrails or roast a Puffin.

It is interesting to see the different versions that different Nordic countries have for the same dish. There are slight variations on seasonings and ways of cooking things like meatballs, sausages, and meatloaf, for example. I think that we will have a fun time exploring this new cookbook. There are some things I will never cook with, like, blood, for instance. There are plenty enough other recipes that will be far more tasty.

What are some of your favorite cookbooks? What are some of the oddest things you ever cooked and/or ate?

100 Words, 2022, Family, Kids, Mysteries, Travel

Where in the World are VS and YA?

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YA and I are on what we are calling my retirement trip.  This travel is made possible by my old company (her current company) using “award credits” that we’ve been amassing the last year and a half.  Wonder where we are?

  1. You can legally mail a coconut from here.
  2. The largest dormant volcano in the world is here.
  3. There is vog here but no smog.
  4. There are no squirrels, hamsters or gerbils here.
  5. All forms of gambling are illegal here.
  6. The tallest mountain in the world is also here.
2022, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Uncategorized

What a Deal!

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Husband’s son Mario has come to Winona for a 10-day visit, and brought the whole famdamily! It’s a complicated, blended family with 3 girls: 20 years old, 17, 13; and a 2½-year-old boy and his 3-month-old brother. Their mom is a dream.

Happily, they are staying just around the corner from us, at the home of Mario’s mom. (She bought this house in 2021, having no idea at first that her former boyfriend would be sharing the back yard fence.) What serendipity! We just walked over there this evening with our contribution of salad and fixings, played with a little kid, held a baby, ate, talked with teenagers in front of a (real) fireplace, helped clean up, made plans for tomorrow, and walked back home. I met more of their relatives, and there will be an even bigger crowd for the big Thanksgiving blowout on Friday. If needed, we can “overflow” over to our house, which holds about six.  : )

I was a little nervous about so many of them coming for so long, and of course this is just the first day.   But we’ll all be fine – there can be an easy flow back and forth. Who set this up??

When do you eat your Thanksgiving meal?

Family, home, Kids, Travel, Uncategorized, work

A Brand New Start

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It was a year ago that we lost our Steve.  I’m re-running one of his posts (from February 2020) for the day.  You can answer his intial question or share a Steve memory!

Today’s post comes from Steve Grooms.

I have been marveling at what my daughter accomplished this past year. Last winter she, her family and I were living in Port Huron, Michigan. She couldn’t find a job, for the local economy is depressed. My son-in-law had a job he detested, with no possibility of finding a better job. I lived in a senior citizen complex near their rental home, staying alone in my room unless my daughter was visiting me. Nobody was very happy.

It became painfully clear that my daughter and s-i-l had to move and set up new lives. Since I cast my lot with my daughter’s family when I sold my home in 2014, I would have to move too. The experiment of living in Michigan was mostly a botch.

Because my daughter was not working, she was the obvious person to do the research and planning necessary to make the move possible. But, oh my, what a fiendishly complicated task that would be.

Breaking this challenge down into smaller pieces, my daughter needed to:

  • Pick a new town and neighborhood to live in where all four of us (three adults, a kid and a large old dog) might be happy.
  • Find a new apartment or rental home where my daughter’s family could live, doing this research while living in Michigan, unable to look at rental properties in person. This would be especially difficult due to the shortage of affordable housing.
  • Find a senior living community for me. It had to be near her home near her new job . . . wherever they might be. Once again, my daughter had no way to visit the various facilities under consideration.
  • Find movers who could relocate two households 800 miles without charging much.
  • Devise a way to get three automobiles from Michigan to Minnesota, a feat complicated by the fact we had only two drivers.
  • Find a job for herself (a job near her new home and my new apartment, wherever they would turn out to be). This decision, too, had to be done without the benefit of a visit.
  • Find a job for her husband (or at least identify a process which he could follow to find one).
  • Find a great new school for her fourth-grade son.
  • Do all the physical work of boxing up two households for the move.
  • Clean her rental home and my apartment.
  • Accomplish all of this and make the actual move in less than three months.

I wonder if that list adequately reflects how complicated this was. The sixth item alone is daunting. Everything on the list was inextricably connected to all the other issues, which made the overall project extremely tricky. Each choice depended on several other decisions, and there seemed to be no obvious place to start.

My daughter was amused by how her research turned out. The Minnesota metro region emerged as the clear favorite for many reasons but especially its strong economy. St. Paul seemed the most attractive city in Minnesota. The most desirable place to live in St. Paul, her research said, turned out to be Highland Park. So my daughter’s search for the ideal place to move led her to exactly the neighborhood where she had grown up.

We made the move last June. I believe this is the most difficult my daughter has ever faced. As of the middle of January, 2020, every single item on the list has been met successfully. My daughter now lives in an apartment a few blocks from her childhood home (although serious house-hunting begins this spring). And everybody, even the old dog, is delighted to be here.

What is the hardest thing you have ever done? Have you ever discovered that you needed to make a brand new start?