Category Archives: Family

2022, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, Movies, Mysteries, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

The Principle

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Today’s farm/township update comes to us from Ben.

Kelly and I saw “Come from Away” last Sunday. It was fantastic. In the lobby we heard a guy walk up to his wife and say, “My glasses fogged up and I was following the wrong lady in a red jacket.”

It was so cold! How cold was it? It was so cold I wore sleeves. It was so cold I saw a duck standing on one foot. It was so cold the handle on the water hydrant by the barn wouldn’t move. Then it warmed up for a day and the chickens came out, and the hydrant worked, and the ducks just looked at their corn.

In the winter, we get pheasants coming in to eat the corn I throw out for the ducks. Each year there’s a couple more and this year it’s 9 or 10. It’s pretty cool. The crows have learned there’s free food here too. Kelly doesn’t like the crows.

Here’s a picture of some dark colored blobs down there. Those are pheasants.

I’m on our local townboard. Been on there since 1998. We have one house on a major road that is city on both sides of this house, and there is 100’ of sidewalk in front of that house. I don’t know if it’s a ‘walking path’ or ‘bike path’ or ‘sidewalk’ but It’s the only sidewalk in the township. (because the rest of the township is rural or subdivisions that don’t have sidewalks). The city clears the walking path out in this area because there are no home frontages here, but they have been skipping that 100’ in front of this house. And the property owner has never plowed it. As it’s in the middle of this stretch of path, it’s a problem for people using the path. I learned all this last winter when I got an angry phone call from a city resident who lives out there and uses this path. I didn’t even know it was a township problem. I didn’t know the homeowner and I didn’t know if he had health issues or what reasons there might be for him not clearing the sidewalk. Took me a few days to connect with him, during which, the county snowplow just pushed all the snow back off the sidewalks and so the path was open. Turns out the guy just refuses to clear the walk on principle. Huh. He figures he didn’t ask for this sidewalk, so he’s not going to plow it. We, as the township, don’t have a sidewalk ordinance and we don’t want to make one for 100’ of sidewalk when we have 33 miles of roads to deal with, therefore we couldn’t force him to clear it. And the city says it’s not theirs, so they don’t want to clear it (even though they’re clearing a mile on both sides of it). Last winter the weather warmed up and the problem went away.

This winter I’ve been watching it as I drive by this area. I’ve seen the guy out there with his small tractor and blower doing his driveway, but he still isn’t doing the sidewalk. And I can’t decide if I admire him for sticking to his principles or if he’s being a jerk. And the city now is clearing it as they’re driving through there anyway. Which makes sense, but I could also see them leaving it… on principle.

Twenty-five years ago, just after I got on the Townboard, we repaved some roads in a subdivision. One resident never paid his share believing no one would come and tear out the road. Jokes on him; the company DID tear up 100’ of blacktop, leaving a section of gravel on this road. Didn’t take long for him to pay up and the road to get fixed. Maybe the neighbors convinced him.

We have a mystery going on at our townhall. It’s an old building, looks like a one room school. (Maybe it was the school that got blown across the road in the great tornado of 1883, or maybe it was always a townhall; depends who you ask and what maps you choose to believe).

For the last 3 years we’ve been picking up Phillips vodka bottles in the gravel parking lot. I wish LJB was still around; we need a good story for this! We have our suspicions… once a week, there will be 1, 2, or sometimes even 3 vodka bottles. Very few are empty. Some have never been opened! Most will be between ½ and 2/3’s full. We’ve got a collection in the hall now of 14 bottles, and there are a lot that have been picked up and thrown out and don’t make it to the hall collection. The hall is at the intersection of two major roads. People park there in summer and ride bikes or jog. A school bus stops there. Sheriff deputies park there to do reports. 

Why are you not finishing the vodka? And why are you leaving them there? Bonus points if you can tie in the glasses fogged up guy.  

Family, Food, gardening, Travel, Uncategorized

Hotsy Totsy

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Last week I made Joanne’s Southwest Salad, a corn, black bean, sweet red pepper, jalapeño, and quinoa mélange that tastes like health and purity. The recipe is in our Kitchen Congress folder.

I usually add the whole jalapeño, seeds and all, but this time I scraped the seeds out of one half of it with my fingers, and added some powdered Chimayo to the mix. It was nicely warm, but not too hot. The Chimayo powder is hot.

I am a life long nail biter, and I was surprised how the jalapeño oils got under most of my fingernails on both hands and made my typical daily nail biting an unpleasant experience the whole rest of the day. I had a choice of being a nervous wreck or having an unpleasantly hot tongue. I opted for the hot tongue.

Our son and Dil love spicy food, and put Sriracha in much of what they eat. Son toyed with Ghost peppers for a while, but decided habaneros are just the right amount of heat for him, and they are easy for him to grow in pots and freeze so that he can throw them into dishes all winter.

We are rather enthusiastic pepper growers and will grow a variety of hot peppers (Chimayo and New Mexico Joe Parker mild red Anaheims), as well as four kinds of sweet red peppers this summer. I am a medium weight for heat. The hottest food I ever ate was my first introduction to East Indian cooking at a Pakistani restaurant in London. I was 21, and the food was so good but so hot I cried all the while I ate it, but I couldn’t stop eating as it tasted so wonderful.

What is the hottest food you can tolerate? What are your favorite curries? Are you a nail chewer?

2022, Family, Gatherings, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Faith & Hope

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I got an email a couple of weeks ago from the State Fair folks.  They wanted to give everybody a heads’ up that ticket prices are going up this year.  And that wasn’t all – they also wanted to give folks a chance to pre-purchase tickets before prices go up.  The difference in ticket price is one dollar.  This doesn’t seem that big of a deal to me – after all, the tickets have been $13 for years.  The cost of setting up the website to pre-sell tickets plus the cost to send out the communication probably wasn’t inconsiderable, so my cynical side kicked in; I’m thinking they just need some cash before the fair.  I didn’t delete the email, but I also didn’t give it much more thought.

Then yesterday morning, our ring doorbell chimed as someone was delivering a package.  It was for YA and it was about the size of a shoebox but didn’t seem heavy enough for a pair of shoes.  When I asked her about later, she said it was a pair of sandals.  Seeing as it was -2° F when we were having this conversation, I commented that this was a great show of hope and faith on her part.  She laughed.

So I decided that I could have some hope and faith as well.  Most days I don’t feel particularly hopeful about the end of pandemic but I went online and ordered all our State Fair tickets for August.  Hope, faith and I saved $8!

Are you making any plans for the summer yet?

2022, Family, Fantasy, Media, Movies, TV, Uncategorized

Humiliations Galore!

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YA and I are working on another puzzle right now; it’s taking longer because I haven’t quite committed yet and now the workweek has come around and we don’t have as much time.

The last time we worked on a puzzle it was a Sunday and neither of us had anything on our schedules.  We settled in and we watched movie after movie as we progressed.  We took turns picking the movie; YA was very understanding of what I would stomach and what I wouldn’t.  In fact, at one point SHE chose Princess Bride – she said she knew I liked it.

I do love Princess Bride; I think I’ve mentioned here before that when it came out in the theatres, I went four nights in a room, dragging a different friend each time.  I couldn’t guess how many times I’ve seen it but suffice it to say we’re talking seriously into double digits at this point.

About halfway through the movie YA said “you know that you’re mouthing all the words?”   There aren’t too many movies for which I know huge tracts of the dialog:  When Harry Met Sally, Romancing the Stone, Blazing Saddles, Death on the Nile.  I also know the first few minutes of Laura by heart:

“I’ll never forget the weekend that Laura died.  The silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass.  It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection.  I felt as if I were the only living being left in New York.  For Laura’s horrible death, I was alone.  I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her.”

But I’m pretty sure that I know more Princess Bride than any of the others.  I did attempt to stop narrating along with the movie, although I’m not sure I was 100% successful.

Do you have any irritating movie habits (well, irritating to others…)?

2022, Art, Family, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Chip Away

82 Comments

YA was seriously into the art scene over her birthday weekend.  She actually requested that I take either Friday or Monday off to go to the Minneapolis Art Institute with her.  I have a friend who works at MIA and she said it’s pretty deserted on week days, so I took Friday off and we headed to see art.

Since it was YA’s day, I let her  lead; she didn’t have anything in particular that she wanted to see so we pretty much just wandered around.  She isn’t a big reader so we saw far more than I would have seen on my own; I love to know what the artist has titled their work and any background/history on either the piece or the artist is always interesting to me.  Normally because I am slow, I don’t always see my favorite works but this isn’t a big deal as I know they will be there the next time.

So the first of my favorites we happened upon was the Yoruba shrine head.  It is exquisitely carved and I always have to be reminded that it’s centuries old as it seems very contemporary to me.

Then we walked through a gallery where the second of my favorites resides.  Les Trois Graces is a smaller version of a statue that was initially installed outside the Paris Opera House.  The artist, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, went on to do various versions of this work in a lot of different mediums (media?).  I love the delicacy of the hands and the gracefulness of the feet and toes as they dance.

I felt like good fortune had befallen me and then we climbed up to the third level and came across my very favorite, living in a different gallery than the last time I saw her.  The Veiled Lady by Monti.  I know that there is a technique to making marble seem transparent – something to do with the smoothness versus the roughness of the carved marble – but it still seems like magic to me.

And as if this weren’t enough, to see all three of my favorite pieces on the same day, we came across a little bronze piece, only about 10 inches high (see the header photo).  This is a sculpture of Loie Fuller, who was a well-known dancer in the late 1800s.  A quick search uncovers quite a bit of artwork based on Fuller, much of it can only be described as “ecstatic”, like this one. Of course, now I have a book of her life on hold at the library and I have a fourth favorite at MIA.

As we were departing the museum it occurred to me that all four of my favorites are sculptures.  Maybe because I have never seen all of them on the same day, I just never connected the dots.  If you had asked me last week, I could not have told you that my favorite artworks are sculptures (and not just at MIA).  I have always marveled at the artist’s ability to not only envision the sculpture but to chisel down to it.  Sculpture seems all the more magical to me because it must be so unforgiving.  One wrong hit of the hammer and you have to start over!

If these sculptures came to life, what would you serve them for lunch?

2022, Family, Food, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Stealth Baking

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It’s a little hard to plan a surprise when the person you want to surprise lives in your house.

Today’s is YA’s birthday (27!!)  Her gift was actually purchased a couple of weeks back; she wanted a case for her new iPad and I agreed to pay for it as her present.  I took off on Friday to celebrate with her; we went to the Minneapolis Arts Institute.  There was also going to be a birthday brunch at one of her favorite places but they have discontinued indoor dining (again).  So the celebrations are a little low-key.

I have a banner that says “Happy Birthday” that I made last year and I picked up a “2” and a “7” big mylar balloon but I still wanted to do a bit more – maybe cake?  YA is not a big sweet eater, but I know that she likes carrot cake, so I decided on cupcakes.

I’ve been thinking how I could get this done and about a week ago she announced that she was going out with a friend to the Walker and lunch.  Yesterday!  This was a perfect opportunity for me to do a little stealth baking.

YA is fairly observant.  She doesn’t go snooping but she does notice things.  While I was working on the cupcakes, I was extremely careful about not leaving any trace of my work.  I cleaned and dried every utensil and pan so that nothing in the drainer would catch her attention.  I wiped the counters twice, making sure to get every little shred of carrot.  Butter and cream cheese wrappers went underneath other trash in the container.  I used an “altered box” recipe, so the boxes went underneath other recyclables in the bin.  The finished products went on the front porch table behind the last of the cookie tins.  I put some pretty party picks in them earlier this morning.

The one remaining problem was the aroma in the house.  I turned on the fans in the kitchen but they didn’t do the job.  And I was worried that if I sprayed Febreze, she would ask why.  I decided that maybe she wouldn’t notice.  WRONG.  She didn’t even have her coat off when she said “what did you make – it smells like cinnamon.”  Having worried about this beforehand, my answer was ready.  “I made cinnamon toast for lunch.”  This is a common enough occurrence that she believed me!

The banner and balloons are up, the cupcakes are on a pretty platter waiting.  She has taken today off as well but probably won’t be up until 9 or 10. I’ll let you know how the surprise goes!

Have you ever been to a surprise party?

Family, Food, Uncategorized

Any Excuse Will Do

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Husband is a compulsive baker of rye bread. It seems that every Friday we agree that we aren’t going to bake on the weekend and will just use up what we have.

We really have a hard time keeping to our bake-free agreement. Husband is very adept at finding an excuse to bake something. Last Saturday he was cleaning out the pantry when he came across an almost empty bag of old russet potatoes. They were shriveled and had stems growing out of them. Just the perfect things to boil and mash and use in rye bread! We couldn’t possibly let them go to waste! The rye bread was delicious, but we really didn’t need more.

What do you look for excuses to do or buy?

Family, home, Technology, Uncategorized, work

At the Master’s Feet

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Husband grew up with a father who had virtually no mechanical skills. Husband never could watch anyone fix anything when he was a child, and has a hard time, even now, knowing how make repairs without considerable anxiety and error. His father’s lack of mechanical skill was a trait shared by his father’s older brother, who was an engineer at a nuclear power plant in Chillicothe, OH. He needed help installing a blade in an Atra razor, yet he was in charge of a power plant. I marvel at that still.

I consider myself lucky to have had a dad who loved it when I watched him fix things. He did all his own plumbing, electrical, and automotive work, and I watched him as often as I could, fascinated in how tools worked, how he planned and strategized, and how he problem solved when things didn’t work out as planned.

Our recent adventure in plumbing gave Husband a chance to observe a master at work. Husband spent all day as our plumber’s helper, handing him tools, watching him assemble and solder things, and helping him install pipe. He had a lot of fun and learned a lot. When, the next day, our garbage disposal stopped working, he was calm, tried resetting the breaker in the basement, tried using the tool provided with the disposal to unstick the blades in the case of them being stuck, and then decided that our 15 year old disposal needed to be replaced. I agreed with him, but thought about it a minute, and then searched under the disposal for a button I wasn’t sure was there, found it, pushed it, and heard the disposal whirr back in to business. The reset button had tripped. Husband had the grace to laugh and think kindly of my button pushing skills, as that is what a lot of repair is-randomly pushing buttons to see what will happen, It always seems to work for me.

What master craftspeople would you like to watch? Who pushes your buttons?

2022, Art, Family, Games, home, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Is a Puzzlement…

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YA and I both received jigsaw puzzles for the hoidays.  Since I had several days off, I thought it would be fun to get one of them started.  Of course, I should have realized that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree where jigsaw puzzles are concerned.

We started the puzzle about about 1:30 p.m., on the card table in the living room.  We finished the puzzle at 10:15 p.m.  With short timeouts for refreshing a beverage or making a quick sandwich, we both sat at the table until we were finished.

Sitting with her for that length of time I began to see some differences in how we approached the puzzle.  I like to go through all the pieces one by one at the beginning to find the edge pieces.  YA just like to sift through looking for edge pieces.  I tend to look for a piece that fits a particular spot.  YA likes to choose a piece and then figure out where it goes.  (Her method was seriously aided by a large fold out picture of the puzzle – which she hogged most of the day.)

The next morning my friend in Chicago texted me a photo of the puzzle she and her husband were working on.  They have all the pieces sorted by color and instead of assembling all the edges first, they work on sections by color.  It’s fascinating to realize that there are probably many other ways to work on a puzzled that I have never encountered or thought of.  I’m pretty sure that this realization will not change how I like to do puzzles although this will be tested out soon.  YA’s puzzle is made by the same company so I’m assuming it will have a large fold-out picture.  Maybe I can hog it when we sit down to do hers!

Any method to your madness (puzzle or otherwise)?

Automotive, Family, Mysteries, Technology, Uncategorized

The Water Tower

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I’ve lived in the Twin Cities for forty years.  Not that this had made me an expert, but every now and then I feel a little sheepish about what I don’t know.

On Christmas Day YA and I drove to Hudson to have dinner with friends.  These friends just moved to Hudson in June, so this was the first time we would visit them in their new home.  I let YA put the address into my phone’s GPS.  YA has been on a campaign to change my GPS of choice from Google Maps to some other direction-finder.  She is convinced that my difficulties with Google will be solved with this new app (I am constantly confused when Google changes the perspective while I’m driving; oftentimes I think I have more time before a turn and then suddenly Google zooms in and I’m either missing the turn or swerving quickly to make it.)

The fact of using GPS is a little frustrating to me.  As a teenager, driving all over the suburbs of St. Louis, I don’t ever remember getting lost or turned around; I certainly didn’t have a city map that I consulted.  I’ve thought about this a lot over the years as I’m pretty sure my penchant for getting turned around is getting worse as time goes by.   And what I’ve come to is that GPS is what’s making it worse.  Prior to the internet and GPS, if you went to a friend’s new house, you’d call them up and ask for directions.  You’d usually get a mix of “go two miles, then turn left at the Shell station, then go four blocks and turn left on Discovery Street, we’re the fifth house in on the left, white with green trim.”  This seems highly sensible to me.  Now I just turn when I’m told; I’m not keeping track of how many miles or blocks I’m going and not paying attention to what’s on the corner when I’m turning. 

Anyway, the new app that YA likes shows where there are traffic signals along the way.  It also shows some landmarks (although not helpful in terms of where to turn).  As we were driving over the 94 bridge toward St. Paul, I noticed the GPS noting “The Witches Hat Water Tower”.  I looked up and there it was – as clear as day over the trees – and definitely living up to its name.  The water tower, which sits in Prospect Park, was built in 1913, designed by Norwegian-born architect Frederick William Cappelen. 

I used to work in St. Paul so I used to drive over the 94 bridge 10 times a week, not to mention all the other times I’ve driven that direction over the decades.  I have not once noticed that there is a water tower that looks like a witch’s hat.  Not once.   I’m thinking that maybe I should keep using the app that YA prefers – who knows what else I’ll find!

Once you’ve driven someplace, do you remember how to get there the next time?