Category Archives: Family

Family, holidays, home, Movies, Music, TV, Uncategorized

Holding The Line

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In my world/head, I don’t play holiday music or turn on holiday movies until the day after Thanksgiving, although every few years I might listen to holiday music in the car on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner.  This rule is mostly just to keep the Christmas/Solstice season within some kind of boundaries.  I think 5-6 weeks is plenty of celebration – no need for it to spill out into October and early November. 

So I was surprised to come home from picking up pizza yesterday to hear holiday music playing.  Loudly.  As we sat down to our pizza, I gave YA grief about playing Christmas songs.  Without missing a beat, she said “oh please – you’ve been doing holiday stuff since March”.   I have to admit that she is correct.  In the spring, when we all thought covid would be history by this time, I was expecting to be extremely busy at work, with all my spring programs bumping into the fall.  Since this was my mindset, I figured I should get all my Solstice stuff done early, so I wouldn’t be stressing out about it in October and November.  I did all my cards, my egg ornaments and my calendars in the spring.  I also worked on the family gift throughout the summer.  The last week I’ve done what I consider my “last-minute” stuff: the newsletter, wrapping, labels, cookie selection, etc. 

I consider all this holiday prep, but not holiday celebration.  No music or movies for me yet.  But I’m all ready for next Friday…. all my holidays movies are in a separate bin so I can get to them fast and YA’s “Alexa” will be on call every day (and I’ve finally figured out how to get her to play Radio Heartland). 

Will you be celebrating this year?  When will you start?

Family, Fantasy, Media, News, pets, Uncategorized

The Millie News

31 Comments

Out tortoiseshell cat, Millie, was recently  diagnosed with what is probably lymphoma. It could possibly be a form of leukemia, but we would need to do a bone marrow test to find out, and the treatment is the same in either case. She gets a smear of prednisone cream in her ear every day, which we will gradually reduce to a maintenance dose every other day in a week or so.  She is rallying, and is almost back to her pre-cancer goofy self.

Our children are real cat lovers, and insist I give regular news updates regarding her condition  and prognosis. It feels some days as though I am running an official Millie news network. I could call it MNN.

I myself have been consumed with the news of late, and go to my regular news sources. NPR, CNN, Reuters, and MSNBC too frequently  for my own mental health. I am alarmed  by 45’s plan to start his own news service, which I can’t imagine being at all reasonable or accurate. I doubt I would ever look at it.

What news services do you follow or not follow? What kind of news service would you start if money was no object?

2020, Family, home, Kids, Technology, Uncategorized, work

Doin’ the dishes

36 Comments

Dirty dishes have always been a contentious issue between YA and me.   She has a much higher tolerance for dishes in the sink than I do; particularly I don’t like coming down in the morning to dirty dishes.  For several years, if YA leaves dishes in the sink overnight, then when I come down in the morning, I yell up the stairs and she has to come down and do them.  This is no fun for anybody but it does work pretty well as a dish pile-up deterrent.  Of course it doesn’t do anything about dishes that accumulate during the day.

When I started working from home back in March, I was assuming (like many others) that covid would have run its course by the fall.  I decided that as my gift to household peace, I would just do all the dishes during shelter-in-place.  Fretting about dishes just didn’t seem like a good vibe to add to an already bad scenario.  I’ve had a couple of times said to YA that I didn’t want to feel taken advantage of and every now and then she does belly up to the sink on her own, but for the most part, I’ve washed every single dish that has been dirtied here since March 15. 

Now that covid hasn’t gone away and we are all still sheltering-in-place, I’m thinking maybe I need to re-negotiate my dish-pan hands situation.

Any suggestions??

Business, Family, Food, Medicine, Uncategorized

Bag Lady

19 Comments

Yesterday morning I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription refill.  As the pharmacist was checking me out, I said “I don’t need any of the paperwork and I don’t need a bag.”  As I just dump the bag and the paperwork as soon as I get home, it seems a waste.   In any other setting, if I just have a few items, I pass on the bag as well.  Usually the receipt too.  I just don’t need more bags of any kind at my house.

Well, the pharmacist put the prescription right into a little bag, although she didn’t print out all the paperwork about the drug.  Probably 25% of the time, even though I have said no bag, I get a bag anyway.  It is so automatic.  I didn’t make a fuss… what good would come of it … just dropped the bag into the trash on the way out of the store.  But I was thinking about how many things we all do almost automatically.

Then YA and I took a big shopping trip to Target.  We had a couple of non-food items that we looked for first, so ended up at the END of the food area (dairy) first, instead of the beginning (produce).  Even though I’ve shopped here many times and we had a list, it was extremely disconcerting to be going “backwards”.  We ended up backtracking at least 3 times when we realized we had missed something.  I’m guessing that I would have this reaction in any grocery store that I’ve shopped at repeatedly.  I didn’t intend to internalize a direction when I shop for groceries, but clearly I have.  Part of me thinks that I should do something about this; how dare the grocery industry mess with my mind.  Another part of me thinks it’s probably too late!

Anything you do without much thinking?

2020, Family, Food, Health, home, Kids, Medicine, Nature, Uncategorized

Invent Your Own Covid Test

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Last Friday I was on a MS Teams meeting in a weekly group supervision session I participate in with staff from another Human Service Center. The clinical director of that agency was really amused by the ingenuity of  one staff member and the young adult child of another staff member, both of whom accurately self- diagnosed themselves with Covid.

The staff member was suspicious of some symptoms,  and took a couple swigs of lemon juice, couldn’t taste it, and went for a formal test at the doctor and tested positive.  The young adult was out with friends drinking shots of Fireball whiskey, realized she couldn’t taste it, and went for a test and was positive.

The clinical director wryly suggested that perhaps we all needed to drink shots of Fireball whiskey throughout the day to self-monitor for Covid.  Cinnamon flavored whiskey isn’t my drink of choice, but I could think of other strong tasting things I wouldn’t mind monitoring with.

Make up your own Covid test.

Family, holidays, home, Uncategorized

The Lefse Purity League

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Husband and I rolled out about 75 sheets of lefse on Halloween.  Husband considers us lefse purists. We would never use mashed potato  flakes, as many do, in our lefse. We try to use store-bought, ND grown russet potatoes along with white potatoes we grow in the garden. My recipe calls for lard, and we use our own home-rendered lard, as well as organic heavy cream, sugar,  and flour. We rice the dough twice.  The recipe is one I got from a local church member who got it in California  from a Jewish woman married to a man of Norwegian heritage. It doesn’t get much funkier than this.

I rolled out the dough and put it on the griddles. Husband fried and flipped and transferred the lefse to towels to cool.  We used two griddles. This year we realized that one of our griddles was defective, so that meant a quick trip to Ace Hardware for a new one, along with another flipping stick. ( I got tired of sharing the one we had with Husband as he fried and flipped.) We now have his and hers flipping sticks.

I have two pastry boards, three pastry board covers, and multiple cotton covers for my lefse rolling pin.  The pastry board and covers are great for rolling out pie crusts, too. You can’t let the cloth get damp or the dough sticks and you get holes in your lefse. It is really important to keep the dough as cold as possible before you roll it out. I know that I have rolled it thin enough when I can vaguely see through the dough the red letters imprinted on the pastry board cover that say Bethany Pastry Cloth. This is an Iowa company that sells everything you need for lefse making.

All my relatives identified as being of German heritage. None of my relatives  ever made lefse. I learned to make lefse here in ND, in a German church with very few people of Norwegian heritage, but many who insist on making lefse every year.  I am continually amused as Ancestry.com  keeps reassessing my DNA  and now tells me my DNA is 17% Swedish.  I don’t know if Swedes make lefse, but I know what lefse is supposed to be like.  Mashed potato flakes indeed!

For what will you accept no substitutes? What equipment do you have that you consider essential?

2020, Business, Family, Food, holidays, Seasons, Uncategorized

The Calendar

29 Comments

Advent wasn’t a thing at my house growing up.  In fact, I didn’t really know what advent was all about until I was out on my own.  Of course, any thing that I can use to amp up the holiday season has my name all over it.

For many years I had an advent wreath with candles (until it caught the tablecloth on fire).  When YA was young, we had a window cling advent calendar (until she pulled all the pieces off the window – I still think that maybe some of the pieces may have gotten eaten by a dog or even flushed).  I made a big advent calendar out of little tins and lots of holiday paper; it was finally retired a couple of years ago when YA informed me that she didn’t really need to be “doing that” any more.

Two years ago a wine advent calendar hit the Aldis shelves for the first time.  I heard about it right before Christmas – too late.  So last year, I did some research and was dismayed when my friend who works at Aldi’s HQ here, said that the wine advent calendar isn’t sold in Minnesota due to the liquor laws here.  No alcohol sold in grocery stores.  I looked online and found a couple of other wine calendars but they were much more expensive than Aldis and then there was the shipping to Minnesota issue.  YA and I did score an Aldi’s cheese advent calendar and enjoyed it so I decided to try again this year for the wine.

I left the house yesterday at 6 a.m. and headed to River Falls (the closest Aldi’s carrying the calendars).  Arriving at 10 minutes to 7, I saw that four other folks were already there.  We all huddled in our cars until someone drove up at 10 after 7 and got out of her car.  At that point, we quickly started lining up outside the store.  Even though I had thought the process through a little bit, bringing a stadium chair, I neglected a coat, gloves or blanket.  I was VERY happy when the sun finally got above the tree line.  Store employees came out with “tickets” at 8 a.m.  There were wine advent calendars, beer advent calendars and hard seltzer calendars that required tickets and had limits.  It looked like the employees had about 50 of each type of ticket.  By the time the store opened at 9, there were probably 125 folks in line… all down the outside of the store, around the corner and down the whole parking lot.  I can’t speak for other parts of the line, but at the very front, we had a party vibe going right up until opening.  In addition to the wine, I also managed to get to the cheese calendars before they were gone.

Since we know we’ll be having a different kind of holiday season this year, at least we’ll have fun with our cheese and wine every night of advent.

When have you gone out of your way to get something you really wanted?

animals, Family, History, holidays, Uncategorized

All Saints

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Sunday was All Saints Day, a fairly solemn day in our church when we remember all our congregation members who died over the past year, as well as our own dear departed. I thought how nice it would be to hear my father’s jokes and teasing again, along with my mother’s keen observations and funny stories. I also thought how much fun it would be to scritch our two Welsh Terriers  behind the ears again, and see the trouble they might get into. I consider them departed saints, too, no matter how naughty they were.

Who are the departed saints  you might like to have a nice conversation with today?

2020, Family, Food, Health, Kids, Seasons, Uncategorized

A Day Without Candy….

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Friends asked me.  Facebook folks asked me.  I saw the question online in multiple places.  Even Nonny asked me.  “What are you doing for Halloween this year?”  Nobody wants to just give up on Halloween but at the same time, nobody wants to be taking any chances either.

We decided to do a slightly modified evening.  Normally the kids come up on the steps, I stand just inside the porch (with a dog gate up) and put two or three pieces of candy in each child’s bag.  But somehow that didn’t seem quite right for me to handling candy that I’ve just touched.

I found some cute orange and white bags online and I filled them with four pieces of candy each and some inexpensive Halloween stickers that I found last month at Michaels.  I tied them up with orange ribbon that I had on hand.  The bags have been “quarantining” (or should it be “sheltering in place”) in my closet in a bag for the last three weeks.  Tonight I will dump all the bags into a big orange bowl and when (if?) the kids come up I will hold out the bowl and say “take one”. 

I don’t even know if we will have trick-or-treaters.  For the past 10 years I’ve had between 20-24 visitors; I made 30 little bags because that’s how much candy I had.  The big change this year is that I only used candy that I like so that if we have bags leftover, at least it will what I like!

Are you giving out candy this year?  Do you give out what you like or don’t like?  Anything special you like on Halloween?

2020, Family, Food, Health, Uncategorized

Judge Not

88 Comments

Our local Cashwise store lines up carts in the front of the store by the checkouts for people who have ordered on-line and have requested curbside loading.  The names of the purchasers are displayed prominently on the carts, and it is easy to see what they ordered.  Several times in the past months I recognized the name on the carts, and have been aghast at the things they have purchased. “Really, Pastor Lisa? You ordered all that pop and chips? Is that what you feed your children?  No wonder they look so pale ,” I think to myself as I pass by with my organic skyr and healthy (in my opinion) food items. Oh, to not judge others is so hard.

What do you judge other people most harshly for? What would people think of you if they glimpsed your grocery cart?