Category Archives: home

2026, Family, home, Music, Uncategorized

Irritating Music

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Yesterday Husband and I heard Ravel’s Bolero on MPR. Husband commented, somewhat in jest “Friends don’t make friends listen to Bolero“. I understand that many people find the piece irritating. I recently learned that Ravel was inspired to write the piece after hearing the weaving machines in one of his father’s factories. His father was an engineer and manufacturer, and I can hear the rhythym of the machines in the music. I find that interesting, and the piece has become far more pleasant for me to listen to.

I played bass clarinet one season in the Fargo Moorhead Symphony when I was in college, and we played Bolero. Our music was rented from a national music rental company that rented music to orchestras all over the country. There are interminable sections of rests in the piece, and written into my score in pencil on about the third page of the piece were the words “Nudge Walt”. I asked the clarinet player next to me about it, and he said it was probably in reference to a bassoon player in the Philadelphia Orchestra for the bass clarinet player to alert him that his part was starting. I guess that many orchestra players have written into their contracts that they don’t have to perform Bolero.

I find most classical music wonderful, except perhaps that of Anton Bruckner, who I find ponderous and boring, and Phillip Glass, who I don’t understand at all. I also find I appreciate music the more I know about the composer. My favorite composers right now are Bartok, Sibelius, and Janacek.

Who are your favorite and least favorite composers? What kind of music do you listen to the most?

2026, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Fun!

47 Comments

Our lives since moving to Minnesota have been pretty noneventful aside from our trip to Kansas City in March. We have spent our time getting to know the community and getting our home to our liking. Not much has been unpleasant, but nothing has been that exciting either. The weather hasn’t been very conducive for outdoor activities.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered three Savoy cabbages through Melissa’s Produce. We grew Savoys in our ND garden. They are lovely cabbage but not available in our local grocery stores.

The ones I ordered were very nice when they arrived, and we refrigerated them right away. This made for an interesting challenge, though, of using up three cabbages in short order.

We cook most everything from scratch as a rule, so cooking a lot of cabbage wasn’t that unusual. I noticed, though, that the recipes we had chosen were really fun to make. Not just pleasant, but fun. I made a huge pot of minestrone. I made a central European pasta dish with cabbage and bratwurst. I made a cabbage, potato, asparagus. and fennel bulb hash. Husband made cabbage and mushrooms, (as well as oatcake biscuits). I love to cook, but I recognized how much fun I was having putting these dishes together, even more fun than usual!

I don’t plan to buy any more Savoy cabbage in the near future. I am kind of cabbaged-out. It reinforced for me, though, the pleasure one can derive from even the most simple activities if you pay attention. Yesterday I made Cuban black beans. Later this week I am making Danish meatloaf (it is made from veal and pork and wrapped in bacon). I expect to have a fun week despite all the rain and staying home. A simple life can be a good life.

What fun activities have you done lately? What are the most fun and least fun things for you to cook? Thoughts about cabbage?

2026, Family, home, Uncategorized

Some Like It Hot

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I have balked at turning on the air conditioning during our recent hot weather, and we have coped well using the ceiling fans in the living room and bedrooms.

We ran the fans a lot yesterday. About 8:00 last night, Husband went to our room to turn in, and came out rather concerned about a definite burning smell in the bedroom. He turned off the fan, which had been running all day. Best Friend is visiting, and said it smelled like burning wood. I dithered for a bit, then called 911.

The fire department showed up in full force with three trucks and a sheriff’s deputy. The fire chief said it definitely smelled like burning, and thought it was the motor for the ceiling fan/light. They checked the temperature of the ceiling and fan and nothing was unusually hot. They thought that the motor was just burning out. As a precaution they decided to go up into the attic to make sure nothing was burning up there. I should add that once the fan was turned off, the smoke detector I’m the bedroom went off and the smoke seemed to increase.

Just as they were about to ascend to the attic, a young firefighter in the bedroom exclaimed “Wow, that is hot!” in reference to a folding halogen reading light (installed by the previous owners) attached to the wall above the bed. It is very flexible. Husband had turned it on about 30 minutes before he started getting ready for bed. He didn’t see that the light had flipped right onto the cherry wood headboard. It scorched a 3×4 patch on it. Of course it smelled like burning wood! It wasn’t the fan at all! It was charring cherry! We had been so concerned about the ceiling fan we hadn’t looked for other possible causes of the smoke. By 10:30 pm the smoke had dissipated but it still smelled like burnt wood.

What a dumb thing to have happen. I am sure it is the talk of the neighborhood. We are having those lights replaced as soon as possible.

When have you had to phone the fire department? What are your favorite Tony Curtis or Jack Lemmon movies?

2026, Family, Fantasy, Food, home, Mysteries

A World Gone Mad

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Gravity, the 5-second rule, Murphys Law, chocolate is a food group, the toast will always land buttered-side down, oatmeal raisin cookies masquerading as chocolate chip cookies are sent by evil entities to usurp happiness.  These are givens.  In addition YA doesn’t like farm eggs and YA doesn’t like my recipe for deviled eggs.

Farm eggs.  I adore Ben’s farm eggs.  Rich, full flavor and then there are those deep golden yolks.  Bring them on!  Unfortunately YA isn’t always sure about “new” things and the farm eggs fall into this category.  She hasn’t said exactly but I think it’s the color of the yolks.

Deviled eggs.  While in theory YA likes deviled eggs, she doesn’t like my preferred recipe.  I’ve mentioned before that I am a Miracle Whip gal.  YA has grown up into a mayonnaise gal.  It I make the eggs with some Miracle Whip and some mayonnaise and give it a good dose of mustard, she will sometimes have one, but not always.

So after Ben delivered eggs on Sunday, I immediately boiled up a few and made deviled eggs.  When I asked YA if she was interested, she said no, so I made them my favorite way – Miracle Whip, mustard, pickle relish, salt, pepper.  And because they were farm eggs, they were stunning looking – more golden and orangish even than the header photo.  I ate some immediately, had some for breakfast on Monday (they were marvelous on toast with strawberry jam) and was looking forward to the last of the batch of breakfast yesterday.

Lo and behold – when I came downstairs, the container that had held the remaining four halves was empty and sitting in the sink.  SHE ATE MY DEVILED EGGS!  Even though I had made her least favorite version. 

So now what?  I feel like I need to re-write all my life expectations.  What’s next… will the toast fall butter side up?

Any universal truths that have let you down?

2026, Business, Government, home, Uncategorized, work

Natural Consequences

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Six months after our move into our home we continue to get mail addressed to the former owner. He still lives in town in a lovely refurbished apartment on Main Street just above his satellite communication business. I know it is lovely from the gossip of some electricians who were at our home and had been in the previous owners’ new place.

I always let him know when we get his mail. Sometimes he picks it up. Sometimes his elderly mom picks it up. She lives one block from us. About a month ago we received the property tax statement for his Main Street property along with some other mail from a finance company. I could tell what it was since the property tax envelope had been conveniently torn enough in transit for me to peek inside. I let him know via text that we had it. He texted that he was currently in Arizona and would pick it up when he got back to town in early April.

I saw him in his Jeep last week as I was going to the grocery store. He still hasn’t phoned to pick up his mail. I decided I am not going to remind him. The more we learn about him and his ways of dealing with things I think that he has been cossetted and coddled far too much by this community, and if his property taxes are delinquent, well, that may be a good lesson for him.

What natural consequences have you seen people deal with? What natural consequences have you experienced?

2026, Family, Health, home, Uncategorized

Waste Not, Want Not

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This is clean up week in our town, and people have loads of debris piled on the curbs outside their houses. The city will come this week to collect it all and take it to the landfill.

We moved a twin bed frame and mattress/box spring here from ND with the hope our son and DIL could use it for their daughter in a couple of years. It was the bed our daughter slept on about 25 years ago. Despite its age it is very clean and in perfect condition. Well, the offer of the bed was politely declined, which is fine with us, but now we are left with a twin bed in our basement with no one to sleep in it.

No charity organization will take mattresses. I understand their reluctance given hygiene issues. I don’t have the energy to try to sell it, so I decided to pay the city $30 to haul away the mattress. It just burns me to have to do this, since it seems like such a waste. When did bedbugs and vermin become such a problem?

Had we more friends and family in the I know we would have found someone to take the mattress. I am keeping the headboard, footboard, and bed frame to either give away or sell in the future. It disassembles nicely and doesn’t take up much room. It is a lovely Ethan Allen piece. I know my ancestors are looking disapprovingly at me now. What a waste!

How did your family practice frugality? In what ways are you frugle?

2026, Food, home, Technology, Uncategorized

Getting To Know You

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In the last 12 months I have cooked and baked on four different stoves/ovens. Each has been very different from the others, and the cooking experiences have been challenging.

In Dickinson we had a quite old GE electric oven with a glass stovetop. We decided we couldn’t in good conscience saddle new owners with it. The glass top was scratched and uncleanable. The oven baked really slow and we needed to increase the temperature to get things done. We replaced it with a Bosch electric stove/oven which worked very well. It definitely was a positive selling point for the house.

As soon as I had figured out all the niceties of the new stove we moved to our current home. It had a 15 year old Kenmore gas oven with gas top burners. The previous owners had no problem saddling us with it, even though the control panel shorted out everything we started a top burner when the oven was lit. I didn’t like baking in the gas oven since things singed on the sides of the pan closest to the burners. I struggled baking with it, trying to adjust rack levels and temperatures. This was quite a trick in November and December for Christmas baking.

We finally got a brand new, dual fuel LG oven/stove that I really like. The oven is electric. The stovetop is has gas burners. Saturday night I made a apple pie with a crumble topping and found the the oven must burn hot as the crumble topping and crust got too dark, and I probably have to lower the temperature about 10-15 degrees when I bake. Sigh! I suppose most appliances have their individual quirks, but I am pretty tired of trying to figure all this out.

What would you feel you had to in good conscience, replace in your current home before you sold it? What have been the easiest and most difficult appliances/machines to learn to use?

2026, animals, home, pets, Uncategorized

Up! Up!

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The Cesky Terrier is a dog short in height but long in length. Our puppy is now five months old. She had gained three pounds since we brought her home. She is perhaps a couple of inches longer, but no taller. She can’t descend or ascend stairs yet. She is extremely fast and can keep up with our 4 year old male Cesky and can wrestle with him like a pro.

Our dogs love to be together, as close to one another as possible. They like to sleep cuddled up closely. Older dog can jump up on the sofa with ease. He likes to nap there. Young pup is just a couple of inches too short to jump up on her own. She hurls herself off the sofa with great abandon, though. I don’t mind the dogs on the furniture.

Mitzi comes to us multiple times a day imploring us to lift her up to be on the sofa with Kyrill. We say Up Up to teach her the command for jumping up for when she finally gets long enough to jump up on her own. She tries her hardest to jump up now, but to no avail. I don’t want to clutter up the living room with graduated step stools so she can ascend on her own right now. I predict predict in May she will Up Up on her own.

What is something you had to strive to accomplish that seemed impossible at first? How do you feel about pets on the furniture?

2026, Family, Food, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Garden Plans

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Yesterday we had 120 bags of organic raised bed soil delivered to our driveway. You can see them in the header photo. A retired guy who was the head of the city solid waste department picked them up from Bomgaars and brought them to the house. He has a forklift for just such loads. He knew my dad. The raised beds will ship this week. We have enlisted the help of a young man to move the bags of soil into the back yard. The gate on our fence is too narrow for a tractor, so he will move the bags with a big wheelbarrow. He is a cement worker for his day job and used to date one of the daughters of the former owner of our house. Everyone seems interconnected here!

Best friend is excited to plant chard, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. The raised beds are 32 inches high and will be good for plants that need deeper roots. I am planting a late crop of spinach and lots of basil for pesto. We will have herbs in separate pots on the deck. We saw two large deer roaming our neighborhood a few nights ago and I am glad our yard is fenced.

I want to get some Canadian roses to plant around the house, as well as some hydrangeas. We thought about putting in a raspberry bed but it would be too complicated due to underground wires and such. We also have a Birch tree badly in need of pruning, but we will leave that for the fall, as well as planting spring bulbs.

How are your garden plans coming along? What are your experiences with raised beds?

2026, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Palm To Pine

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Highway 75 runs north and south through Luverne. It is a major highway in the region. Many years of my life were spent along this road. My first house as an infant and young child was right along the road. My parents built a house along 75 south of town when I was17. My undergrad college in Moorhead was along 75. The University of Manitoba was right along 75, as was my first Winnipeg apartment, although it was called Pembina Highway north of the border. It was called the Palm to Pine Highway, as I think it started in Texas.

On April 15, Highway 75 through the center of Luverne will be closed for several months for resurfacing and new sewer pipes. This is described as progress. They culled 100 year old trees for the project. The MN road department has assured residents that homes and businesses along the route will not be hemmed in. We shall see. It will be huge problem for the marching band festival in September. Much of the diverted traffic will go on the Blue Mound Avenue, just off our street. I know this needs to be done, but what a huge pain to live through.

Any annoying road conconstruction by you this summer? What are your most sentimental highways?