We had a lovely visit on Monday from my cousin, Wes. He lives in Columbus, OH, and is a retired librarian at Ohio State. He was a librarian at Macalester for several years, and then moved to to the big time in Ohio. ( I always think of him when Wesew comments on the blog).
Wes was on a return trip from Seattle and stopped by before heading to Minnesota to see other family there. We had a great time reminiscing and telling stories. We share similar political and social beliefs. I hadn’t seen him for six years. Growing up as an only child, my cousins were like my brothers. I spent a lot of time with them. I had very few female cousins and I wasn’t very close to them. I think perhaps that is why I have always been more comfortable around men than I am around women.
We have had very few visits from any family except my parents since we moved here 33 years ago. This visit was a real treat. I wish that more of our immediate and extended family had the sense that a visit to other family is more important than the appeal of the area in which they live. I suppose that our family could just consider us real pills, and that is why they don’t visit, but I they seem to like it when we visit them, so I don’t think we are that putting off.
What family visits have you dreaded or enjoyed over the years? Who are your favorite cousins? Who are your favorite relatives?
On Sunday, the last long-haul day for my Ukrainian egg production, I binge-watched Peter Gunn with Craig Stevens. When you binge-watch a series, you get to know the theme music pretty well and I looked up at one point as the credits were rolling to see that Henry Mancini wrote the theme music.
I don’t know much about Henry Mancini except that he wrote the music for Breakfast at Tiffany’s including Moon River. So being me, I took a break from eggs and googled him. I was surprised to find that he was the composer for a lot of shows that I know: Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Pink Panther movies, Charades and Hatari. I remember doing a skit in elementary school using the music Baby Elephant Walk but I had never known it was by Henry Mancini.
All this new knowledge made me think about other very recognizable theme music: Ghostbusters, Hawaii Five-O, Green Acres (for better or worse), Lara’s Theme (from Doctor Zhivago) and you know me – Perry Mason. I could probably keep this list going for quite some time.
Steve’s lost skillet put in mind the losing and finding of things. Husband and I often wonder where our cat has got to inside the house. She never goes outside, and we are always careful about not leaving the doors open, but we both have this irrational fear of her being lost outside when she isn’t immediately visible. All I have to do to get her to come is to roll up a piece of paper into a ball. The minute she hears that crinkle of paper, no matter where she is, she comes running, expecting me to toss it for an exciting game of fetch and chase.
I don’t remember much of this, but when I was about four, I left my security blanket draped on a post on the side of the road on Minnesota’s North Shore. I must have been ready to give it up, as I reportedly shrugged off its loss. Prior to this, my mother could only wash it when I was asleep, because I wouldn’t be parted with it.
These days, the things we lose are most often things that are right in front of us as we look for them. We also have so many accumulated recipes compiled in cook books and ring binders that it is hard to find the exact ones we want at times.
What is your strategy for finding lost objects? What have you lost lately?Did you find it?
Well not exactly day one. But the first day in the field doing spring work so it’s day one from that point of view.
Spent the morning doing my usual stuff on the computer: emails, newspaper, moms banking, our banking. A few phone calls, etc. before I’m finally out the door mid-morning.
I needed to take a couple of tires to get fixed and the one on the grain drill I already had loose. Also had a tire on the four wheeler with a slow leak and that’s easy to put a floor jack under the back end and use the impact wrench and four nuts and that comes right off.
Got both tires in the back of the truck, loaded up all three dogs, and headed for Millville Minnesota. We’ve been taking tires to Appel service in Millville for as long as I can remember. It’s about half an hour away and you won’t find a nicer, family owned business, anywhere. Millville is a town of about 180 people and so far down in the valley you can’t get any cell phone reception. There are a couple of bars, couple of restaurants, one Church, a cemetery where I have several relatives, a gun shop, and in a better year I would’ve dropped off the tires and then gone to get lunch at the Lucky Seven Café.
When I got to Appels, most of the crew was at lunch so I said I’d come back. They are really good at fixing your tires while you wait but I may as well keep moving. Back up the road a few miles to pick up my Oat seed. It was such a nice day, pretty amazing weather for this time of the year, and we worry that it’s so dry; all the farmers are going hard. mostly applying anhydrous ammonia- Those white tanks you see in the fields. I probably saw a dozen farmers doing that. There was a couple guys ahead of me at Meyer’s Seeds and we stood outside and talked while Meyer’s rounded up seed and bring it out on the forklift. I petted some cats (The camera snap on the phone scared them away) and I got a nice metal ‘stick’ used for checking seed depth. Always wanted one of those.
After I got my 54 bags of oats, I strapped that down in the truck, and then back to Millville. As I pulled up, they were just taking the four-wheeler tire in and the drill tire was done. There’s something pretty interesting about watching a guy change tires. The machinery involved and just the whole process is really pretty fascinating. The guy ahead of me was watching his tires get fixed, I watched them fix my tire, while at the same time trying not to get in the way or look TOO interested. (It’s kinda loud and hard to talk or ask questions).
Just a tube needed in the four-wheeler tire. The grain drill tire is kind of special. It’s about 3 feet tall, and completely smooth except it has two heavy ridges on each edge. That way, going through the field, it makes a real clear mark that’s easy to follow on the next round of the field. I had ordered two tires: they had one in stock, the second hasn’t shown up yet. And that’s OK, this one was worse than the other. $262 for the tire. $13 labor to mount both. The only thing missing was the bottle of grape pop from the café.
The dogs love riding in the truck. And they don’t miss a chance if they can help it. Although Humphrey lays in the back and looks completely uninterested but he does spend a little time looking out the windows. Bailey bounces back-and-forth between the front seat and the backseat and she spends half the trip with her nose in my face. Allie, the queen of them all will eventually setting in some place where the others don’t walk all over her at least for the moment.
Once we are back on our driveway, I let them all out to run home. About halfway down the driveway there was a squirrel about 75 yards away from the trees and making a beeline back to the trees. The dogs were a good 200 yards away. Missed it by “that“ much.
Our 5 year old gardening buddy has a birthday next week, and asked his parents for a Gunsmoke themed party. He likes dressing up like a cowboy, and I assume his parents let him watch Gunsmoke reruns. His parents agreed, and his dad found a bunch of wooden pallets he is transforming into a boardwalk. There is a large sign the says Long Branch Saloon. I can hardly wait to see if anyone dresses up like Miss Kitty.
Our daughter also has a birthday in a couple of weeks. She always has anxiety over birthdays, I think stemming from anticipation over childhood parties. We never went so far as to recreate a film set, but she had some nice parties. She stated she has a number of birthday events scheduled by friends in the next two weeks. She is celebrating personally by having a different kind of hot dog a day for her birthday week. We never knew she even liked hot dogs.
My childhood parties were pretty tame, but I will never forget my heartbreak on my 8th birthday when my parents told me that we were moving to a new house in a different part of town, meaning I wouldn’t be next door to my best friend anymore.
What are some of your more memorable birthday parties? What events or celebrations do you dread? What would you wear to a Gunsmoke themed party? Plan your next birthday bash.
YA and I went to Easter dinner at a neighbor/friend’s home. Everybody had their Fauci ouchie and three of the other 4 folks could be said to be “in our bubble”. The fourth person was a close friend of the friend/neighbor. I liked her right away and was interested in the mosaic art that she does.
The topic of my Ukrainian eggs came up and she asked a lot of questions about how they are made. At one point she said “oh, that would be a fun thing to learn to do”. So I offered to teach her; she was so excited I thought she might fall off her chair. She asked if I could teach her twin sister as well – they apparently like to do these kinds of things together. In for a penny, in for a pound – I agreed.
Since I’m actually putting the egg table up this weekend to start my Solstice eggs (yea, I know, just a tad early), I thought this would be a good time for lessons. Instead of a traditionally colored pysanky (white, yellow, green, red, black) I’m going to design a beginner egg that will have various shades of blue. The reason is simple. My Solstice egg this year will be using the blues and I don’t want to mix a bunch of different non-blue colors just for this lesson. The process is exactly the same so I won’t be short-changing them.
I’ve taught Ukrainian eggs before – to two different friends and to YA when she was little – all of these lessons were a long time ago. Even though I’ve taught before, I find myself a little more nervous about this time. Maybe because I will teaching two at a time? Maybe because I know she is an artist herself? I expect my jitters will fade away quickly once we get going. At least I hope so… jitters and hot wax on eggs don’t go together well!
Have you ever taught anything? What do you think you’d be good at teaching?
Husband really likes vegetables. He also really likes olives and preserved /pickled peppers and tomatoes. For some reason last weekend, he decided he was going to make an olive salad, and proceeded to buy six kinds of olives. He ran short of the olives with smoked paprika, which is why I was running around in the big wind on Monday to score a jar for him while he was at his private practice. The header photo is the olive mélange he concocted.
I like vegetables well enough, and probably eat more because I have been married to Husband all these years. I don’t crave vegetables. He really does, and says he feels ill when he doesn’t eat enough of them. I would probably feel the same way if I couldn’t have cheese and dairy products. I could live the rest of my life and never eat another pickle or olive.
Husband considers olives a free food for him as a diabetic. He also loves green salads, which I could take or leave. I just hope he can eat that huge container of olives. They are taking up a lot of room in the fridge and not leaving much room for my skyr!
What is your favorite kind of salad or vegetable? What do you tend to buy too much of when you go grocery shopping?
I have very few bad dreams. Or at least not that I remember once I’m awake. But I had a doozy last week, the kind that leaves you wanting to stay awake so that you don’t fall back into it. I made a trip to the bathroom, splashed my face, had a glass of water and when I got back into bed, I dreamt, but not the same nightmare scenario that had woken me.
I was starting a new job in a big business building downtown. My new boss owned the whole floor, although his actual business only took up five or six rooms. I don’t recall if I knew in the dream what I was supposed to be doing. The rooms of the business were messy and it seemed clear that there wasn’t an actual office (or even desk) for me. I had been given no direction about where I was to settle. I was pretty well-dressed in the dream, although my dream self was a little worried that I didn’t have many nice work clothes.
Of course, in part of the dream, I wandered out into a hallway and had trouble finding my way back. My boss was in and out, fairly frenetic, again giving me no clue what I was supposed to be doing. I worried about how I would get downtown every day. I wondered if I should take matters into my own hands and order a desk. Oh, did I mention that my new boss was Barack Obama?
I’ve probably said here before that I view dreams as a recycling of the day to day detritus in my subconscious. Usually I can track bits of my dreams back to a waking trigger, but I’ll admit this one has my stumped.
Any dream interpretations for me? Any good dreams you’ve had lately?
Yesterday Guinevere and I turned right at the bottom of the driveway instead of our normal “to the left” on our walk. I got a really good look at my boulevard and was so surprised to see not just the daffodils starting to sprout up, but also the tulips, lilies and even a teen tiny peony tip. And, of course, even a few creeping charlies. Even though a few baboons have already mentioned that they’ve seen things popping up, it still surprised me to see so much this early.
At least it still feels early to me; I can’t even keep track of the times I’ve had to cover up my plants in my straw bales after Mother’s Day due to a frost warning. However seeing everything popping up makes me want to get out there and clear out last year’s leavings, despite knowing that it might not be safe yet.
I’m normally very good at delaying gratification. I always eat the cake first and leave the icing for the end. I have no trouble saving gifts until it’s the right time to open them. Most of the time I’ll pick the ickiest chore to do first and save the things I like better for later. But now I am itching to get out there with my grubby jeans and gardening gloves, to starting cleaning up and making way for spring. I’m not sure how to keep myself inside this weekend.
Now that we’ve had some nicer weather, I’ve been farther afield with Guinevere. On the way home from the library yesterday, I passed a display that I had seen several times last year. The homeowners have two big planters out on their little boulevard, one on each side of a tree. There are plastic eggs, pretty sticks and butterflies. The fun part of seeing this again is that the owners have clearly freshened it up. Instead of dirty and faded as you would expect after the winter, the eggs are new and bright and the butterflies are all intact and fluttering in the wind.
This is not a display that can be easily seen from the house; the homeowners must have decided at some point to make sure the planters are cheerful and welcoming for folks who are walking by. I feel like it’s a gift to me and other pedestrians. This is important to me; in today’s environment that seems so overwhelmed by hate and nastiness, I am really trying to pay attention and acknowledge when people are intentionally kind (well, unintentionally too I guess). I’m thinking about leaving a thank you card in their mailbox.
We talked a out Little Free Libraries last week – books, produce, treasures, even sticks. I hope that everybody is seeing other acts of kindness as they go about their business and that it inspires us all to try to step up to kindness when it’s needed.
Any other kind/nice stuff that you’ve seen lately?
Trail Baboon 