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books, Family, Gatherings, home, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized, Words

Serial Bliss

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Today’s post comes to us from Minnesota Steve.

There aren’t many things better than discovering a great book, a book so good you hate to turn the last pages because you never want it to end. One thing that is better is discovering that the great book you just finished is one in a series written by the same author. The pleasure you are feeling is repeatable.

One afternoon when I was about ten I discovered a book of stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in the Ames Public Library. The first of them, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” introduced me to the complicated figure of Sherlock Holmes and to the thrill of reading mysteries. When I understood there were more Holmes stories, I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

There is a lot to like about book series. You can start subsequent books in the series knowing you like that author’s style. You often go into subsequent books already knowing some of the characters and the setting. Series offer writers the chance to develop themes in depth and do a better job of telling stories. When I begin a book by a new author I don’t know if I will eventually feel the time I spent with the book will be rewarded. When you are chewing your way through a good series, that isn’t an issue.

I’ve just begun exploring a new series. Following exhortations from my daughter, I just read the first novel in Louise Penny’s beloved Three Pines series. Penny’s crime novels feature charming Canadian locales and the comforting presence of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Louise Penny has a warm and whimsical view of life and people. While her novels are driven by the need to explain a murder, the people who fill her books are human and mostly likable. Penny’s vision is deeply rooted in community. My daughter enjoys Penny’s humor. I was surprised to find so many “Easter eggs” in the form of unexpected observations about life and people. The series currently includes 15 books. Penny adds about a book a year. When my daughter met Louise Penny last year at a Detroit book signing event, she was not surprised to find Penny is modest, witty and gracious . . . just the sort of person who would write such appealing novels.

I’ll have more to say about good book series in the Comments section.

What book series have you enjoyed? What did you like about them?

Family, Food, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

The Chestnut Tree

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Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

The horse chestnuts are falling.

The walnuts are falling too and they make more noise when they fall. And boy, if they hit the deck it’s a good “Thud”. But hit the metal deck table? Wow, that’ll wake you up. “KABANG”! We have 4 nice big walnut trees that shade the deck. But they sure make a mess.

But it’s the horse chestnuts that I’m attracted too.

This is the one chestnut tree we have at home.

I planted it from a seed. Mom says she’s surprised it ever grew at all because I was digging it up every day to see if it had sprouted yet.

I would collect the nuts on Sundays along the sidewalk on the way from church. There were several chestnut trees next to the parking lot we used and in the fall I’d be lucky to find some left from the kids at the earlier services.

They’re just so appealing with their large size and smooth shell and the nice brown color. And they’re fairly easy to get out of the husk. Walnuts are messy and stain your fingers and they’re just dark brown and yucky. Acorns are kinda cool, but they’re small and sometimes hard to get out of the husk. But horse chestnuts. I get warm fuzzies just thinking about them.

Here’s part of what I collected. There doesn’t seem to be very many this year. Yet another victim of our cool, wet spring?

Here’s chestnunts in their natural habitat.

And the empy husk, which was almost as appealing as the nut itself.

I had the big yellow Tonka dump truck and I’d fill it with acorns I picked up while playing in the street. Yeah, Mom and dad told me to go play in the street. Not exactly; the oak trees are along our driveway so that’s where I had to go to collect acorns. I was probably about 9 or 10 years old.

I remember when I was about 4 or 5, mom and dad had just built the new house. There was a tree stump in the backyard that I played on. And it seems like there was an upended stump; all roots sticking out, I could climb up in there and find a place to sit in among the roots. That was fun.

I’ve lived here 55 years. A lot of trees have come and gone.

TALK ABOUT A TREE.

Family, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

Four & Twenty Blackbirds

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Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

The blackbirds have arrived. Or maybe they’ve just arrived en-mass. Kelly does not like them. She will go out at 6 a.m., slapping two boards together to scare them off. To me it looks like an exercise in futility. She’s thinking if she scares them off soon enough and often enough they’ll stay away. And I’m not sure – I can’t prove it *won’t* work. But I don’t think it is working.

It’s morning, she’s just driven off to work and the trees are already filled with cackling blackbirds. I’m sure it upset her no end; she knows they are mocking her now. But I admire her determination. The barn swallows have moved on so that’s depressing as well. Tonight when she gets home, she’ll be out there cracking those boards together.

We’ve even tried firing shotguns at them. Yep, they all fly away, but then they’re right back. Like turkey or deer. Or raccoons. Or a bad fungus.

The city of Rochester has also been fighting crows roosting in trees in the downtown area. So at least we’re not fighting the messy droppings of the blackbirds, just the noise.

“What wakes you up in the morning?”

Art, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Tedium Terminator

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Caregiving is many things but one of the side effects that you don’t usually hear about is the tedium. Maybe others don’t experience this but I can only run up and down the steps to fetch food and ice so many times a day before it starts to get tedious.  Stress baking and cooking didn’t help much either this weekend.  I’m even looking forward to going to the office.  Yikes!

So I was thrilled when I heard from a girlfriend that her newest grandbaby came a week early and is healthy and at home already. Thrilled for two reasons: a healthy new grandbaby is always thrilling AND I now have a project to work on.

I’m making baby blocks and I have to know the baby’s name before I get started since the number of blocks and paper squares depends on the number of letters in the baby name. Once I got going on the blocks I remembered that  I needed to make a couple of thank you notes for YA as well.  I spent a couple of relaxing hours in my studio and now I feel better.  Guess I need to come up with some projects to work on the next couple of weeks!

Do you have any go-to tedium terminators?

Business, Family, holidays, home, Kids, Medicine, Uncategorized

Binder Heaven

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Binders are my thing. Give me a good binder with tabs any day.  I have a binder for my other book club, for poetry that I’ve printed off the internet, for directions, for recipes and for Solstice planning.  Vacations and special events like the solar eclipse also get binders.  I made a binder for YA’s college search and another one for college financial aid.  Luckily at work, I need a binder for each program and I also have a binder for assorted things I need to keep track of.

YA’s injury has generated massive amounts of paper: emergency room paper, orthopedic paper, worker’s comp paper and insurance paper. Every time we leave the house for an appointment, I get handed the folder.  I joked on Tuesday that I was going to put it all in a binder; YA snorted.

So I was surprised yesterday morning when she said “can you put all these papers in a binder?” I didn’t know how serious she was and although I agreed, I didn’t have the project on my immediate radar.  She asked again at 5 p.m. and then 8:30.  At that point I grabbed an unused binder (yes, I have a stash) and some tabs (yes, I have a stash) and we worked on it together.  She sorted out all the papers, I labeled the tabs and 3-hole punched everything.  As she wheeled herself back to her room with the completed binder, I felt a warm glow.  Two binder gals together!

How do you like to organize your papers?  Do you think our society will EVER be paperless?

education, Family, home, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Violin Debacle

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The discussion of bands and band instruments the other day reminded me of something that I haven’t thought about in quite a while.

When Child was in the third grade, she came home with a permission slip and information on joining orchestra at school. I was a little skeptical.  When she was five, she wanted to take piano lessons but after 2 months, her piano teacher fired her.  She didn’t want to practice and then at the last lesson apparently she was rude to him (I was in the kitchen when this happened, so didn’t witness it).  She hadn’t made any other overtures toward an instrument, or even music in general, so I was surprised when she informed me she wanted to play the violin.

I always wanted to let her try things, so I read through the papers and signed her up. Luckily the school had a violin she could use for free and the next day she carried it proudly home.  Then for the next week she proceeded to torture the poor thing horrendously.  I can’t even begin to describe it but whatever you’re imagining right now, amp it up.  The dog and cat hightailed it as far away as they could get from her.  I wanted to jump off a cliff, but since that’s not very encouraging to a kid, I pasted a smile on my face and ate a lot of chocolate.  At one point I thought, is it really that hard to make a decent noise on a violin, so while she was at gymnastics, I tried it.  I certainly wasn’t going to win any awards, but I could at least pull the bow across the strings to make a sound somewhat reminiscent of music. So there it was; Child had no violin ability.  Still I let her scratch on because I figured I’d let the music teacher do whatever dirty work was needed.

By the end of the second week, she was practicing much less. While this made all the ears in the household happier, I knew it meant she was losing interest.  The third week she didn’t practice at all, despite my reminders.  There was a practice book in which she was supposed to record how much time she spent playing; I told her that if she wasn’t going to practice she had to be honest and put down “0” or it wouldn’t be fair to Mr. Brown, the music teacher.  So she marked all the days with a “0” and off she went to school.  When she came home that afternoon and she still had the violin, I was a little surprised but not nearly as surprised as when I looked at her practice book and where there had been “0”s that morning, there were now numbers on every day.  10 minutes, 20 minutes, one even said 30 minutes.  She had erased the “0”s when she got to school and written in her false data.

While I appreciated her ingenuity, I couldn’t let this go, so I made an appointment with Mr. Brown, took her with me and had her tell him what she had done and then apologize. He was AMAZING.  He was very kind and understanding.  He asked her if she really wanted to continue and when she said “yes” (I just about fell on the floor), he suggested they give it another week.  Of course she didn’t even pick up the violin the next week so we went in again and met with Mr. Brown to give him the violin back.  She never looked back.

Is there something that you just don’t a talent for?

Family, Food, Health, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Caregiver Update

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The orthopedic office was busy but inside the treatment room, it was pretty quiet. “In 99% of these kinds of breaks, we put on a cast and they heal up on their own.”  I was momentarily elated.  Then he turned to YA and said “Unfortunately, you are in the 1%.”  Surgery is scheduled for Tuesday.

She is in better shape than a week ago, but both ankles are still quite swollen, sore and hideously discolored, so for the most part she is hanging out on her bed, using my studio chair to roll herself down the hall to the bathroom and back. For the two doctor appointments this week, she literally had to scoot down the stairs on her backside and then use the crutches to get to the car.  This takes quite a while.

Even if she gets downstairs, she’s not stable enough on the crutches to do anything, so all meals are being prepared by me. I’m doing all dog and cat duty as well as YA’s other chores (vacuuming, garbage/recycling, poop patrol in the yard, mopping) as well as her laundry and, it goes without saying at our house, her dishes.  In addition, because her dog (Guinevere) has a teeny tiny bladder, I’ve been going home over lunch every day to let the dogs out.  I’m also the go-to for discussions of workers’ comp, insurance, appointments, etc. None of this is physically taxing work but I’m tired anyway.  When the alarm went off this morning, only the knowledge that my alarm clock is a fancy-dancy expensive thing kept me from sweeping it off the nightstand!

My kudos and admiration to everyone who has ever had an extended period of care-giving. Real heroes in my book.

Have you ever had to be a care-giver? Been the care-give?

Art, Family, home, Kids, Media, Music, News, Uncategorized

Gender Bender

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I have followed with some dismay the recent criticism of poor little Prince George for taking ballet lessons, and was glad to see the support of his dancing by other media figures and dancers.  Our son studied ballet for 12 years. It helped with some of his motor coordination problems from his prematurity. He channeled it into a study of the martial arts in college, and now he can break a board on his head!  He still retains some dance moves, and it is amusing to see all 6’5″, 250 lbs. of him doing a pas de chat (dance of the cat) down the sidewalk.

I did not encounter much gender bias growing up. My parents encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. I remember being outraged at about age 5 when I was told I couldn’t run around outside without a  shirt, though. Most of my cousins were boys, so I played lots of sports with them and tagged along with them as they did their boy activities like building model cars and tree houses, stockpiling fire crackers, making homemade cannons, and setting pocket gopher traps.

I remember that boys with non-traditional interests had a harder time of it.  I remember the discomfort people back home had when a boy became the first male cheerleader at my high school.  It looks like, given poor Prince George,  that things haven’t changed much. I hope he keeps dancing. Maybe he will do a pas de chat through Westminister Abbey at his coronation.

What gender bias did you encounter or witness growing up?

Family, Food, gardening, Gatherings, holidays, home, Uncategorized

What Are Your Plans For The Weekend?

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I think everyone I encountered yesterday asked me what my plans were for Labor Day weekend. This weekend is typically a time when Husband and I work our tails off in the garden and at home preserving produce and cleaning. I will make pesto, and I may have a few tomatoes to deal with, but I haven’t any other plans. I could spend a lot of time cleaning, but I don’t think I have it in me.

Husband suggested we go to the Dunn County Fair in Killdeer, a town about 40 miles north of us. It would be fun to see the 4-H exhibits, but the husband and wife calling contests don’t hold much interest for me.  You Baboons able to attend the Minnesota State Fair are sure lucky! I have made it clear to Husband that we will not frenetically bake or cook this weekend.  We need to eat out of the freezers, and that is that!

What are your plans for the weekend? Any memorable Labor Day weekends in your past?

Family, Food, home, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

Kitchen Captives

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Two weeks ago,  Husband ordered some sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. Until this point he had been a haphazard, sourdough self starter, making a starter and then discarding it when he felt like it. This time, he bought a deceptively small container with about a tablespoon of starter in it. It has held us captive ever since it arrived.

Husband followed the instructions for starter care religiously. This meant refreshing the starter ever 6-8 hours the first couple of days. This involved taking  4 ounces of  the growing  starter to which you add 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water. You discard any starter beyond the 4 ounces, saving the discard for pancakes and waffles, or whatever else you want.  There are only so many sourdough waffles, pancakes, and biscuits a person can consume every day.

Last weekend we made 10 loaves of a variety of breads. Our freezers are full. I feel trapped in my kitchen by this demanding starter. It reminds me of the man eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors.  It is like having a new pet in the house. Husband says he will freeze the starter soon to bring peace and serenity to our home.

What responsibility have you taken on that you have come to regret?