It is so cold here this week, and there are so many disasters galore regarding my husband’s frozen-up pick up on the rez, that it has been a real relief to receive garden seeds in the mail. We will start tomatoes and peppers in the next week or so.
What are your garden dreams? What are your hopes for the next year?
You saw what happened to my studio a couple of weeks ago. I got advice from a construction buddy of mine about how to re-hang the shelves so they would be sturdy, to hopefully avoid ever having them fall down again. As you can see from the above photo, everything is back in order, but it’s a good thing I like the folks at my local hardware store. It was an epic number of times stopping by before I was done.
I’ve never had a 6-trips-to-the-hardware-store project before. I’ve had lots of 2-trippers and a few 3-trippers, but never more than that. The worst part of this 6-trip debacle is that each and every step was a different day; I was working on this at night and every time I realized I needed to go back to the hardware store, they were closed for the night!
If you’ve seen photos of my studio before, it probably doesn’t look any different to you but it feels different to me – all put back together as well as nice and clean now. And I doubt anything will bring those shelves down again – fingers crossed!
When have you had a frustrating project?
Today’s post is by Steve Grooms
The title of this article is a joke. Marie Kondo is tiny, actually. Her height, according to the national press, is five inches short of five feet. And yet she is unquestionably a big deal in the culture. Kondo has become famous and influential by teaching folks how to reduce clutter in their homes. She wrote four books that have been translated into eight languages. She has produced a series of videos on the art of tidying up one’s home. A series of her videos has been airing on Netflix under the title of “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.” A newspaper article yesterday said Twin Cities resale shops are stuffed with bargains now because Kondo has encouraged so many people to offload unwanted stuff.
The title she prefers is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Note how that differs from the simple idea that most people have way too much stuff. Kondo wants to change lives, not just tidy up messes, and she hopes to use “magic” to accomplish that. Working from her background in Japan’s Shinto religion, Kondo finds magic in inanimate objects. Before she helps a client declutter a home Kondo kneels reverently in an effort to introduce herself to the home. She asks clients to touch each object they own and keep it only if it “sparks joy” in their lives.
Kondo has a fairly rigid process for tidying up a home. It starts with clients making a pile of every single article of clothing they own. The piles are usually massive. Then she asks clients to attack that pile, chucking out every item that fails to spark joy. The process moves along deliberately, taking several weeks to play out, concluding with an emotionally wrenching effort to jettison sentimental objects.
A few observers have criticized Kondo. Oddly enough, a woman who has written four books doesn’t seem to revere them. She has said nobody needs to keep more than 30 books. Kondo thinks a book one hasn’t read in three years is ripe for dumping, and she sees no value in keeping a book one has already read. My daughter, the person who urged me to get to know Kondo, vehemently disagrees on the topic of books!
Kondo could come off as a nag were it not for her sweet personality and spiritualism. Her approach to life and the stuff people accumulate keep attracting converts. I believe most people in our culture are troubled about how much stuff we own. Many of us would like ourselves better if we could dump a lot of that stuff and live in an uncluttered environment.
Do you currently suffer from having too much stuff? What sparks joy in your life?
Husband moved yesterday on the reservation from one quarter of a double wide trailer to half of a double wide trailer right next to his work. The old trailer, where he has lived for four years, was across from the casino and right next to a gravel pit, so it was pretty dusty. The fridge didn’t work, and he kept his food cold in a camping cooler. It was sort of like a studio apartment with a bathroom. Now he has a bedroom and a bathroom and a kitchen. The fridge works. He has a dishwasher and a washer/dryer.
The trailer set up is thus: two double wide trailers are attached to one another end on end, one intended as a sober house for men, and one for women. There was never enough staff to make the sober houses functional. They connect in the middle in a laundry and furnace room. Husband and I were moving things into the laundry room when we realized that the door had closed and we were locked in. We had no key . There was no one nearby to hear us call for help. We were possibly locked in the room forever. Neither of us had a phone. Luckily, there was a kitchen knife above the washing machine, and I pried the lock open. It was a very frightening two minutes.
Tell about some of your moving adventures.
Once a month, after I volunteer at Loaves & Fishes, I drive east on 98th Street on my way back to 35W to get home. Imagine my excitement to see that the Denny’s there has been sold and will be a new Snuffy’s coming spring. While the Edina Snuffy’s isn’t actually that far from me, it’s not convenient to get to so I don’t think about it often.
But a Snuffy’s where I have to drive right by it? I’m thinking I’ll be having Snuffy’s take-out once a month from now on. Veggie Burger, fries and a malt – either Oreo or Brownie or the Dreamsicle. I’m drooling just thinking about it.
Do you have a favorite take-out place or meal?
I had a nightmare last night. Don’t need to go into it but it combined two things I’m not crazy about and I even know what I’ve seen/thought recently that most likely triggered it. However at 3:25 in the morning, you just want to go back to sleep. I turned on the TV and pulled up Laura with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. I know the first 10 minutes by heart because that’s about how long it takes me to fall back to sleep with it playing. I didn’t make it 10 minutes in this time.
How to you deal with bad dreams?
Today’s post comes to us from Port Huron Steve.
The debut broadcast of CBS Sunday Morning aired January 28, 1979. Because I was a fan of the host, Charles Kuralt, I made a point of watching that first show. I’ve seen many of the broadcasts that have aired in the 40 years since. While my life is mostly unstructured and variable, I try to catch that show. It pleases me to have something in the week that is fixed and predictable. Watching it has become a ritual for me.
Most of us have rituals. They can be annual (like how we celebrate Christmas) or monthly, weekly, daily or something altogether different. If I can believe his songs, a ritual for folksinger Greg Brown is drinking coffee in the morning. My parents couldn’t go to sleep until they had told each other, “I’ll see you in the morning.” Some people meditate. Many folks couldn’t feel right about a week that does not include going to church.
For several decades our family had just one ritual. On Saturday nights we gathered to enjoy the Prairie Home Companion broadcast. We were heartbroken when Garrison quit—was it two times or three?—and thrilled when he came back. I used to walk dogs with a woman who was close to Garrison. She assured me that he needed to do the show as badly as I needed to hear it.
In 2000 I acquired a puppy, an exceptionally affectionate English setter. Katie and I both needed exercise, so we adopted the daily ritual of hiking the off-leash dog park that lies between Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling. We had many friends there, human and canine. Our route took about an hour to walk. I used my time in the park to reflect on my life. I couldn’t afford a therapist with an office and a couch, so I relied on the park walks to help me sort out my past and make plans for the future. Katie and I walked that park virtually every day of her life for eleven years.
Like many fans of Trail Baboon, listening to The Morning Show was once an essential ritual for me. I remember thinking I couldn’t bear starting the day without the help of Dale and Tom. Even so, I always knew that someday the show—wonderful as it was—would come to an end. Shows do not live forever, although The Simpsons carries on as ever. The LGMS remains one ritual I’ve never been able to replace.
What role does ritual have in your life?
Many of you know I have a complicated relationship with mystery writing. If I figure out the murderer too soon then I’m impatient with the other characters for not getting to it earlier. If the author doesn’t give me all the clues so I can’t figure it out on my own, then I’m irritated beyond belief. So it was interesting to me that I got hooked on a British series called Death in Paradise on Netflix a couple of weeks ago.
I realized after watching a few nights worth of episodes that the writers of the show rely very heavily on the locked-door mystery – in which the murder happens in a room or building locked from the inside. Locked-room mysteries almost always fall into the category of “author not giving you all the clues” so they are not my favorite. But this week I have my own locked-room mystery.
On Tuesday night, I went into my studio with a box, which I put on my desk. Left after 5 seconds and shut the door behind me. Thursday morning, YA texted me “what happened in your studio?” She then texted that it looked like one of my shelves had fallen down. When I asked her to send me a photo, I got the above. Yikes.
When I got home and saw the destruction in person it was clear that a lot more than a shelf falling down had happened in that room. Clearly one shelf, with the attached ribbon rod had come down and everything on it, but quite a bit of the items on the stable shelf had come down as well: assorted mountains of paper, the box of orange ribbons, a large bin VERY full of individual beads, envelopes, paints, you name it.
But the mystery is how this happened. Normally when Nimue gets locked into a room, you remember letting her out because you’ve been looking for her. She doesn’t usually meow or make a noise to alert you, you just have to search. She hasn’t been missing this week; neither YA nor I recall opening doors to look for her. If we had been home, the noise of the shelf coming down would have been noticeable. It certainly seems like her kind of mess… maybe she jumped up on the one shelf and as it went down, she scrabbled onto the other shelf in a panic, knocking things down willy-nilly. I thought maybe a squirrel loose in the room, but how would the squirrel have gotten in and then out? Someone breaking into my house to mess up my studio doesn’t seem likely. YA sleepwalking? There’s no place for anyone to stand while making a mess like this and the mess is all things that fell, nothing else. And since the studio is right across from my bedroom, I’m pretty sure that would have woken the dogs and me.
Like those mysteries in which the authors don’t give you all the clues, this one may be a mystery until the end of time!
What projects do YOU have scheduled this weekend?
YA loves cheese more than almost anyone I know. When we came home from China, I was prepared for the possibility that she would be lactose-intolerant; Asians have a higher percentage of lactose-intolerance than Caucasians. I never needed to worry about it; as soon as YA began to eat solid foods, cheese was one of her favorites.
Cheese sandwiches, cheese fondue (her godmother makes a wicked fondue), cheese sticks, lasagna, curds, nachos.. if it has cheese, count her in. After I experienced raclette (melted cheese poured on top of food) in Switzerland, I got a raclette machine for us. Pretty soon YA had an opinion on the difference between Swiss raclette cheese and French raclette cheese (she prefer the Swiss as it has more “bite”).
Every year for our Family Day celebration, she chooses a fondue lunch at the Melting Pot in downtown Minneapolis. She likes the original Swiss fondue recipe followed by a dessert fondue. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when she requested a raclette lunch for her birthday celebration – despite the fact that we almost never eat any meals together these days due to our conflicting schedules.
We had a nice salad of greens, pomegranate seeds, pears, walnuts and vinaigrette then the raclette! We like our melty cheese poured over cauliflower, little potatoes, baguette and also sweet gherkin pickles. It was a wonderful lunch and I was happy to stay inside rather than go outside in the freezing temps.
Do you/did you have a favorite birthday meal request?
Rhiannon got brushed and clipped this week for a visit to my office. Several years ago my company began to observe “Take Your Dog to Work Day” in June. Well-behaved dogs are invited to the office and we have “Yappy Hour” on the front lawn. Since then the program has expanded. Throughout the summer, every Friday is dog-friendly and then there are random pop up days announced; today is one of those days.
Bringing both dogs is just too much for me (and my small cube) and YA’s dog isn’t as user-friendly as my old pup, so it will only be Rhiannon today. Her cushion will come to the office as well as a water bowl and a Tupperware of treats. It’s pretty exhausting for her, so she’ll only stay half a day and I’ll take her home at lunch time. Even though it’s tiring, she seems to really enjoy it, especially the ride in the car!
You’re the boss. Budget isn’t an issue. What perk would you like to offer your employees?
Trail Baboon 