Sometimes I think maybe I should have gone back to school to get a PhD in family manipulation. I got my Masters training from the master – my mother. Even when I could feel her working her magic on me, I succumbed time and time again.
The inheritance of this talent is a two-edged sword. It certainly works wonders sometimes but then I occasionally feel guilty. I should probably feel badly that I don’t feel THAT guilty. Some things are a slam dunk… if I ask YA to clean in the bathroom directly, she might or might not. But if I leave a wet wash cloth on the edge of the tub or some hair from my brush on the counter – voila! Bathroom cleaned in no time. In the dining room (where she works from home on Mondays and Fridays), if I spread all her stuff (bills, junk mail, computer mouse, keys, etc) all over the table, then she cleans it up lickety split. If I just organize it into a pile myself, the pile will sit there forever. I never ask her to come help me with yardwork but if I ask for one thing – like moving a bag of mulch from the back to the front, she almost always stays to work. My latest discovery is that if I just rinse out the kitty fountain and mention that I’ve done it, she will take the fountain apart and do an extremely thorough cleaning. The funniest thing about all this is that if you saw her room or the sink after she’s been working in the kitchen, you couldn’t imagine she would have any cleanliness streaks in her.
We had two weeks between my mom’s passing and when we went down to St. Louis to clean the condo and have her service. During that time, YA had two trips, one long work trip to Cancun and another for-fun trip to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms. She had planned it a couple of months back and was scheduled to get home on Sunday night and we were leaving very early on Monday morning for St. Louis.
A few days before she left for Washington DC, she told me that I should get the car washed and vacuumed before our trip. Luckily I was on my game at that moment so I said “well, I’ll try but I have a lot to do for the service and getting ready for the trip.” Three hours later, I looked out the back window and found her vacuuming my car – see the header photo. Heaven forbid she should have to travel to Missouri and back in what she considers to be a health hazard. (Brekke is NOT a health hazard unless you compare her to YA’s car, which is clean enough that you could eat off the seats!) After she was done, I volunteered to run the car through the little car wash down on 54th while she was in DC.
Win/win, right? What chores do you prefer to outsource?
Things really have been going well so far. Last Saturday we closed the spring college show, the last show for the director, Jerry. He’s retiring at the end of the academic year. He and I have worked together at the college for 25 years, (I was free-lance the first few years) and have known each other longer than that.
Notice the students in the background.
Did you make the connection? His name is Jerry. And we like ice cream.
Our buddy Brian, in a scene from the play. Brian has been around, like, forever. As a student he was the thorn in my side. A fun thorn, but one of those kids that pokes the bear right up to the edge. He’s one of our besties now.
Monday we got 0.65 inches of rain. I had concert rehearsals Monday and Tuesday with a final spring concert on Wednesday and we finished planting the windbreak bushes. The oats started poking out of the ground on Thursday. Got some more corn planted, too. Making progress.
I have 25 Tamarack trees to plant yet. I didn’t realize they’re also known as a Larch. And when I heard that, my head immediately said, in that Monty Python voice, “The Larch”.
Saturday, at one of my other jobs, I’ll be working the Bernie Sanders visit to Rochester. As usual, I’ll be way in the back in the booth. His advance crew has been very nice and on our walk through with six Rochester Police officers, the high school kids were sure staring at us. I saw one young lady, whose mouth fell open at the sight of us, and I said, “You’re in trouble now.”
On Tuesday the township had a culvert replaced on the only road into our place. The neighbor and I just planned on staying home. As part of my township duties, I went up and was an official inspector. They had a shovel I could lean on.
It was interesting to watch them start the project. Another contractor had a high-pressure water jet, and a giant vacuum, and they made a trench to expose the two telephone lines and the fiber optic line that bisected the culvert on the West side. That fiber line through the culvert is what started this whole thing. Turned out to be another phone line on the East side. The old culvert they could cut in pieces to get out. The new one, the contractor put all the way to the west, then slide it in under all the cables. Added the aprons on both ends, and add some rip-rap. Good for another 85 years.
Padawan is getting more experience every day. There are days I feel like I spend all my time explaining things and answering his phone calls. I try to remember he really doesn’t know anything about this stuff. And the more he learns, the more valuable / knowledgeable he becomes. The other day I had him move the tractor and digger on to the concrete, then I showed him how to replace digger points, and I went out and graded the road. He found a broken shank, which he learned how to replace one other day, although this one was a bit more difficult, and it took a few more phone calls but he got it. Two weeks ago he would not have know what a broken shank was or that it was important.
He cut grass. Until he ran it out of gas. I mentioned that it has a gauge. “That thing sucks!” he says. “Don’t blame the tools” I remind him. “That gauge was blinking way over there. I cut grass for another hour!” …so you had an hour’s warning to fill it?? He walked away from me. And got a gas can and refilled the mower.
He has a one-track mind and that track is cars. My goodness he talks about cars a lot.
Friday morning a crew was out to burn the CRP ground. Conservation Reserve Program. They burn every five years as part of the regular maintenence.
I spent 6 hours chisel plowing the cemetery field I started running last year. It was the last field to be harvested last fall, just before it snowed, so I didn’t get it worked up last year. After I got that worked up I spent an hour planting corn.
It’s been some real nice weather.
Sunset
Moon rise
BEEN TO A BEN AND JERRY’S ICE CREAM STORE?
GOT A FAVORITE MONTY PYTHON OR FAWLTY TOWERS MOMENT?
Just got through another Tech week. That final week of adding costumes and lighting and sound and dress rehearsals before the show opens. It’s always exhausting and long days and late nights. I only yelled once and that was just to get the cast to be quiet. It wasn’t at anyone directly. I’m pretty good at staying calm around the cast. I tell them that sometimes I yell but it’s not at anyone directly, it’s just to get their attention so they don’t hurt themselves or break something. I make a specific point of telling them we don’t want anyone to get hurt. “Don’t bleed on my set.” You know, showing them that I care.
Then sometimes on opening night I go down and tell them the campus inspector said the building was settling and I had to shift everything two feet to the left and reverse it. So, nothing has really changed for them, they just have to do it in reverse. They stare at me. Finally, one person will call me on it and I just walk away. I love messing with them. They’re so young. I told one girl we’d turn on the AC but it doesn’t have a thermostat so it turns into a meat locker. She looked at me with her big eyes and said, “Meat lockers are cold, right?” …….. She’s a really nice young lady.
And they’re always busy and talking and wiggling and just being young. All that energy wasted on the youth.
Last Friday Kelly took down the snow fence. On Saturday Padawan and I pulled out all the fence posts. I didn’t count, but 75 or 80 posts. There are various methods to removing old metal “T” fence posts: You can wiggle them back-and-forth side to side and front to back enough to make it loose and pull it out by hand. Sometimes you pull it out a couple inches, then wiggle it some more. Typically they’re in the ground about fourteen inches. The stubborn ones, we wrap a chain around it, hook the other end onto the tractor loader, and lift to pull it out. Some people use jacks or other means of mechanical leverage, it just depends. I had gotten maybe 30 loose by hand. Padawan got a good system going of wrapping the chain, pulling it taught, and I’d lift it out. He said he liked the work. I think he’s starting to see the feeling of accomplishment.
Pulling posts
Almost done!
I bought Padawan and me new shovels. Friday I picked up 100 seedlings. Next week I’ll pick up another 75. We are planting gray dogwood and Ninebark to create a natural wind break rather than the snow fence. Kelly is excited not to have to do snowfence anymore but there’s a lot of work that has to go into this before we get to that point. Using a string and a 100-foot tape measure and downward marking spray paint, we painted a dot every 6 feet apart in two rows 8 feet apart. Thankfully, the heavy rains did not wash off the dots. I also bought 500’ of plastic fencing and garden staples, and we’ll try to protect these tiny plants.
Laying it out
The show at the college is called ‘8 Minutes’ by E.B.Lee. It’s 9 different scenes of people with eight-minutes left until the world ends. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s really several nice scenes. One is a person who is trying to get home to his dog- from the dogs perspective. One person is taking care of his mother with dementia. Two people are stuck in a car- she wanted to see the cherry blossoms, he has allergies, and now they’re stuck in traffic and why did they wait until NOW to go?
Or the couple with a shelter, but he’s lost the key. So, it’s got funny scenes and touching scenes. My scenic design turned into ‘connections’, some made, some missed.
I am using four, 2000 watt Fresnel fixtures. One wasn’t as bright as the others.
Hmmm, this doesn’t look right.
I love these huge lamps.
I got these light for free from Mankato State when they swapped everything out for LED a few years ago.
It’s not supposed to look like that.
A new one. Ah. Thats better
I’m using two lights called ‘Parcan’s as side light. They take a lamp that looks like an old car headlight. A sealed beam round light. 500 watts. It’s old technology from the hot and heavy days of Rock and Roll before the days of moving color changing lights. One light, one color. They make an oval beam of light, and you reach in the back and spin the bulb to get the oval the way you want it. It used to be a whole big thing. I felt a little nostalgic when I reached in the back and spun that lamp. My gosh I’m old.
Par 64
Reach in and spin that white thingy
ROCK AND ROLL! Back in the old days with 300 parcans.
Thursday this week I got my Twenty Year award from the college. An engraved marble pencil / flower / thingy holder. It’s nice!
At the farm, one recent day, I replaced shovel points on the digger, replaced a broken bolt, and found a broken bracket that supports the coil tines at the rear. Still haven’t gotten the bracket off. Started with a hammer, got a bigger hammer, got a torch, and a grinder. Back to the torch and grinder again the next day. Ordered new parts, went to John Deere and got them on Thursday. They’re still sitting in the shop. Between planting tree’s maybe I’ll work on that.
Fixing
New shovel vs old worn out shovel. Isn’t it interesting how abrasive dirt is??
Still trying to get that bolt out.
A late Friday update: Padawan and I planted 50 tree’s before we got rained out Friday afternoon. It went well. We had a good rhythm going. The tornado sirens were going off and we just kept working. It all looked fine out there. There was some small hail. We took the dogs and the gator and went up to the highest point on the road and everything looked fine. Then my neighbor texted and asked if we were OK and said, “I saw the trees!”. Uh… what trees?? Oh, you mean the 6 tree’s across the township road? And a few evergreens that tipped over across the road. Power was out, power poles leaning, broken, a couple sheds blown over. Just a narrow swath in our area, maybe some straight line winds. Once again, Thankful for our sheltered little valley. We had several people helping cut up and clean up and a few neighbors stop to check if we needed help.
A good community is invaluable.
As of 11:45PM, power still out and the generator still running.
As an only child, there were very few occasions when I had to share much with anybody. I always seemed to know that no matter what, any friends or cousins would eventually leave and I would have sole possession of my toys. That made it easy for me to share.
It has been interesting watching our older dog struggle with sharing dog toys and chews with the puppy. He wants her to play with him, but just can’t seem to figure out that if he would just let her play with or chew on a particular toy, he could just get another toy or chew thingy and they could both be occupied. Oh no. Any toy or chew she has, he has to have. Why? Why does he need to be King of the Toys? I suppose it has to have something to do with his need to be the Alpha. Why can’t Alpha characters be magnanimous??
Our older dog is only 4 years old and seems solemn and careworn beyond his years since the puppy came home. I will watch with great interest how things change as she matures and becomes stronger and more assertive. Until then, we shall have to referee the distribution of dog toys
How easy was it for you to share as a child? What were your most precious toys?
Big snow storms and big parties don’t go together. I watched the weather like that proverbial hawk for a couple of weeks and was a little dismayed when just a few days ahead of Pi Day, the forecast took a turn for the worse. For the next few days we were hoping the snow would hold off until Saturday night, but it became clear that our hopes wouldn’t be realized. YA suggested that we move Pi Day up to 5 p.m. (instead of 6) to give folks a little more wiggle room so I sent out an email.
I was a bit worried about whether I could be ready by 5. On Thursday and Friday I was… well a little fuzzy. Just not firing on all thrusters. Around noon on Friday, I had some pie shells par-baking; as I waited, I took a quick break on the sofa. When the timer went off, I headed to the kitchen, faced the oven, turned off the timer, put on the oven mitts and then promptly turned right around and opened the dishwasher. Just a smidge loopy I’d say.
YA was an angel and by the time the first folks arrived at 4:30, everything was done except for the whipped cream on the last three pies. We had everything on the table and ready by 5. Phew. Of course not everybody got the email so there was a 5:00 influx and a 6:00 influx. One friend came at 7:15! No worries – enough pie for everybody!
Here is this year’s menu:
Blueberry
Dutch Apple
Peach
Pear Croustade
Oreo Cream
Double Lemon Chess
Nectarine Almond Crumb
Key Lime
Crack
Banofi
Fudge Pecan
Coconut Macadamia
Root Beer Float Whoopies
So you can have a Pi Day celebration when there is a storm and even if you’re a little discombobulated. However I did make everybody who left after 7 call/text me when they got home safe and sound!
Thursday night I went to see my little friend Minnie in Mary Poppins at the Wayzata Community Church. I’ve been to several of her performances in plays the past couple of years but this was the first one at this venue. Apparently they’ve been doing productions for 25 years. Who knew?
It was a quite a production with a cast of close to 40 with a huge stage (in the sanctuary) and a nice-sized band. (So, in addition to Minnie in the play, I got to enjoy her father playing the trombone as well!)
It was a little overblown (in my opinion). Every now and then the band’s background music drowned out the dialog but the biggest problem was really the size of the cast. Every big number had almost the entire cast on stage with all the “main stars” in the front; normally not a problem but a lot of the not-main cast were the younger actors/actresses so you really couldn’t see them easily. It was just kind of a mass of bodies. For those of us there to see a friend or family member (probably most of us in the sanctuary), it was difficult.
Minnie really shone in “Step in Time”, the number done by all the chimney sweeps. She was the youngest of the sweeps but she held her own. She knew the steps and kept up with the older/bigger dancers. She clearly knew all the words and she has a great smile.
Another great piece of the evening was sitting with Marie, Minnie’s little sister. Marie had a fabulous Mary Poppins dress and shoes, along with her Mary Poppins doll and umbrella. She looked so cute.
So it was a fun night. I get to see Marie in a “showcase” next week. I love being the neighborhood grandma!
What do you wear when you’re out for the evening?? Favorite musical?
Last Thursday night, YA and I headed over to the Minnesota Historical Center to see the Julia Child exhibit. It’s been there for a bit but we just got around to it… plus the free Thursday aren’t EVERY Thursday, so it does require a little pre-planning.
I’ve seen Julia Child’s actual kitchen at the Smithsonian, but this traveling exhibit if much more extensive, covering details of her childhood, how she met her husband Paul, their life in France and, of course, her culinary journey. There are quite a few fun bits in the exhibit:
Pots w/ smells. There were a few pots next to copies of her most famous recipes. When you lifted the lid, that recipe’s aroma wafted out of the pot. Ingenious. There was a mock-tv studio and if you stood in certain parts of the room, your image was filmed and showed up on three different screens. Another fabulous part of the exhibit was a 12-foot high copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking; the inside of the book was projected from two different screens and every minute or so, the “page” would turn, taking your to another recipe in the book. What a marvelous idea.
I guess I know more about Julia Child than I thought (couple of biographies); the exhibit didn’t have anything that was a surprise about her life but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
I had been surprised that YA had wanted to come along but she seemed to enjoy it. We then went on to see a couple of the other exhibits that are showing right now but she didn’t want to stay for the free concert that was going on that night. Oh well, I take what I can get!
What’s the last museum you’ve visited? Any good biographies lately?
Not quite sure where I got the idea to read And Then We Hit a Rock by Greg Buenzli – it had a catchy title – sometimes that’s all it takes. Greg and his family bought a catamaran and sailed around on it for a year and a half. Four stars. It would have been five stars if the good stuff / bad stuff had been more balanced. It was about 90% the bad weather, the things that broke (legend!) and other things that went wrong; only about 10% (most of it in the last 10 pages) of why it was a good experience. An OK read, just not as good as it could have been.
The reason I’m telling you this is a warning. Do not attempt any home improvements projects right after finishing this book. It’s cursed.
Now that YA has finished painting all the hallways, she’s been at me to re-hang all the pictures. I was ready; I had purchased some new picture hangers, I’d sorted through the photos and stacked them by where they should go, I’d dusted everything off. No worries – I’ve certainly hung pictures before.
It was a nightmare. If it could go wrong, it did. Hallway is just dark enough that everything I dropped (repeated little nails, anchors) needed the flashlight to find it. I only dropped the hammer once – the only luck of the day was that it didn’t land on any of my toes. Two photos had to be re-hung because I just did a bad job the first time. The wire on the back of one photo ripped off after it had been on the wall about 15 minutes. The box with the various tools was right underneath it at that point or the glass would probably have shattered. Also the number of tools kept expanding as I went along. Level, hammer, pliers, painters tape, scissors, flashlight, ruler. And have I mentioned my poor fingers? Mashed, crushed, banged, pounded, beaten, whacked, smashed, bashed, battered…. I’ll stop now. Suffice it to say I hung 17 pictures and bashed a thumb or finger at least 20 times. I did try using a little pliers to hold the nails, but it wasn’t very effective.
I couldn’t bring myself to do the destination photos that go down the stairway after getting the upstairs done; hopefully I’ll have the nerve tomorrow. Maybe 24 hours between me and the cursed book will make it not so painful!
Ever read a cursed book before? Bashed a finger recently?
YA and I actually have a lot in common. I probably mention the ways we are different more often than not – makes for better stories sometimes.
Anyway, we both really like the Derby cookies that they make at Great Harvest Bakery. Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pecans (plus all the other good cookie ingredients). And they are huge – really too big to eat one a day, but yummy enough.
Great Harvest doesn’t make the derby cookie very often. They make four or five cookies a month but for some reason they only make the derby a couple of months during the year. At the beginning of every month, both YA and I scour the bakery’s monthly newsletter to see the monthly cookie listing. I was expecting that we wouldn’t see our favorite until May. I don’t know much about the Kentucky Derby but I do know that it’s in May. YA was the first to see the newsletter this month and when I asked her how many I should get (the packages of six are a much better deal), she responded, two now and then maybe two the end of next week and two more at the end of the month. She figured we can freeze any “overage”. Like the two of us can’t eat 36 cookies in a month. Snort.
Anyway, I obediently went up to Great Harvest today… ended getting three packages because once you purchase a certain amount at the bakery, you get a discount. Did the math quickly in my head (and had the math confirmed by the bakery clerk) that buying one extra package of cookies actually made the price go down a bit. Win/win. I put one of the packages in the freezer for now.
The capper to this story is that when I bought all these cookies and bemoaned the fact that the bakery doesn’t make them very often, the clerk concurred and also said that since the base of the derby cookie is the same as the base of a couple other cookies, we can special order our favorite on any month those others are made. Which is most months. Wish I had known this any time during the last several years!
Will you watch the Derby this year? Will you wear a fancy hat?
As I mentioned in the past, I do not have the shopping gene; YA has double. She has resigned herself to this and does all her window shopping and browsing on her own or with my good friend Brenda, who also has double of the shopping gene. (Once they went off shopping at about 10 in the morning and came home at around 5. When I asked what she had gotten, YA said “nothing but I did look at a sweater that I almost got”.)
My shopping Achilles heel is Trader Joe’s. It’s big enough that any shopping excursion doesn’t take that long and all the stuff in there is edible, which makes it easier for me to plunk down money. YA has discovered this and every couple of months says “I think we should go to Trader Joe’s” — she usually has a date/time in mind as well.
Last Friday, we headed off with only one thing on our list – salt. We have plenty of rock salt for the grinder but were out plain old table salt. Truly all we did was walk around and put things in the cart. Three bags and a lot of money later, we headed home. At that point YA wanted to stop at Taco Bell (yes, after just buying 3 bags of groceries) and I suggested that since I had ponied up all the money at Trader Joe’s, she should cough up for lunch.
This triggered a feisty discussion about who had put more in the cart. For every item of mine that she mentioned, I countered with one of hers. This did lead eventually to us going through the receipt and adding it all up. Surprisingly, we were very very close. I had put more things in the cart, but her items were more expensive. We did agree to not count the ginger beer since we had both wanted it.
The brioche waffles were the last thing to go into the cart. They’re pretty good but I won’t rush out to buy anymore before they are discontinued – to be replaced by some other goodie that will tempt us.
In a surprising turn of events, Trader Joe’s doesn’t stock plain old table salt (except for one pitifully small bottle)!
Any establishments in which you can’t control yourself?
Trail Baboon 