We have a new church Worship and Music director, who also directs the choir. She is our son’s age, and we have known her since we first saw her at her infant baptism 35 years ago. She was an elementary music teacher and has a lovely mezzo voice. She has purchased lots of new, challenging music for us. We had got pretty entrenched with the same pieces with the former director.
Our church choir is pretty small with about ten regular singers. We are often short on sopranos, which we were yesterday on Reformation Sunday. This is a big day for Lutherans, and there was a display of Luther’s 95 Theses in the front of the church. Our choir director planned big, and we sang three very challenging choral pieces, and recruited the high school band director to play timpani, a college trombone student, a high school trumpet player, and three sopranos who sing in the Badlands Opera organization. Ironically, four of our visiting musicians were Roman Catholics, but they sat cheerfully through two services and sang “A Mighty Fortress” with gusto. They even took communion!
Our bell choir director is also the organist. She has been taking the choir director’s lead and giving us very challenging music, too. It is fun, but sort of daunting to try new things and stretch ourselves in ways we haven’t had to before. The congregation is very happy with our efforts. I believe it was Gustav Holst who said in reference to small church choirs attempting difficult musical pieces that “anything worth doing is worth doing badly”, which I take as encouragement to keep performing these challenging works even if we don’t do them perfectly.
What are some of the positive challenges you have had lately? Have you been part of an organization where positive “shake ups” have happened? What is the most challenging musical work you ever performed?
Our daughter has been very excited his past week to be playing with Legos. She is an adult. I had no idea there were Lego sets for grownups, but daughter found a store that sells them and has been assembling them as a relaxing hobby in the evenings. You can see one she put together in the header photo. Her most recent purchase is below. Lego has an entire line of kits for people 18 years or older.
She says there is a kit for a large replica of Rivendell from Lord of the Rings for $600. That one is out of her price range but it is tempting. I don’t know how she keeps her cats away from them but she says they leave the completed designs alone if she puts them on her bookshelf. I don’t remember having Legos as a child, but I liked building with wooden blocks and Tinker Toys.
What were your favorite building materials in childhood? What would you like to see Lego offer as a grownup project?
Yesterday was the first day of fall, and it was cool and cloudy, I noticed this week that the leaves were just starting to change color. The garden is finally slowing down. I am done canning tomatoes.
Fall has always been my favorite season. Not too hot, not too cold. (We won’t talk about the Ocober 5, 2005 snowstorm that shut the area down for three days and broke off hundreds of tree limbs.) I like the cooler nights.
Things at work always pick up in the fall, especially for those of us who work with children. Bad news at parent-teacher conferences means the phones start ringing at my agency from calls from frantic parents wanting help for their ornery children. Fall is a time of truth and reckoning for some of us.
What are your favorite things about fall? Any favorite fall songs or poems? Did your parents ever get bad news at parent-teacher conferences?
One of the new vendors at the fair this year is a bakery; they have three items on their menu – an Amish donut, a peanut butter chocolate donut and sweet tea. No coupon. We stopped by a few time over the last week and the lines were unbelievable. The photo above was taken at 11 a.m. on Friday and doesn’t even begin to do the line justice. It was the longest line I’ve ever seen at the fair – even longer than Pickle Pizza last year and Nordic Waffle their first year. Based on how fast people were being served, I’m guessing people were waiting 45 minutes or so for their donut. Pickle Pizza and Nordic Waffle at least move faster than that!
I once slept out overnight outside of Dayton’s to get Bon Jovi tickets. I got to the Fitzgerald at 5 a.m. for the last Morning Show and several baboons waited with me for quite a while for Jim Ed Poole’s service. And I will admit to sitting outside Aldi’s once a year for 2+ hours to get the wine and cheese advent calendars, but at least I’m one of the first few in line and the wait is spent sitting in my stadium chair. But I’m generally not good about lines; I tend to start weighing the benefit of what’s at the end of the line versus the time I’m spending standing in it.
So I’ll be passing on the Amish donut. If they return next year, maybe it won’t be such a crush.
What are some times you’ve stood on line for a long time? Was it worth it?
YA was three when I took her to the fair for the first time. We took her umbrella stroller although she didn’t use it too much that day (YA never liked any kind of enclosure – no exersaucer, no playpen, no doorway jumper). The following year we didn’t bother with the stroller at all – she kept up with no issues or complaints.
Since this is our experience, we are both a little surprised at the stroller revolution. Strollers have gotten bigger and bigger as the years have gone by. Now there are side-by-side doubles, front to back doubles, not to mention all the additional pockets, cupholders and clip-on fans. They seem like a lot of trouble to me but they are clearly popular with parents of toddlers.
I shouldn’t be surprised that strollers have taken the next step – wagons. The fair was full of them – large wagons, almost all with canopies. They remind me of the old Conestoga covered wagons that took settlers west. Most of them also have a lot of extra storage area and, of course, cup holders. Most of them have seating and trays (think tv tray) inside. And have I mentioned storage? Cookies, stuffed animals, shirts, bubble blowers, straw hats…. If you can find it at the fair, YA and I have probably seen it in one these wagons over the last week. I saw a handful filled with so much stuff that there wasn’t room for the kids. On Wednesday, a family with their full wagon held up the bus back to the park `n ride as they figured out what to do with all their stuff before they could fold it up to go in the bus luggage compartment.
Who know what the next step in stroller evolution will be but for now I’m absolutely sure that if I looked closely enough, I’d find that one of these covered wagons was named “Intimida”!
What would you have wanted in your Conestoga if you were heading west?
Last Wednesday was our grandson’s first day of Kindergarten. He was happy, proud and confident. He is, after all, 5 years old, and in his mind, he can do anything! His parents were dewy eyed, and our DIL had to redo her eye makeup when she got to work after dropping grandson off. I reminded son that I missed his first day of school since I had moved to Iowa to do my psychology internship, leaving him for the year with his father.
My first day of school was in Mrs. Helling’s room. I teased my mother in the weeks before school as she, a Grade 3 teacher, was getting her room ready and I would go with her to the school , warning her that I would slip into Mrs. Cooney’s room next door. Wouldn’t you know, my teasing got me all confused and I actually went into Mrs. Cooney’s classroom and was told to go next door. I was mortified!
What are some of your memories of first days of school?
Just a few observations from Opening Day at the Fair!
Cookies. Sweet Martha’s has made a big change, well a big change in my book. Instead of the smallest size coming to you in a paper cone, it now comes in a cup. Of course, they still fill it up 50% higher than the lip of the cup, so I continue to need my collapsible cookie container!
Tantrums. Normally you see more tantrums in the afternoon but this one little gal (I’m guessing four years old) was getting the day off to a rip-roaring start. I’m not even sure what she was raging about but her poor father was sitting on the curb, holding onto the stroller (which she was trying to rip out of his hands), while he tried desperately to “reason” with her. I didn’t want to pry, so I didn’t hang out long enough to see how long the meltdown lasted but as worked up as she was, it might have been awhile.
Community Building. One of the bands in the parade was the Eden Prairie High School Band, which is a whooper. As the muscians marched by, I noticed that the entire drum section was wearing pig ear headbands from the Oink Booth. None of the rest of the band was sporting any headgear.
Creating a Stir. There was a fairly large crowd at AFL-CIO Corner, but all but one of the little kiosks was quiet. Turns out six St. Paul Firefighters were present to sign and sell the firefighters’ annual calendar. Two of the six were wearing muscle shirts, the others no shirts at all. They were doing a brisk business in calendars and photo ops.
Sad Shakespeare. I have a pretty high tolerance for Shakespeare in any form and it’s a good thing. There was a short performance in the West End towards the end of the day. The little troop did the Pyramus and Thisbe play from the end of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. It was a silly bit and only lasted 15 minutes but without the rest of the play to explain it, it didn’t make much sense. The poor sound system didn’t help them much. Pyramus’ death scene however was a hoot.
We took a long weekend last week. Daughter has been saying we needed to take a vacation, and we fully agreed with her. But May through July is Kelly’s busiest time, and of course spring is bad for me, and, well, we can always come up with an excuse NOT to go somewhere. Spur of the moment, we decided, let’s just take a weekend. We asked daughter what she thought we should do; I mean are we renting a cabin on a lake or are we going to a hotel. Well, she wanted swimming, and rides at Mall of America. OK, sounds like we do the Embassy Suites, which has been a family favorite over the few years because they do complimentary breakfast really well. They set the standard for hotel breakfasts! Fruit, yogurt, Sausages, bacon, eggs (not as good as ours of course), hashbrowns, bagels, made to order omelets, cereal, drinks: milk, juice, coffee.
We got there late evening Thursday and had supper at the hotel restaurant. Friday we all slept in and took naps and didn’t leave the room until 3:00 PM. Over to “THE” mall and had lunch, then walked around a bit and bought some ride tickets. We waited in line for an hour so we could all do the log flume ride. Because there was some bad weather in the area, the rides were going at half capacity, so the wait was longer than it should have been. Boy, if we didn’t get covid waiting in that line. Then daughter and I did a crazy spinning loop de loop roller coaster and I think I learned I might be too old for those rides. Woo boy. A couple times I had to just put my head back and close my eyes and I’d think, “DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES!” There was a young boy about 8 years old who was on the ride with us; he said he had two little sisters and mom had to stay with them. After the first spinning loop he said “That was unexpected!” Yep, sure was! When it was over, I told him I had no idea what had happened in the last 40 seconds.
Even daughter, who’s a daredevil, was a little shook up after that. We all went to the Ferris wheel from there. And then Daughter and I went on our favorite roller coaster from 10 years ago; the one that goes straight up, then straight down. And upside down and right side down and over this way and around and back upside that way. Aye aye aye. Whew. That was easier last time I did that. Kelly and daughter did the carousel and we decided that was enough. I saw a sign that read, ‘Barking Lot stroller parking’, and I thought it said ‘Barfing lot’ which I thought was really appropriate.
I bought the 30 point arm bands, but no one put them on our arms, so I’d just show them to the ride operator. The first ride scanned them all. The second person was talking and looking away and only scanned one, and the third ride just put us on without even scanning the tickets. We gave them to a young couple and told them to have fun.
Daughter also wanted Red Robin for supper. We don’t have one of them in Rochester. At some point in her brief past, she had a shake at a Red Robin she really liked and wanted another. Supper was really good there and my vanilla malt was yummy. I don’t know about hers.
Saturday, we got the swimming in and had the pool to ourselves for an hour. We saw the Barbie movie, (and got a free icy drink), and had supper at Giordano’s pizza with a hostess named Joy who was super helpful and sent us back to the hotel with plates, drinks, and plastic ware.
Sunday, we stopped to see our son and daughter in law. When we got home, the dogs were glad to see us, (our neighbors took care of the dogs and chickens while we were gone) and Humphrey just had to stay outside for a couple nights. Once in the house, he had a big drink of soft water, and slept for several hours on his pillow.
Everyone survived on the farm, and Monday morning, daughter said she wasn’t ready to go back to her program. None of us are kid, none of us are.
We called this our ‘practice vacation’ to remember what works and what doesn’t when travelling together.
The soybeans are looking good, you know, for 6 weeks behind. They’ve finally started to canopy and, to add insult to injury, the weeds are coming too. A few buttonweed, lambsquarter, and ragweed are towering over the soybeans. Plus, a lot of volunteer corn. Which doesn’t really hurt anything, it just looks bad in a nice field of soybeans.
I started working on the shop again and started getting 2×4’s put on the walls and removed from the work bench an old radial arm saw that I haven’t used in I-don’t-know-how-many years. Back on Amazon Prime day I ordered one of those 360 degree green laser levels. It is pretty cool!
Remember a few months ago I showed a bunch of eggs under the deck? Well, the chicken hatched out 13 baby chicks the other day. She’s a good momma and moved them down to the main pen and she’s keeping a good eye on them. Thirteen chicks?? Don’t hold your breath for all of them. The other chickens seem jealous: ‘How come YOU got chicks!??’
My brother came out and we unloaded the last load of straw into the barn. 600+ bales in there again. Coming up, planting winter rye as a cover crop! Deep roots good for the soil, but it will over winter so it will have to be killed off in the spring before planting corn.
And back at the college, all my computer stuff is working this week! Yay!
I know I’ve talked about this topic before, but it’s fascinating when I see glimpses of myself in YA. She is in Dublin for two+ weeks for work and the morning of her flight, I found the clipboard (in the photo above) sitting on the counter downstairs. In an interesting twist on the apple-not-falling-far-from-the-tree, I note that she has used three colors of highlighters. I am a one-highlighter gal when it comes to my lists; it looks like the yellow highlighter is for her backpack but I’m not sure about the fuchsia or even the dots.
My list-making has evolved in the past couple of months. My weekly spreadsheet went by the wayside around the holidays last year; it was a gradual decline but I realized it wasn’t doing it for me any longer. I actually went “list-less” for several months with the occasional list of errands on a post-it or groceries on my phone’s note app.
Then a few weeks ago, after I re-retired, I wrote out a list of things for the next day. Just on a pad of paper I had laying around and only a few items, nothing that is part of my regular routine. It felt nice to take a highlighter to the list at the end of the day so I did another list for the next day. Again – just written by hand and just a few items. It’s become my new routine — for the most part. There have been a few days with no list and I survived!
YA doesn’t do daily lists (that I ever see anyway) but it’s nice to have evidence that every now and then she’s takes a page from my playbook.
Would you rather have a pet dragon or a pet unicorn?
Our son and DIL and grandson were in Alabama last week for the baptism of our DIL’s niece. I was glad our grandson got to spend time with his only cousin. It was really hot there, though, and between the weather and the politics, Son said he could never live there. I wish our grandson had cousins who lived closer.
I remember summers as the best times to hang out with my cousins. We all lived within 30 miles of each other. As an only child, my cousins were the closest people I had to siblings, and I got to spend weeks in the summers at their various farms. They all lived on farms. They were mainly boys, and I learned how to set gopher traps and set off fire works and play rough and tumble football and baseball. We played and messed around and had a great time. When I was in Middle School and High School I spent summers with a married cousin and she taught me to sew for 4-H.
The other day, Son was filling up his car with gas in Pipestone, MN where many of my cousins lived, and saw a really tall, thin, older blond man filling up his car. He looked like one of my relatives, and after Son introduced himself, it turned out he was one of my cousins, who asked when I was moving back to Minnesota! He lives in Norfolk, NE, and he is going to move back, too, when he retires. I don’t think he still traps gophers.
Where in the US wouldn’t you want to live? If you had cousins, what did you like to do with them? What are some of your favorite summer memories from childhood?
Trail Baboon 