My little neighbor, who is six, gave me a very stern warning over the weekend. “My friend had a bear come up on her deck to eat from her bird feeder. So be really careful and be sure to close your gate at night.”
I’m not sure where the friend lives, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in southwest Minneapolis. We normally keep an eye on the gate so the dog doesn’t get out, but I will admit that I did look out the back window last night to make sure it was closed!
Any irrational fears you’ll admit to?
Last month Bill (I think it was Bill) mentioned Voyage to the Bunny Planet by Rosemary Wells. It had been in print a few years before I was first read it to Child, but I remember that we had it from the library at some point. The Hennepin Library doesn’t own a copy any longer but I was able to get it through InterLibrary Loan and I’m liking it so much that I’ve ordered myself a copy. (I have a very modest children’s book collection – based solely on what I like).
There are three stories, each featuring a young bunny who has had an exceedingly bad day — never-ending math class, horrible cousins, medicine that tastes like gasoline. At the end of these bad days, the young bunnies wish for a visit to the Bunny Planet. There they are greeted by the kind Queen Janet who invites them in with a “Here’s the day that should have been.” Each bunny falls off to sleep with the visions of a perfect day dancing in their heads.
At the beginning of each story, there is a rabbit quote like this:
It is the first duty of a flagging spirit to seek renewal
in the latitudes of whimsy. I, for one, dream on
beyond the give planets to a world without wickedness;
verdant, mild, and populated by amiable lapins.
Benjamin Franklin
The other quotes are from Rudyard Kipling (“The captain fell at daybreak, and ‘e’s ravin’ in ‘is bed, With a regiment of rabbits on the planets round ‘is ‘ead.”) and Galileo (“I designated this heavenly body “Coniglio,” but alas, never saw it again.”)
It’s gratifying to see rabbits making the grade in heavenly literature but I think it’s fascinating that Benjamin Franklin dreamed of whimsy and thought a perfect world would be a bunny haven.
I say whimsy all around!
Tell me about your “day that should have been” and how your perfect world would look?
Husband and I are planning a trip to Tacoma in early July to see our daughter. As is typical of our family, the topic quickly turned to food after we determined the dates of our trip.
One of our daughter’s favorite things to eat is a pasta sauce I make with our home grown tomatoes. I can’t take credit for the recipe. It is Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce III. I make it with a tomato puree that I can from our garden San Marzano tomatoes. It is simplicity and richness combined.
2 lbs. fresh ripe plum tomatoes
1 stick butter
1 medium onion, peeled and halved
1/4 t. sugar
Wash and cook tomatoes in saucepan until they are tender. Puree them through a food mill back into the saucepan. add the butter, onions, 1.5 t salt, and cook at slow simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Discard the onion, and serve
In the late summer, I make jars of puree, the first step in this recipe, and can it. Daughter asked if I could bring a jar of puree with me in July so that I could make the sauce when we visit. I said of course I could, and I started to plan how I could wrap a quart jar of puree securely and transport it safely in a suitcase for our flight to Washington. Husband protested, however, and said that it was too risky and we could have tomato puree all over the place if the jar broke, there were perfectly fine tomatoes in Tacoma, and that since daughter had a food mill (a necessary piece of equipment for this sauce) I should just make it when we got out there.
I suppose that he is right, but the tomatoes last summer were extraordinary, and the puree is just terrific, and I have more puree than I need. I just hate it when common sense interrupts my schemes!
When have people interfered with your good ideas? What is your favorite tomato sauce?
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.
We live in a predominantly Roman Catholic community. We are a town of only 23,000 people, yet we have four Catholic churches, two Catholic elementary schools, a Catholic Middle School, and a Catholic High School.
You can imagine the gasps when, last week, the Catholic School Board announced that Father H, the principal of the Middle School and High School had been permanently relieved of his duties, along with an unmarried, female Elementary Principal and athletic director. They had apparently been consuming alcohol in a school vehicle on their way to a basketball tournament in Minot in March, and then tried to hide what they had done. There is also much scuttlebutt about other misbehavior, but that didn’t make the newspaper. Oh, the scandal!
This is no place to misbehave, because everyone knows everybody else, people notice things, and there really is nowhere to hide. The two Principals should just have worn shirts that said “Shoot me now” instead of trying to be sneaky. Moreover, if you get drunk and disorderly in Minot, 230 miles away, even that news will make it back here. This is a small State despite the vast distances between towns.
What are some scandals you remember from your home town or where you live now?
Last week as I was struggling with my usual insomnia, I started to do a room by room inventory in my mind, visualizing each part of the house and deciding what furniture we would take with us when we moved, and what we would discard. I haven’t done that before, and I have no idea why I did it last week. We have no firm moving date. It could be as long as five years before we leave here. Doing that inventory sure didn’t help my sleep, since I got increasingly anxious about all the stuff we have, and how we could possibly move it. The next day we got a New Yorker and wouldn’t you know, there was an article about a woman who decided that her possessions were too burdensome and her actions to get rid of the unnecessary. I believe that both these incidents were signs from the Cosmos to sit up and pay attention and prepare for action.
Husband and I had a discussion the other day about our tenure out here, and how we seem have been in the right place at the right time for us and for the communities we have worked with/for. We both felt, though, that it was time for us to seriously think about that time ending. Husband had just returned from doing some expert witness testimony for the Tribal Court in New Town, his first time on the Reservation since March, 2020. He felt good about his testimony, but decided that he really didn’t want to make that 100 mile journey any more. I talked about how useful and needed I still felt at my agency, but how exhausting it was getting for me. Both of us are sick to death of the constant attention in the state to extraction industries like oil and coal. The isolation from family is feeling keener.
We have lived here for 34 years. Given our family health history, we could both live another 30 years, and I really don’t want to spend all those years here. I think I am going to start getting rid of the unnecessary stuff in the basement. We may not move for several years, but I want to be ready.
When have you been in the right place at the right time? How did you know? When did you know it was time to go somewhere else?
With the nice weather over the weekend, my nextdoor neighbors got their chalk out and went to work creating a village on their driveway (designed by Margot, who is 6). When I stepped outside to appreciate it, Matilda (the almost 2-year old) informed me that she had a new bed. Turns out it is just her crib but with the side down and a bed rail attached, but she was happy about it. There was more big news… last night was her first night without her pacifier. It was apparently a trade – the pacifier for the big girl bed. I laughed and thought about my experience with pacifiers when YA was little.
When I went to China to pick up YA, there was a big list of “suggested” items that I take with me; a pacifier was on the list so I dutifully packed it. YA, even as Tiny Baby, was not interested. After a couple of futile attempts, I stuck it back in the duffel bag. Nonny was at the airport when we got back to Minneapolis and she stayed for a week or so while I got my feet underneath me. Nonny was absolutely sure that if she presented the pacifier enough times, Tiny Baby would accept it and all would be right with the world. (It’s funny looking back because Tiny Baby was not fussy, there really wasn’t a great need.) But Nonny kept trying and every time TB rejected a nook, it would end up on the side table or a chair or someplace where it became irresistible to someone else: Baron.
Baron was an 85-pound ball of fluffy, sweet, calm Samoyed. He wasn’t the brightest bulb but he was sure that these pacifiers that Nonny kept leaving around were meant for him. Of course as soon as he absconded with one, it became off-limits for the baby; slowly but surely over that week, we went from having a collection of 10 baby pacifiers to a collection of 10 dog pacifiers. If ever there was a dog that didn’t need a pacifier, it was Baron. He had self-soothing down to an art. Eventually he chewed them all enough that I had to throw them away and we never had any more, since Tiny Baby didn’t need or like them. Nonny wasn’t amused but I thought it was hilarious.
Do you have any self-soothing practices? Are they working well for you?
I received a text from Daughter last week enquiring if she would get an Easter basket this year. I replied that of course she would. She reminded me of her favorites (anything milk chocolate, Butterfinger eggs, anything sour) and I assured her they would arrive in good time. I asked Son and Dil what Grandson should get in his basket, and they sent their suggestions (Cadbury mini eggs, freeze dried mangos and raspberries, raisins, and pretzel chips). Now I am sorting through our spare boxes to get everything sent.
I remember the activities of Easter more than the treats. It was a time I got a fancy new church dress and hat. I don’t remember dying eggs. The Easter Bunny left white tracks all over our house, deposited on the charcoal colored carpets by my mother, who dipped oval shaped shoe polish applicators in flour and left bunny tracks through the house that led to the candy.
We plan to tell the children next door on Easter Sunday that we have rabbit problems in our yard, and would they please come over to get the chocolate eggs those darn rabbits have left all over the place. That will be fun.
What are your Easter memories? What do you want in your Easter Basket this year?
I see in the news that Jennifer Garner just got her ears pierced. According to her, the main reason she didn’t do it sooner was because she thought her father would disapprove.
I can certainly understand. Getting your ears pierced started to become popular when I was in high school. As the years went by, more and more of my friends started to get pierced but my folks, particularly my father, were adamant that I not join the “fad”. Back then the only official way to get your ears pierced was at the jewelry counter of the big departments stores and you had to have your parents permission if you were under 18. There were a few girls I knew who did the deed on their own with a needle and ice cubes, but that scared the heck out of me. It never occurred to me to go against my folks’ wishes in this, even if I could figure out how.
The argument went on for a couple of years and came to a head toward the end of my junior year. All the trendy and interesting earrings were now pierced; the non-pierced options all made me feel like my grandmother. Finally my father made his big error in his argument; he said that getting your ears pierced was a form of body mutilation “like those Ubangi natives you put the metals rings around their necks to stretch them out”. I remember these words, because he brought it up several times before I came up with a counter-argument, that being overweight was also a form of body mutilation. (My dad fought his weight his whole life.) I’m not sure what gave me the bravery to say this to my dad and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was struck with the certain fear that he might kill me for this comment. (No, my dad was not abusive, so this is not literal.) But he did not. He actually left the room and the next day told me that I was right. And if I lost 20 pounds, I could get my ears pierced.
If I would replicate the process by which I lost 20 pounds, I could bottle it and retire to my own private island on the proceeds. Took about 3 weeks. I know that my mom yelled at my dad over this, but they both took the honorable path; my mom drove me to the department store, stood by while I got my ears pierced and even paid for it.
It was a good decision for me. I adore earrings and I have far too many of them. Friends who know of my earring fetish has brought me earrings from all over, including some huge paper mache dangly fish from Hong Kong and some adorable pink pig earrings from a barbecue joint in Boulder. I have earrings from Sicily, Hawaii, London and even New Zealand. YA has made earrings for me and I have trouble not going overboard making them for myself as well.
I did not repeat my parents’ dictions; when YA turned 10 she wanted to get her ears pierced for her birthday. Off to Claire’s we went. Too bad that Jennifer Garner didn’t have ME for a parent.
What have you tried to do differently than your folks? How did that work out?
It’s not spring yet… it’s not spring yet… it’s not spring yet.
It’s my mantra right now. Most of the snow and ice is melted from the yard. I’m able to get out (without a coat or even sweatshirt) and walk the dog. The footprint of my bales, where there is not grass, is showing. YA has mentioned plants for the garden this year as well as some solar light that she thinks we need in the back.
But I’m cynical and am waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s just too unbelievable that spring is here. Didn’t the groundhog see his shadow? My winter attitude does well for me. I was able to run errands this past February (when it was hovering around zero) with a sweatshirt, scarf and gloves. So I’m a little skeptical that I can break out the zorries and tank tops. If I lose my winter attitude, what happens if spring is just jerking us around?
How do you handle the changes of season? Do you have a favorite?
Trail Baboon 