It’s been a few years since YA and I traveled together. This is a four-day weekend trip that we’ve talked about for a few years now. Here are some interesting facts about our location:
Nearly half the residents of the US live near here
The gate to hell is hiding underneath North Street
Part of the Berlin Wall can be found here
Woody Harrelson was arrested in this city in 1982 before hitting it big in Hollywood
The Anthony Thomas Company makes 50,000 pounds of chocolate here daily, including their famous candy named after a state tree
The NFL was headquartered here from 1927 until 1938
Jack Hanna is Director Emeritus to one of the largest attractions of its kind in North America here.
Where in the world are we? (Bonus points if you can say WHY we’re here!)
It has been a real eye opener moving here from the middle of nowhere on the Northern Plains. The weather here is far more changeable and unpredictable. Pickup trucks are fewer and smaller. Lots more bugs.
Sioux Falls is our “big town ” for shopping. It is only 24 miles away as opposed to Bismarck, our former “big town” that was 100 miles away. Trips to Bismarck were few and far between. Even so, we really don’t want to be running to SF all the time for things we need that we can’t get in Luverne. That means more ordering on-line.
We have been astounded by the speed on-line orders are delivered to us. The other day I ordered some bookends at about 10:00 am. They were delivered by 6:00 pm the same day. Other orders come overnight and are delivered between 5:00 am and 8:00 am. Is this normal? Does this happen elsewhere? I think if folks back in western ND knew this was possible, they would protest the wait times for their deliveries!
I wonder, though, how long deliveries across the country will be quick and speedy. The other day I got an email from a produce company in Oregon I often order celery root and savoy cabbage from. They were offering a $500 bonus to any customer who could recommend a CDL trucker who could deliver their produce. There seems to be a trucker shortage. Hmm. I wonder why?
Do you get orders delivered fast? Tell some delivery stories. Know any truckers?
The other night I got some mushroom ravioli out of the freezer. It was some pasta we moved from ND. It was purchased at our local ND Family Fare store.
The pasta was somewhat remarkable for being imported from Italy. It is a brand that Family Fare regularly stocks. I am not a big mushroom fan, but the pasta was pretty good. Our Boommate thought it was absolutely superb. She loves mushrooms.
It had porcini and champagne mushrooms in the filling. We looked up where we might find the brand, and it is specific to Family Fare. The closest stores to us are in Cannon Falls, Litchfield, and Northfield.
The day after we had the pasta, Boommate drove to St. Cloud for a quilt show. She reported massive construction detours, one of which took her close enough to Litchfield for her to justify a side trip to the Family Fare store. It had the pasta brand, but no mushrooms ravioli. Sigh.
I have made ravioli from scratch in the past, but I don’t think I could replicate the mushroom filling. I admire her determination to get to Litchfield. These days the farthest I drive for things is Sioux Falls.
What is the farthest you have gone to get something you really wanted? Ever made pasta from scratch?How are construction season and detours going for you?
Our initial plan for heading to St. Louis after Nonny’s passing was to take the dog and leave the cat at home with our fabulous neighbors coming over to feed her and take care of her box. Then the dog passed and I knew immediately that I simply could not leave the cat at home. I have a very bad history of pets passing while I’m gone (it’s happened twice). We did think about boarding Nimue but even that was giving me anxiety.
I bought a brand-new kitty carrier – bigger than the one we use for the block-and-a-half transport to the vet – and a new harness. The plan was to let her out every 100 miles or so and I even brought an aluminum cake pan for a litter box and put some litter in it for traveling. All of this turned out to be pointless. Nimue had no interest in how comfortable we were trying to make her. She didn’t make any noise, but the getting out of the carrier on a harness was not on her list of things to get done that day. The first time we took her out, she sniffed around a bit, but more puffed up than we’ve ever seen her. She wouldn’t eat a treat, wouldn’t drink any water, certainly didn’t do any business. Crickets.
We tried two more times with the same result. After that we quit trying. When we arrived at Nonny’s condo, she headed straight underneath Nonny’s bed. I was pretty sure it would be time to go home before she came out. For the next three days, we had to keep Nimue in her carrier for most of the day – with people coming in and out, boxing up stuff, tossing stuff – there was no way to keep her safe except in her carrier. And when we were gone from the condo, we also kept her in the carrier. Both my sisters, my niece and nephew all had keys and I didn’t want to run the risk that they might stop by for some reason and accidently let her out.
All of this made me feel terribly guilty – after all, we were torturing her because of my anxiety. She would probably have been happier at The Cat’s Meow than with us. So, it was with a bit of joy that I came into Nonny’s bathroom late on Wednesday afternoon to find Nimue ensconced in the sink looking like butter would melt in her mouth.
On Friday, when we headed home, we put Nimue in the kitty carrier with a few treats, put her on the backseat and drove off. We talked to her quite a bit during the day but never attempted to take her out – 9+ hours. Within minutes of getting home, she had eaten, done some business and settled down on her kitty bed in my room. Like nothing had ever happened. Apparently no kitty ptsd here!
On the way home from St. Louis, YA were debating about what we should pick up for lunch and she told me that she had noticed a sign (when we were still in St. Louis) that Steak `n Shake was offering an Orange Dreamsicle Freeze. I don’t know if I’ve whined about S`nS dumping their original Orange Freeze – but they let go of it at the same time they dropped the grilled cheese. I haven’t been there since then – about 6 years.
But the new offering sounded good so we decided that fries and a freeze would be an ok lunch. YA found the closest S`nS and we let GPS get us there. As we were waiting in the drive-thru line, we noticed several posters in the windows of the eatery touting their all new beef-tallow. These are their exact words “return to tallow is part of a broader trend to revive traditional cooking methods and highlight authentic flavors.” Snort. I asked the person taking the order if it were true that the fries were now being fried in beef tallow. When he said yes, we cancelled the fries and just got the Freezes.
When I became a vegetarian in the early 70s, it was the end of French fries for me as all the fast-food places used animal fats for frying. Burger King was the first to switch over; for many years I got a whooper with no meat (yes, that’s just a glorified cheese sandwich) and fries. Then Wendys switched, then S`nS, and eventually even McDonalds gave it up and moved to vegetable oils. So this move back to beef tallow doesn’t make much sense to me. I don’t know the science about the health benefits (although RFK touting beef tallow makes me wonder…) but from a planetary point of view, I don’t think we need more cows eating way more grains than it takes to feed humans. My cynical side says S`nS is grasping at straws trying to deal with their currently financial struggles and think this might be a way to differentiate themselves from the pack.
Regardless, YA and I ended up at Subway for our lunch to go with our Orange Dreamsicle Freezes, which unfortunately weren’t all that great. I can’t imagine I’ll ever go back to a Steak `n Shake again.
Fries? Shoestring, curly, seasoned, sweet potato? Or just pass the tater tots?
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?
Oft times I feel as if my world is fairly small. 494 to the south, Highway 100 to the west, 35W to the east and Franklin to the north. Obviously I do travel outside of my “zone” but overwhelmingly, my life and errands are within. So it isn’t odd to me that my mother also had a fairly constricted range. It was brought home to me last week when YA and I were in St. Louis that Grasso Plaza is basically a catch-all for just about everything.
Grasso Plaza is about 5 minutes from my mom’s house, up on Gravois Road, which is a major thoroughfare in the southwestern suburbs. It’s basically just two strip malls across Gravois from each other with five lanes of traffic in between. (One of these lanes is what St. Louisans call the “suicide lane”, in which you can basically go either direction – insanity.) The parking lots on both sides were clearly designed by an idiot who had been drinking heavily. I can’t believe that the insurance companies haven’t banded together to force the Plaza to have them both re-done; I’ve witnessed two accidents myself in my visits to Nonny.
Anyway, here are all the places in Grasso Plaza that we went to in our three full days:
Schnucks. This is one of the grocery store chains in St. Louis; I am not making this up. We got a few snacks and some beverages to keep in the condo while we were there.
St. Louis Bread Company. SLBC was bought by AuBon Pain in 1993 and everywhere else except St. Louis, the name was changed to Panera. I assume some lawsuit or contractual thing was involved. On the outside the sign says St. Louis Bread Company, on the inside, everything says Panera, including how your receipt prints out. We had two meals there.
Walgreens. Of all the things that Nonny didn’t have in her condo was lotion!
Southern Bank. Nonny’s bank – we had to deposit a check of hers.
Post Office. We had to send the equipment back to MobileHelp (Nonny’s “help I’ve fallen and can’t get up” service). Very very friendly and chatty clerks – good thing no one was waiting behind me.
Cotton’s Ace Hardware. I’ve been here many times over the years but this trip it was to drop off the last of Nonny’s canned goods/cereals. Cotton’s has a collection barrel for the Affton Christian Food Pantry.
Dollar Tree. Just a quick stop for some plastic drinking cups for the condo since there were so many folks working on the cleaning out.
H&R Block. Stopped by to ask one tax question concerning Nonny’s taxes. They weren’t helpful. I should have just texted Linda. Ended up getting better info from AARP.
These weren’t the only errands we ran, but it was most of them and I was happy to put Grasso Plaza behind us. Even though it was handy, I don’t want to mess with those parking lots and that suicide lane ever again!
Highway 75 runs north and south through Luverne. It is a major highway in the region. Many years of my life were spent along this road. My first house as an infant and young child was right along the road. My parents built a house along 75 south of town when I was17. My undergrad college in Moorhead was along 75. The University of Manitoba was right along 75, as was my first Winnipeg apartment, although it was called Pembina Highway north of the border. It was called the Palm to Pine Highway, as I think it started in Texas.
On April 15, Highway 75 through the center of Luverne will be closed for several months for resurfacing and new sewer pipes. This is described as progress. They culled 100 year old trees for the project. The MN road department has assured residents that homes and businesses along the route will not be hemmed in. We shall see. It will be huge problem for the marching band festival in September. Much of the diverted traffic will go on the Blue Mound Avenue, just off our street. I know this needs to be done, but what a huge pain to live through.
Any annoying road conconstruction by you this summer? What are your most sentimental highways?
It’s angry goose season at the College again. Caution tape and cones have been put up and emails have been sent out warning us of the danger. The first day as I passed the pair in the parking lot, the male goose just opened his mouth at me. Didn’t even hiss, but he was warning me off in no uncertain terms.
Last Friday Kelly and daughter and I drove to Alexandria. I went to pick up the Track Wacker for use this spring. We took Highway 14, stopped in Mankato for a bathroom break and filled the truck with diesel fuel. $132 later we headed for New Ulm where we stopped to see Hermann the German. I’m pretty sure I was there with my parents when I was a kid. Really didn’t remember anything about it, and on Friday it was 30° and windy and we didn’t linger very long. He’s closed for renovation anyway.
Two lane roads the rest of the way to Alexandria and a very nice drive. We got adjoining rooms at the hotel so daughter could have one room and Kelly and I could have the other. It was a pretty slick way to do it, and I would sure try it again in the future. I got up early the next morning, had a mediocre breakfast at the hotel with French toast sticks so tough I couldn’t chew through the crust on the bottom, but the sausage patties were good and I headed half an hour northwest to Millerville to pick up the Track Wacker. I knew it would fit in the back of the pickup. Then for good measure, I bought a fire ring as well.
I got back to the hotel just as the other two finished breakfast and we packed up and were back on the road. Drove to see Theater L’Homme Dieu where I spent a few days with a show back in 2010. Again, quiet two lane roads home, probably didn’t have any traffic for 20 or 30 miles. Saw some really long trains. I couldn’t get over how long some of them were. Being a sucker for a historic roadside marker I had looked up a few before leaving. A few miles outside of Grove City we stopped at the Acton State Monument. The battle of Acton, the Acton incident, and the Ness Cemetery. They mark the beginning of the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862. You know, it’s one thing to read about it in the books, it’s another to stand there and realize it happen RIGHT HERE.
And then to the Ness Cemetery and see the monument: one of Minnesota’s oldest monuments (Dedicated September 13, 1878) marking the burial of those first victims. It was a very deeply moving experience for us.
Twelve hours of driving and about 600 miles. We got home about six in the evening. A couple neighbors had come over to feed the dogs and collect eggs. They call the dogs their “dog grandchildren” and gave Bailey extra food “because we love her“. Sure is nice to have neighbors like that.
Sunday I unloaded the truck, took the rear blade off the tractor, hauled the snowblower out, I even got the lawnmower out and mowed down some grass and weeds before I put the snowblower in its summer parking spot. Daughter and I picked up driveway markers, (but I haven’t taken the snow fence down yet, I don’t wanna jump the gun too fast), and I got the four wheeler running and drove that around a while. Drove down in the pasture to check things out after winter.
I also picked up branches along the road and Kelly picked up branches in the yard. I think the spring mud is pretty much done. The fields are really drying out, or at least they were before it rained all day Thursday. It could be an early spring here doing fieldwork. If I was a little more prepared I might’ve been able to get out and do a little fieldwork in March. I remember one year doing some on March 31. That doesn’t happen very often.
I spent a few hours in the Shop one night putting a couple new LED lights on the back of the 8200 tractor. Took me an hour to do the first one and five minutes to do the second. Standing on a work platform and reaching over the outside dual tire was another instant of wishing I was 6 inches taller or my arms were 6 inches longer. But I managed. The 6410 tractor that I use for the majority of the work, I’ve replaced a bunch of lights with LED and I have four more to replace and two more to add on the back. It only has two rear work lights at the moment and really could use two additional. It was on my to-do list but apparently will be a summertime project.
Baby chicks arrived on Wednesday morning. I had gotten their pen ready so once they were delivered and we did the usual pictures and videos of them in the box, I could take them right down and dip their beaks in the water and get them all settled in. I ordered 50 this year for $260. Last year I ordered 40 and it was $170. Twenty of the Easter egg blue and green layers, 10 of the Silver Laced Wyandotte,, 10 Lavender Orpington, those gray ones like Mabel from a few weeks ago, and 10 of Hatchery choice. Could be anything.
So far so good on them.
My summer Padawan came to the college a couple of days and helped me paint the set. He tries to educate me on what’s hip these days. When I took him back home he showed me all the different kinds of cologne he has and told me in the winter you wear something warm and spicy and for example he wouldn’t wear this certain cologne at this time of year. I stared at him quizzically. Why not? And he stared back at me. Like, because everybody knows that. Well, you have to learn that somewhere I said. I mean did he read that in GQ magazine? (He doesn’t read magazines.) Well, just everybody knows that he said. I laughed. Well, I don’t.
HAVE YOU EVER ATTACKED A GOOSE?
WHAT IS THE PROPER NUMBER OF CONES TO PLACE AROUND SOME GEESE?
I’m rarely without a book at hand. I always have a CD in the car, CD player also in my studio. Libby on my laptop. Libby on my phone. STACKS of books in my bedroom (library books in one place, my unread titles in another). Even when traveling, books come with me; my packing list on the computer has books as a box to tick.
Even though I didn’t think I’d have any time for reading on this trip, I brought books. No books on CD in the car with YA but I had my laptop with Libby, had my phone. STILL brought books with me. I did make a conscious effort to bring things on the lighter side…
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (CD) by Agatha Christie. I’ve read this before but all my BritBox the past two months stirred up a desire to read a few of her early works again. I’m actually almost done with this. Maybe I can do an errand by myself today to finish it up!
Serial Killer Support Group (Book) by Saratoga Schaefer. I haven’t started this yet but it’s called a “dark, witty debut” about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her younger sister’s murder. Hopefully the “witty” is true.
Family of Spies (Libby) by Christine Kuehn. This is non-fiction; written by the author when she discovered her dark family roots. I’m about half way through this one; although it’s not a feel-good subject (spies during WWII), it’s written pretty much as a straight-forward history. I think the author was putting some emotional distance between herself and the story.
Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (Book) by Leslie Thomas. I also haven’t started this one yet but I have seen the first three episode of the TV series thanks to BritBox. The TV series was a little on the lighter side so I suppose the book could swing either way.
A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks (Book) by David Gibbins. This is the last of the “listicles” books that I picked up for Blevins Book Club. I was trying to cram it in two weeks ago and then the snowstorm happened, so I haven’t picked it up since. I’m about 1/3 of the way through. It’s not nearly as good as I was hoping. Writing is a bit dry and I was hoping for much more interesting photographs.
Of course, the chances I’ll finish any of these (well, maybe the Christie) is pretty slim, but where reading is concerned, hope springs eternal. A bit like the cat and the grocery bag from Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater!
Trail Baboon 