Well, I admit defeat. I am old. I am out of shape. I am stiff and sore. I need exercise.
I went to a SAIL class on Thursday at the American Reformed Church. (That is the less conservative Dutch Reformed Church in town, in contrast to the Christian Reformed Church, which is uber conservative.) SAIL stands for Stay Active and Independent for Life. It is operated by a community organization that provides services for senior citizens, and aims to prevent falls and keep older citizens in their homes.
I realized after my decision to attend that I had no work out clothes. I haven’t owned sneakers for 10 years. We made a trip to Sioux Falls earlier in the week to remedy that.
The class lasted an hour. We marched around, worked on balance, and stretched. They supplied hand weights. Some exercises were done standing. We worked on upper body and shoulder strength and thigh muscles. For some exercises we sat. I was the youngest person in the class. Some of the folks knew my parents.
It amazes me how woefully weak and stiff I have become. I will attend these free classes twice a week. We want to get a Cesky puppy in the spring, and I need to get into shape.
How often do you exercise? What defines “old” for you? Getting any new animal companions soon?
January 8. I am not willfully ignoring the events of yesterday or the day before that. Or the day before that. I don’t want us to become a source of dissension that could attract trolls. And on a more personal note I need at least one place/forum separate from the insanities that are surrounding us on a daily basis. If others disagree, I bow to the majority but will mostly likely be quiet.
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I saw a news story that some residents of the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts are upset at the smell emanating from the new Dunkin’ Donuts factory there in town. They complain about the fried dough smell and that their homes and clothes reek of it. Of course, quite a few others think it’s a nice smell.
It was a surprise to me that the donuts are made in a factory; while I never really thought about it, I assumed they were made in each Dunkin location:
Turns out it’s a little of both worlds. Most Dunkins get frozen dough from various partner factories. They thaw the dough, shape, fry, ice, etc. in the individual locations but there are also franchises that have the donuts made in their local factory. Who knew? Truly I do like the idea of the donuts being made right in my little store, but as long as they taste good when I get them in the drive-thru, I guess it doesn’t really matter to me.
However I do sincerely understand how the anti-smell folks in Havervill feel. When I was working in the bakery, I came home every single day and took a hot shower before I did anything else. I even convinced the owner to include me in the uniform rental (the other women in the bakery didn’t want this) so that I could leave the odor-drenched clothing at the bakery. I could FEEL the bakery smell on my skin. It wasn’t even that it was a bad smell just that it was so enveloping. And, of course, I believe I told the pumpkin pie story more than once, but my aversion to that smell is just as strong now as it was back then.
I guess that means I would be in the “ew, it stinks” camp if I lived near the factory. But I’m not sure I’d be willing to complain about it out loud.
What kind of a factory would you prefer not to live near?
The holidays brought me a nice cache of giftcards so yesterday I had a “gift card day”. Dunkin for breakfast on the way to knee therapy. Blicks Art Supply. Barnes & Noble. Taco Bell. A great day.
I spent about an hour wandering around Barnes & Noble. As a dedicated library patron, I have to admit that I haven’t been inside a bookstore since last year when Jacque’s sister was signing her latest book at Once Upon a Crime. Nothing against bookstores but my pocketbook prefers the library system.
Anyway… as I was checking everything out, I found two tables that had various history books piled up. I’m assuming that B&N stores get table recommendations from headquarters with a few title suggestions but that most of the books are picked for display by store employees. (That’s how it was back in my day in the bookstore.) The history tables had the look of employees having a bunch of fun. History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, History of America in Ten Expeditions, History of the World in Six Glasses. Clearly this is a trend and it reminded me of a couple of titles I’ve read – A History of the World in 100 Objects and Orchid Muse: History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers. 100 Objects started as a BBC radio series – I stumbled upon in once it was published in book form. It looks at objects from all over the world, from as long ago as 2 million years. It was absolutely fascinating. Orchid Muse was a book I read last year as part of my Rivers & Ridges Book Festival experience. The author was at the festival so I got to hear her speak – a lot of extra little details that weren’t in the book.
I didn’t realize that history in a set number of lessons was a thing but if you do a quick internet search, you can find a glut of these books. 47 Borders, 50 Books, 50 Failures, 12 Maps, 500 Walks, 50 Lies. I could go on but this is enough and it makes me wonder if authors are starting out to do a “number of things” or if they have an area of interest and publishers/agents push them in that direction?
Any other suggestions for “History of the World in”…….?
Most of my friends and acquaintances know me well enough to know that New Year’s Eve does not find me out drinking and partying wildly. The only time I’m up at midnight these days is if I need to make a trip down the hall in the middle of the night.
I have only been drunk twice in my life. The first time was when I was living in Northfield during the summer between what would have been my junior and senior year. I was working at Ole Piper Inn and went to a party with my co-workers. I hadn’t really had drunk much prior to that and there was a lot of mixing of different kinds of alcohol. I woke up in my bed but don’t remember how I got there. Keys were in my jacket pocket and the car was in the driveway – luckily nothing amiss. Thank goodness the party was only about 10 blocks from my apartment.
The second time was at a work party at the bakery in Milwaukee. No memory loss this time (I remember the bus ride home from the bakery QUITE clearly) but I felt so awful the next day that I wished for memory loss. It was after this horrible hangover that I decided that overdrinking was just not something I wanted to do.
I’m not a teetotaler but I rarely have more than a glass of wine or one mixed drink. It’s not hard as the taste of alcohol isn’t my favorite anyway. Not imbibing much was a little challenging with clients over the years but nothing too awful. The pressure that many people experience for not drinking in social settings hasn’t happened much to me; I’ve found that if I don’t call attention to my beverage in a party setting, most folks don’t even notice that I’m nursing one glass of wine for an hour or that I’ve switched to a non-alcoholic option.
All this is coming to mind because in addition to the New Year, I finally gave in and let the Medicare/BCBS home wellness visit happen last week. It was easy enough, no invasive stuff and only took about 30 minutes. The nurse practitioner asked me all the same questions that the doctor asks every year at my usual wellness checkup. When he got to the “how often to you drink alcohol” question I hesitated after saying “one or two” and he immediately filled in with “a day?”. I laughed and said “no, probably one or two every two or three months”. I had hesitated because I was trying to decide between two to three months and three to four months. He clearly didn’t believe me. I reported that I had just had a glass of wine the Saturday before at my party but that I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had any alcohol. Maybe Blevins back in September?
He did write down 2-3 months, although I’m not sure he really thought that was the truth. Oh well.
Did you party last night? What makes for a good celebration in your opinion?
I can’t say I regret the end of 2025. This has been the most disturbing and disruptive year in my memory.
Moving and politics have taken their toll. We are very happy where we are in terms of location. I have hopes the political situation will improve.
Our goals are modest. We want to install raised vegetable beds in the back yard. We want to plant Boyne raspberries. Husband wants to improve his guitar skills. We are not traveling.
We plan to have best friend relocate here in the spring, and get a Cesky sibling for our pup. All these things are potentially exhausting, but change that is in our control is far more manageable than unexpected change.
What are your goals for the new year? Garden and travel plans?
DIL texted me on Sunday to report they had arrived safely in Brookings from Mankato the evening before and were spending the blustery day playing board games and reading books.
She said that 7 year old Grandson was reading his favorite DogMan books in a blanket fort made up of sofa pillows and his infant sister’s bouncy chair. Any fort in a storm!
I loved blanket forts as a child. The sofa cushions made great walls. My farming cousins and I tried to erect forts in trees in the groves, in the granary, anywhere we could find. It sure kept us busy. Perhaps this explains the allure of tents.
I was always so happy when we had snow days from school, as that was the only time my mom made waffles. We still call them Blizzard Waffles. Husband says he has sourdough discard and we can have waffles on New Year’s Day!
What were your favorite ways of making forts? How do you spend stormy days at home?
Husband came down with a head cold late last week. He really suffers when he has a cold. His allergies seem to make cold symptoms worse than normal. He spent the weekend doing nasal irrigation and concocting soup to ease his symptoms. We had quite a bit of the turkey brodo I make from The Splendid Table cookbook, and he doctored it up with lemon juice, poached chicken, turmeric, hot peppers, and Penzey’s Bangkok seasoning. He said it helped, and he feels he is on the mend.
My mother never did much when we had colds. They were just things you suffered through without much fuss. A fever might warrent some aspirin, but there was rarely any Vapor Rub or other over the counter cold medication in the house. My father took a different approach. In the fall and winter he always had a bottle of peppermint schnapps in the freezer. If I had a particularly bad cold he would slip me a shot of the icy schnapps at bedtime. It was really aromatic and put me into a restful sleep
I still tend to ignore cold symptoms and don’t use cold medications. I don’t use schnapps, either, although a hot toddy can be nice at times when the symptoms are bad. I rarely get colds, though, having become immune to many cold strains through 30 years exposure to drippy-nosed preschoolers in the play therapy room.
How did your family deal with colds and flu? Got any good home remedies?
I took a walk on Christmas morning. Me and the dogs, out through the fields. Saw a bunch of pheasants, tree’s I need to cut down, and lots of deer tracks. The header photo is from our walk.
Weatherman Mark Seeley has a weather forecast and article on the back page of The Farmer magazine. In the last issue, he talked about January of 2006 being the warmest January in MN weather history. “January 2006 started a remarkable trend of warmth in Minnesota. Fifteen of the 19 Januarys since that time have brought warmer-than-normal temperatures to the state. Of further note, seven Januarys since that of 2006 also rank among the warmest 20 in state history.” — https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-life/january-2006-started-warm-and-never-wavered
There are many reasons to be appreciative of the deep-freeze cold we normally get in winter. It kills off harmful bugs, it helps breakdown the soil for better working conditions in the spring, helps break up compaction layers in the soil, it helps keep stored grain in condition, to name just a few benefits. The worst thing is repeated cycles of freezing and thawing. That’s hard on certain crops, like alfalfa. Ice sheeting, and the repeated freeze thaw or a lack of snow cause winter kill. I bet you master gardeners have examples of the problems repeated freezing and thawing can cause in the gardens. Not to mention how tough the warmer temperatures are on cattle that have a winter coat and are prepared for cold. Respiratory issues can really become rampant.
We’ve had this one chicken living in the garage all winter. During the day she has taken to perching on the bottom rung of a sawhorse and looking at herself in a mirror.
Mirror Mirror…
And then the other night, there were 5 chickens in the garage! OK, seriously, the poop from the one chicken is gonna be bad enough come spring, and at least she’s over in a corner. Having five of them: one in the rafters, two more on recycling containers, and one on the dogwash wall are too much.
An unneeded bonus chicken in the garage
The next day I kept the garage door closed. I figured they’d just go back down to the coop. Three spent the night around the corner perched on the bird seed containers. Why have they moved up here in the first place? I don’t know what their problem is. I’ve got several spending the night in the nest boxes where they lay their eggs. They’re not supposed to do that either. They’re not too crowded as some are in the right side space, some are in the left side space (and they all pile up on top of each other for some reason), some are up in the rafters, and the rest are in the main coop area. I did add another board in there if they need another place to perch. Is it too many roosters? I think we have 5 roosters these days. And maybe 55 hens? I don’t know exactly how many, they are too hard to count. Really 2 roosters would be a good number. There’s a couple that seem extra ornery to the chickens. How come they never get picked off by coyotes?
Christmas day late afternoon I forgot to shut the garage door in time and had to chase out 3 chickens. Yeah, even being Christmas, I chased them out. I had given them extra corn and layer ration in the morning. They’re fine. The one in the corner, she’s earned it, she can stay.
Out in the shop, I added a metal top to the work bench. Dad built this work bench after the shed was built, so maybe in 1982 or 1983. When I started on the shop project two years ago, the guy doing the insulation wanted me to pull the bench off to redo the insulation behind it. I said no. Dad had put styrofoam and fiberglass insulation on that wall before he added the bench. I tore the top four feet off the wall as part of the shop project. The old insulation was pretty bad. Yeah, I probably should have redone the bottom four feet too, but I was already in over my head on this project and didn’t think I could handle any more. Hindsight you know. The bench is pretty well built, and the top is 2×8 boards with a gap between them. Stuff is always falling into that gap. Maybe it was Dad’s way of cleaning off the bench, to sweep the dirt and dust into the gap. Which then ended up in the bolt storage he had underneath. A couple weeks ago, I lost a screw down that gap and I decided that was it! I am covering this! I bought two sheets of 16 gauge steel (about 1/16th inch thick) 2′ x 4′ from a big box store. ($70 each! Jeepers!) Thanks Obama! (That’s a joke you know) And I rounded over the front edge. I need to get some different screws to hold it all in place, but it looks real professional. I’m glad I did that.
Kelly helped me get the last screen back in the 630 grill and I have that all reassembled.
Reassembled 630. Runs and sounds Great!
Needs an oil change yet and it will be ready for next summer’s work and projects. Next summer’s project I think will be rebuilding the belt pulley assembly. Clyde probably knows what a belt pulley is. You’ve seen pictures of back in earlier days, a long canvas belt ran between the tractor and an implement to provide power before the advent of power-take-off on the rear of a machine. That’s the belt pulley.
On the 630, that belt pulley is also the hand clutch assembly. And it rattles like some of the plates inside there are broken. I remember Dad adjusting it once in a while, but I don’t recall him ever pulling it all apart. The tractor also hasn’t had a working tachometer / speedometer / hourmeter for as long as I can remember. A few hundred dollars will get me a new gauge, new cable, and I don’t know yet if I’ll need a new gear inside the governor assembly or not. It’s all only money.
I’ve done my crop rotation maps for next year and got the acres figured out. Talked with Nate at Meyer’s Seeds and I’ve got until January 16th to lock in the early order discount pricing on oats, corn and soybean seed. I was approved for $43,000 in loans for chemicals and fertilizer from the Co-op. That doesn’t include the loan for seed. I’m really hoping I don’t need all of that loan as the crop prices aren’t that good. The first few years I farmed I stressed out a bit more about the crop loans. Of course 35 years ago I probably spent $10,000 on everything and it was still big money. Now days it’s just part of the deal. I don’t stress over it so much.
I thought for sure Kelly and I were gonna win the lottery the other night. And what would we do with all that money? As the old joke goes, keep farming until it is gone!
EVER BEEN THROWN OUT? TOLD TO LEAVE? EVER THROWN SOMEONE OUT?
Happy Boxing Day, Baboons! Today is also St Stephen’s Day. I have been thinking all week of this song from the Chieftains and Elvis Costello. We appreciated Boxing Day as a great day off when we lived in Winnipeg.
It has had good company with any number of earworms that have plagued me for a while.
O Canada seems to always be playing in my mind. I also have been hearing Ode to Joy and the hymn Earth and All Stars which has pretty wild lyrics and which I haven’t heard in church for a couple of years. I seem to hear these songs when I wake up in the middle of the night.
For some really strange reason I woke up earlier this week with this playing in my head:
I have no idea where this came from. Why on earth would I dredge this from my memory the week of Christmas?
How do you think we ought to celebrate Boxing Day as a holiday? Any earworms lately? What is your favorite production of Guys and Dolls?
As you can see from the photos below, our cat has claimed the Christmas tree for her own. Ever since we put it up she has been sleeping under it and drinking the tasty water in the tree holder. She walks around it as though she owns it.
This is first Christmas tree we have had for about three years. Other years we were traveling to Brookings and didn’t want to have a fully decorated tree sitting around unattended for days. Luna the tabby has been known to to climb the tree and/or knock down and play with ornaments. She also chewed the straw beards off the Julebukke. I am happy to report that the dog has ignored the tree entirely. Our previous Welsh Terriers were famous for unwrapping presents and stealing ornaments.
We bought the current Frasier fir at the local farm store. It is fairly small. We put a string of lights on it, and plan to decorate it today. We shall see if Kyrill can resist plucking ornaments off the tree. This is a pretty low key holiday for us even with the tree. Best friend is coming down. This is the first Christmas in decades we aren’t doing any Christmas music in church. We will celebrate with our son and his family January 3rd. His cat and dog leave their tree alone. Luna will probably give us heck for taking down the tree after Christmas. It is her tree, after all.
How have your pets treated your Christmas tree, decorations, and presents? Do your pets have Christmas stockings?
Trail Baboon 