In the last week I have done something rather unheard of for me-I took two full days off of work because I was tired.
I am rarely sick. I normally have enough energy to get done all the things I want to accomplish in the evenings and on the weekends. I am not doing any more than I normally do. I am in good health. Work is no more stressful than it usually is. Why, then, am I in bed most nights by 8:30? Husband is having the same experience that I am and is tired all the time.
I realized to my great annoyance that we are tired because we are aging. I will only be 66 in February. That isn’t that old. Husband will be 70, so I can understand a little more why he is taking more naps. After all, he may be retired, but he is working 20 hours a week.
My two days off allowed me to get a lot of things done at home that I would never have accomplished after work. I have to accept that I need to take more time off. With only a year of full time work left before I retire, I doubt that the administration will be too upset about me taking the occasional day off. They are hopeful I will work part-time after I formally retire, so they will be nice to me.
What about getting older has surprised and/ or annoyed you? If you are retired, is it what you hoped it would be?
One benefit of singing in our church choir is that we sit in the front of the church and get to watch the antics of the children in the pews during the service. Our congregation is pretty tolerant of noisy children in church. Parents of the most rambunctious children sit in the balcony so they don’t make too much of a ruckus.
The other Sunday our backyard neighbor was in the balcony with her two boys, ages 5 and 3. They are very active boys. Once, this summer we heard the mom in the backyard yell at the oldest one “Don’t you put that rope around your brother’s neck!” Neither boy would sit still in church, choosing to instead run around in the balcony and not listen to their mom. She tried her best to get them to sit quietly, but it was a losing battle, and she eventually left and went home before the sermon.
What do you think about the Elf on the Shelf?Who were the naughtiest children in your neighborhood when you were growing up?
I make a variety of cookies for Christmas that I send to friends and relatives. This year our son asked me to make some marzipan cookies called Engelsplatschen, or angel cookies. He provided the recipe. One of our daughter’s friends, a young woman originally from Stuttgart, also was interested in them, as she is having problems with gluten intolerance, and these only had two teaspoons of flour in them. The only other ingredients were marzipan, almonds, powdered sugar, and an egg.
I have never cooked with marzipan before. My Aunt Leona made marzipan fruits that she painted with food coloring. She learned how to make them from her mother, who was a professional cook in Hamburg. I expected the cookies to stay in the round balls I rolled them in, just like her fruits. Well, they spread out all over, ran into each other, and burned.
I did some research, found a better recipe, and ordered more marzipan. My new recipe has quite a bit of almond flour. They will still flatten out, but will have more substance. Live and learn.
What are your favorite Christmas cookies? What new things have you been learning about or learning to do?
I did get snow fence installed, and driveway markers are in.
Hauled in the last of the scrap Iron I wanted to do for this year. I’ll be curious to see what my total was for scrap iron this year. Several thousand lbs. This last load was 3500 lbs and was an old disc, a bit of the old elevator frame, and some misc pieces. Price was still $100 / ton so it paid for the gas anyway.
I did an (almost) final cleaned up behind the shed one day just scraping all the brush into a pile; I wish I had done a before photo but there’s the after.
Just image it full of trees and junk and crap collected over 40 years. I’d love to put an overhang back here to shelter some machinery like the rear blade, the snow blower, the brush mower, etc. Got a pile of cement blocks to move yet.
Met our banker one day and made a plan. I’ve got most of the big bills paid. Signed the last of the papers for crop insurance, but don’t know what that’s going to pay yet.
Had two nights of Holiday Concerts at the college this past week. The choir sounds really very nice. The band is small but growing, and they’ll be really good in another year or two. The one photo is the designer, Paul, with Santa.
We’ve had a little issue with Luna and Bailey lately. They really got into a fight the day I was working on snow fence. Like a ‘to the death’ type fight. I had to separate them three times, finally putting Bailey in the gator.
We can tell Bailey seems jealous, yet she’s picking fights she doesn’t want to be in. They’re equal size and weight. It almost seems like Luna is trying to find her place in the order. Bailey is spayed, we don’t think Luna is yet. We’ve had Luna for 2 months now. She’s really settling in. Which might be what’s putting Bailey off. Any thoughts on 2 female dogs getting along would be appreciated.
Need to get the final paper submitted for class this coming week and the semester is over on the 15th.
The Rep Theater has the next phase of heating and AC going on so that will take some of my time. They have a lot of old photos out as part of the 40 year anniversary. This was me at about 20 years old at the Rep. PHOTO
I should get going on 2023 bookwork one of these days… I’ve been really lazy on that this year.
There is a woman who attended our Lutheran Church for many years before she and her husband moved to Minnesota. Her lasting legacy , the thing she is remembered for, is her lefse recipe. Hers’ is the recipe we all consult when there are any doubts about how to make lefse. I think that is a pretty nice way to be remembered.
One of my Great Uncles is best remembered for being a very musically inclined bootlegger who was really good operating steam threshers. HIs children carried on his love of music by running a dance band for many years. Since Prohibition was over, they didn’t need to keep up his bootlegging when he died in the early 1930’s.
I hope that Husband and I are leaving a legacy of good psychology practice that others can learn from. I like having students and interns to teach and supervise. I only get to do a little of that, though. I guess I could consider my psychological evaluations as lasting legacies. It would be fine with me, though, if I am mainly remembered as a good cook and baker and as a kind person.
What lasting legacy would you like to leave? What skills or talents would you like to pass on to someone?
North Dakotans were rather shocked in September to hear on the news that a woman in Minot had been arrested for murdering her boyfriend with antifreeze in order to get money he was inheriting. It even made the New York Times. If you click on the headline, you can read the whole article.
What isn’t in the article is that after her arrest, it was discovered that the man was being scammed, and that the inheritance was fictitious. There never was any money. She sort of miscalculated. Oops! I hate it when that happens!
What have been some of your bigger miscalculations?
Husband loves to bake bread, particularly sourdough, and he also makes his own starter. He has what I would consider conflicted ideas about sourdough starter, such as should yeast be added at all, and if so, is he violating the code of the sourdough makers, and can he truly call himself a baker if that happens? Should the ingredients be weighed or measured by volume? What about covering the starter or exposing it to the air for a while? How long? The doubts and worries go on for days. I find it really exasperating to watch.
A few weeks ago he decided to make two kinds of sourdough rye; one was a Faroe Island rye recipe from Magnus Nilsson’s Nordic Baking, and the other a New York Rye recipe from the New York Times. He has successfully made plenty of starters with white flour, but there seemed to be some issue with the rye starter recipes. He fussed and fussed and hauled up one baking book after another until the dining room table was covered with them, consulted the internet endlessly, decided on one rye sourdough starter recipe and then changed his mind and chose another until he finally decided on one that he ended up making alterations to. He made enough for both recipes but ended up changing the New York Rye bread recipe so that he needed to use the entire amount for that recipe. It turned out well. It had a pinch of yeast added to the starter and more yeast added to the bread. The sourdough starter police didn’t come knocking on the door, either.
He has yet to make the Faroe Island bread but is mulling when he could do it. He also is trying to decide between making Finnish or Swedish Limpa. There are subtle but important differences, he says. I don’t know if I can stand any more fussing, but I think he has finally settled on his sourdough method. At least the bread is really good! Of course, I never get particular about the foods I prepare!!
What cooking or other skill are you trying to perfect? What are foods you are good at making, and what are challenges?
When we first moved to our house in 1988, people referred to our street, in December, as Santa Claus Lane because about four houses at the end of the street had elaborate, wooden, hand made, moving Christmas decorations in the front yard. One, the home of a piano teacher, had the swaying figure of an organist that looked like the teacher herself seated at a pipe organ, with choir boys standing along side in a row. The boys looked like the teacher’s three sons.
As the owners of the elaborate decorations aged and/or died, the decorations have been given to other residents on the street, but the decorations have aged, too, and no longer move. Most other residents opt for strings of lights on the trees and houses. All we have are four, year round LED lanterns stuck in the ground lining the edge of the front peony bed.
Our front yard isn’t conducive to light displays because of the awkward placement of the only electrical outlet on the front of the house being between the double garage doors. We would have to drive over electrical cords. I am fine with no lights. Something in me rebels about the falderal, and really, all that just takes up space in the basement 11 months of the year. Husband is even more ascetic than I am, but confessed last weekend while we were running errands to strange urges to get lights and hang the all over the front of the house. I don’t know what got into him, but I got him home as soon as I could and poured a glass of German brandy for him. that is something we usually only have around this time of year, since I need it for Stollen.
How do you decorate the outside of your house for the holidays? What is your favorite holiday beverage?
Hasn’t been a lot happening on the farm this past week. Since I finished all the tillage last week and it was cold, too cold to work in the shop, I had to go back to work work, or at least, pretend I was while I did other things.
I had a straw delivery, more HVAC work at the Rochester Repertory Theatre, a lot of work on the final essay for my English class (turned in by the time you read this) and a couple hours spent trying to teach my mom how to use her new talking watch. She’s had a talking watch and would use that before she got the Alexa. But she’s out of practice now. I tried to encourage her that the watch would give her something to occupy her time. We’ll see.
A group of theatre students from the drama club at the college came and helped haul out the demolition detritus from the HVAC project at the Rep. Some years you get a really good group of kids, and this is one of them. A couple students are new and some I’ve known from previous years, including the ringleader, and I say that with the best of intentions. She’s the cheerleader, she’s the one that inspires them, and influences them to be so friendly and so willing and to make them all feel so included. And that extends not only to other student members, but to me as well. And I’ve told her, she’s the reason this bunch has coalesced as they have. When I asked if the drama club would help with some demolition, she sent a chat message to the group, simply saying, from what I heard, “Ben needs help”. And nine students showed up. Or maybe it was the fact I promised them food. Some days we sure get lucky. To me, camaraderie has always been the best part. See the header photo of the group.
Still waiting to hear from Crop Insurance. The other day, on the back of an envelope, I spent some time on the computer finding the current balances due on various loans from this year. Machinery part loans through John Deere, crop loans for fertilizer and spraying, loans for seed, plus rent that I owe, estimate an amount for combining, an operating line of credit that I’ve made a lot of use of this year with the shop project, plus a credit card balance, all written on the back of the envelope. Then I would look at my checkbook balance. It was a larger gap than I would hope. Wild card being what to expect from Crop Insurance. I know it won’t be tens of thousands, it will probably be a few thousand dollars, and if we strictly focus on this year‘s crop loans , it will come out pretty even. Again, we are so lucky, and so fortunate: we own our home, we don’t have a mortgage on any of the land, Kelly continues to support me in the fashion to which I have become accustomed, and we have a warm home and warm clothes, and even with my shriveled-up eyeballs, we are healthy. I have nothing to complain about.
I saw a survey recently, asking if you would rather have a job you loved but that didn’t pay much, or a job you hated but it paid a lot. And most people said the job they hated because money gives you options. I have to agree, money does give you options, but I feel like I’d rather take the job I love. Maybe that’s because we are already in a comfortable spot, and we have a few options.
This weekend I think we really need to get snow fence up, it’s not gonna get much warmer. I have that old disc that needs to be cut up and loaded on the trailer for scrap iron, I would like to get that done this weekend. I bought some tarps that I intend to hang in the machine shed to create a bit of a fourth wall so I can try to contain some heat in the shop end and work in there a little more. There are a few things on my summer 2023 ‘to do’ list that I’m beginning to think I may have to move to my 2024 list. Again, if I finish the list, I didn’t have high enough goals.
Yesterday marked exactly eight weeks since our bathroom project started. It started as what I thought would be a quick (and inexpensive) fix of my weird shower system and very quickly went straight downhill. The hot water assembly was so old that when an interior piece of the handle broke, those words “not up to code” were uttered (for two different parts of the bathroom) and started that proverbial domino effect.
When the contractor was finalizing his proposal, I asked him for a guesstimate on how long it would take. He said four weeks. I assumed he was padding that and then padded it again myself so I wouldn’t be upset if the bathroom wasn’t up and running again in a month. Good thing.
The first issue was that the plumber put in the wrong tub for the project. It took several days to get this resolved; I ended up having the contractor replace the tub and I stopped payment on the plumbers until they refunded a chunk of change.
Second issue was the tile. We chose a tile that showed in stock at our local Home Depot. The day we went in to order it, the person who helped us said “Oh yeah, we took a pallet of this down yesterday – there’s plenty.” When contractor went to pick it up the next day, Home Depot said they didn’t have enough. This is when having a good contractor comes in handy – he beat them up enough that they ended up getting it at another store and delivering it right to the house.
Third issue was the vanity. Home Depot SAID that it would be delivered in 2-4 days. They must have meant hours on Mercury, because it certainly didn’t arrive within 4 days. Then when it did arrive, they informed me that they couldn’t deliver it up the steps onto the front porch because I hadn’t paid the additional “in house” delivery fee. Grrr…. Luckily my next-door neighbor was our in his yard and between him and me and YA, we got it onto the porch fairly easily. Of course, when the contractor arrived the next morning and opened it up, it was broken:
Since the return process didn’t go smoothly, I ordered the second one sent to the store. After another set of Mercury-long days, I got multiple messages via text and email saying different things about where the vanity actually was. Called Home Depot and got told the vanity was at the store. I called the store and talked somebody into checking that it was actually there. Called contractor (I spent a lot of time on the phone for this project) and told him he could pick up vanity in the morning. Then lo and behold, overnight I got an email saying vanity had arrived at the store broken. Apparently when the guy at the store told me it was there, it hadn’t been taken off the pallet yet so they didn’t realize it was broken. Sigh. I made kind of a large stink at that point. Not sure if it helped or not but the third vanity arrived undamaged. And even though the store said they had checked it, my contractor made them open it up so HE could check.
Did I mention that during the tear-down process, the toilet got cracked? The brand new toilet that we had put in just seven months ago? Contractor took full responsibility and ordered a new tank. In the meantime, I’m here to tell you that FlexSeal really works. Not sure you can really seal up a boat and drive around the Everglades like in their commercial, but it held the toilet together really well until the next tank arrived yesterday.
Now I realize that this isn’t too bad compared to a lot of the horror stories out there, including some we’ve heard here, but it was enough that the contractor’s 4 weeks and my 6 weeks weren’t padded enough. But overall I’m feeling relatively lucky; this is the second major project that hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected. Before and after pictures tomorrow!
Trail Baboon 