These weeks before Christmas are a time of waiting and anticipation for many Christian believers. In our community for the past several days we have had an additional anticipation event in the form of a “monstrous” snow storm predicted to last from Monday night into Thursday. We may get 8-11 inches after a spate of freezing drizzle.
Like most everyone else in town, Husband and I have been planning what we will need if we are stuck at home. We have been to the grocery store three times since Friday. A young couple was buying many gallons of paint in Ace Hardware yesterday in anticipation of finishing a home project if they are snowed in. There is a party atmosphere in the grocery stores, people chatting to each other in the checkout lines, strangers smiling at strangers. Excitement is in the air. People want to be snowed in. Husband insisted on buying a large quantity of dog toys and treats since no one wants to be cooped up with a bored terrier puppy. Kyrill is supposed to be neutered on Tuesday. We shall see if we can get to the vet office on Tuesday morning.
I had planned to finish all my Christmas baking by last night, so that I could get all the goodies we are sending to the UPS store today. The storm anticipation has helped me slow down, and I plan to finish everything in the next few days and send them out on Thursday or Friday. Being this frenetic isn’t good for me. It is interesting, though, how staying at home necessitates so much planning.
What is the most elaborate party you ever planned?What would you need to stock up on if you were to be snow bound and had time to plan? What is the allure of being snowed in?
Snowed overnight. About 5” wet, sticky snow. Gave daughter a snow day. I started waking her up, kept looking out the window at the snow falling, talked with Kelly, and we decided, life is too short. Covered daughter back up and turned off her light. She wasn’t awake anyway. Can you say ‘teenager’??
I made a quick path up the driveway and back. Will do more around the yard later with Kelly so she can refresh how to drive the tractor and work the blade. Header photo is halfway down our driveway.
I finished meteorology class. Got 57/60 on the final (which the teacher opened early for me), and I submitted the final lab assignment (on water usage in our homes) and got 10 points of extra credit for doing another test. Don’t know my final grade yet as the teacher hasn’t graded three assignments, but I’m expecting an A. Three credits closer to getting a degree someday.
I won some items in an online auction this week. This auction is open for about 8 days. And if someone bids on an item in the last 5 minutes, the timer resets for another 5 minutes. I was bidding on some heavy-duty pallet shelving. Did some research on new stuff, and it’s about $600 for one end and 2 bars. Typically, you figure half the price for used. So, these three auction lots were three uprights, six bars, and a bunch of cross pieces. There was three lots and I bid on two. Got one lot for $725. Couldn’t afford the second, but still a bargain.
Also got a set of 6’ fork extensions to put on the pallet forks I use on the loader. I remember first using forklift extensions as a stagehand and sometimes there was larger, awkward cases that needed a longer reach than normal forklift forks.
These will be good for picking up branches, or scrap iron. I thought about taking my trailer to pick up this stuff. But my trailer has sides on it, about 1′ tall. It’s great for hauling straw. It’s not so great when trying to load something from the sides, like pallet shelving, because a forklift can’t set it down with those sides in the way. I may have to buy a flat trailer too, because… you know. Toys.
I hauled in the scrap iron I dumped on the trailer a few weeks ago, plus a couple other things I had tossed on there. It weighed 1000 lbs and scrap was a low price of $50/ton. I never check the price; I just haul it in. Sometimes scrap is $400 / ton. Obviously, more people are hauling their scrap in when the price is high. I learned from the salvage yard guy that when they scrap cars, they drain the fuel out of them, and they save the good fuel and use it in their own cars. He did admit it’s a little like Russian roulette. But the machine they use to drain and filter the fuel has a site gauge and you can see bad fuel and divert it. It also costs them $4/gallon to get rid of old fuel.
This week at the college I’ve been working on lighting our holiday concert. My friend Paul creates the decor. I light it up. One night only, so I can tolerate that. We have ice mountains and a giant Nutcracker.
And this is my view from the booth.
After Paul finishes building the set, he leaves some bit of decor in the office. This year it was Version 1 of the Nutcracker’s mustache.
I was outside the other day and suddenly the chickens all made a racket and they headed for shelter and the dogs started barking and ran around trying to figure out what was happening. And there was a red-tailed hawk right next to the house trying to get a chicken. It flew away. No blood, some feathers. It might have been after one of the roosters; Number 3 was missing some neck feathers. Seems pretty ambitious for a hawk. Or desperation.
And some of the ducks are bathing in the water tank down by the barn. Nothing wrong with that except they spill a lot of water and it’s making an icy spot. Won’t be my problem in a few days.
Here’s some chicken and duck photos. The last one is Rosie and Guildy.
Hasn’t been any particular music this week. Just trying to keep the Holiday earworms away.
Our bathroom remodel started the week before Halloween. We are working with a main contractor who designs everything and who subcontracts with a home builder company for the carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. The first two weeks the carpenters came and got everything prepped for the drywall installers, electricians, and plumbers. It took a couple of weeks for those folks to get their work done, and then we had a couple of snow storms that put everything behind.
For the last three weeks one young man has been working to install the shower and bathtub liners, grab bars, etc. He said he would be done on Wednesday of this week, but he ran out of caulk and had to go back to Bismarck to get more. He showed up again yesterday to install the shower doors, do the caulking, and finish the work on the tub and shower. He isn’t a plumber. He just installs the shower liners and tub liners and grab bars and such. To his dismay, he discovered that the hardware for the shower doors wasn’t in the large box the doors came in, and were back in Bismarck at the warehouse. He won’t be able install the doors until today. That is another delay. Until he is finished, the carpenters and plumbers can’t return with the toilets, vanity, and sink and install the flooring and new light fixtures.
Yesterday the carpenter phoned and said we needed to pick out the flooring so that he and his crew can come as soon as the tub/shower guy is done. We did so today, and found that it will take a good two weeks to get the flooring delivered. I am puzzled why he waited until now to tell us to pick out the flooring. I thought we had already picked out the flooring, but apparently that wasn’t the case, so the earliest our bathrooms will be done is the week between Christmas and New Year. That is two months of chaos.
Our home is in absolute disarray, and is full of drywall dust. Our tempers with each other are getting short. An enormous snow storm is predicted to hit our region on Monday, bringing up to a foot of snow. It may be very hard for the Bismarck carpenters to get to our town next week.
The only good news is that the downstairs bathtub/shower was usable starting yesterday. All that needed to be done in that bathroom was for the tub/shower guy to screw in the mixer handle that turns on the faucet in bathtub and caulk it. He did that, and then told me that the plumbers needed to come because there wasn’t any water coming out of the faucet. I asked him if he had opened the shut-off valves for the pipes to the tub. He said there never are shut off valves like that for a tub. I went to the basement, found the shut off valves that had been installed a couple of years ago by a local plumber, and flipped them open. He was impressed. The water is flowing, and now we will have two bathrooms for us and our daughter when she visits over Christmas. There won’t be new flooring, towel bars, or a bathroom mirror, but the essentials will be there.
When has Fate’s fickle finger mucked things up for you? Do you have a litany of woe?When have you bested the experts?
For twenty years I have been using various kinds of activities to ease my pain, especially rhythmic activities, which is why I rode a bike for so long. Which is why I drew/painted with pastels. I still don’t know if that is drawing or painting. I guess painting. However aging has taken both of those activities away from me. Life has added monumental stress and a diagnosis of migraines, which my neurologist says I have had for 30 years at least.
So I went back to art, at a much more forgiving level, sketching, in other words, at a level where I can accept the sudden jerks of my hands and my poor close range eyesight issues. I can be in a severe headache and force myself to sketch, get lost in the process, and then realize 15-30 minutes later how much lower my pain is. My neurologist is surprised by this. I pointed her towards the medical literature on it.
I sketch from photographs, some as old as 75 years. I get lost in the memory of the people, places, and events. Among my favorite are travel photographs, which I group together. So I thought I might spin off VS’s game. So can you identify, despite my poor hand where I was? Some are specific places, such as 1, 6, and 7. Or maybe you can identify the area or a similar area in 2, 3, 4, and 5. Two places should be easily identifiable to two Baboons, but then there is my weak art skill. A hint: I have only traveled in 46 states and four Canadian province.
December is proving to be a hard load to carry. How does December go for you?
I am happy to report that the Youth and Family Team at my agency will soon be fully staffed. We provide mental health services to seriously emotionally disturbed children and their families in the far southwest counties in our state. We are supposed to have a clinical lead (a licensed social worker or licensed counselor) who supervises and also also acts as a therapist, another therapist (either a licensed social worker or a licensed counselor), a Skills Trainer who teaches basic coping skills to children and parenting skill to their parents. two Mental Health technicians who reinforce the skills for the parents and children at home and in the community after they have demonstrated minimal mastery of them, and a case manager who keeps track of things and makes sure we are in compliance with all the deadlines and fills out all the releases of information and goes to school and social services meetings. I am sort of an adjunct therapist and consultant for the team.
Last spring we lost a therapist, team lead, skills trainer and case manager. We have gradually filled all the empty positions, including two this week. Positions are hard to fill all over the state, but especially here in the remote West. We are fortunate, but especially fortunate because we all get along and work well together. The people we just hired are amiable and hard working.
It is really miserable to work on a team where there are conflicts and poor communication. Knowing how to work on a team is a special skill..
What are your experiences on teams? What qualities do you think make for a good team player?
Our puppy went to the groomer today. The groomer said he did splendidly, and was easy to work with. She did a really good job with him, and studied the photos and literature I gave her on Cesky terriers. She did a really good job on his beard today. His fur is turning more and more platinum. He started out as completely black as a newborn.
He has been so happy and relaxed since we got him home. I guess he liked all the attention and cossetting and brushing. It was a spa day for him. I have never been to a spa. I have never had a massage or a pedicure or manicure. I don’t know how I would react having someone so close and personal.
Kyrill told me that he was so handsome now that I should sign him up on a dating site so he could get a girlfriend. I told him that wasn’t going to happen. He gets neutered next week.
Have you ever been to a spa?What do you think it would be like to go to one of those spas in Baden-Baden, Germany? How would you describe yourself on a dating site?
We have sung some hymns in church set to Welsh melodies lately, and Husband says he gets the shivers whenever he hears them. He attributes this to having some Welsh ancestors, and thinks the melodies tap at some deep primordial aspect of his collective makeup.
I tend to be more opinionated rather than shivery over church music. I like Advent music in church. One isn’t supposed to have Christmas music in church until Christmas. Advent music tends to be quiet and contemplative, which is fine with me. I find my teeth on edge when our church music gets too boisterous or when we sing hymns that have a lot of lyrics in the first person. How Great Thou Art is an example. Our Worship and Music director really dislikes Blessed Assurance, but was gracious enough to sing it the other day at the funeral of a 103 year old parishioner. Our recently retired choir director couldn’t stand Amazing Grace and refused to perform it or sing along when the congregation sang it. We have one song coming up on our December choir schedule that sounds like it should be in an old time western movie. The left hand piano accompaniment rhythm sounds like a horse ambling slowly on the trail. The congregation has loved it when we have sung it other years. I try to think of funny lyrics to it while we practice it, which reduces my irritation.
I really do like to sing in our church choir, and we have some fun performances coming up this month. Husband will play a duet on his cello on Christmas Eve with a flute player. We will do A Festval of Lessons and Carols like they do at King’s College on December 18. We won’t sing How Great Thou Art.
What gives you the shivers? What December music do you like? What December music do you loathe?
Our daughter lives in Tacoma, WA. The last two days she has texted and phoned me several times about the school and business closings because of snow. “Mom! It snowed half an inch and they closed my agency and local schools. This is ridiculous!”
I patiently tell her that West Coast has very little snow removal equipment, no one has snow tires, and few people there know how to drive in slippery conditions. It was the same way when we lived in southern Indiana, and everything stopped when it snowed. Daughter is a tough North Dakota girl and these arguments do little to change her attitude that she is living with a bunch of weenies.
A friend of ours is a retired college librarian, and she tells of a time when she taught Middle School English at a rural South Central North Dakota school when they had “mud days” when the rural roads were too muddy to run school buses and they called everything off. It was perfectly understandable to her. She grew up in Bison, SD. She also lived for a while in Nashville, TN, where everyone just drove as fast as they could when there was cold, icy weather so as to get home more quickly . She said that didn’t work so well, and she marveled at their foolishness. I am just glad I don’t have to go anywhere for the next month except to Bismarck to pick up my tough girl at the airport for Christmas.
Are you a weather wuss? What is the worst weather you ever experienced? Who are the biggest wusses you know?
We celebrated an early Christmas with our son and his family over Thanksgiving. I was quite excited to get a new cookbook from them, The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson. We have his Nordic Baking Book, which has hundreds of wonderful recipes. The book I just received has 700 recipes from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Finland. Some recipes are pretty traditional ones for meatballs and stews. I am happy to report, though, that if I ever run across Pilot Whale in the store, I shall know how to cook it. It may be a while before I am brave enough to cook with seal entrails or roast a Puffin.
It is interesting to see the different versions that different Nordic countries have for the same dish. There are slight variations on seasonings and ways of cooking things like meatballs, sausages, and meatloaf, for example. I think that we will have a fun time exploring this new cookbook. There are some things I will never cook with, like, blood, for instance. There are plenty enough other recipes that will be far more tasty.
What are some of your favorite cookbooks? What are some of the oddest things you ever cooked and/or ate?
Husband’s son Mario has come to Winona for a 10-day visit, and brought the whole famdamily! It’s a complicated, blended family with 3 girls: 20 years old, 17, 13; and a 2½-year-old boy and his 3-month-old brother. Their mom is a dream.
Happily, they are staying just around the corner from us, at the home of Mario’s mom. (She bought this house in 2021, having no idea at first that her former boyfriend would be sharing the back yard fence.) What serendipity! We just walked over there this evening with our contribution of salad and fixings, played with a little kid, held a baby, ate, talked with teenagers in front of a (real) fireplace, helped clean up, made plans for tomorrow, and walked back home. I met more of their relatives, and there will be an even bigger crowd for the big Thanksgiving blowout on Friday. If needed, we can “overflow” over to our house, which holds about six. : )
I was a little nervous about so many of them coming for so long, and of course this is just the first day. But we’ll all be fine – there can be an easy flow back and forth. Who set this up??
Trail Baboon 