Last weekend, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, one of our employees came into our building and spread gold glitter all over-in the elevator, in all the hallways on both floors, in our offices, and on our desks along with green paper shamrocks and candy. Whoever it was had a master key to get into all the offices. Administration has been oddly silent, so I think it was one of them who did it..
All I could think was how awful for the cleaning staff to try to vacuum up all the handfuls of glitter that were strewn all over. The glitter has spread everywhere. One of my colleagues took her work laptop to a meeting at a local elementary school, and when she opened it up, glitter spilled out onto the table they were all meeting at. We are even carrying it into the community! After a couple of days for the cleaners to vacuum you can still see it in the carpet. Husband had some on his face at lunch yesterday.
For some reason Leonard Bernstein ‘s Candide came to mind when I saw all the glitter
What are some of your favorite Bernstein works? What is the biggest mess you ever made?
This weekend Husband and I are going to have a shred fest, disposing of lots of unneeded documents that we sorted through and discarded last Saturday. For some reason probably having to do with all the renovation in the basement, our housekeeping has really gone south over the past 18 months.
What with Covid and our busy schedules we have had very few guests over to the house in the past couple of years. Last Sunday that changed when Husband gave a cello lesson to one of our church choir members. The aspiring cellist brought his wife along, also a choir member, and we had to do a lot of house cleaning before they came. The dust was awful, and there were countless dog nose prints on the bay window that needed to be cleaned. We even cleaned out closets and brought lots of stuff to the thrift store. We also gave the basement a good cleaning now that the renovations are completely done. We were exhausted by the time we were finished.
We really don’t have a schedule for cleaning. We just do what needs to be done when we see it. I think that when we are both fully retired it will be easier to be more intentional housekeepers. Cleaning closets is pretty low on the list, but it sure feels good when I open the closets and see the organization and fewer things. I have the same approach to cleaning and organizing my desk at work. I have a far too grand, u-shaped desk at work that allows me to have stacks of papers that get bigger and bigger and still leave me room to do my work. You can see how ridiculously big this desk is.
I also have some odd figures that I have acquired over the years that hold pride of place in one corner of the desk. You can see them in the header photo. When the paper piles start encroaching on Moishe and Sigmund, then I know it is time to file things and straighten things up.
What did or does your desk look like at work? What is your decorative style?
I have two coworkers who plan to retire about the same time I do next year. We have worked together for 25 years, and have experienced the highs and lows and ridiculous moments that one experiences in a government agency.
Over the years we developed a motto to keep us going in our continued State employment until the time we reached the ages to get our pensions- “Just Soak Em!” Why, we ask each other, do we keep doing this? Because we’re going to soak em! We are going to extract every penny we are due from the State for all the hard work we did at wages much lower than in the private sector.
I suppose I will need a new motto for a new life that doesn’t involve my work. I will have to think hard on that. Luverne, the town we plan to move to after I retire, has the motto Luverne, Love the Life to encourage people and businesses to move there. Better, I suppose than “If you ain’t Dutch you ain’t much“, another popular motto from back home.
What is your personal motto right now? Think of new mottos or slogans for yourself, your family, state, or your community.
My children love to characterize me as being really rigid and fussy. I’m really not that fussy and particular, but they exaggerate as a way of gentle teasing. My post last week about Saying “No” gave us some some fun discussion about my parenting. I didn’t realize that they both read the blog on a regular basis. Son sent me the following You Tube video, which I find hilarious. He likes to refer to me as “Meine lieblings Mutti”.
I like their teasing, as it is gentle and done in good humor. My father was a terrible tease but he wasn’t malicious. There is a fine line between good teasing and bullying, though. We don’t have bullies in our family.
I have been teased at work by my coworkers the past few weeks for my smudging of our building and the sheer amount of smoke that I filled the building with. That has been fun teasing, too. I imagine it got tiresome for a former coworker to have it brought up on a regular basis that she had been caught speeding in a State vehicle by the governor. She always accepted it with grace and humor.
What do people tease you about? Know any mothers like the one in the video?
I don’t think there are many Baboons who work full-time any longer for an agency or some other entity. As a State employee I sure appreciated having yesterday off. I really needed a three day weekend. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but it was very nice to sleep in on Saturday and Monday. Sunday was an early day ringing bells in church for three hours, but it was nice to take a nap when we got home.
North Dakota still gives State employees Good Friday off. I don’t know if there are many other states that do. That means that I have another three day weekend in March. I imagined what other days in April, June, and August I could suggest to the powers that be to consider for three day weekends. May and July are covered already with July 4th and Memorial Day.
For April we could have the 23rd off in honor of Shakespeare’s Birthday. June 16th could be a day off for Bloomsday, as long as State employees read Ulysses aloud. August 23 would be a great day to celebrate the opening of the first one-way streets in London in 1617. The Transportation Department would support that one!
What Monday or Friday holidays would you like to see?
Last week I went out with six coworkers for a farewell luncheon for one of them. These are all young women under the age of 35, all mental health professionals. The lunch was delightful, but the conversation sure made me feel old.
Much of their discussion was about their newest discoveries for facial moisturizers and makeup, their latest experiences getting their nails done, their favorite coffee shops they visit daily, their favorite restaurants, their recent appointments at the chiropractor, and the new tattoos they were planning. Since I don’t wear makeup, have rather nice skin for someone who is almost 66, and would never, ever, get a tattoo, I hadn’t much to say. I have never had a manicure. I have never been to a chiropractor or had a massage. I refuse to spend money at coffee shops when I have perfectly good French press coffee brewed for me every morning by my husband. They were all astounded, however, when I mentioned that I have never had a pedicure. They all agreed that they are going to take me out for a pedicure before I retire. We shall see. I don’t know if I want someone messing around with my feet.
My coworkers view these activities as self care. I could never justify spending all the money that they do on these things. My self care is listening to music, gardening, and cooking. I suppose I spend more money on cooking ingredients than they do, but I am healthier than most of my coworkers and eat way better then they do.
What do you do for self care?What activities did you engage in that your elders shook their headsover when you were young?
No snow this year. I’m kinda OK with that. I’m sure it’s coming yet…we got 2 or 3 months of winter to get through, so I’m hooking up the rear blade and I’ll keep watching the forecast and I’ll get the snow blower in the shed if I have too. We will need the moisture somehow, and the cold weather does help kill bugs, but these up and down temps are really hard on cattle. Pneumonia and respiratory issues are common with these temperature fluctuations.
The farm magazines are making predictions and they pretty much always say “stay the course”. Don’t make drastic changes in crop rotations or marketing plans. Yet. I’ve gotten pecuniary plans from the co-op for fertilizer and spraying for 2024 and things are actually down a little bit from 2023. A few thousand dollars here and a few thousand there and pretty soon I’m talking real money. But I’m not planning any more major projects for next year. Yet. I mean beyond getting the fourth wall in the shed. We may not do that next slab of concrete. Yet.
County property tax adjuster was here this week. The permit for my shed remodeling project came in and he was following up. I know the guy from our township business with the county, and we talked for half an hour. Five minutes of that had to do with the shed remodeling.
Yesterday I got a 100 gallon propane tank placed so I can have temporary heat in the shed this winter. The deliver guy joked I was going to use a lot of propane trying to heat the whole shed. Yep. I better get the temp wall up. That’s my plan for these couple warm days. So far I’m not making much progress.
While I’m making plans for shed heat, back on Sunday night it was 8° and the well house thermometer was showing 35° and I am a gambling man and I hate to pay for electricity I don’t really need to use, but it’s also worth hedging your bets and I went out and turned on the well house heater. It was 18° the next morning but I slept soundly knowing I didn’t have to worry about that. Myself, and I know other people, use that phrase: I may do something that seems extreme, but, “I will be able to sleep at night”.
Got my final dividend check from AMPI, the co-op to whom I sold milk. They are on a 20 year dividend payout and this was my last one. Whopping $2.19 cents. Twenty years since I milked a cow and did all those chores seems like a lifetime ago. Seems like a whole DIFFERENT life. And it really was. I wouldn’t of missed it for anything. I still miss the cows’ personalities, and the situations they gave me and the people I met as a result.
Our kids daycare having a barn and farm tour.
Our bulk tank was a “Zero” brand. Kind of an oddball as the company had a unique design that didn’t work the way most dairy pipelines did. It was the first pipeline we installed in 1983 replacing the Surge brand buckets. Surge buckets were revolutionary when they came out in the 1920’s. (See this website for a lot of interesting information. “Interesting” if you’re into that sort of thing. https://www.surgemilker.com/history.html
The zero pipeline had some really unique features, but it also had a couple pretty serious drawbacks that affected the cows health. Too complicated to get into here. I replaced the pipeline, (keeping the Zero tank) in the mid 1990s with a Delaval system; a much more traditional system that was easier to service and cheaper parts. I sold the bulk tank a few years after we sold the milk cows. I saw a video online the other day of the same brand of tank and it brought back some nostalgic memories.
This photo was the milk house. The bulk tank is on the left. 600 gallons. Note the step stool to reach the lid for cleaning or samples. The four milker units are hanging, for washing, on the right. Wow, looking at this photo myself gives me so many memories. So many things I fixed over the years and so much time spent in there. The milkhouse was remodeled when we did the pipeline in 1983, but before that it was still the milkhouse and I remember washing the old bulk tank and surge milkers in there and my folks would say, “How did you get so wet??”. Well, I was washing stuff. Shrug. My history.
This photo was the ‘receiver jar’. You can see the milk came into that, and when it was about 2/3rds full, it pumped over to the bulk tank. I really loved having that jar. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but that was my favorite part of dairy farming: watching the milk rush into that and pump out. I’d watch that jar for hours.
Everybody travel safe if you are. Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays!
HAVE YOU EVER HAD TO DO SOMETHING SO YOU COULD SLEEP? WHERE WERE YOU IN 2003?
Christmas parties at my behavioral health agency have always been somewhat controversial. Back in the days of the “good ol’ boys” administrators they were boozy and pretty wild evening affairs at the local Elks Club or Knights of Columbus. People brought their spouses or significant others. Husband and I once played harmonica and bass guitar, respectively, in a employee blues band that had our LDS (Mormon) psychiatrist standing on her chair and clapping and shouting. The occasional employee invariably had too much to drink and had to be talked to the next work day about their behavior. We now have far different administrators who are female and more concerned with team building. Our Christmas parties take place in our building during work hours, there is no alcohol, and only employees attend.
Our workplace has been pretty stressful this past year, and many of us are getting burned out. Our head administrator and new clinical director were intent that this year’s party was going to be fun and healing if it killed us. We had our Christmas party on Wednesday. There were about 35 of us. The party was from noon until 4:00. It was considered a staff meeting, so everyone was expected to attend. We had been randomly divided into four teams the end of November and each team had given the assignment to decorate one of the doors in the waiting rooms. They had to be decorated by December 10th. This was a team building exercise. We had to vote on which door was the best. The teams were also assigned various categories of foods to bring for the potluck meal. My team was assigned main dishes and sides. We were encouraged to bring “ethnic” foods. I brought butter chicken, North Indian mixed vegetables, homemade chapati, and basmati rice. (One of our new crisis workers is from India and got tearful eating the vegetables because it tasted like the vegetables her mother makes.) Our Filipina psychiatric nurse brought Lumpia and a chicken dish. Our Ukrainian Crisis Team lead brought cabbage rolls. There were lots of pasta salads, barbecue, snack chips, dips, and desserts.
We then had team competitions playing multiple rounds of Family Feud. My team won. We had a white elephant gift exchange. I got a Willie Nelson chia pet planter kit. I gave a 3-D model of the brain that we had in the basement.
I was pretty exhausted by 4:00 with all the socializing and snacking. (I had got up at 5:00 AM to fry the chapati.) Was the party fun? Yes and no. I don’t think forced jollity works real well, but it was nice to be at work and be able to talk to coworkers and not worry about productivity. Our administrators are already thinking of next December’s team building exercises.
What do you think would make a good team building exercise for a work place? What are the best and worst work parties you had to attend?
Wednesday I took nine boxes of goodies to UPS to send to friends and relatives. The process was fairly painless except for the irritation I felt being referred to several times by the perky, young clerk as “Dear”. It was clearly a reference to my being noticeably older than she. My initial impulse was to say “I am not a Dear. I am Dr. Boomgaarden and that is how I would like to be addressed”.
I didn’t say anything, of course. I typically don’t with clerks or people I don’t know well. I didn’t want to come across as rude. Now, if you are a client or someone close to me, I don’t hold back and I can be pretty blunt. Besides, I wanted the clerk to not get flustered while she was getting my packages labeled.
I sometimes replay situations in my head to reflect how I wish I would have responded or acted. I used to do it a lot more when I was younger. Sometimes doing that helped me rehearse what to do the next time similar situations arose. There are only so many times one can bite one’s tongue.
Any regrets? Are you blunt, diplomatic, or a tongue biter?
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?
Trail Baboon 