We got a text from our daughter the other day, lamenting the dismal failure of two Christmas treats she tried making-those Special K wreaths you cover with green-dyed almond bark, and a pretzel, M & M, and white chocolate, milk chocolate chip confection. Neither set up, and were real messes.
Daughter has turned into a very fine cook of soups, casseroles, and main dishes, but admits she is no baker because she “cooks from the heart”, adding what she thinks would be good and deviating from the recipe. That just doesn’t work for baking. Baking is a first and foremost a science. The decorative part is secondary.
Daughter’s cooking style is that of a person relying more on their right brain than their left brain. I am a left brain person, who rigidly follows recipes until I get brave enough to alter things. Artists, poets. and musicians do a wonderful job using both sides of their brains in their arts. You just can’t wing your way through it when you bake. Flour can only absorb so much liquid, you need just the right amount of leavening, chocolate melts at a certain temperature, and you have to understand how fats interact with all of it. It is amazing anyone can bake.
How do you approach a recipe? How are you at following instructions?What science classes did you like/not like?
Last week this time we were preparing for a blizzard, and this week we had record high temperatures and tornadoes and extreme winds. If you’re smart enough to pay attention to the weather extremes going on you would call it global warming. Or you could just shake your head and say, well that’s different. Oh, it was different all right. I’d rather not have to go through that again.
I was glad the snow melted, I really just wanted the banks to melt down on the sides of the road. Guess I should be more specific about what I wish for. White Christmas or brown Christmas won’t bother me.
From the winds, we have a lot of branches down. We have an old maple tree in the front yard. A branch falls off if you look at it funny so it lost several in the winds. I have some trees down around the fields, some minor damage to some of the buildings, and most of the snowfence is gone. None of that is serious. I spent a few hours out with the Townboard guys clearing trees off township roads. I saw a couple trampolines folded in half, I saw metal roofing of a house peeled up over the top. You know if it’s windy down in our valley, it’s really windy out in the open.
I was supposed to have a choir concert at the college last Friday night. We postponed it to Monday. It was a very nice concert. The photo up top is my view from the booth with the Lighting Console as I programmed. It was nice of Santa to stop in at the concert on Monday.
End of the financial year here so I am settling up with the neighbors. I mentioned a week or two ago about pre-paying some fertilizer and doing tax planning for next year. My neighbors that do the combining and hauling of my crops sent their bill. Combining soybeans is $38 per acre. Corn is $39 per acre. And it’s eight cents per bushel to haul. They also made some round bales of straw at $13 per bale and I sold them 200 bushels of oats at $3.58 per bushel. I’ll be writing them a check for $7310. It’s a lot of money, but it’s cheaper than owning my own equipment and having the time to do it. And the neighbors with the cattle here, they pay rent on the pasture, I pay them to combine the oats, and they will buy the round bales of straw. I did some work for them and we pretty much balance out at the end of the year.
The chickens appreciate the snow melting. You can see them here gathered in a bare spot last week.
They don’t like the snow, they’ll walk over a little, but nothing deep. Except one white chicken. Evidently her feet don’t get cold. There were a few days last week when she was the only one out. Maybe she just doesn’t get along well with the others. She is kind of ornery, biting Kelly twice when she tried to collect eggs. Bad move chicken, bad move.
The MRI on my shoulder last week showed massive tears. Still waiting on the surgery consultation. Some days it hurts more than others. If I’m going to have surgery done, I’d really like it sooner than later. In the meantime, I wait. I remember reading in a John Irving book a phrase something like, “Does anyone in love ever want to ‘wait and see?’ “
How do you feel about waiting? How many other heteronyms do you know?
Since my local State agency and Husband’s State agency in Bismarck are considered health care facilities, we can’t have in-person office gatherings in which we share a meal due to pandemic protocols.
Yesterday, the social committee at my agency held our annual Christmas party over lunch hour. We all filed in to the main meeting room, filled our take-away containers with deep fried turkey, knoephla soup, and all manner of casseroles and baked goods, and returned to our offices to fire up our computers to play trivia games in a Microsoft Teams meeting. We also had a scavenger hunt to find things in our building that were either red, gold, green, or silver, based on on the team we were assigned to. I was on the red team. I took the red fire extinguisher off the all outside my office to show on-line, along with all the red items in my play therapy room.
In Bismarck, Husband’s party was also virtual during Wednesday’s lunch hour. Each “work team”, in its own space, staged a tableau from a well known Christmas movie, again, with computer video, and others were to identify the movie via chat. The Psychology Department depicted a scene from “Jingle All The Way”. This was followed by an all-out, virtual Pictionary game drawn on a white board for people to guess the Christmas song depicted. Everyone’s answers were delivered via Microsoft Teams chat. The food came from the Pizza Ranch.
We all want to engage with one another, and we miss the camaraderie. We enjoy our coworkers so much. Virtual is as good as it gets for now. Oh, for the days when we all got together for a catered meal and live music at the Knights of Columbus Hall with spouses and partners in tow, and the Regional Director would get blitzed and start singing, and there would be pinochle into the wee hours. We were all younger then.
What are your best and worst Christmas parties ever?What kind of party would you throw if there was no pandemic?
The last five years have been tough on mental health. It seems the predominant diagnosis at my agency these days is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which means that you worry about basically everything.
My mother was a champion worrier. She worried about the weather especially, either blizzard or tornado. Both my children have major anxiety and so do I. I like to think that worriers live longer than non-worriers. It is probably wishful thinking. Last night, I was frantic for Husband to get home from Bismarck in the snow and the wind. He made it safely, but the images of disaster were difficult to deal with. I focused on house cleaning. That helped.
How has your worry increased lately? How do you manage your anxiety? Who were the champion worriers in your family?
There are two State Highways that intersect our town. One goes east/west. The other goes north/south. The east/west route, known as Highway 10 or Villard Street, runs through our business district. The railroad runs parallel to it. There are, at intervals on either side, extremely large, full-sized billboards. Most are for local insurance agencies, for local companies advertising for new employees, or are displays of pro-life messages from our local Roman Catholic organizations.
I was rather astonished the other day to see a new billboard by the Hardees fast food restaurant boldly declare “SAY ‘NO’ TO INCONTINENCE” in huge letters with very little other information on it. Husband got a better look at it, as I was driving, and said it was for some sort of women’s spa.
I have no difficulty rejecting incontinence. Who would? I just wonder if this would make a successful advertising slogan.
What are some of your favorite or least favorite advertising slogans? Any beloved or despised jingles?
In 1966 I was at a difficult age. I was a little too young to have ridden the Beatles wave, but old enough that I knew I wasn’t a little kid anymore and wanting to connect with the rock `n roll world. When the Monkees hit the scene, they were just my speed. Like most of my girlfriends, I loved the pre-fab group (although at the age of 11, I didn’t really understand that part to begin with). Since most of my friends adored Davy, I resisted that tug and settled on Peter Tork. I knew he was the oldest Monkee, but he played a lovable goof who came off as the youngest, most vulnerable. I was a loyal Monkees fan until the band broke up 1969 (if you are a fan, you might protest this date, but I count the breakup as early `69 when Peter resigned.) I won’t go so far as to say that I went to Carleton because Peter has also attended, but it would be a lie to say I wasn’t aware!
I was sad to see that Michael Nesmith passed away on Friday. He was never my favorite but I did like the “twang” that was in the songs that he penned and sang. His signature wool cap came about when he wore it to the first audition for the tv show and one of the producers remembered it. It was also said that he was very calm at that audition, giving off an air of not caring whether he got a part or not. He carried that aloofness with him throughout his Monkees’ career; there were a few times that he did not appear with the group in later reunion gigs, although he had just finished on a tour a few weeks before his death. He wrote many of their songs; my favorite is probably “You May Just Be the One”:
In a side note, I found out many years later that his mother was the inventor of Liquid Paper. In this day and age of the computer and word processing software you might not know what Liquid Paper is, but if you were a secretary or typist during the 70s and 80s, you certainly do. It was a lifesaver back then.
With Michael’s death, there is only one Monkee left – Mickey Dolenz. Davy passed away in 2012 and my Peter passed away almost 3 years ago now. I know that their music is now considered a little on the bubblegum pop spectrum, but they are still my first love. I got out all their CDs and played them over the weekend.
Did you have any hero worship when you were younger?
Today is St. Lucia’s Day. One of my fellow church choir/bell choir members tried to make Lucia buns in honor of Hedwig, the Swedish foreign exchange student living with them this year. She spent $18 on saffron for the buns, only to have the dough fail due to yeast that was too old. Undaunted, she went back to the store to get more saffron and good yeast, and was going to try the buns again yesterday. I don’t know if they are going to have someone wear a crown with flaming candles.
I have mixed feelings about saffron, liking it best in East Indian rice and chicken. It is too weird for me in sweet pastries. I know its difficulty at harvest makes it so expensive. I have always wondered if we could grow the crocuses it comes from in our garden.
What is your favorite recipe that calls for saffron? What are your experiences either with, or as, a foreign exchange student? Where would you have wanted to go as an exchange student?
Well I guess it’s winter this week. We had 4 inches of unexpected snow on Tuesday. maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention to the weather but I don’t think anybody expected that much snow. At least it was light and fluffy.
And then it was cold. I had one below zero Wednesday morning! I went down to open up the chickens and they were in no hurry and had no interest in coming out. One chicken, who always ends up in a different side of the pen, ran to the door, stopped and looked, pecked at some snow, and turned around and went back inside. Didn’t blame her a bit. Even the ducks weren’t too interested in leaving the water. I threw corn out to them at the pond.
The deer have started to group up. I took this picture coming home one night. That’s just one group. Usually there’s about three groups this size. This is why I don’t like the deer. Too many of them.
Almost done with class. We had to write a paper about a park or an area and of course talk about the rocks, waters, and land uses etc. I wrote about our farm. Understanding the history of the glaciers coming through and the forces that have shaped the land and the types of rock underneath is really pretty interesting. I will have that submitted before you read this. And then a final in class on Monday and then that’s it. Then maybe I can start working on my basket of farm bookwork.
Or maybe not. My left shoulder has been giving me trouble for years. But not enough to really cause any issues. Until about two weeks ago. One night out of the blue I went to lift my arm and it hurt like all get out. Then it got better then one night again it hurt so bad I went to the ER, but of course by the time I got there didn’t hurt so bad. Had an MRI done on it and as of now, still awaiting results on that. But I foresee rotator cuff surgery coming up shortly. well, that will certainly make me reevaluate some things.
My good friend Paul, the one who occasionally comments on here, had rotator cuff surgery about a year ago. He had a terrific recovery so he can be my guide.
Tuesday night after the snow, Kelly rode in the tractor with me as we bladed the driveway, so she’s ready to tackle that on her own if necessary.
I think I can still design lights with one arm. I need the computer to program and record cues. Obviously someone else should be climbing ladders. Notice I said “should“. No, if it comes to that, I will behave. I can still program the light board with one arm.”
So we’ll see.
Ever received or sent a dear John /Jane letter? How did that go?
I got an email yesterday from my librarian cousin in Columbus, OH, to tell me that his younger brother had died suddenly the day before on the farm near Magnolia, back home in Rock County. He was my age, and had some health issues.
I have very fond memories of my cousin, a wild and impulsive guy who loved fireworks as much as I do, and with whom I had wonderful fun as a kid building forts in the grove on his farm, playing baseball, climbing trees, and setting pocket gopher traps. One of my favorite memories is the time he and his younger brother were having a knock down, drag out fight in the middle of the farm yard while their mother was whacking them with a broom and they were laughing at her.
My cousins are like siblings to me. The ones my age are boys, and I had lots of fun doing daring and inventive things with them. I am so glad for my memories with them.
Got any good cousin stories? Who are your favorite relatives or adopted relatives?
I am a master procrastinator when it involves paperwork at my job. Meeting paperwork deadlines is a major item in our yearly performance evaluations. My main job is conducting psychological evaluations. I test two people a week. For psychological evaluations, I am allowed 30 calendar days to complete the evaluation report, the clock starting the day after the first testing session with the client. Holidays and sick days do not change the due dates for report completion. That means I have two reports to complete each week, in addition to testing new people.
When I am not testing people or writing up the results of the testing, I have therapy appointments and other meetings. I would much rather meet with people than spend hours at the computer scoring tests and writing reports, and since 30 days sounds like such a long period of time, I typically scramble when day 28 arrives and I have limited free time in my schedule to write. I am happy to say I almost always get my reports done on time, but usually on day 29 or 30. I often bring work home to finish it on the weekend.
I don’t know what got into me last week, but there was a perfect storm of illness-related therapy cancelations along with a slew of evaluations that required very short reports, and I finished six reports, working ahead and leaving a couple of weeks with no reports that are due. Now, I can go to South Dakota for Christmas and not have nagging paperwork worries.
A dear friend of mine, a philosophy professor, used to reward himself with a glass of cognac after reading student essays, the promise of the cognac keeping him going on the grading. I sure don’t need that sort of reward after finishing reports. I am just basking in the feeling of working ahead and reducing my ever-present anxiety.
What do you put off doing? What is the latest accomplishment of which you are proud?How do you approach paperwork?
Trail Baboon