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?
it sure is easy to shop for people who like to cook! Husband and I got a lot of our Christmas shopping done for our kids last Saturday at the local kitchen store. Daughter wanted us to shop at small, local, businesses, and so we did.
Husband and I don’t bother with surprise gifts for eachother any more. We spied a nice Emil Henri tagine at the kitchen store and we decided that was our present this year. We are picking up the goat at the butcher shop next week, and I forsee making Morrocan goat dishes with our new purchase.
Our children are often frustrated with us over the holidays since we really don’t need much and can never give them many ideas for gifts. I asked for a cookbook and a calendar. Husband asked for a couple of books. Nothing too exciting, and pretty easy to come by, supply chain problems not withstanding.
How is your holiday shopping coming along? Who are the easiest and most difficult people for you to buy for? Having any trouble finding what you want? What was your favorite Christmas present as a child?
Most mornings YA and I share our schedules with each other. Not specific details down to the hour but general “what I have on my plate for the day” schedules. On Saturday morning, YA told me she was going to the gym and running a couple of errands.
I was finishing up cookies and after about an hour I realized that not only had she not left the house, but that I could hear the hair dryer running upstairs. I was a little surprised as I would never shower and do my hair and makeup (not that I ever wear makeup) before going to work out at the gym. I always save the shower for AFTER the workout. I shook my head at what the younger generation gets up to.
It occurred to me that every generation shakes its head at the younger one but then I thought about my mother. When I was growing up, my mother’s standard lipstick color was flaming red. If she ever wore another color back then, I wasn’t aware. And she did not go out in public without it. I have a very clear memory (probably because it happened so often) of her applying a fresh layer of lipstick in the rearview mirror of the car before getting out to run whatever errand was on her agenda.
So here am I, stuck between the rearview mirror lipstick application and the showering before the gym generations. I’m guessing that YA probably has a long list of my actions that she just doesn’t understand.
Any habits of yours that another generation just doesn’t get?
Last evening, our handball choir performed in a musical holiday extravaganza put on by the local college at our church. We played along with the Community choir, college vocal ensembles, college band, and smaller vocal and instrumental ensembles for a very ambitious 90 minute program.
Our practice schedule was interrupted by COVID early in the fall, and we never caught up. We weren’t prepared for all our pieces last night, and our main goals were to not get lost in the music and to end together. Only an experienced bell ringer would have caught our mistakes, but we each felt our individual errors keenly. I made mistakes and got lost in places I never got lost in before. Husband described it afterwards as a musical ordeal. I believe it was Gustav Holst who said that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. We are just relieved it is over and now we can focus on our last two performances on December 17 and 19.
Any performances you would like to forget about? What pageants have you participated in?
Sure been a nice week weather-wise. Temps In the 50’s the last few days. Ten-day forecast has the temps in the mid 30’s and no snow. I’m OK with that. My apologies to anyone waiting for snow.
Kelly and I got snowfence up the other day so there’s another thing checked off my list. Glad to have that done.
There was a little wind to contend with and the cowpies were mostly dry.
Daughter and I did driveway markers. It was colder than I expected that day and she’s not a fan of the wind. Nice that Bailey could keep her company.
They kept me company inside the gator, too.
I was feeding the ducks one morning and that chicken came running from the pole barn, so she’s still back there laying eggs. .Way in the back, down in a corner. I’m still hoping she gets tired of this as the weather gets colder.
Last weekend I redid a few things in the chicken coop. I put the back wall back in place. (I take it off for more ventilation in the summer) and I changed their perches and got the water buckets and heated pad situated for winter.
It’s odd, they barely use that rear nest box for eggs, often preferring the front unit. One hen must be molting. She looks really rough right now.
I don’t know if her feathers are going to come in a different color than she was? She used to look like the chicken in the front. Boy, hang in there, girl. Egg production is a little down; the old ones are starting to taper off and the new hens are just getting started.
End of the year finances: I’ve paid off our production loans from this years inputs and prepaid some expenses for next year. It’s funny; we have a good year and actually make some money, but it’s tough to save much because taxes will take a big chunk. I know taxes are important and provide a lot of services, but golly. It feels like throwing money in a hole in the ground. I went to the co-op and paid $900 for the grid soil sampling.
Paid $2800 for the lime and applications on half the farm. Prepaid for 4 tons of fertilizer for next year $3400 (again, maybe half of what I’ll need). They don’t have anhydrous nitrogen prices yet and they figure chemicals prices will hold steady so I didn’t pay on them. Easy come, easy go. Sometime before the end of the year I’ll get seed ordered for next year. That also becomes a deduction on this years taxes. Don’t have to pay for it yet, just get it ordered.
Remember getting your first check book? What was the first thing you bought? I bought a Timex Watch and you had to push the button so the time would show up in Red.
The warm weather the last several weeks has given us a glimpse of some fun bird behavior.
We have a bird feeder in our backyard that Husband fills with black oil sunflower seeds. We are the only people on the block who feed birds, so our yard is pretty popular, especially given the tall lilac bushes where multitudes can perch. They also like weaving in and out of the twisty grapevines on our deck. There is a very large flock of about seventy sparrows, with several Red Polls, House Finches, Chickadees, Rose and White Breasted Nuthatches, and Junkos who frequent our yard. There are often seven Eurasian Collared Doves on the ground under the feeder, eating what the other birds knock down. A Downy Woodpecker also makes an appearance now and then. They are all really greedy, and feast and gobble as fast as they can. The Chickadees alert the others after Husband refills the empty feeder to let them know that dinner is served.
I cleared out the rhubarb bed the other day, leaving a large area of smooth dirt that the rhubarb leaves had formerly covered. Last Saturday I noticed about twenty Sparrows rolling around in the exposed dirt, digging into the earth, making little indentations in the soil. I guess they were having dust baths, a luxury in North Dakota in late November.
Even more luxurious was the shower they and a migrating flock of Cedar Waxwings had a month ago on the last really warm day of autumn. I set up a sprinkler to water our rhododendrons, bleeding hearts, fern bed, and hydrangeas before freeze up, and we saw the birds flying repeatedly through the spray and huddling on the ground, letting the water cascade over them. The Waxwings made a point of drinking copious amounts of the water that collected on the walkway. The next day, they were gone.
What are your favorite birds to watch? Tell your bird stories. What is your favorite bird-inspired music and visual art?
Husband is always on the lookout for sourdough rye recipes, and settled on a Danish Rugbrød last week. That is the coarse, very thinly-cut type of rye bread baked in a Pullman pan with added sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and rye chops. It is often used as the base for Smørrebrød, those lovely open faced sandwiches..
The recipe he chose took eight days to make, beginning with the sourdough starter. He meticulously measured things as he fed the rye starter, and by Day 8 he was ready to mix up the bread.
The recipe was poorly translated from the Danish, and the exact steps were very difficult to follow. Husband fussed and fussed over getting all the proportions of everything correct at every step. He measured out everything by weight, and had to covert even the liquids from liters to grams. I served as his calculation assistant, and when he asked me to find out how many grams in a deciliter, I knew we were in uncharted territory.
I remember feeling so lost when the metric system was introduced when I was in elementary school. As I helped Husband with his deciliters, I thought of that and how ridiculously logical the metric system is. Why is this so hard for my American brain to comprehend?
The bread turned out quite well. We froze half and plan to send it to the only two Danes we know for their honest opinion.
What are your experiences with the metric system? Why is it hard for the American mind to grasp?What is your favorite bread to bake? Whose opinion do you value?
Husband and I ordered some classical audio cd’s from Amazon recently. I usually like to order from Archiv, but everything there was on backorder.
Our selections were fairly eclectic, ranging from choral music by Arvo Part and Henrik Goreki, to a cd by Brooklyn Rider, a string quartet, playing with an Irish fiddler.
When you order from Amazon, you never quite know where the products are coming from. Three of the cd’s we ordered came from overseas. A London /Decca recording of Chopin nocturnes played by Vladimir Ashkenazy came from Japan. It arrived speedily, several days before even the US cd’s arrived. It is a lovely recording, but all the liner notes are in Japanese!
Two of the cd’s are coming from England. One is from Banbury, Oxfordshire. The other is from Stockport, in Cheshire. That particular cd is being shipped by Royal Mail. I have no idea what that means in terms of speed of delivery, but it sounds so impressive! I imagine it being delivered by someone in a Beefeater uniform.
Any interesting shipping or delivery stories? What music have you discovered lately? What would you like to receive via Royal Mail?
In searching for something on my laptop last week, I came across a list of books about dragons. Looks like I made this list six or seven years ago (last time it was saved was six years back) and I’ve read a few of the books on the list since then. I’d completely forgotten that I had this list.
Dragons, of course, are widely varied in literature. My least favorite kind are the mindless, evil dragons (think Smaug in The Hobbit). I prefer intelligent dragons who can communicate if they choose (like Ramoth in Dragonflight or Temeraire in the Novik series). My current car is named after a dragonrider of Pern (Brekke – one of the rare dragonriders who can communicate with all dragons, not just their own).
I also like dragons who adore treasure – not sure why, maybe because it’s such a longstanding bit of dragonlore that it feels right when it is included. It’s interesting that the Greek dragons who were set to guarding treasure have morphed into beings who lust after gold, diamonds and jewels. Of course I also read somewhere once that gold is a good conductor of magical energy and that dragons NEED it to exist.
The biggest problem with this list is that I have already reached the limit of books that I can have on hold at the library – with probably be at least a week before that changes. Hopefully in a week, I’ll remember I have this list of books I want to read! Maybe I’ll start yet another tab on my reading spreadsheet.
Tell me about a mythical animal that you think might improve our world if it existed! Or just if you have a favorite mythical animal.
Trail Baboon 