The other night Husband was preparing to use his Neti pot after cleaning his CPAP hose. There were any number of things and implements and Q-tips involved in the processes, and when he was all done, he couldn’t find his hearing aids, which he had purposely taken out. I guess you can’t wear hearing aids when doing what he was doing.
We looked all over, in every room and drawer. I had him retrace his steps as best he could as he had got all the things he had needed for his tasks. He mentioned that he had gone into the bathroom I typically use when he got the Q-tips. I didn’t see them anywhere on the counter, but something caught my eye when I glanced in the bathroom waste basket. Sure enough, there they were!
Husband has lots of numbness in his fingers from carpal tunnel. He must have gathered the hearing aids up with the rest of the cleaning supplies and inadvertently tossed them, too. I felt like I imagine a detective feels after a successful solution to a mystery. I should add that despite his health issues, Husband is a busy and active guy.
When have you felt like a detective? Lost anything recently? Read or watched any good mysteries lately?
Today is Bosses Day. I have been quite lucky in my work having, for the most part, good bosses who did their best to protect us and make our psychology department as functional as it could be. That isn’t an easy thing to do in State government. Over the years we had some upper level administrators and directors who weren’t so great, and who were eventually walked out of the building in the middle of the day by State HR people from Bismarck and told not to return. That was sure something to see! I also always have got along better with male rather than female bosses. I am not certain why that is. (Probably something to do with my relationship with my somewhat overcontrolling mother!!)
I don’t remember an official boss when I worked as a corn detasseler for Dekalb when I was in high school, just middle aged women who detasseled with us and yelled at us if we worked too slowly. My first real psychology job was at the local hospital. My immediate supervisor was a great guy, but the CEO of the hospital was a heavy drinker who liked to party with the nurses in local bars. That wasn’t exactly the image that the board of directors wanted for a Catholic Hospital. He was eventually replaced.
There used to be six psychologists in our department. Now I am the only one left. I am supervised by the psychology supervisor at the Human Service Center in Bismarck. We only meet via the internet once a month. I never wanted to be a boss or a supervisor. I just do my own thing here and try to keep up my productivity and follow the rules without having anyone looking over my shoulder.
Who were your best and worst bosses? Were you ever a boss? Who was the bossiest person you ever knew?
I returned home from South Dakota last week to find our refrigerator filled with some odd foods. There was a huge coil of liverwurst, a new bag of cornmeal, and fluffy biscuits. These are all things I dislike. I asked Husband what was up.
It seems that while I was gone he had a sudden longing for the foods of his childhood, particularly the foods of his family from Eastern Ohio and West Virginia. Their foodways were quite Appalachian, with a great love of cornmeal mush. His Ohio forebears were also butchers and made lots of sausages, hence the liverwurst. He insists he got the liverwurst because he wanted to make sure he had an adequate red blood count. Sure, sweetie.
I don’t get particularly nostalgic over food, unless I consider my Aunt Norma’s chicken. That was always a treat, and I have learned to master it so it tastes just like hers. Daughter is nostalgic over my pasta sauce, which she thought for years was my own creation until she saw the recipe online realized it was by Marcella Hazan.
I don’t know if I should consider it a compliment that, if Husband couldn’t have my company, he found solace in cornmeal mush. Oh well, there are worse things, I suppose.
What foods, activities, or things do you get nostalgic for?
It was the Soup Swap yesterday. I’ve been going to these for almost 20 years and I always look forward to it. You make 6 quarts of soup, freeze it in 6 individual bags and then at the party we do a round robin swap. I think I’ve talked about it before.
Being a vegetarian at a soup swap in the autumn can sometimes be rough. In fact, at the very first swap I attended, I was the only one who brought a vegetarian soup; I went home with 6 frozen bags of meat soup. (I distributed them in my neighborhood). But the party is fun, so I’ve taken my chances many times since then. Yesterday was a mixed bag. We ended up with multiples of the same soups: Minestrone, African Peanut & Sweet Potato, Rosemary Lentil. In addition to these soups, I made way more of our soup that needed as YA is always complaining that I never make enough for US to have some. I made four batches:
So here is the recipe: Golden Caulifower Soup (thanks to Carissa Stanton and her Seriously, So Good cookbook.
Roasted cauliflower
4 c. chopped cauliflower florets (about 1¼ lbs)
3 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. ground turmeric
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. red chile flakes (optional)
½ tsp. pepper
Soup
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed (about 2 cups)
4 c. vegetable broth
1 can (13 ½ oz) full fat coconut milk
Pumpkin seeds (garnish)
1/3 c. pumpkin seeds
½ tbsp. olive oil
¼ tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. salt
Pepper to taste
Roast the cauliflower. Heat the oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, drizzle the cauliflower with the olive oil and sprinkle with the turneric, cumin, salt, chile flakes and pepper. Toss until coated. Arrange the cauliflower on a pan lined with foil and roast for 20 minutes, turning the florets halfway through. Set aside (but leave oven on).
Make the soup. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until onion is translucent (5-7 mns). Add potato, broth, coconut milk and the roasted cauliflower. Increase the heat to high. When soup boils, reduce heat and simmer covered for about 15 minutes. Use either in immersion blender or stand blender to blend the soup until smooth. Serve with the pumpkin seeds as a garnish.
Toast the pumpkin seeds. Drizzle olive oil over the pumpkin seeds and sprinkle with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Lay out the seeds on foil lined sheet and roast at 350° for about 12 minutes.
We have plenty of soup for the fall (although I’m sure I’ll have to make tomato soup soon to use up our surplus tomatoes).
It sure does get dark early. By the time I get home from work, change clothes, and talk with Kelly a bit, it’s dusk. And it’s only going to get worse for a while yet, and I’ll be OK with that once it’s cold and “winter”, but I got too much going on right now. The world goes round, and the seasons change, and it’s OK. Even the roadside vegetable stands have all closed and that’s kinda sad. It seems to happen so fast!
I really do love fall and wrapping up the seasons. The harvest and the fieldwork and completing that circle, it all just feels right. My friend Diane and I have always talked about how we get that urge to ‘pack up’ and suddenly we’re all about organizing. Cleaned off my home office desk one day, and then at the college, I took some pillows up the prop room and spent an hour packing up greenery and organizing.
Some of you have an ‘Arts and Crap’ room, I have props. It’s kind of a disaster. In theater lingo, a ‘prop’ is something the actor handles, versus the set or furniture. If you think about it, you can imagine all the stuff a theater might have for ‘props’. Anna or Catherine might have stories about props and props people. But here, I just tell the kids to try and get it somewhere near something else that looks like it. But they don’t care, and once you go down that road, you’re headed for disaster. I’ve had several people offer to clean it up. Maybe they chicken out once they look at it. ANYWAY, I cleaned up a corner and that’s a start. A few more corners to go. One day at a time.
At home, I was supposed to get the shop heater on Thursday, but it got postponed to Tuesday. And I need to move some stuff so they can work in there. Meaning once again, half the crap is moved to another place, and I was just getting so I could find it now. The pallet rack is the biggest deal. I’m taking half of it apart and maybe I can drag the other half out of the way.
I got a lot of other stuff done. Got new hydraulic hoses for the tractor loader, and since I replaced all the rest last summer, they are all new now and good for another 20 years unless I break one.
Got some hydraulic hoses off the chisel plow and took them to John Deere. They make all the hoses as needed. It was busy at the parts counter, so I told them I’d come back on Saturday to pick those up. There are two women at the parts counter now, Belinda (Or ‘B’ as I realized they call her). I don’t know the other woman; I haven’t worked with her much. But Belinda is fun.
I also got the 630 running again so I could move that. (Had pinched a wire going to the starter and created a ‘dead short’ and had smoke coming from under the dash. Accidently let out some magic black smoke but I was able to get it back in). it’s not running well, and it needs further investigation, but at least it’s running.
I took the carburator off the ‘4-wheeler’ and cleaned it and put it back on and it ran for 100 yards, and then I limped it back to the shed and pushed it out of the way. Will come back to that later. But I’m getting good at taking the carburator off.
Sounds like my neighbors will get my soybeans out this weekend. Good to have that done, and sure glad the weather has been holding.
I’ve been listening to Kris Kristofferson this week. He wrote so many songs you know, but you’re not used to him singing them. What a talent he was.
It’s fun to hear other versions of familiar songs. These are not by Kris, butTennessee Stud or Don’t think Twice, it’s alright are two that come to mind that have multiple covers.
On the duck front, we’re down to four. Went from 22 to 11 to 8 and now 4.
I made it home from South Dakota early yesterday afternoon. There were lots of newspapers waiting for me to go through. We subscribe to print editions of the Bismarck Tribune (6 days a week), the Dickinson Press (1 day a week), and the Rock County Star Herald (1 day a week). They are usually delivered on time. I was only gone 4 days , but that still left a lot of news to read.
I was tickled by an article in the Star Herald about Luverne’s recent High School Homecoming and the ABC Parade (Anything But A Car), which challenged students to drive on a parade route from the ice arena across town to the high school in unusual vehicles. Motorcycles were the most common, followed by tractors, lawn mowers. scooters, golf carts, a race car, a bulldozer, and a dump truck. How fun!
My first vehicle was a very old Nash Rambler my dad got very cheap from someone in 1973. I graduated to a Chevy Chevette when I got to college. I would probably have driven in an ABC Parade in one of my Dad’s U-Haul trucks. No CDL needed for that!
What did you drive to school in? What was your first vehicle? Ever been in a parade? What news outlets do you subscribe to?
Today is driving day for me. I am heading back home to ND. It is about a seven hour drive. I will stop once or twice on the way. It will be good to be home. I have travelled more than usual over the past six months, with three trips to Brookings SD, and one trip to Boston.
I have to fly to Dallas, TX the last week of October for a conference of Psychology regulatory boards. I am truly dreading the trip, mainly due to the destination. I put off making plane reservations until last Monday, and was quite relieved when I got it done. I did it online as usual. One of my worst fears was realized yesterday when I took a look at the reservation and saw that I had misspelled my first name. This entailed a text conversation with someone at the airline who fixed it up rather handily, much to my surprise. I am not afraid of flying, but of the preliminaries to the flights.
I don’t know why this all makes me so anxious, as I have never really had messed up reservations in the past, and things can be fixed. I suppose I could do this all through a travel agent, but we don’t have many in our town. I am happy that the Dallas trip looks ok on paper, at least. After that I just want to stay home for a while.
What about traveling makes you anxious? Tell about good trips and less than good trips.Any tips about Dallas?
I have been thoroughly enjoying myself here this week in Brookings. Son’s surgery went well. He is home recuperating. Yesterday I roasted a chicken and made slow cooker Bolognese sauce and chicken enchiladas. I also got to drive six year old Grandson to school, which is terribly fun. One morning we listened to a number from Cats on the Sirius XM Broadway station, and he was rather astounded when I told him that the performers were singing and dancing in cat suits. He also liked the number from Hamilton that we heard.
Son and Daughter In Law are good parents with quite appropriate limits and expectations. I tend to call Grandson out more often for minor infractions, though. It was pretty funny when, one evening at supper, Grandson announced, with a huge sigh, that Oma’s eyes saw everything, and there wasn’t anything he could get away with that I didn’t see. This was after I reminded him to eat his penne with his fork and not his fingers. He made a point of showing us his fork skills after that.
What is the first Broadway musical you remember hearing or seeing? What is your favorite musical now? How was your relationship with your grandparents?
It has been in the news, but if anyone didn’t hear, last Septmber, a young man driving between Fargo and rural Minnesota had some car trouble. His Honda Pilot took on a mind of its own, speeding up to 113 mph, not letting him brake, and not allowing him to shut he car off. He was able to phone 911 as well as his mother while driving, and the Highway Patrol and county sheriff figured out how to stop him. A Deputy sped past him going 130 mph, stopped the patrol car in front of the Pilot, and instructed the young man to crash into the rear of the patrol car. He did, the vehicle stopped, and no one was injured.
The whole story is amazing, but what astounds me is that the driver was using his phone all through the ordeal. My phone is in my purse when I drive and is on silent so I can’t hear it or be tempted to answer it. My son has his phone set up so that it sends him calls and allows him to call while driving without taking his hands off the wheel. I imagine that is what the driver of the Pilot did, too. I don’t know if I would have had the presence of mind make the calls and drive and flip all the switches to try to turn the car off.
What would you have done? Is your phone connected to your car audio system? What is the fastest you have driven?
You all know my weakness for seasonal goodies – so does Trader Joes. There is normally a slew of new items each season, most of which won’t be back when the season is over. YA and I went out a couple of weeks ago, right after the latest Fearless Flyer (Trader Joe’s newsletter) arrived in my mailbox. There are plenty of things we like to shop for but looking at and maybe picking up some of the seasonal stuff adds to the fun. In this respect, the YA apple didn’t fall far from the tree!
We tried fall leaf tortilla chips and potato crisps in the shape of ghost and bats. A big jar of harvest soup, a bag of apple granola. Pumpkin pasta. At the last minute we tossed a box of apple shortbread cookies into the basket. Normally the seasonal items we pick up are nice but nothing that makes me sad knowing they won’t come around again. But this year is different. The tortilla chips, the ghost potato crisps and the apple shortbread were all winners. I even whipped up some fresh salsa to have with the tortilla chips. YA ate most of the apple shortbread before I even got one.
Over the weekend, I had to pick up a couple of things at Michaels… and when I came out of the store and headed toward my car, my eyes lit on the Trader Joes on the other side of the parking lot. I didn’t even hesitate; headed right over and picked up more of the chips, crisps and the shortbreads. YA was very happy to have two more boxes of shortbread but thought that my extra bags of chips and crisps boarded on “hoarding”. She also suggested that I shouldn’t be eating the ghost/bat crisps until it’s a little closer to Halloween.
Considering that the world has been celebrating Halloween for a couple of weeks; the scary movies started up on October 1st on the dot. I like the fall and Halloween, but I prefer not to have my wits scared out of me by scary movies and creepy designs. I do like most folks yard decorations at this time of year; how do they keep those giant skeletons standing up?
So we’ll be enjoying our fall goodies for a few more weeks; I’ll probably have to make more salsa!
Do you prefer the cozy side of Fall or the spooky side of Halloween?
Trail Baboon 