I couldn’t find the cat yesterday afternoon, so I looked in our bedroom and found her snuggled in the down comforter we keep on our bed. She had been there for hours. You can see her in the header photo. She looks pretty comfortable, I think.
We have twelve very nice goose down pillows for the three queen size beds in our home, plus down comforters for each bed. Our friend who will live with us is allergic to feathers, so we bought two non-down pillows for her when she visits. The dog sleeps with us and also expects to have a pillow for his head at night. We are a spoiled bunch.
Husband’s allergies are so much better here. He is very allergic to cats and dust. There is very little dust compared to western North Dakota, and it seems the cat is shedding less now, probably because the humidity is higher. Our friend’s four cats will stay in the basement after she moves in, but I think we will get an air cleaner or two to mitigate any upward cat dander migration. I just had a Shark vacuum delivered that is especially good for pet hair, so I think we are covered. The dog doesn’t shed.
What kind of pillows do you prefer? Do you let pets sleep with you? If you have allergies, how do you manage them?
On Tuesday we talked about trick-or-treaters and Bill mentioned that he and Robin also ask kids about their costumes. I assume that most all adults do this. It’s a low-level way to make a short connection.
One of my last little groups consisted of a girl in a pink princess dress and a boy in some kind of princely attire. Knowing that I would never see these kids again and knowing that they won’t care a whit about whether I’m crazy or not, I started a conversation:
Me: What a great costume. Are you the Count of Monte Cristo? (knowing full well this kids wouldn’t know what I was talking about.)
Count: No, I’m Prince Philip
Me: Oh, from Sleeping Beauty.
Count: No from Maleficent.
Me: Silence for a bit.
Me: (turning to the girl) Are you a princess?
Count: She’s Sleeping Beauty
Me: more silence
Me: Here we go (handing out the candy)
While I was perfectly willing to be silly about the Count of Monte Cristo, I didn’t think I needed to get into an argument on my front steps with kids about Prince Philip trick-or-treating with Sleeping Beauty but not knowing they were in the same story.
Tell me about a costume you wore as a child (Halloween, school play, whatever…)
I saw the sad news that Diane Ladd passed away yesterday – she was 89.
She began acting at the age of 18 and just retired 3 years ago; her last roles were in Gigi & Nate and Isle of Hope. When she first came to my attention was the year I graduated high school, when she appeared in Chinatown and then Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Both great performances and she was nominated for a Golden Globe, Academy Award and a BAFTA – winning the BAFTA.
One of my favorite of her performances was as Etta, the sister-in-law of Theresa Turner in Black Widow. It wasn’t a huge part but she really made her cool but nasty character sizzle on the screen. The header photo is the best one I can find of her in that role.
I also really liked Rambling Rose in which she plays a southern woman who battles to keep a younger teenager from going under the knife unnecessarily. Here’s a good clip from that:
I also remember a really nice part she played in a Columbo episode. She’s a wheelchair bound woman whose husband kills her mother. She wears pretty, diaphanous dresses and appears fragile, but turns out to be a strong and kind woman. It’s one of my favorite Columbo episodes.
Her part in Alice didn’t do much for me. Of course, the I didn’t care the the show BEFORE she stepped in, but trying to shoehorn her into the role that Flo had vacated didn’t seem to work all that well. But she was popular and did win a Golden Globe for her work.
Most of the news stories today have “mother of Laura Dern” in their titles. It’s a shame because I don’t think that’s her big claim to fame. She had a long, diverse and entertaining career; that’s what the headlines should be!
Have you seen Diane Ladd in anything? Do you have a favorite?
This time of year I do actually work at not having too much leftover Halloween candy in the house. Luckily the number of kids that stop at the house has been remarkably consistent the last few years — even during Covid when I packed candy into little bags three weeks before and wore a mask while welcoming kids. This year, based on the number of pieces per bag, I figured I had enough to give each kid two pieces.
I always do relatively high-value candy – this year little Snickers and Reeses PB Cups. I heard a few ads on the radio the week before talking about non-candy ideas that you could implement and I just laughed. It might make adults feel virtuous but what kid ever wants some plastic bauble or deck of cards instead of candy. And while Smartees and Jolly Ranchers are infinitely cheaper, they aren’t as valued when kids are sorting out their bags of goodies at the end of the night.
In past years, I have taken any excess candy to the office – it never lasted long. The force was with me this year; I gave out the last four pieces of candy at 9 p.m. when I was getting ready to turn out the lights and bring in the luminaries. I congratulated myself on giving out all the candies.
YA has foiled my plans. She brought candy HOME – some she had found on sale and some that she picked up at the office. It is good candy – Ghiradelli caramel pumkins and Halloween-colored M&Ms. And she also bought Reeses pumpkins for herself awhile back. Turns out she bought more than one bag, so that is sitting out as well. I’m trying not to walk through the dining room too often. Out of sight, somewhat out of mind.
I’m pretty sure that not too many people see grocery-shopping as an exciting activity. Well, count YA and I as the outliers. For some reason over the years, we have cultivated grocery-shopping as an activity we like to do together.
Our favorite is Trader Joes. We especially like to go every couple of months when the new round of items hits the stores. We go through the Fearless Flyer that TJs sends out and highlight stuff that looks good. Sometimes, if I just want a couple of things, I don’t tell YA that I’m going to Trader Joes; if she comes along, it will triple the bill at the register.
The spot where Rainbow Foods used to be in the Hub Shopping Center near our house has been empty for seven years. A couple of times there were signs for temporary spots, like a Halloween store, but they never materialized. When construction started to happen almost a year ago, we were both excited to see what was happening there and then doubly excited when we found out it was going to be a Mexican market, bakery and taqueria. Unfortunately, it took WAY too long to open, so I had put my excitement on the back burner. Finally, about a month ago, it was clear from the trucks in the parking lot that progress was finally happening.
The grand opening was this past Saturday. Prizes, giveaway, samples, a bouncy house, mariachis and native dancers made it a big party. And it was CROWDED. The opening was at noon and we arrived at 1. Thank goodness for my bad knees and temporary handicap parking placard; we would have had to have parked in Iowa otherwise. And forget getting a shopping cart. Luckily YA and I didn’t have any big shopping plans so we just used a big bag that we had in the car.
Lots of nice-looking produce, a massive dairy/cheese aisle and two bakery sections, one with cakes, pies and then the self-serve bakery aisle …. I don’t even have the words
There were plenty of mainstream items alongside the Latino foodstuffs you would expect to find. A big endcap of Mary statuettes and a long row of Mary and other religious paintings above the front windows. They even have a Currency Exchange office. The taqueria was doing a bang-up business, as well as the deli. The tortillaria, where they will make fresh corn and flour tortillas is still in the works and should be open in a couple of weeks. You could see that area and the machines waiting to get set up. Since I’ve quit making my own tortillas, I can’t wait.
Anyway, YA and I had a fun time. We picked up a few items that I needed for a soup I wanted to make but didn’t partake of any on-site food – just too crowded, even for us. But my guess is that in the next few weeks, as the hoopla dies down, this will be another grocery shopping venue that YA and I will add to our events catalog!
If a tomato is a fruit, does that make ketchup a smoothie? Any good grocery shopping stories?
Did you ever watch a dog chasing a ball or a stick and watch them running and grabbing at it off the ground and think, doesn’t that hurt your lips scraping them across the gravel like that?
We pondered that playing with Luna the other day. It doesn’t seem to bother Luna.
Daughter came up with this Halloween costume all on her own:
Last week driving to Plainview there was a lot of corn still standing. This week a lot of corn has been harvested. Not mine, but all the corn around us. Several guys have finished. And now they’re hard into fall fertilizer and tillage. If any of you retired people want a job, I’m sure you could go to any of the larger farms in the area and get a job driving a tractor or truck for about 3 months. Depending on weather, it’s long days, lack of sleep, field meals, and, if you’re like my brother, “it’s just round and round- it’s boring!” But it’s big equipment and it can be fun. It wouldn’t work for me right now. I can’t get there until mid morning by the time I take daughter in. And I may have to leave mid-afternoon to pick her up. And I have a show this evening… Nope, I’m not the ideal candidate. YOU might be!
And the equipment sure is fun to see.
This week was all about getting the college show finished. We have our first show at 2:00 PM Saturday, the 1st. It will be ready, and ‘good enough’, but if I had more time, I’d tweak a little more.
It’s a good thing this set isn’t any bigger. I don’t know what happens to me that everything turns into a rush at the end, whether trying to get book work done to meet my accountant, or finish a set, or get the machine shed enclosed before cold weather comes, apparently I think I like the thrill of the rush of adrenaline and the whooshing sound the deadlines make as they go past.
Music lately has been some boogie woogie piano, my usual ‘All That Jazz’ movie soundtrack, and then playing a video of “The Gospel at Colonus”, from 1985. The full show is available on YouTube. I’ve had the CD for years, and we saw it at the Ordway maybe 10 years ago. This production has Morgan Freeman, Jevetta Steele, The Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and SO MUCH good gospel music. I was painting alone and singing and shouting along. HALLELUJAH! AMEN!
So. The lack of concrete. I mentioned on the blog one day that I didn’t feel good over the weekend and postponed the concrete.
Last Friday afternoon I rented a little machine called a plate compactor. It’s about the size of a small snowblower, I believe the plate measured 17“ x 20“ and its got a little Honda gas engine on it, and a long handle and when you rev it up it vibrates really fast and compacts whatever it is you’re trying to compact. In this case, about 8 inches of gravel as a sub-base for the concrete. It goes really good in one direction; pretty much drives itself. And it’s not too hard to go in circles, but if you drive it into a corner, you’re kind of stuck. The only instructions they gave me when I picked it up was how to start it. Later on I was on YouTube trying to find some instructions on running this thing, or if there was a certain amount of time you needed to compact material and the only videos I could find were how to start it. What somebody needs to make is a video that’s gonna tell you right up front, this thing’s gonna kick your ass. For the first half an hour. Because when you drive it into the corner the only way to get it back out is to use brute force and pull it back against the machine’s compaction motion. And eventually you’ll figure out you can flip the handle over and sort of steer it, almost one handed, but that doesn’t really help if you’re in a corner with a couple of walls. Anyway I learned a lot that first hour. And when I woke up Saturday morning, muscles I didn’t know I had hurt. And then my stomach started to hurt, then I got the chills, and I just didn’t feel that great. But, I had a lot of work to do.
WFriday evening I had finished compacting the sub base inside the shed, that 20′ x 20‘ area. Saturday morning I started putting gravel in. Kelly came and helped. That woman really is too good for me. She has an attention to detail that I don’t. She’ll spend hours working on something that I said was “good enough” long before. I was still feeling terrible and I finally had to go in the house and take a nap. Three hours later she was still adding a little gravel here, taking off a little there. She used those YouTube videos to learn how to start the machine and she was compacting gravel. We use one of those laser levels that sits on a tripod and puts out a green laser beam line. Then I have a stick with three marks on it: the height of the existing concrete, then a mark for the sub-base, and a mark for the Gravel.
Kelly is not afraid of hard work and she said she was enjoying it. I just wanted to move on because I’m always moving onto the next project.
Saturday night I came in the house and took a shower and then I soaked in the tub for half an hour and I went to bed.
Sunday morning we were back at it. All we had to do on Sunday was a little area 13‘ x 6‘ to be a walkway at the front door of the shop. I didn’t have much energy and if I had to get on the ground to do something, I tended to stay there for a while. Outside the shed, I cut a hole in the wall and shoved a piece of PVC pipe in for the drain, and then I laid in the dirt for a while. There was a thistle under my left shoulder. It hurt. Eventually I got up.
And by Monday, I knew I had to postpone the concrete. I needed to take that off my plate. A friend told me I don’t need a plate, I need a turkey platter. Yeah. That’s about right.
Almost ready!
Speaking of pondering, I read these two phrases in a new display at the college art gallery. :
Ouch. That seems kinda harsh.
This one reminds me of that quote: “In order to discover new lands, you must consent to lose site of the shore.”
The display is photographs by Ethan Aaro Jones, and is called “Unsearchable Distance”.
I have purposely chosen to not write about Halloween today, as it seems to me we have enough horror and fear around us. Instead, I wanted to let Baboons know what I am thankful for right now.
First, I am thankful to all the Baboons for putting up with all the posts I have written over the past several months about moving. I am sure they were getting pretty tedious to read. Moving is over, and now we are getting settled and organized. Not much more needs to be said about it.
I am also thankful for the increased time with our son and his family. We saw them yesterday in Sioux Falls and I got the best smiles from our 3 month old granddaughter.
Thanksgiving is four weeks away, and our son has requested a particular brined turkey ala Alton Brown, homemade French bread, and various other side dishes. Son and family, along with my best friend, will spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. I am so excited to cook in our new kitchen.
Finally, I am thankful that the court hearing Husband was to testify remotely at yesterday was settled on Wednesday afternoon. He had done a parental capacity evaluation on the parent in hot water with a central ND county. Now he is officially done working.
What are you thankful for these days. What are your Thanksgiving plans?
Our son and daughter loved listening to Rabbit Ears productions of children’s stories narrated by famous actors accompanied by wonderful musicians. One of their favorites was a story about Paul Bunyon narrated by Jonathan Winters with music by Leo Kottke. It was funny to hear Paul Bunyan talk about the assignment he got from the president to clear off all the trees from North Dakota. We could certainly relate, as we had a dearth of trees in our region.
Husband has really enjoyed walking the dog and seeing all the crimson and scarlet maple leaves in the neighborhood. We didn’t have these kind of maples in ND. He said the last time he lived in a place that had maples like this was 46 years ago in Madison, WI. The trees in Dickinson were mainly Green Ash and Cottonwoods. Their leaves were pretty blah in the fall.
We have a maple and an oak in the our front boulevard. We also have a Birch in the backyard, along with a Blue Spruce and a Flowering Crab. There are also all sorts of Arbor Vitae. We are well set for trees and bushes. The header photo is a tree across the street from us
What trees do you have in your yard? Any favorite Jonathan Winter or Leo Kottke creations?
My BFF suggested we go see Ann Reed last week; I haven’t seen Ann in a live performance for many years so I was excited to go. She has such a huge repertoire, I hate to admit that this is still my favorite:
She (along with Joan Griffith) did a great set and in between many of the songs, she shared haiku with us, some of hers and some that she had found along the way. When I went looking on the internet afterwards, I discovered she has a book entitled Our Daily Breath: Haiku & Photographs.
During my search I found a website, Haiku Universe, that will sent you a daily haiku or short poem. You know me, I couldn’t resist. It’s been fun the last week or so to get a little haiku every day. Here’s one I particularly liked (by Tomas O’Leary):
then it came to me
like a bomb in my lunch bag –
it was my day off.
So I’ve had haiku on my mind. Here are a couple of mine:
My orthopedists
Are both about twelve years old.
Having bad knees stinks.
It’s that time of year –
All of my hard work, yard wise
Fills up many bags.
Do you have any fall clean-up/organizing that needs doing? Any haiku or poems speaking to you?
Unless you got your water from a well back in Dickinson, no one needed a water softener. Our city water came from the Missouri River, and had just the right amount of minerals and wasn’t too hard. You didn’t need a special tap and faucet for drinking water
I had forgot that back here in Rock County, everyone has a water softener, as the water is very hard. The people we bought the house from were kind enough to leave us several bags of softener salt. The kitchen is plumbed so that our drinking water comes through the refrigerator door/icemaker. It is going to be tedious to fill up the tall pasta pot with water from the fridge door. I also have to get used to feeling as though I didn’t get all the soap off when I take a shower.
There were two guys in town with the same last name of Frakes who both were friends of my dad. One ran the Culligan franchise, so dad called him “Softwater Frakes”. The other was a building contractor named Marion who was married to a woman my dad called “The Devil’s Grandmother” due to her fussy and irascible temperament. I think of them now every time I drive passed the Culligan shop.
What are your favorite songs and stories about water and the sea. Anyone who you know who could be the Devil’s Grandmother?
Trail Baboon 