2 TO 4 A DAY

NEW DIRECTIONS

2010-11-28T08:37:00.000-06:00

After over 360 blog posts, I have decided to permanently sign off on 2to4aDay and put my energy in a different direction. I’m not entirely sure what direction this will be, but I know it will involve less time in front of a computer.

This blog was an important part of my journey from a productive member of the working class to a lay-about retired person. But it’s time to move on. There’s only so much a person can say about walking 2 to 4 miles a day. And I think I’ve said it all!

So thank you for reading for the past couple of years. Happy trails to us all!

QUEEN OF EUPHEMISMS

2010-11-19T08:52:00.004-06:00

In this age of Jersey Shore, The National Enquirer, Maury Povitch’s “Who’s Your Baby’s Daddy?” and other over-the-top, in-your-face, too-much-information media, I am reading my mother’s diaries.

My mother is the hands-down Queen of Euphemisms, adhering strictly to the unwritten 1950s Norwegian immigrant code of modesty: Never use an expression that may offend when you can substitute a less offensive expression in its place.

As I mentioned earlier, I have tackled the daunting project of transcribing my mother’s 52 years of diaries, from 1954 to 2006. These are not your tell-all soul-baring diaries. These are your “I baked six loaves of bread today and washed the bathroom rugs” kinds of diaries. But hidden amid the faithful recording of her daily tasks are bits and pieces of intriguing history and gossip.

But often this history and gossip is written in code. She doesn’t betray people. She doesn’t give judgmental color commentary on others’ behaviors. She doesn’t divulge any information that might be seen as critical or personal. She uses her euphemisms carefully.

It’s refreshing, it’s maddening, it’s curiosity piquing. “What does she mean by that?” I continually find myself asking, trying to decode her secret language.

Some of her euphemisms are obvious: Charlotte wrote with “news” . . . my aunt Ellen “beamed with news” . . . Edna “announced her news.” The “P” word is never used. (If my mother didn’t think it was right to use the “P” word, then I’m not going to either.)

Many relatives “went to the hospital” without ever having their maladies specifically named. Some medical problems were all right to discuss: “blood poisoning” seemed to be a popular diagnosis in the ‘50s. But other relatives might spend days or weeks bedridden, and my mother wouldn’t give a hint as to what their problems were. How much do you want to bet that they were “lady problems” and “men problems”? (See, she’s got me doing it, too.)

Mental illness existed in their families, but wasn't openly discussed. Occasionally someone might have a “nervousness” or a “collapse.” But diagnoses and outcomes were never mentioned.

A favorite dog is run over by the milk truck. Seemingly, we never mourned. We buried it and looked for another dog. A beloved aunt suddenly dies. A complete report is given on what was served at her funeral lunch. But for Pete’s sake, we don’t get into that touchy-feely stuff.

So the diary transcribing has also become an exercise in reading between the lines, reading into the euphemisms. I’m not critical—in fact, I might be nostalgic for a time when people used a little dignity when discussing the lives of others and themselves.

So if you grew up in our neck of the woods and are living in fear that your long-hidden family secrets will surface as I transcribe my mother’s diaries, you can rest easy. Your secrets are safe. It would take Samuel Morse himself to decode some of the allusions created by the Queen of Euphemisms, my diary-writing mother.

MORNING

2010-11-16T06:47:00.004-06:00

I believe I love mornings so much—and subsequently get up ridiculously early—because at that time of the day, all my thoughts seem so miraculously clear.

Like crystal.

Like a ripple-less river.

Like a picture window freshly washed in ammonia and vinegar . . .

(It also seems to be a time of the day when I can’t stop writing similes.)

My brain is normally a sludgy, oatmeal-like mass of low-functioning gray matter. But for some mysterious reason, for about two hours after I get up in the morning, my medulla oblongata clicks in harmony with my pons. My left brain’s logical sequential function and my right brain’s intuitiveness get along like small-town-casserole-swapping neighbors, and my neuron synapses fire with the precision of a 21-gun salute.

Like a well-oiled engine.

(Oops, there go the similes again).

In the morning, an unfinished crossword puzzle from the day before suddenly seems head-slappingly obvious.

In the morning, a frustration miraculously forms a solution.

In the morning, the schedule for the day (after tossing and turning all night) suddenly unfolds like a Google map.

And in the morning, problems seem smaller; everything seems do-able.

Sometimes during my morning clarity, I feel envy. “Just think,” I marvel, “some people function with this level of brain power all the time. ALL THE TIME!”

They probably just take that 24/7 clarity for granted, assuming that everyone’s brain operates at non-stop peak performance. I fervently hope those people are sitting in places like the White House Oval Office or in the cockpit of any plane on which I’m a passenger.

Some people tell me that their most productive times are mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Others claim to be night owls whose energy and creativity kick in at 2 a.m.

Personally, I like having my clarity time early in the morning. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. Many mornings I get to see the sun rise and early birds catching worms. The hope for that clarity is my inspiration for rolling out of bed. If I accidently oversleep until, say, 7 o’clock, I feel disappointed. How could I waste the most valuable part of my day?

By 8 a.m., it's over. My superhero mental powers are already slipping away as my brain returns to its normal, pre-clarity level.

The cape goes back in the closet.

I am no longer able to think faster than a speeding bullet or leap tall problems in a single bound.

I no longer have the secret to saving the whales or the capability of finding the cure for Crohn’s disease.

I am once again 2to4aDay, mild-mannered retired school teacher in her knee brace and sweat pants, eating shredded wheat and making a grocery list.

But for those two early-morning hours, I am invincible.

WORTH A TRY

2010-11-12T20:55:00.002-06:00

It was one of those “FWD: FWD” emails. You know the type. We all have a friend or a relative who sends us every forwarded email ever invented on the face of the earth.

This one said: “Look at the picture below close up. Then look at it from 15 feet away.” (Try it. It really works. Fifteen feet, no cheating.) From close up—Albert Einstein. From 15 feet away, Marilyn Monroe. It’s a miracle.

So I said to Tom, “From now on, I want you to look at me from 15 feet away. I have a feeling I’ll look better.”

So he stood 15 feet away.

“So who do I look like?” I asked hopefully.

“Albert Einstein,” he said.

“All righty then . . .,” I said, turning away. I guess it doesn’t always work.

HAVEN

2010-11-12T07:28:00.007-06:00

Back when I was working, pre-retirement, I sometimes ate lunch in the teachers’ lounge at the small college where I taught.

It was always a crap shoot as far as who my tablemates would be. Sometimes I ate fast to escape the carping of a fellow teacher who just wanted an audience for his or her bellyaching. Sometimes just the right combination of people were at the table so it seemed more like a party than a 20-minute cram-the-food-in-your-face-and-run lunch session.

But occasionally, when the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars, I’d be lucky enough to be at the same table as Myron, an art teacher at the college. He was a quiet, soft-spoken man of incredible talent—an effective, respected teacher. And a wonderful lunch-table companion. I’d always feel like a more enlightened person after I ate lunch with him.

I remember one conversation in particular. It was years ago by now—years. But I still remember what he said. Somehow the conversation had turned to the subject of marriage.

“When I come home,” Myron said in his thoughtful, quiet voice, “I feel like I’ve entered a haven. My wife makes my home a haven.”

I don’t remember what I replied. Knowing me, it was probably something inappropriate like, “Well, my goal is to make my husband’s home a hell-hole.” Whatever I said in response is immaterial. All I know is that word ‘haven’ has stuck with me all these years.

Haven. A harbor, a place where ships may shelter from the weather. A sanctuary, a place of safety.

Source: http://www.ports.org.uk/

I think about that conversation every time Tom walks through the door and I shriek like a fishwife, “The dryer smells like burning wires!” instead of “Welcome home, my darling.” Or if I warn, “Don’t track on the floor—I just washed it,” instead of “I’m so glad you’re home, sweet love of my life.”

‘The dryer smells funny?!?’ ‘Don’t track on the floor?!?’ Ye gads, not something a Haven-Creator would say.

So Myron’s wife inadvertently set the marital bar high for me, even though I rarely measure up. And I'm not being modest; I rarely measure up. But I can’t think of any compliment greater for a spouse than to have a partner sit at a lunchroom table of co-workers and quietly use the word ‘haven’ when describing ‘home.’

FAMILY ROOTS

2010-11-11T08:20:00.005-06:00

I suppose it’s possible. Although my first reaction was to snort and mutter to myself, “Whatever . . .,” I suppose it IS possible.

While I was looking up some family history information online about immigrant ships’ passenger lists, I stumbled upon an intriguing site:

“UFO-Roots” for “those whose ancestors arrived from outer space, to make connections with others sharing this problem, discuss their ancestry, and provide advice on possible avenues for further research.”

So while some people are bragging that their ancestors came to America on Erik the Red’s Viking ship or the Pinta or the Santa Maria or the Mayflower—and I’m checking passenger lists on the Norwegian immigrant ships Bark Nornen and Argonaut looking for my Norwegian ancestors, a few other earthlings may be looking elsewhere. Instead of trying to figure out if their ancestors came from the Romedal or the Stange municipality in Norway, they might be weighing the likelihood of coming from the Andromeda Galaxy as opposed to the more local Milky Way.

As Agent K said in Men in Black, “1500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”

It was an "AHA!" moment, explaining a few people who have mystified me over the years. It made perfect sense that some of their ideas and behavior could be traced back to the landing of a dome-shaped UFO in Duncan, British Columbia, rather than a ship pulling into Ellis Island, New York. Or it might explain the "new neighbors" who, by eerie coincidence, showed up at the church pot luck with an odd-looking casserole the day after the crop circles appeared in the Bjornberg's barley field.

Or their residency on earth could be as simple as Captain Kirk on the Star Ship Enterprise reminding his crew after landing the Klingon bird of prey in Golden Gate Park, “Everybody remember where we parked!” If you forget where you parked your UFO, it’s tough to get home again, no matter where home may be.

"They" might be living among us, researching their roots on the Internet.

It would explain a lot.

GIFTED

2010-11-09T12:07:00.004-06:00

In 1979, exactly 31 years ago today, it snowed.

I know that for a fact because I woke up that morning, looked out my hospital room window, and there it was. All over the ground—winter.

A nurse came in and encouraged me to get my lazy butt out of bed and clean up a little. Evidently, there was some arcane hospital rule about lying around in the same sweaty pigtails in which I had given birth the day before.

The nurse dug my maroon embroidered robe out of the bag I had packed for the hospital, trotted me down the hall to the shower room, and transformed me from a bedraggled-looking new mother into an ethereal creature with a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary.

The day before, I had passed out on my hospital bed in a post-partum exhaustion, drool pooling on my pillow, when Tom came back into my room to see if I was awake. He had something important to tell me.

He had been studying our new baby very carefully, very thoughtfully, while she slept in the hospital nursery.

“I think she’s gifted,” Tom told me, as seriously as I’d ever seen him.

“Wha—what?” I asked groggily. “Gifted? How can you tell?”

“Well,” he said solemnly, “to begin with, she’s much more alert than those other babies in the nursery.”

“Good,” I yawned, “she’s alert. Anything else?”

“Well, she got that perfect score . . .” Tom reminded me, trying to appear modest.

Score? Score? What score?

Then it dawned on me. The APGAR score—Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration—the APGAR test that they administer to newborns to make sure they aren’t experiencing post-delivery distress. Our new daughter had scored a perfect “10.”

Her first test, and she had aced it. She was gifted.

I smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she is,” I agreed.

And 31 years later, we know it for a fact.

She is.
Tom with his “gifted” daughter

WEATHER BOTTOM FALLING OUT

2010-11-06T07:14:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, Tom and I took a three-mile walk on the Central Lakes Trail. During the time we were out there, we saw only two other people on the trail. Two other people!!

Listen up, folks. This balmy, Minnesota Indian Summer weather will not last forever (see ten-day weather forecast below):

Today, Nov 06, Partly Cloudy 54°/37°
Sun., Nov 07, Partly Cloudy 58°/40°
Mon., Nov 08, Partly Cloudy 56°/41°
Tue., Nov 09, Few Showers 54°/37°
Wed., Nov 10, Few Showers 45°/32°
Thu., Nov 11, Partly Cloudy 41°/29°
Fri., Nov 12, Partly Cloudy 38°/25°
Sat., Nov. 13, Snow Shower 33°/25°
Sun., Nov 14, Partly Cloudy 36°/25°
Mon., Nov 15, Partly Cloudy 36°/26°

Source: www.weather.com

Do you see that temperature plummeting? After next Tuesday, it could be cloudy, rainy, 30- and 40-degree temperatures. By next Saturday, it might be snowing. If this 10-day weather forecast doesn’t convince you that winter is coming, then what will?

Here’s my point:

1) We’re all not getting any younger.
2) The weather isn’t getting any better.
3) Get out and walk!

The next time Tom and I are walking on the trail, I’d better see you out there or you’re in BIG trouble. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

P.S. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere that the 10-day forecast doesn't include words like "snow," and "30 degrees," please disregard the above paid political announcement.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING

2010-11-05T09:13:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, as a special outing for my 92-year-old mother, my sister and I drove her back to her old stomping grounds to visit her younger brother (age 88), his wife (age 82), and her sister-in-law (age 90). We thought it was going to be a treat for my mother. Instead, it turned out to be a treat for my sister and me.

As a result of that visit, I learned all kinds of family history that I would never have known if we hadn’t gone. Between memories that they had and information my aunt had tucked away in her desk, one of many things I found out was that:

My maternal great-grandfather (Ingebret Sletvold) was never an “Ellis Island” immigrant. Instead, his name shows up on the passenger list of a "bark" (sailing ship) named the Nornen which sailed from Christiana, Norway (renamed ‘Oslo’ in 1925) and landed in Quebec, Canada. We were that close to being Canadian!

Our great-grandfather, Ingebret Sletvold

Although he landed in Canada, Ingebret's plan always was to immigrate to the U.S. because the Norwegians had been promised that they could get 160 acres of homestead land in Minnesota at $1.25 an acre—a whole farm for $200! They took a ship that landed in Canada instead of New York’s Ellis Island because the shipping companies much preferred sailing into Quebec. At the time, the Canadians weren’t nearly as fussy about overloading ships with passengers—and it was more profitable for the shipping companies to cram as many Norwegians into steerage as they possibly could.

Ingebret’s brothers (unknown number, but ship’s passenger list definitely includes Evan Sletvold, age 20) had emigrated two years earlier on a sailing ship called the Argonaut. They had paid the adult fare of 15 speciedalar (the Norwegian dollar currency of the time, eventually replaced by the kroner). They had boarded the ship on April 25, 1866, and arrived in Quebec on June 5, 1866—a trip lasting about seven weeks.

The Bark Nornen (source: www.norwayheritage.com)

Unfortunately, two years later, when our great-grandfather Ingebret’s group sailed on the Nornen, they ran into a becalmed Atlantic. Instead of seven weeks, they were at sea from April 19 to July 6, 1868—a total of eleven weeks. According to the ship’s log, the food provisions ran so low that at one point, the ship’s crew had to put down a mutiny by the hungry passengers. Judging by my own appetite four generations later, 20-year-old Ingebret was probably a mutiny leader. I come from a long line of eaters.

He staked his 160-acre claim in Oscar Township, enduring many hardships, and slowly built a farm that today is owned by my mother’s cousin. He married and raised seven children (one of them my grandmother Emma).

Ingebret and Marte Sletvold’s family in 1885 (our grandmother—my mother’s mother—Emma is on the far left).

One of the stories remembered by my mother’s cousin about Ingebret happened in 1910, when he was in his 60s. A man from Elizabeth, the neighboring town, had bought the first automobile in the area. Many of the men around the community were curious, so Ingebret and a couple of other neighbors asked the auto owner if they could have a ride to Fergus Falls in his new car. Back in those days, none of the roads were paved. The automobile driver was inexperienced, and the worst happened—the driver lost control of the car and had an accident.

Poor Ingebret was the one most badly hurt in the accident, and he spent three weeks mending in the hospital. That incident just about cured him of automobiles forever. In fact, the next time he rode in an automobile was three years later in 1913—in the undertaker’s hearse.

When I look at the shrinking ranks of my elderly aunts and uncles, I feel sad that so much of their history and experiences will be lost when they are gone. I need to have more tea parties with these precious people—and take the time to listen and learn.

Three of our uncles, ages 94, 90, and 83 (wonderful photo by my sister Marian)

I WISH I’D WRITTEN THAT

2010-11-03T08:16:00.003-05:00

One of the greatest satisfactions of retirement is that finally—finally—I have time to read those interesting books people talk about. A person just doesn’t have time to do that while holding down a full-time job or raising kids or cramming more activities than physically fit into the little squares of the calendar hanging by the telephone.

And now that I have the luxury of having the time to read, I also have a time to appreciate (or maybe envy) the thought and skill that go into what other people write.

These are my three favorite quotes from the last three books I’ve read:

From Healthy Aging by Andrew Weil, M.D.:

“ . . . Aging and death give meaning to life. Without them, life would eventually be horrible, intolerable . . . to yearn for eternal youth and escape from death seems to me the height of foolishness.”

Think about that, would you . . . just think how different our lives would be if we knew that our physical time on earth was endless, that we would always be here, that there would never be an end or an escape or a conclusion to our physical existence. Put that in your pipe and smoke it for a minute . . . and gosh, I wish I’d been the one to write it first.

Another quote from Little Bee by Chris Cleave, which I loved because of its imagery in describing a situation that seemed hopeless:

“ . . . Handing out inflight meals in a plane crash.”

Don’t you just love it? Don’t you wish you had written that (or if you’re really unselfish, don’t you wish I had written that?)?

And a final quote from The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel in which two recently traumatized little sisters in Haddington, Indiana, rename themselves Immaculata and Epiphany after the Virgin Mary makes seemingly daily appearances to them by the mulberry tree in their yard. Their caretaker makes this observation when one of the little girls asks her if she believes them:

“ . . . If I could be an innocent in history, and were presented with two notions, Nazis or a visitation from Mary, I know which one would seem less likely.”

Ha! Again, wish I’d written that. Sometimes I read an entire book and yawn the whole way through until I get to one line—one nugget of truth—that makes the whole book worthwhile. And for five or ten minutes, I actually believe that knowing that nugget of truth will change me and make me a better person.

For five or ten whole minutes--after which I immediately slip back into being my old ordinary self. I can only hope that nugget of wisdom lodged itself deep into my subconscious to be pulled out later, at just the right moment.

And I hope that maybe, someday before I die, I can write one thought, one little line, that will cause someone else to exclaim, “I wish I had written that!”

DAILY LIFE

2010-11-01T10:54:00.008-05:00

She was 35 years old, had been married 12 years, and had six children under the age 11.

Every Monday, she washed clothes for her family of eight—pumping water from a cistern in the basement, heating the water on a wash stove, and pouring it into her wringer washing machine. In fair weather, she hauled the wet clothes (for a family of eight, including one in cloth diapers) up the basement stairs and hung them on the clothes line outside. In cold or rainy weather, she hung the clothes on lines strung across the basement or over wooden clothes racks next to the oil stove.

Nothing was wrinkle-free; everything had to be ironed. Sheets, pillowcases, dish towels, men’s t-shirts, blue chambray workshirts, overalls, children’s clothing, men’s dress shirts—it was classified either as dry ironing or sprinkled ironing. It often took a full day on Tuesday to finish the ironing.

She baked bread twice a week, six loaves at a time. She grew vegetables in her garden, and either canned or froze endless pints or quarts of vegetables for later use. She bought crates of fruit (pears, peaches, apricots, cherries) and made them into sauce, jam, preserves, canning until the basement shelves were filled with mason jars. She picked apples from the apple trees in the back yard and made pies and sauce enough for a family of eight—and the endless parade of family, friends, and workers that came to her table.

During the summer, she made meat-and-potatoes meals every day from the pork and beef that her husband had raised and butchered. She fed whoever was helping on the farm that day—her own six children plus two, three, four men with hearty appetites: her father-in-law, brothers-in-law, hired men.

She rendered lard, she fried doughnuts, she made cinnamon rolls, she baked endless batches of cookies and bars, lefse and flat bread. She planned lunches for PTA, Farmer’s Club, Ladies Aid, and Home Management meetings. She made turkey dinners, lutefisk dinners, ham dinners—depending on the holiday. She donated her baking to bake sales at the school and at the church. If surprise company stopped by on a Sunday afternoon, they would always be invited for supper and there would always be enough food. If someone in the family had a birthday, 20 or 30 of her and her husband’s closest relatives would show up for a meal and birthday cake.

Our mother in the spring of 1954 with the youngest of her six children, my sister Laurie.

Every Saturday, she cleaned the house from top to bottom. She waxed and varnished the wood floors. She sewed house dresses for herself and play clothes for her children. She sewed “twin” feedsack dresses for the two youngest. That year, she taught her oldest daughter to sew her own clothes, too. For a special treat, she went to town and bought a dress and hat for herself so she would have something new to wear on Easter Sunday. And when she got home, she baked her husband a cherry pie as a “thank you” for her new clothing.

In a spare moment, to relax, she would crochet doilies or knit mittens and scarves for her children. She would read books she borrowed from the Ladies’ Aid lending library at church—books about missionaries or inspirational stories about people who lived their lives in the shadow of God. She sometimes had to study and prepare the Bible Study for Ladies’ Aid. She taught the high school aged kids in Sunday School on Sunday morning. She read books to her own children.

Her children were sometimes sick, and she gathered soggy sheets in the middle of the night. She dealt with one feverish, measle-y child after another (so much simpler if they had all gotten the measles at one time). Sometimes she helped out a sick or busy relative or neighbor, babysitting for their three or four children in addition to her own six.

When a neighbor or friend had a death in the family, she would make a hotdish, a pie, or a cake and bring it to their house.

Sometimes her husband would take the children with him—to town, to a social gathering—and leave her home alone so she would get a little break. But that didn’t happen very often. In July of that year, all eight of them piled into the car and went on a road trip: to Itasca State Park, to Bemidji, to the Duluth Zoo, to the open pit iron mines in Crosby-Ironton, to Brainerd. They stayed in a motel one night and went swimming in Lake Bemidji.

She wasn’t a saint. She didn’t always feel cheerful. Sometimes she felt overwhelmed. But when she looked around, it was the way all the other women in her community were living their lives, too.

I told you I was transcribing my mother’s diaries. This was her life from 1954 to 1955.

CERFECTLY PAPABLE

2010-10-30T08:12:00.001-05:00

Last night, Tom and I were in the kitchen doing our important retired-people activities (most likely, scratching and mumbling). I don’t remember exactly what we were doing or what we were talking about, but I do remember seeing the refrigerator light gleaming off Tom’s backside as he peered into its depths.

“ . . . and I am certfectly papable of handling my own . . .” he continued a conversation we were having before he bent to look into the refrigerator.

“You’re . . .” I interrupted, puzzled. “You’re certfectly papable? Certfectly papable? Did you just say ‘certfectly papable’?”

“I said I was ‘perfectly capable,’” he corrected.

“No, you didn’t!!” I crowed. “You said you were ‘certfectly papable’! I heard you. You said ‘certfectly papable’!”

“Certfectly papable,” he repeated, suddenly liking the sound of it. He seemed to be pleased he had said it, like he had uttered something witty and quotable. “Yes,” he agreed proudly, “I am certfectly papable.”

And that’s why it’s good that we have each other. He needs someone to point out his ‘witty and quotable’ sayings, and maybe even write them down. And me? Well, I am very happy to oblige.

TATER TOT HOTDISH MYSTERY

2010-10-28T07:35:00.005-05:00

In 1973, when Tom and I were first married, one of the staples on our newlywed menu rotation was Tater Tot Hotdish: a pound of hamburger, a can of sliced mushrooms, a can of cream of chicken soup, and a bag of Ore-Ida Tater Tots.

At the time, Tater Tot Hotdish met my three main culinary criteria: 1) quick, 2) easy, 3) cheap). The fact that Tom would eat it was just frosting on the cake.

But as a couple, our culinary tastes have moved far beyond our early years of cheap casseroles. We have traveled the world; we have tasted food from other cultures. Our palates have evolved, and we are no longer tied to the comfort food of our Midwest youth.

The only problem is that everything I make ends up tasting like Tater Tot Hotdish. Even when I try a brand new recipe, trying to add variety and international cuisine to our dinners, the new recipes still have that old familiar look.

“I tried something new,” I’ll announce to Tom as we sit down to dinner.

“Great!” he’ll smile, always up for a new adventure. He’ll poke at the new dish, lift a bite to his mouth, and ask cautiously, “What is it?”

“Beef Bourguignon,” I’ll announce proudly, although I’m never exactly confident in my ability to pronounce ‘Bourguignon.’

“Reminds me a little of Tater Tot Hotdish,” he’ll reply good-naturedly and eat it anyway.

Part of the problem is that I’m an ingredient substituter. It really annoys me to try a new recipe and have to buy an ingredient that I don’t already have. If a new recipe calls for ¼ teaspoon of turmeric—well, gosh, how important can turmeric be if the recipe only calls for a ¼ teaspoon of it? Seems to me it’s kind of a gingery/mustardy/curry-ish colored spice . . . so I’ll throw in a little of something I have on hand that looks like it might be in the same spice family and hope for the best.

I’m beginning to suspect that my ingredient substitution might be part of the problem.

The day I tried cooking the Beef Bourguignon (a lovely French dish made from cubed beef chuck, carrots, beef broth, red wine, and mushrooms), I didn’t have exactly the right ingredients. So I just did a little substituting: cubed beef chuck (substituted hamburger), fresh cremini mushrooms (substituted a can of Green Giant mushroom stems and pieces), beef broth & red wine (substituted a can of cream of chicken soup), pearl onions (substituted Ore-Ida Tater Tots).

Last night, I tried a new recipe called “Prosciutto, Pear, and Blue Cheese Sandwich.” ‘Be daring,’ I challenged myself. ‘Break away from the same old/same old menus.’ The recipe called for: 100% multigrain artisan bread, arugula, shallots, extra-virgin olive oil, Pompeian red wine vinegar, freshly ground black pepper, prosciutto ham, a pear, and blue cheese. Really . . . who actually keeps that stuff on hand?

No 100% multigrain artisan bread? No problem (substituted Ore-Ida Tater Tots). No prosciutto ham? (ham? ham-burger? It’s like they were meant to be interchanged!) No arugula or shallots or pears? Easy (substituted a can of Green Giant sliced mushroom stems and pieces). No Pompeian red wine vinegar or extra-virgin olive oil or blue cheese? Not a problem (a can of cream of chicken soup should lubricate the dish).

So, you’re invited to my house for Thanksgiving—turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, yams, pumpkin pie. The works. But don’t be disappointed if it turns out looking a little like Tater Tot Hotdish. It’s a mystery.

IN BIG TROUBLE

2010-10-27T06:57:00.007-05:00

I had just been outside, so I knew it was windy. A few snowflakes skittered among the raindrops around 3 p.m., but it had switched back to rain.

I didn’t know that we were in big trouble yesterday until I turned on the Weather Channel and—oh, my gosh, Jim Cantore was in Minnesota.

You know, Jim Cantore. The top weather visual editor from the Weather Channel.

He’s so important that the Weather Channel only sends him on location if the weather is big. I mean, really HUGE—like hurricanes, floods, monsoons, or tidal waves. And here he was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was in our very own state.

To make it even worse, Jim Cantore was using his big weather voice. “Monster of a storm,” he was booming. “Fall Fury” screamed a headline as they panned away from Jim. Oh, my heavens. They had named our wind.

“Winter weather advisory,” “massive squall line,” “potential to be the strongest storm in Midwest history!!!” Jim’s big weather voice is easily an octave above his normal speaking voice. And, oh my stars, he was standing in my very own state.
“Strong, strong jet stream,” he screamed at us, trying to make himself heard over the wind whistling by his microphone. “Super Storm,” I thought I heard him say, “even bigger than ’98!”

I couldn’t remember the Super Storm of ’98, so I had to take his word for it.

“What sets this storm apart is its intensity,” Jim said worriedly. I hate it when Jim looks worried. It makes me worry. “It’s already snowing in Bismarck, North Dakota,” he warned, “and the snow is sticking to the ground!” Wow, sticking to the ground! Um . . . er . . . wait a minute. Doesn’t snow generally stick to the ground? As opposed to sticking where?

I left the TV long enough to go look out the window again. Sure enough, it was windy all right. And since Jim Cantore was in Minneapolis, I knew we must be right in the middle of something big. Really big. After all, Jim Cantore doesn’t hop a plane for an on-site visit unless entire villages are in peril or animal populations are fleeing.

I was half expecting to be blown away in the night. But when I woke up this morning, my house is still standing, my power is still on, there’s a little snow on the ground, traffic is moving, and we all still seem to be alive.

But thanks, anyway, Jim. If it hadn’t been for your broadcast, I might have mistakenly thought it was just a typical late October day in Minnesota.

DELECTATIO MOROSA

2010-10-25T07:27:00.003-05:00

I learned a new Latin phrase yesterday. (It’s all a part of my secret plan to learn one new Latin phrase a day for the rest of my life—NOT.)

Here is the Latin phrase: delectatio morosa. Translated, it means “delighting in others’ misfortunes.”

I also know that Buddhists have a term that means the 180-degree opposite: mudita, the concept of experiencing happiness at another’s good fortune.

Example 1: The richest, most arrogant athlete on the planet is caught in an affair—no, let's make that several affairs—that eventually cost him millions of dollars and his marriage. Ah-ha!! We feel smug. Our simple, modest lives seem validated; we may not be the richest, most arrogant athlete on the planet, but by George, at least we’re not scumbags. (delectatio morosa).

Example 2: The richest, most arrogant athlete on the planet signs another four-year, $100 million contract. And even though we have recently been laid off from our own pauper-wage jobs, we feel extremely happy for the good fortune of the athlete. (mudita).

Here’s the hard part. I’m supposed to be aiming for the mudita instead of the delectatio morosa. What?!? I don’t know about you, but that’s not my natural inclination.

Why, if I gave up my delectatio morosa , I’d have to stop slowing down and gawking at traffic accidents. I’d have to stop reading movie magazine covers at the checkout counter at Kmart to find out if Ashton is really cheating on Demi. I’d have to stop scanning the “Foreclosures” and “Court News” sections of the local newspaper, looking for familiar names. I'd have to hope that government figures from the opposition political party (gasp!) can solve our national financial crisis.

But I think I want to try it.

From now on, if you have good news to share, you can count on me to support your joy and celebrate your victory. And if you experience tragedy, I will try not to be one of the circling vultures feeding off your vulnerability and pain. That’s the plan anyway.

This sounds like quite a challenge for a Monday morning—the Latin phrase speakers and the Buddhists, locked in battle for my soul.

Picture Source: www.deadspin.com

LANGUAGE OF THE LONG-MARRIED

2010-10-23T09:31:00.002-05:00

Tom and I have been married 37 years, so it has become unnecessary for us to speak in complete sentences. Because of our deeply ingrained love (like the Colorado River carving out the Grand Canyon), our conversations are spare yet meaningful.

On Thursday, I had walked my 2-to-4 miles alone, bringing along two empty Fleet Farm plastic shopping bags to do a garbage pick-up on a three-mile route around our neighborhood. But on Friday, Tom and I arranged our extremely busy retired-folks schedule to walk together on the Central Lakes Trail.

I hadn’t brought along bags for garbage pick-up because, in my own mind, this walk was kind of like a date. Still, it bothered me to walk past an empty pack of Camels, a Coors Beer can, a newspaper flier—without picking them up. Which reminded me . . .

Me (to Tom): Yesterday when I was picking up garbage on—let’s see, it would be Roosevelt Street? No, one block off Nokomis would be Oak Street—well, you know that street where there’s a transmission shop and the back side of the milling place—

Tom: What happened?

Me: Oh, you know, that street where the people didn’t mow their lawn for three weeks because their mower was broken?

Tom: Yea, yea—Oak Street.

Me: Yes! Oak Street! That’s it—one block off Nokomis, alphabetical order, Oak Street.

Tom: What happened on Oak Street?

Me: I had just bent down to pick up an empty Diet Coke can out of the gutter when I heard a vehicle coming up behind me.

Tom: And . . . ?

Me: The guy driving—it was a truck. But not a pickup truck, a bigger truck, like a grain truck.

Tom: What about the guy?

Me: The guy in the grain truck—or whatever kind of a truck it was—rolled down his window and said “thank you” to me.

Tom: Thank you?

Me: You know, for picking up garbage. He was turning into the milling company so maybe he worked there. So he thanked me for picking up garbage.

Tom: Did you give him your number?

Me: Yes, my social security number and my bank account number.

Tom: Did you give him your cell phone number?

Me (snorting): Of course not. I’m not stupid. Even though I could tell he wanted it.

Tom: All right then. What did you say?

Me: I said, “You’re welcome.”

Tom: Is that the end of your story?

Me: I think so . . . (pant, pant—we were walking up hill.)

Me (after a moment): Yes, that’s the end.

Tom: Good.

I’m sure he meant that it was a good story.

Like I said, 37 years of marriage and the conversations get deep. Really deep.

BREAKING EVEN

2010-10-22T09:45:00.005-05:00

You’d think a woman could have a birthday in peace. But no-o-o-o, that would be too easy. When a birthday comes around, there’s a mandatory period of wrinkle examining, soul searching, and actuarial-table reading.

You see, this is the year I turn 62 and am eligible for early-claim Social Security. After watching F.I.C.A. taxes being taken out of my paycheck for over 45 years (including the jobs I had during high school and college), my only goal is to live long enough to recoup those deductions. (In other words, I want my money back.)

According to the Charles Schwab website, I will need to live until I’m 76.4 years old to get back all I paid in to Social Security. After that, if I had a shred of decency, in January of 2027, I’d lie down and die so that there would be something left in the Social Security coffers for the next generation.

Source: www.schwab.com

I’ll do my best to kick off at 76.4 years. But I had a grandmother who lived to 101, a father who lived until he was 93, and my mother is still ticking along at 91. It looks like chances are excellent that—against my own personal moral sense of right and wrong—I’ll end up being a burden to the Social Security system.

So even though I will likely still be alive in 2027, I will feel tremendous guilt about it as I steal from my children’s generation and drain the Social Security coffers dry.

Sigh.

Having a 62nd birthday is also an impetus to re-check my Lifetime Bucket List and see how I am coming along.

I started out with 38 items on the list; I have accomplished 6 of those goals. One item had to be crossed off because it’s too late (“Go to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver”) . . . oops, sorry, Bucket List. But another one is already scheduled for September of 2011 (“Go on a New England/Canadian trip up the east coast past Maine, New Foundland, down the St. Lawrence River, and end up in Quebec City where we will wander out in the countryside and find Tom’s roots.”).

After that, only 30 Bucket List items to go. I promise I won’t use a dime of my ill-gotten, grandchildren-robbing, anti-American Social Security checks beyond the age of 76.4 to accomplish any of those tasks. Cross my heart and hope to die (figuratively, that is).

DIARY PROJECT

2010-10-20T08:12:00.003-05:00

My mother certainly wasn’t the first person to keep a diary. It seems to me that diaries have been kept by folks like Anne Frank, a Mad Housewife, and a Wimpy Kid since tiny little books with keys were invented. So my mother certainly wasn’t the first diary-keeper and certainly won’t be the last.

What makes my mother’s diaries so unique is that she kept them for 52 years, from 1954 to 2005. That's a long time, even for a persistent Norwegian. She only stopped writing on a regular basis in 2005 because she suffered a stroke that short-circuited her ability to write and concentrate.

These are not your typical soul-searching, tell-all diaries. After all, my mother is a good stoic Norwegian who strives to be decent and modest. It would never do to write in her diary that ‘today is a bad day and I feel the need for mood-altering medications.’

As I’ve mentioned before, self-respecting retired people have a project going at all times. (Remember when I did Tom’s family tree and the family picture-scanning projects?) Here’s my latest project: transcribe my mother’s diaries, scanning in the seventy bazillion newspaper clippings, recipes, obituaries, and miscellaneous scraps of paper tucked within the pages, so that everyone in the family can have access to the historical record.

It makes me a little tired to think about all that transcribing. (And I’m sure it makes my family weary to think about reading any of it once it’s transcribed.)

So far, I’ve read through the entire year of 1954 and transcribed the first half of January. During 1954, my mother baked over 600 loaves of bread (six loaves twice a week), taught my youngest sister to walk, entertained relatives by the '54-Packard-load, survived blizzards, moved a family of eight from one farm to another, canned every type of fruit and vegetable known to man, knitted, sewed, patched, washed clothes, ironed those same clothes . . . and had two Toni permanent waves.

It’s not the stuff of epic movies.

But it gives a picture of what life was like in rual West Central Minnesota in the 1950s. And it might solve arguments like “What year did Great Aunt Christie have her foot amputated due to diabetes?” You know, the type of questions that mushroom into those heated, knock-down-drag-out, shoot-your-cousin arguments on family holidays.

So that’s what I’ll be working on in my spare time between now and . . . I don’t know . . . how do you say “eternity” in Norwegian? “Eeuwigheid?” No, wait a minute. That’s Dutch. Anyway, there are 12 five-year diaries, and my mother has tiny handwriting.

At the very least, it will keep me off the streets and out of the bars.

NINE REASONS WHY IT'S HARD TO LEAVE ARIZONA

2010-10-19T06:05:00.016-05:00

And that's why it's so hard to leave Arizona.

ALLEGIANT AIRLINE OPEN MIC COMEDY FLIGHT

2010-10-18T06:54:00.003-05:00

I’m not a nervous traveler.

True, I like to be at the airport very early (often to the point of ridicule by other less conscientious travelers).

True, I position my quart-size plastic Ziploc bag with 3.4 oz. liquids in a side-zip pocket that is quickly accessible within 3.4 seconds or less.

True, my carry-on bag is exactly the right measurements to easily fit into the little 9” x 14” x 22-inch “Does Your Bag Fit Here?” container by the check-in counter. And I never, ever, ever try to pass off a 50-pound tote bag as my ‘purse.’

True, I carefully pre-position my driver’s license in the card holder of my wallet so I can whip it out at a moment’s notice. I do not wear earrings, watches, bracelets, underwire undergarments, or other metal objects that can set off the metal detector. And true, I try to pre-eliminate anything that might hold up the any check-in lines and annoy other travelers.

No, I’m not a nervous traveler. I’m a serious traveler. I mean business when I walk into an airport. Game face, tunnel vision, all business.

That’s why my Allegiant Airline flight back to Minnesota yesterday was a little surreal.

Me: Okay, carry-on luggage secured in overhead compartment. Check. Purse tucked neatly under the seat in front of me, leaving ample room for emergency exits. Check. Seatbelt fastened. Check. Stare straight ahead and try not to look like an airline hijacker. Check.

Flight Attendant (on cabin intercom): Good morning! Thank you for flying Allegiant Airlines! It is currently 81 degrees in our departure city of Mesa, Arizona, and 40 degrees in our destination city, Fargo, North Dakota. Those of you wearing shorts may wish to wait until next June to disembark this plane in Fargo.

Me: What?!? Next June to disembark . . . oh, got it. She’s joking; the flight attendant made a joke . . . shirt tucked under the seatbelt so the flight attendant can see that my seat belt is fastened. Check. Seat in an upright position. Check. Try not to look like a terrorist. Check.

Flight Attendant: On this flight, it is strictly forbidden that passengers have in their possession all sugar-related food products. In a few moments, a flight attendant will be making her way down the aisle to confiscate all candy, cookies, and other treats that passengers may have brought on board. (gasps from passengers) . . . Just kidding!!! Had you going, didn’t I?

Me: Okay, she was just kidding, even though laughter on an in-cabin P.A. system sounds slightly evil. Adjust the air flow valve above my head. Check. Adjust the shades (window seat). Check. Fold my hands carefully in my lap. Check. Try not to look like an airline hijacker. Check.

Flight Attendant: In the event of an emergency, an oxygen mask will drop from your overhead compartment. Put the elastic band around your head and secure the mask to your face, stretching the plastic tubing to start the flow of oxygen. If you are seated next to a small child—or someone acting like a small child (ba-da-boom, pause for laughter)—be sure you secure your own mask before attempting to help that person.

Me: Oh, my gosh. She keeps making jokes . . . are flight attendants allowed to make jokes??? (Mental head shake. Game face back on.) Elbow definitely on my own arm rest and not on the armrest of the person next to me. Check. The wings are on the plane. Check. Try not to look like an airline hijacker. Check.

Flight Attendant: Our captain for this flight is Dante and the co-pilot is Jeff. My name is Tiffany, and the flight attendant in the forward cabin is Lori. It’s Lori’s birthday today. Everybody join me in wishing Lori a happy birthday!!

Entire Cabinful of Passengers (dutifully, in semi-unison): Happy Birthday, Lori!

Me: Don’t these people have last names? Dante? Tiffany? Why can’t our pilot’s name be ‘Captain Manly Courageous’ instead of ‘Dante’? Why do I wish our flight attendant’s name was something sensible like ‘Florence’ or ‘Edith’ instead of ‘Tiffany’?? Why do I wish that it wasn’t Lori’s birthday so I knew for sure she wasn’t tippling champagne in the galley to celebrate? Deep breaths . . . focus. Check. Game face. Check. Try not to look like an airline hijacker. Check.

Flight Attendant: It’s your lucky day today! We are having a fire sale of all our Allegiant souvenir gift items! Get your stocking stuffers early! We have key chains, picture frames, bracelets, earrings, golf balls—all with the Allegiant logo—at fire sale prices. The souvenir cart will be making its way down the aisle later in our flight. Cash only, please.

Me: Fire sale? Fire sale???? Was there a fire? On this airplane? Is this airplane on fire now??? How do flight attendants have time to sell stocking-stuffer key chains? Aren’t they supposed to be checking airlocks and emergency exits and oxygen levels and whether or not Dante, the pilot, is sober and qualified to fly this plane?????????????

I’m a serious traveler. I arrive early. I am prepared, cooperative, compliant, and obedient. I don’t make jokes about shoe bombs. I try not to annoy passengers around me or make unreasonable demands of flight attendants. I try to keep my personal possessions to a minimum and use only the space I am allotted . . .

My luck that I ended up with Tiffany on the Allegiant Airline Open Mic Comedy Flight.

Source of photo: www.bluewaveted.com

ELEVEN DAYS OF MEMORY LANE

2010-10-05T21:43:00.004-05:00

I am catching a plane out of Fargo tomorrow and going to Phoenix for eleven days to visit my kids and grandkids. In the meantime, I realize what a fragile bond I have with my blog readers. I can't afford to lose any of you. Sadly, I will not have regular access to a computer for blog postings. I'm doing only the carry-on luggage routine, so it's either clean underwear or my laptop--and I've chosen the more hygienic route.

So could I ask a favor of you? In my absence, would you please read one of my old blogs every day? I will be back on October 18 and I need all of you to be back then, too. Every single one of you. No dropouts. No excuses.

Here are my suggestions for old blogs to read. They're just kind of a cross section of blogs over the past three years, and I kind of liked them for one reason or another.

DAY 1, October 7: Mayo Clinic

Day 2, October 8: Advice with Strawberries and Whipped Cream

Day 3, October 9: Signs of Danger

Day 4, October 10: Winter Tracks

Day 5, October 11: Fluffy's Master Plan

Day 6, October 12: As Brave as Mrs. Skogen

Day 7, October 13: Monday Morning Walk

Day 8, October 14: Six Decisions That Change Your Life

Day 9, October 15: Taking My Mother to the Doctor

Day 10, October 16: First Two Men in My Life

Day 11, October 17: 90-Year-Old Logic

So goodbye. Don't forget to come back on October 18.

MARLBORO-SMOKIN’ DUDE

2010-10-05T14:38:00.006-05:00

I don’t know who assigned me the job of worrying about perfect strangers, but I find myself with yet another random person to feel responsible for.

Mentally, I just think of him as the Marlboro-Smokin’ Dude of Seventh Avenue. I wish his own mother would worry about him, but somehow she foisted it off on me.

About a year ago, I mentioned that I had made myself the designated neighborhood garbage picker-upper. As long as I was out walking my 2-to-4 miles in my neighborhood anyway, I might as well make myself useful and pick up the trash along the streets. So twice a week, I make sure I bring along a bag or two and I clean up my neighborhood. I net about four bags of garbage a week. (We are evidently a very trashy 'hood.)

About a year ago, I started noticing the Marlboro-Smokin’ Dude. Every day, like clockwork, he throws out an empty Marlboro pack in almost exactly the same spot on Seventh Avenue. He crumples up that cellophane-wrapped pack and tosses it out his car window right into the curb—slam, dunk, two points. So if I pick up garbage on a Saturday, for instance, and then go out again on Tuesday, I can be sure that there will be three crumpled Marlboro packs in the gutter. Bing, bing, bing. He’s my man. Dependable as the sunrise.

So this morning, I was worried. It had been three days since I had last picked up garbage. My bag was already half full by the time I got to Marlboro-Smokin’ Dude’s little stretch of road.

Whoa. What was this?!? No crumpled Marlboro packs.

I scratched my head. Was something wrong? Did Marlboro-Smokin’ Dude move? Was he sick? Give up smoking? Take a different route to work? Did he die of Marlboro-induced lung cancer?

I worried the whole way down Seventh Avenue. Was he okay? Sure he was a littering slob, but he was my littering slob.

Before I headed home, I decided to search Marlboro-Smokin’ Dude’s gutter one more time. Fallen autumn leaves made my search more difficult. I took another swipe through, kicking aside leaves as I went.

He wasn’t dead after all. There, nestled among the brown leaves, was his signature crumpled Marlboro pack. Thank goodness. I thought I was going to have to call the police with a missing person report. Granted, it was only one pack instead of the three I was expecting. But at least I knew he was alive and coughing—er, kicking.

ME AND THE PEACENIKS

2010-10-04T16:27:00.010-05:00

(Disclaimer: This blog entry in no way, shape, or form means that I suddenly want to discuss politics.)

The yards around my town are full of campaign signs: “Larson for County Attorney,” “Olson for County Commissioner,” “Westrom for State Representative,” “Wyatt Earp for Sheriff” . . .

As the Five Man Electric Band sang back in 1971, “Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs. Blocking up the scenery, breaking my mind . . .”

The political signs make me nervous because I know that in November, I’ll have to go vote again. And to tell you the truth, every single candidate on the ballot, regardless of political affiliation, usually makes me as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

When people ask me whom I support or whom I am going to vote for, I usually truthfully reply, “Whichever candidate that I believe will do the least amount of damage.” And I mean it—I really don't have a lot of faith in any of them.

Recently I was directed to a website called The Political Compass . By taking an opinion poll, you can compare your own political views to current or past politicians, national or global. The test doesn’t neatly slot you in as a Republican or a Democrat, a Conservative or a Liberal, a Socialist or a Communist. Instead it plots your views on a graph to give you a general idea of where you fit in the political spectrum.

After I took the test, I had a personal epiphany.

No wonder I can’t find anybody to vote for on the ballots in November. No wonder I walk away from most political discussions with my hands over my ears. No wonder I don’t particularly trust Obama or Palin or McCain or Biden or Clinton or Huckabee or anybody else on the ballot.

No wonder I’m equally skeptical of Chris Matthews with his Hardball show and Michael Moore with his Roger and Me or Sicko. Because according to the test I took, the political figures my views most closely align with are . . . get this (drum roll, please) . . .

Mahatma Gandhi

Nelson Mandella

The Dalai Lama

You could have knocked me over with an organic feather from a vegan dove.

I just answered the questions according to my heart-felt opinions, and that’s what came up. I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not even an Independent. I’m a member of the Party of Universal Responsibility, Love, Compassion, Kindness, Human Rights, Equality of All People, and Nonviolence.

I wonder what I did with my old tie-dyed t-shirt and love beads. They’ve got to be around somewhere. Probably in a closet, right under my Bob Dylan albums. I think I’ll wear them to the poll on Election Day in November when I write in Mother Theresa’s successor, Sister Nirmala, for attorney general.

ALONE AT THE END OF SUMMER

2010-10-03T16:48:00.017-05:00

I decided to take one last drive down to Glenwood, the little lake-front town about ten miles south of Alexandria. It's October 3--summer is over, and who knows when I'll have time to get down there again for my 2 to 4 mile walk. Probably not until next spring.

What I didn't realize when I got in my car and drove down there was that I would have the entire town to myself.

There was nobody at the beach where I parked my car . . .

A few stray geese down by the shore didn't even fluff a feather when I walked by. I guess they figured there were more of them than there were of me, so they had no fear.

There wasn't another soul on the walking path. Not a soul.

I hadn't expected to see sunbathers, but nobody?? Not a beach comber looking for shells or a couple of 10-year-old boys looking for frogs? No, just me.

Most of the summer residents had taken out their docks after Labor Day, but a few hardy locals still had their boats or pontoons tethered in the water. However, not a single boater was on board.

A flock of mudhens bobbed unconcerned several yards from shore. But they didn't make a sound--they just bobbed and floated.

More beached docks, ready for winter.

Nobody fishing off the public fishing pier . . . it was a safe day to be a crappie or a walleye on Lake Minnewaska.

Not a single kid was playing at the public playground . . . It was like the Pied Piper had been through town and lured all the kids away.

Lakeside restaurant's parking lot, which is usually jam-packed in the summer, was empty. E-M-P-T-Y, even though the neon sign in the window said "Open."

We usually have to fight to get a table in the outdoor seating on the front of Lakeside--but today I could have had any chair, any table, I wanted.

The streets were empty . . .

Nobody stood admiring the yellow-leaved trees against the blue sky background except me.

Me, myself, and I. All alone in Glenwood. Where was everybody? Even the inlet was deserted.

It was a perfectly beautiful October day along the shores of Lake Minnewaska in Glenwood, Minnesota. Sixty degrees, blue sky, gentle south wind rippling the water, fall colors abounding.

And I had the entire place to myself.

QUIET

2010-10-01T07:52:00.004-05:00

It’s so quiet around here.

At the moment, all I can hear is the sound of the washing machine in the laundry room, sloshing away on a load of sheets. I can hear Tom out in the kitchen, turning the pages of the newspaper with an occasional thump of a coffee cup hitting the tabletop.

Once in awhile, a car drives by, the occupant no doubt on the way to work. But all in all, it’s quiet.

The last of our kids and grandkids left yesterday to go back to Arizona after Grandpa’s funeral. The kitchen counters are tidy once again—no bottles or formula or car seats or rice cereal boxes adorn them.

The kitchen table is small again. We took out the extra table leaf and put the booster chair down in the laundry room.

The basement stairs are once again accessible. I don’t have to do any more risky feats of Derry-do, leaping over the kiddie gate that we had set up to prevent Colbie from going headfirst down the steps. The giant shoe collection by the garage door is back down to one pair of old-lady walking shoes.

The living room no longer looks like a giant changing table. The diapers and wipers and other poop paraphernalia are gone. Go Dog Go and the puzzles are back in their cupboard in the basement.

The laundry room is a mini mountain range of sheets and towels from every bedroom and bathroom in the house.

The refrigerator is looking a little empty after days of being crammed with sippy cups and gallons of whole milk and Junior hotdogs.

Yes, it’s quiet again. No more grandbabies to clutter up our neat ‘n’ tidy little old-people world. Neat and tidy, everything in its place, quiet.

Too quiet.

I miss the mess.

TAG--YOU'RE IT!

2010-09-29T07:28:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I feel like a relic in the world of blogging—a little like the frumpy chaperone at the high school prom. I am astonished that anyone could be interested in my old-lady stories.

That’s why I was surprised when I was “tagged” on the blog of a much younger, much cooler person. For those of you unfamiliar with blogging terminology, “tagged” is when another blogger mentions you in their blog. Yesterday, I found that Mama Nash (one of my daughter’s friends from high school) tagged me. Yikes! She challenged me and four other bloggers to answer five questions. So here goes nothing.

Question No. 1: What are you having for dinner tonight? Because I don’t have a single clue what I will be having for dinner tonight at 6:55 a.m. when I am writing this, I will change the question to “What have you been having for dinner the past few nights?” And the answer would be that friends have been bringing us dinner. My dad died a week ago, and wonderful friends have provided my out-of-town family-filled household with meals. One brought the all the fixings for hot turkey sandwiches (enough for a dinner plus a couple of lunches). Another group of friends made an entire lasagna dinner, complete with salad, bread, and dessert. Last night, my daughter-in-law whipped up a batch of her famous vegetable chili while I played outside with my grandchildren. In the midst of all the funeral preparations, I was humbled to find out how many wonderful friends we have. It was hard to admit that I was overwhelmed, but I cannot tell you how grateful I was at mealtimes to just go to the refrigerator and pull out a dinner already prepared. Humble, grateful, relieved.

Question No. 2: What is your favorite and least favorite household chore? I love laundry. It is one of the household jobs where you can actually see the results neatly folded or hanging at the end. When I finish doing the laundry, I put away every last sock so that the laundry room is clean as a whistle. At the other end of the spectrum, my least favorite household chore is vacuuming. Tom is a much better vacuum-er than I am, even moving furniture to get every last dust bunny. So I always feel inadequate as I sloppily zoom around the high-traffic areas.

Question No. 3: What's your middle name and is there a story behind it? My middle name is Clare, and I was named after my mother’s only sister, Clara. Thank goodness my mother had a little mercy and dropped the final “a” and replaced it with an “e.” However, that didn’t stop my siblings from calling me “Clarabelle the Clown” (from the Howdy Doody Show) when they wanted to hurt my tiny little underdeveloped feelings.

Are these questions done yet?????

Question No. 4: If you could only use one piece of make-up for a week, what would it be? What do you mean, if I could only use one piece of make-up? One of the most liberating parts of being old is throwing away your makeup bag. There’s nothing worse than wrinkly old ladies with spackling and caulking all over their faces. Give me my tube of N.Y.C. lip gloss (dusty rose) and I’m good to go. (And most days, I even forget to do that.)

Question No. 5: Who is a famous person that you've met or seen up close? Oh, crap. Now I have another item to add to my already-overflowing bucket list of things to do before I die. I’ve seen famous people from across a crowded arena when they were on stage and I was in the audience. I’ve shook hands with some Minnesota politicians, but only when they wanted my vote. But I’ve never shared an elevator with Brad Pitt or sat at the next restaurant table from Steven Spielberg or met Lance Armstrong biking on the Central Lakes Trail. I’ll work on it though. I promise.

So there it is. Absolute proof positive why I’ve never been tagged before. The end.

DON'T FORGET YOUR 2 TO 4 A DAY

2010-09-25T12:25:00.002-05:00

This is your conscience speaking:

No matter how busy you are, no matter how many directions your mind is going, no matter what devilish voice inside your head says, "You don't have time today . . . "

Make the time to walk your 2 to 4 miles each and every day.

Those miles will make you sweat a little, smile a little, and inhale a little nice, clean oxygen. It helps the brain synapses fire those motor neurons more efficiently, creating a fire in the brain.

AND it's a good time to forget problems, solve problems, invent new problems, or just plain enjoy the scenery.

2 to 4 a day. Important. Do it. Now.

This is your conscience. Over and out.

PARADIGM SHIFT (PART 2)

2010-09-24T08:56:00.007-05:00

When I wrote the blog about paradigm shifts on Monday, two shifts were taking place at the same time.
The most important one, of course, was my father’s death. On Monday, Hospice told us it was just a matter of days—maybe hours—before his struggle would be over. And on Tuesday, he passed away. No matter how prepared we think we are, the loss of a parent pulls the rug right from underneath us. No matter how old, how ill, how much that person is ready to go . . . we’re left lying flat on our backs on the floor with the wind knocked out of us.

The second paradigm shift taking place on Monday had started the week before. My husband Tom—predictable, stable, conservative, fiscally responsible Tom—had made an offer on a lake home. After living in the same house on the same block in the same town with the same woman for 34 years, Tom “rolled the dice,” as he called it, and bid on a lake house. The property was in sad disrepair but was in our modest price range because of a foreclosure/short sale situation.

I can’t tell you how shocked I was. I couldn’t have been more shocked if Tom had grown a third eye, pulled his hair back in a gray ponytail, and bought a Harley. He was assertive and aggressive as he went after that property. A new Tom emerged before my eyes—a short, French version of the Incredible Hulk.

Disappointingly, we found out yesterday that we were outbid for the house. Tom couldn’t have known that a group of investors with ready cash offered tens of thousands over the asking price. They saw the house as a financial opportunity, hoping it appreciates in value when the real estate market recovers.

Tom and I would have fixed up the house and made it into a nice place for our kids and grandkids to come and visit. Life isn’t fair sometimes.

BUT . . . Tom gave it a good shot and learned a lot (about realtors and poker faces and behind-the-scenes deals) in the process. I, on the other hand, learned a lot about Tom. A guy can surprise you, even after 37 years.

So there was my second (and less important) paradigm shift. Early this week, there was a lot going on at one time for an old lady to handle, but we’re coming through it just fine. And maybe sitting on the front porch in a rocker knitting afghans isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes a person needs to get the adrenalin flowing.

OUR DAD

2010-09-23T06:16:00.001-05:00

Our dad passed away on Tuesday afternoon. He was 93 years old and very ill with cancer and Parkinson’s. At the end, his world had become very narrow—a room with Mom at an assisted living facility. He counted on visitors to bring the world to him.

He had always been the man in charge, the guy in control. He’d say “jump,” and his kids would only stop long enough to ask, “Is this high enough, Dad?” But we didn’t jump out of fear. We just wanted him to approve. Even as adults, I think we would all ask ourselves, “What would Dad think of what I’m doing right now?” Even if we grumbled a bit under his eagle eye, we never wanted to disappoint him. We always wanted to live up to his expectations of us.

So a new paradigm: life without father. As ill as he was in his final years, as confined as he was to his wheelchair, he never lost his position of head of the family. Until the day he died, he was the man in charge, the man who set the bar high for himself and those around him, and the father we loved

PARADIGM SHIFT

2010-09-20T21:32:00.005-05:00

Four score and a million years ago, back when I was employed, back when I had classrooms full of students held captive at fifty-minute intervals, w-a-a-y back . . . I used to tell my students about paradigm shifts and chaos.

Sometimes I would step up to the board with a blue dry-board marker in my hand and draw this picture for them:

Then, while they yawned broadly, I would define some terms. (I often defined the terms kind of loosely from my own dictionary-according-to-me, but it went sort of like this):

Paradigm: a pattern or a model.

Paradigm shift: a dramatic change in methodology or practice. It often refers to a major change in thinking and planning, which ultimately changes the way projects are implemented.

Chaos: great disorder, confusion, a state in which total control is impossible and chance is supreme.

Chaos Management: creating order out of chaos in order to move to a new paradigm.

Paradigm/Chaos Reassurance: At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction. –Quote by Aldous Huxley

Pretty deep stuff, huh? If you don't understand it, don't worry. My students used to look at me pretty blankly, too.

So what's my point?

Right now I’m in the middle of a paradigm shift. At a time in life when I should be knitting afghans while rocking on the front porch, I’m in chaos up to my eyeballs.

I’m swimming in a sea of disorder. I can hardly wait to wash up on the shore of Paradigm 2 and get back to my NEW boring, humdrum life where everything is neat and predictable. This chaos business is intended for much younger people.

More details will follow . . .

INCURABLY ROMANTIC

2010-09-16T21:10:00.007-05:00

Late one afternoon earlier this week, I was sitting in my chair doing something really important (like flicking lint off my sweatpants) when Tom walked into the room.

“Wanna do something?” he asked.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked cautiously. We’ve been married long enough to know that sometimes these invitations aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

“Wanna go fishing with me?” he asked. I knew immediately that he had already checked with his usual fishing buddies and none of them could go fishing that evening. I am usually number five or six on his list of fishing partners, but I try not to take it personally.

“Um . . . sure,” I said, summoning up some enthusiasm.

Although I love to be out on the water in a boat, I wish I didn’t actually have to hold a fishing rod to earn the right to be there. I never catch anything except weeds. The biggest thrill I get is when I catch a particularly long lake-bottom hydrilla weed that fights me tooth and nail, all the way to the surface.

But fish? Naw . . . I never catch fish.

The best way to think about going fishing with Tom is to think of it as “date night.”

Tom drives and I ride . . .

We see sailboats . . .

and kayaks and pontoons . . .

and jet skis and other fishing boats . . .

Tom catches a fish and throws it back. Too small.

And although I do not take a picture of it, I catch a really exceptional weed. I am tempted to keep it and fry it up for a vegetarian dinner entree, but I end up throwing it back, too. ‘Catch and release’ weed program through the DNR. I'm very conservation-y.

Date night. Night crawlers and leeches. Minnows and Trilene fishing line. Sinkers and jigs. It’s what keeps our marriage fresh and exciting.

DOES NEAT AND TIDY COUNT?

2010-09-15T20:27:00.003-05:00

If I could revise my genetic makeup in any way, I wish I had been born with at least one iota of home decorating DNA.

Just one polynucleotide. It could even be a really little one. One microscropic nucleotide of style and taste in just one measly polymer in the double helix of life.

I would like to be able to walk into a furniture store or look at paint swatches or carpet samples and know instinctively that this looks good and that looks ridiculous. I watch shows on HGTV, the home and garden channel, where designers snatch bits and pieces from sale shelves and bargain bins, put it all together, wave a magic wand over it, and voila! A house is beautifully transformed.

I watch it, but I just don’t get it. How do they do that?

In a brave attempt to update our house, I recently decided to replace the chandelier in our dining room. Easy, right? Easy for you maybe, with your overabundant decorating polynucleotides . . . your spilling-over-the-top tasteful DNA . . . your inborn, natural ability to know what’s beautiful and what isn’t . . .

I replaced this (before):

With this (after):

Does it look all right? I need some validation here. I need some reassurance. (But please, no comments on the 1970s furniture or the fake flower arrangement. Those have sentimental value and are non-negotiable.)

I want you to know that I consulted at length with a short, dumpy lady wearing a blue vest in the lighting department of Menard’s before I went out on a limb and bought this light fixture. Ethel (as her name tag declared) is now officially my personal interior designer, although she sold me the wrong light bulbs. (They weren’t the dim-able kind.)

In my own defense, I’m really good at vacuuming. I dust regularly. I keep a neat and tidy kitchen. It’s just interior decorating that confuses me. I think it was because I first started keeping house in the 1970s when people thought that orange shag carpet, avocado-green kitchen appliances, and harvest gold flocked wallpaper were cool. It completely warped my natural sense of taste and style, and I’ve been befuddled ever since.

METH GANGS AND CRIME SPREES

2010-09-13T14:04:00.002-05:00

I have always felt like we live in Mayberry R.F.D. Any minute I expect to see Andy Taylor and his little bare-foot boy Opie come walking down my street with their fishin’ poles and a can of worms.

It’s just that kind of a place.

We are not careless, mind you. We lock our doors at night or when we’re away from the house during the day. However, if we’re home, our doors and windows are usually wide open, our garage door is usually up, and the air is usually filled with the sounds of kids and bikes and lawn mowers.

Our house doesn’t have security bars or window alarms or pit bulls or motion lights or home security systems. Anybody with a fingernail file and a roll of duct tape could probably break in and steal our 20-year-old television quicker than you could say “Aunt Bea.”

That’s why it was a little unnerving last week when a neighbor who lives down the street from us stopped to warn us about a local crime spree. A nearby mobile home park has been a hotbed of attention from our local police department. Our neighbor had heard (second hand, but that still counts) that there’s a group of meth addicts living at that mobile home park who have robbed homes in broad daylight—looking for money, tools, electronics, or anything they can sell or pawn to support their meth habit.

I heard they go into garages where the door is left open, our neighbor cautioned.

They might even walk into houses when people are home, looting the inside while the occupants are out in their yards, our neighbor warned.

I’ve heard they are so desperate for drugs that they have become bold and ruthless, our neighbor claimed.

So for a couple of days, I faithfully shut our garage door. I conscientiously locked the doors to our house every time I went in and out. I was constantly on guard for people who looked like meth addicts roaming at large down our maple tree-lined street. I started looking suspiciously at the neighbors; how did I know that they weren’t the meth addicts cleverly disguised as 80-year-old spinster sisters or a retired pastor and his wife?

Everybody’s eyes started looking a little glassy to me.

Two days passed. My house was a fortress.

During those two days, not a single crazed meth addict tried to break into my locked-up-tighter-than-a-drum, claustrophobic house. I felt light headed, breathing the same stale air—twice, three, four times—knowing that each breath of recycled air contained less oxygen than the breath before. I started exhibiting many of the same symptoms as a meth addict myself: anxiety, hallucinations, paranoia (What was that noise? Was someone trying to break in??)

On day No. 3, I furtively lifted the drawn shades on my kitchen window and peeked outside. That’s when I noticed that the rest of the neighborhood looked like it always did: kids, bikes, dogs, lawnmowers, flowers, birds, open garage doors, Sheriff Andy and Opie going fishing. The usual.

Not a single meth addict in sight.

So I unlocked my doors. I pulled back the curtains and raised the shades as far as they would go. I opened my windows and let the cool September air blow through my house. And I felt safer and happier than I had in days.

PHYLLIS AND THE DISAPPEARING EARRING

2010-09-10T16:36:00.006-05:00

When I wrote a story about Phyllis and the vacuum cleaner, I had two requests (granted they were from my two daughters) for more Phyllis stories. So here is the story of my sister-in-law Phyllis and the disappearing earring.

Tom’s 82-year-old sister Phyllis just loves to get dressed up. Now when I get dressed up, I usually put on my multi-purpose black pants and a shirt with some kind of a black-and-white Rorschach ink blot pattern. That’s my idea of dressed up.

But when Phyllis gets dressed up, Katy bar the door! (For anyone under the age of 60, “Katy bar the door” means “watch out—get ready for trouble.”) Phyllis knows how to put together an outfit that includes dazzling colors, low-cut necklines, sparkles, sequins, dangly earrings, clunky bracelets, strappy sandals, spiky hair, and general pizzazz. If I wore the same outfit, it would look like a Halloween costume. When Phyllis wears it, she looks an 82-year-old Cleopatra getting ready for a night out on the Nile.

At a family wedding several years ago, Phyllis was dressed to kill. She was classy and dazzling, her earrings a four-inch dangle of polished metal. At the reception, she sat at a tableful of family—eating, laughing, and telling stories.

All of a sudden there was a frantic public clamor. One of Phyllis's four-inch dangly earrings had disappeared.

Relatives crawled around on the floor under the table, searching for the missing jewelry. Phyllis looked under her chair, in her purse, on the table, inside her napkin. But the earring was gone—seemingly vanished into thin air. She was distraught. The missing earring threw off the entire effect of her haute couture.

A little later, my daughter-in-law tactfully suggested one more place Aunt Phil could look. Aha! There it was! Somehow the earring had slid off her ear, plunged into the low-cut neckline of her wedding outfit, and ended up lodged in the depths of her senior-citizen bosom.

Phyllis is not one to hide her light under a bushel basket. Soon everyone at her table knew that the lost had been found. With only a small bit of encouragement, she would even show them where it had been found. And somehow, eventually nearly everyone at the wedding reception had heard the earring story.

That might have been the end of the tale. However . . .

Last March, we were in Arizona, sitting around the table eating dinner with several family members. Aunt Phyllis was at the head of the table, calmly eating her dessert, when suddenly a small piece of chocolate cake dropped off her fork. She stopped cold, her fork suspended in midair. She searched her lap. She examined the front of her shirt for tell-tale chocolate smudges. She shook her napkin.

Then in a flash of déjà vu, she remembered her previous experience, and her hand disappeared into the low-cut front of her blouse. When her hand re-emerged, she was triumphantly holding the piece of chocolate between her thumb and her pointer finger. “Oh!” she exclaimed happily. “Here it is!” She popped the chocolate cake into her mouth.

The “five-second rule” evidently applies not only to food on the floor but also to food in your cleavage. Thank goodness we have our family matriarch, Aunt Phil, to pass down the rules of jewelry retrieval and fine dining to the next generation.

CAP’N TINY

2010-09-09T12:32:00.004-05:00

A couple of my best memories from the summer of 2010 will be my two Mississippi River voyages on the U.S.S. Pontoon with Cap’n Tiny at the helm.

In the real world, Cap’n Tiny is a guy named Larry, a retired City of Minneapolis civil engineer, and my brother-in-law. But once he steps foot on the U.S.S. Pontoon and heads out on the Mississippi River, he becomes Cap’n Tiny, fearless navigator and river explorer. He knows every river landmark, every below-the-water danger, every rip rap rock on the shoreline, every flock of ducks. Cap’n Tiny knows who illegally landscapes the river bank or lops off tree branches and throws them into the river current (usually because they end up snagged on somebody’s dock down river).

And like every good river captain, he knows exactly where to pull into shore to find the good bathrooms.

He’s even trained my sister to be an efficient first-mate. “Aye, aye, Cap’n Tiny,” she calls as she pulls in the pontoon bumpers and unhooks the rope that tethers us to the dock, pushing us out into the river. “Avast and shiver me timbers, Cap’n sir, we’re ready to set sail.”

Well maybe my sister doesn’t exactly say “Aye, aye, Cap’n Tiny” and the rest of that salty sailor talk, but I’m sure she’s thinking it.

The first one onto the pontoon is always Lucy, the half German shepherd/half Chow mix dog they rescued from the animal shelter. Lucy dislikes the water but loves the pontoon. I suppose it would have been better if Cap’n Tiny had a parrot to perch on his shoulder; but given a little encouragement, I’m sure Lucy would be happy to climb up there and squawk a little pirate talk. She’s a dog who wants to please.

Cap’n Tiny and his wannabe parrot, Lucy

After everyone is boarded, dogs and people, off we go, down the Mississippi, to chase river pirates and keep the muddy waters of the Mississippi safe for other Minnesotans.

Then again, maybe we just float along the river, enjoying a beautiful September day, the blue sky, the moderate temperatures, the changing colors of the leaves—in the safe hands of Cap’n Tiny, master of the mighty Mississippi.

DREAM HOME

2010-09-07T13:15:00.006-05:00

About 35 years ago, Tom and I decided to put our “starter home” up for sale and look for a permanent home. A starter home, for those of you who haven’t been at that stage, is the piece-of-poop little house a couple buys when they first get married. They’re tired of dumping money into rent, so they figure that a little starter house is better than nothing.

They usually don’t love the house all that much. It’s usually w-a-a-a-y too small for more than two rather thin people, located in a neighborhood where drive-by shootings are the norm. The furniture is a combination of college-day leftovers, duct-taped rejects from relatives, and scavenged wrecks found the night before large-item curbside pickup day.

So 34 years ago, Tom and I sold our starter home and bought the house we would raise our family in. And here we’ve lived since 1976—lots of bedrooms and bathrooms, a big yard, close to Tom’s and my workplaces, lots of neighborhood kids, and a short five-minute drive from all the schools our kids attended. It was the perfect house to raise a family.

Perfect. Except for one thing.

In a state where there are 11,842 lakes . . . in a county containing 141 lakes . . . in a community where there are a dozen lakes within fifteen minutes of our house . . . amidst all this water, we live on dry land.

Those lake homes were always just out of our financial reach. We were never quite comfortable sticking our necks out quite that far and getting into that much house debt. So we stayed where we were, in our safe, comfortable, finally-paid-for home.

Enter the Financial Crisis/Real Estate Recession of 2008-10. We got the bug all over again. In this state of 11,842 lakes, there must be one little lake house, one modest cabin, that we could afford to buy. Surely in this real estate climate of foreclosures and short sales, there must be one seller who would be interested in pricing a lake home reasonably enough for two conservative retirees to afford without pushing them to the edge of a financial precipice.

There’s also another problem: I love every single lake home I ever see. Every. Single. One. I’ve never met a lake home I don’t like.

Steep bank? (No problem! I will be able to run up and down those 483 stairs to the lake far into my 90s.)

Only one bedroom with a flowered curtain for the doorway? (Pshaw! Bunk beds! Pull-out couches! Futons! Tents!)

No indoor plumbing? (I’ve used an outhouse before! I can carry water from the lake! I can chop a hole in the ice for a weekly bath in the wintertime! )

I love this lake home--it just needs a little paint!

Holes in the roof? (Skylights, my good people, think of them as skylights!)

Boat dock is missing boards? (Leaping! I’ve always been good at leaping! Even across open spans of water, I can leap.)

A pot of geraniums on the front porch would make this lake home perfect!

Then there’s Tom. He’s never met a single lake home in our modest price range that he likes.

Two dandelion on the lawn? (Yikes, weed problems! It will cost us thousands to get the weeds under control!)

Scratch on the refrigerator door? (The appliances will need to be replaced! If you replace the refrigerator, it will be just a matter of time before the stove will need to go and the dishwasher will need to be junked!)

Dated carpet on the family room floor? (Oh, my gosh! This place is a money pit! First the carpet, then we’ll need to paint—and then it will be windows and woodwork and shingles and siding . . . !!!!)

We have an appointment this afternoon to see a house out on Lake Ida. It’s our favorite lake—clean, quiet, good fishing, beautiful. It’s a house that’s been for sale for over a year. It was owned by an older couple who are probably giving it up because they can no longer physically care for the property. From pictures on the realty website, I can tell it’s dated—dark paneling, lots of crocheted afghans and rocking chairs, flowered 1983 wallpaper, harvest gold bathroom fixtures. The owners have probably never watched an episode of “House Hunters” on HGTV in their lives.

I know I’m going to love it. Unconditionally and irrationally.

I also know Tom will find a thousand things wrong with it.

We may never agree on a lake home. Somewhere in between our two extremes is a happy-medium reality. And maybe, just maybe, the house we live in right now IS our dream home and we don't even know it. Just because we've been married for 37 years doesn't mean our dreams are identical.

STATE PROBLEM, THEN STOP

2010-09-04T08:05:00.003-05:00

When my newest grandson Tommy was baptized in August, we all trooped to St. Andrew of the Apostle Church in Chandler, Arizona, for Sunday morning services.

It’s very rare that I ponder . . . and contemplate . . . and mull over . . . a sermon topic for weeks after the sermon has been delivered. In fact, most of the time I couldn’t pass the “what-was-the-sermon-about?” test taken five minutes after the sermon ends. But that day, maybe because of the specialness of Tommy’s baptism day, I did remember the message.

The pastor said, “When you pray, don’t tell God your problem and then outline to Him how you would like your problem solved. Just tell Him your problem—and then stop. S-T-O-P. Stop.” He went on to give the example of someone who had lost a job and prayed, “Dear God, I lost my job. Please send me a bucketful of money and dump it in my lap.” Or how about, “Dear God, I am worried about my son. Please make his bad-influence friends disappear off the face of the earth and give him a scholarship to Harvard.”

I'm just so full of ideas about how to solve my own problems. I just lack the wherewithal (i.e., the magic wand and pixie dust) to solve them myself. So I like to sit back and place my order to God about how I would like things taken care of—kind of like the drive-up window at Burger King. (“And I’ll have fries with that.”)

The pastor assured us that it is okay to mention our problems to God. In fact, he encouraged it. But then we need to STOP! God's plan does not necessarily involve a short-term bucketful of money or a scholarship to Harvard—or even fries.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this wrong: “Please, God, my dad is really ill and frail, so would you please . . .” (fill in the blank with my very specific directions, which vary from day to day, but usually involve turning water into wine and walking on water).

And then when my insightful directions are not followed, I get all disappointed and annoyed. What good does it do to pray when He doesn’t do what I ask? After all, who knows better than I do how to fix the world or solve my own problems?

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been carrying this sermon around in my head. Who knows, maybe it will sink in to my control-freak brain and someday I will just automatically share my problem and STOP. His will be done.

Maybe I’m not too old and set in my ways to learn to let go and let someone else take charge for a change.

GAGA OOH-LA-LA, DON’T WANT YOUR BAD HAIR-R-R-CUT

2010-09-01T13:09:00.003-05:00

Last year, I went around for weeks with two lines of Lady Gaga’s song “Poker Face” stuck in my head.

“P-p-p-poker face, Mum, mum, mum, mah, p-p-poker face, mum mum mum,” I’d sing. It was just one of those tunes stuck in my head, even if I only knew a couple of lines.

I had no clue what I was singing.

Then one day, I googled the lyrics. Sheesh. Holy cow. Sheesh.

I stopped singing “Poker Face.”

But now I have a new Lady Gaga song in my head, “Bad Romance.” Again, I can only understand about two lines of the lyrics. And since I am not a participant in a bad romance (thank you, Tom), I started substituting the only thing that had gone wrong in my life lately: my hair.

After going to the same hairdresser for the past eleventy-nine years, she went a little wacko on me. ‘Plain and simple,’ I always tell her. ‘Nothing fancy. Make my hair look like it belongs on a retired schoolteacher.’

She had tactfully labeled my hairstyle a “classic bob” during one visit, and I clung to that term. “Classic bob.” That was me. I liked the sound of it. I’m definitely a classic bob kind of woman.

And then, at my appointment in August, my hairdresser must have been inhaling too many peroxide fumes or slugging henna shots because she tried to go designer on me. Murmuring soothingly about layering and shaping, she cut my hair into little angles and corners and weird isometric tiers. It certainly didn’t help that this past August was the hottest and most humid August in the history of Minnesota summers. All those little hair angles and tress schmangles just frizzed up into shrubbery.

Sometimes when I get home from walking my two to four miles on a humid day, I glance at myself in the mirror and shriek in horror. I look like an extra in a scene from Night of the Walking Dead.

Don’t misunderstand me. I know full well that if the worst thing happening to me right now is a bad haircut, I am a lucky girl. Lucky, lucky, lucky. But I still find myself with that Lady Gaga tune rolling around in my head:

Rah rah ah-ah-ah!
Ro mah ro-mah-mah
Gaga Ooh-la-la!
Caught in a bad hairrrr-cut . . .

Before I start singing this at the top of my lungs in public places, I’d better google the rest of the lyrics. I have an uneasy feeling that Lady Gaga is talking smack again in this song, and it isn’t the type of song a classic-bob sort of lady wants to be singing, even if she does have a bad haircut.

DOMESTIC APPLE GODDESS

2010-08-27T13:34:00.006-05:00

Last weekend, a paper shopping bag full of apples made its way into my kitchen. My daughter had been visiting friends who live on a farm, and their apple trees are bearing early and bountifully this year.

‘Wow!’ I thought, a little weak in the knees, ‘will ya' look at all those apples!’ The apples stared back at me.

“They’re not eating apples,” my daughter warned me. “They’re cooking apples.”

All those years before I retired, it was a whole lot easier to buy my apple products ready-made at the grocery store than go through all the work of processing them myself.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to deal with a huge bagful of apples. My childhood is filled with memories of apples—we had about a million apple trees in our back yard (or maybe four). Anyway, I can remember helping my mother peel, slice, mush, can, pickle, and freeze apples for weeks at the end of summer and into the fall. I can still peel an entire apple without breaking the peel (hold your applause).

I looked balefully at that bagful of apples for several days. Tom looked balefully at me looking balefully at those apples. I don’t even know what “balefully” means, but I know that looking baleful didn’t get the apples taken care of.

Finally, yesterday, I dug into the back of the cupboard and found what I was looking for: my mother’s old cone-shaped stand sieve with the wooden pestle. The applesauce machine. I didn’t even have to look up the recipe—apples, water, cinnamon, and a little sugar.

Applesauce. Any idiot could do it. It was like riding a bike; you never forget how. First I cored and quartered half of the apples. Do expect a blister on your knife finger; this is not labor for the faint-hearted. Then I put the quartered apples into my biggest kettle with about a half-cup water per eight apples.

Add sugar or Splenda (optional) and cinnamon (also optional) to taste. Cook until the apples get mushy, dump them into the conical sieve, grind away with the pestle, and presto change-o! Applesauce.

Then I repeated the whole process for the second half of the apples. If I’d had a bigger kettle, I would have done them all at once.

And do you know what? I had fun. It was relaxing doing one of those no-brain childhood chores with my mother’s old apple sieve and pestle. And the blister from coring all those apples didn’t even hurt. It was more like a Girl Scout badge of domestic achievement.

PORTMANTEAUS

2010-08-26T07:57:00.006-05:00

The other day, while doing a crossword puzzle, I ran across this clue: portmanteau imbibement. I filled in all the adjacent boxes I could figure out around that word—above, below, left, and right. Finally, I conceded defeat—I knew that an imbibement was something to drink, but I needed to look up the word “portmanteau.”

What a cool word! I now plan to use it every single chance I get (pronounced port-man’-toe). It’s the term for blending two or more words and their meanings into one new word.

The crossword puzzle word term for “portmanteau imbibement” ended up being “alcopop,” a fruity alcoholic drink like a wine cooler which combines alcohol and a sweet-flavored beverage. (I also found out that these words could be called “centaur words” after the mythical combination of a man and a horse, but I like “portmanteau” better. I think “portmanteau” sounds classier than “centaur.” I’m a closet word snob. So sue me.)

Then I realized that the English language is jam-packed with portmanteaus, many that I am familiar with and more than a few that were new to me. There’s “frenemy” (an enemy who pretends to be a friend), “prooming” (pet grooming), “locavore” (eats only locally grown food), and “bromance” (guy friends who are extremely close and spend large amounts of time together).

There are “staycations” for people who are too broke to travel, “cremains” for people who don’t want to be embalmed and en-coffined, “beautility” for people who like their refrigerators to also be pretty, and “sporks” for people who want only one utensil for both soup and peas.

Food engineers have come up with “pluots” (plum/apricots), Clamato juice, and beefalo burgers. Whole countries have been combined to form new countries like “Tanzania” (Tanganyika and Zanzibar). Mexicans who move to Texas are called “Texicans.” And famous couples are re-labeled as “Brangelina, “Billary,” and “TomKat.” People are chocoholics, foodaholics, and workaholics.

Right now, you are reading my “blog,” which is just a portmanteau for “web log.”

Not content to leave well enough alone and say that there are enough portmanteaus in this world to last everyone a lifetime, I came up with a few of my own. It seems that the world of retirement is sadly lacking in portmanteaus. So here are my contributions:

RetirVee (retiree + RV) - a retired person who travels in an RV

Pensiontentiary (pension + penitentiary) - condition of people who planned to do fun things in retirement but invested in Tom Petters’ Ponzi scheme instead

Grammaholics (gramma + alcoholic) - older women who need a little alcopop with their cereal to get moving in the morning

Hypertirees – (hyperactive + retiree) - retirees who accomplish WAY too much every day and make all the other retirees look lazy by comparison

Hypochoneezers (hypochondriac + geezers) – old people who insist on telling you about all their illnesses, surgeries, and medications

Oldageezer (old + age + geezer) because we are sick to death of being called senior citizens

Portmanteau: see if you can work the word into a conversation today. After you see all the looks of admirect (admiration + respect) you get, you’ll be glad you did.

HARD OLSON’S NEPHEW, CHARLES

2010-08-23T13:03:00.005-05:00

I reminded my 91-year-old mother today that it was the first day of classes for some school students. I asked her if she remembered her first day of teaching back in 1939 in the District 111 one-room schoolhouse. Not specifically, she said. But she sat and thought about it for a minute.

Then in a flash of unexplained brain synapses, she suddenly remembered one of her first graders, Charles Meyers.

In a one-room schoolhouse, the students—from first graders to eighth graders—all shared the same classroom. However, when it was time to work with the three first graders on reading or arithmetic, my mother would call them to the front of the room where they sat on little chairs made from apple crates in a semicircle around her teacher’s chair.

First-grader Charles Meyers was too husky to fit into a little apple-crate chair, so my mother pulled her “utility box” into the semicircle for Charles. The utility box had been made for her by her brother Elmer when she went to Moorhead State Teachers’ College and held all her teaching supplies and books.

Charles Meyers, third from the right, was a husky 1st grader, flanked in this picture by a 4th grader and a 6th grader.

Charles lived with an aunt and uncle a couple of miles from the school. His mother had been unmarried when Charles was born and had asked her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hard Olson, to raise Charles.

The brother-in-law, Hard, had been named after the difficult birth his own mother had experienced, but my mother said the name still fit him. When Charles started first grade, he had a tough time adjusting to the social aspects of school. My mother explained that he hadn’t been taught many manners at home, and he got attention by being mean to the other students. She often had to send a note home to his aunt that Charles had misbehaved in school. “I hope you don’t think I’m a bad mother,” the aunt had once said to my mother.

But Charles did like his teacher. One morning, he arrived at school smiling proudly. He carefully set his lunch pail on my mother’s desk and said, “Open it!” My mother lifted the lid off the lunch pail and found a pile of wilted dandelions. Charles’s round face fell and his lips quivered. The dandelions had been so beautiful in the sunshine when he picked them on his way to school. He had wanted to bring his teacher a present, but all that remained was a mass of drooping weeds.

Whatever happened to Charles, I asked? My mother didn’t know. She had only taught at District 111 for two years from 1939 to 1941. When she left in the spring of 1941 to get married, the families in the school gave a bridal shower for her. She remembers arriving at school one morning to find her desk all decorated and an invitation to the shower in the middle of the decorations. She was touched that even the children from the poorest family in the school excitedly brought gifts for their teacher’s new home. “A bedspread,” she remembers. “One of their gifts was a bedspread.”

My mother hopes Charles found a way past his tough childhood and made a good life for himself.

MOMENT OF SILENCE

2010-08-23T08:12:00.003-05:00

Today is Orientation Day at the two-year college where I taught from 1976 through 2009 B.R. (Before Retirement). Classes start tomorrow.

I had trouble sleeping last night, probably a leftover from those 32 years of tossing and turning the night before the students arrived. I did, however, skip the chronic dream where I am running from classroom to classroom in my pajamas, looking for the students I’m supposed to teach. Thank goodness for that.

I wonder if there will ever come a time when I am not very aware of school starting in the fall. Part of me is relieved that I no longer have that weighty responsibility. But part of me has a little nostalgic envy for my fellow teachers who are still in the trenches: meeting the new students, preparing for the new classes, challenged by new technology.

All I know is that I respect and admire all the teachers who do this very tough but rewarding job every day. Have a good school year!

LOVIN’ AUDREY TAUTOU

2010-08-22T13:45:00.004-05:00

Most of the time, I’m content with my wishy-washy, middle-of-the-road views. I never get too bent out of shape when people are discussing politics or religion or illegal immigrants or the national budget crisis. I like all kinds of music, all kinds of books, all kinds of movies. I’m not locked into eating any particular kinds of foods. I usually just muddle through life in a gray-colored fog of apathy and leave the rabble-rousing fervency to others.

That’s why I feel kind of excited when I have a “very favorite” anything.

So I’d like to make an official announcement: I absolutely love Audrey Tautou. I believe I can state unequivocally that she is my very favorite actress.

I like every movie I’ve ever seen her in. Even if the movie itself isn’t that terrific, Audrey Tautou always rises above a mediocre plot and shines. I think of her as a natural, understated comedienne—able to pull off quirky, off-the-wall humor in the most subtle way imaginable.

I first saw her in Amelie, which I wrote about in an earlier blog. Then I watched She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not. She was in The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks. Last night, I watched A Very Long Engagement. I loved Audrey Tautou so much after I watched that movie, I also went to Instant Play in Netflix and watched her in Happenstance, staying up waaaaaay past my bedtime to do so.

In most of Audrey Tautou’s movies, viewers have to read English subtitles because she’s a French actress. But I’m willing to do that. Absolutely. Because so far, I haven’t met an Audrey Tautou film I didn’t like.

Note: Since French films are sometimes a little more casually open than many American films, you may not want to invite your Sunday School teacher over for “movie night.”

I’ve got Coco Before Chanel in my Netflix queue. On the next rainy or heavily humid day when I’m forced to do my daily two to four miles inside, Audrey Tautou and I will be downstairs on the treadmill working out together. I’ll be sweating, but Audrey will be as cool as a cucumber, brightening up the screen with her huge talent.

ROAD TRIP

2010-08-21T10:12:00.008-05:00

My daughter Shannon and I just spent three days on the road, driving her car back to Minnesota after she spent the summer in Arizona. While Tom hopped on an airplane and flew back to Fargo in three breezy hours, we took three days to cover the same 1,700 miles in Shannon’s little Mazda.

“Do you realize,” I asked her at one point, “that you will have lived in two climates with a 150-degree temperature span this year?”

She thought about that a minute. It was true. Who spends the summer in Arizona and the winter in Minnesota? Who willingly endures two months of plus 100-degree days and then, of his or her own free will, goes back to a land where minus 30-degree days are distinct possibilities?

But Shannon had realized her goal of getting to know her new nephews and niece better. She was the godmother at both of her nephews’ baptisms. And she was able to give the new mothers lots of much-needed support. Mission accomplished. Summer well spent.

But then it was time for the road trip back. Since Tom made the trip out with Shannon in June, it was my turn to ride shotgun. And armed with my road atlas, my Mapquest printouts, and my nearly super-human sense of direction, it was my responsibility to provide navigation for the return trip. (My theory of getting home: take any highway going either east or north. Works every time.)

What we found out on the open road was your Federal Stimulus Dollars at work. I believe the total stimulus bill was $787 billion. After driving from Arizona to Minnesota, Shannon and I are convinced that fully $700 billion of those dollars were used to buy orange highway construction cones, orange detour signs, and orange fencing.

Oklahoma on I-40 may have taken the prize. Instead of counting the number of miles under construction, it was much simpler to count the number of miles that were unimpaired. That would be twelve. Twelve miles of straight, simple, clean, unhampered roadway. The rest of it was decorated with every type of orange signage and orange safety indicator known to man.

Even worse, every construction zone was labeled with reduced speed signs and the warning, “Fines double in work zones.” In Texas, the zealous Texas State Highway Patrol was supremely evident. Maybe Texas spent some of its share of Federal Stimulus Dollars hiring additional law enforcement. They were everywhere—lights flashing, pulling over offending vehicles, collecting double fines on behalf of the fine state of Texas.

Kansas must have done all its road construction last summer. All of its highways were bright, clean, smooth, and well maintained. However, in Kansas, we ran into turnpike tollways. Drop $1.15 at this toll booth—exact change in coins only, please—no bills or pennies. Drop another $1.15 at the next toll both; and finally, pay $1.90 to leave the great state. (Luckily, there was an actual person at that tollbooth who could make change for 2 one-dollar bills. By that time, all of our coinage was exhausted down to the last seat-cushion-crack dime.)

Iowa and South Dakota again made the summer of 2010 the Summer of Road Construction. Orange cones, detours, concrete barriers, creeping along at 45 miles per hour. We marveled at the large machines—one guy would be operating the machine while clusters of three, four, or five other men in orange vests and hard hats stood watching. ‘What exactly,’ we asked each other, ‘are they watching?’ Over and over, the scene replayed along I-40, I-35, I-80, I-29 . . . one guy operating the machine and several others leaning, sweating, scratching, watching.

So the road trip is finally over. It wasn’t like we were Thelma and Louise. Never once did I have to shout, “Driiive, Shannon! Drive! Drive the car! Go! Go! Go go go go go go!” We never hit an orange cone, we never led the Texas State Patrol on a high speed chase, and we never disobeyed a detour sign. We just drove those 1,700 orange-decorated miles until we finally made it home.

HOTTER THAN HADES

2010-08-19T22:04:00.008-05:00

As the plane approached the Mesa, Arizona, airport around 9 p.m. last Thursday, our pilot got on the intercom to make the usual pre-landing announcements. We were arriving on time, he said, and hoped we had enjoyed our flight.

“The temperature in the Phoenix area is approximately the same temperature as the surface of the sun,” he remarked. “It is currently 108 degrees.”

Nine o’clock at night and still 108 degrees.

I looked at all the people on the plane and wondered to myself, “Who are all these people, and why in the world are they going to Phoenix, Arizona, in August?!?”

A person would have to be crazy.

Of course, I was on the plane, but that was different. My little grandson was going to be baptized on Sunday.

Gosh, I hate to sweat. Golly, I hate to swelter. Gee whiz, it’s hotter than blazes in Arizona in August.

As we drove on I-10 across Phoenix on Friday afternoon, I watched in fascination as the dashboard thermometer on our rented VW Jetta climbed higher than I had ever seen a car thermometer climb before.

We started out on the west side of Phoenix at an eye-popping 119 degrees.

The closer we got to downtown Phoenix with its eight lanes of traffic, the more that thermometer climbed.
After passing through the Papago Freeway tunnel in downtown Phoenix, the thermometer hit its high point:
We drove past a motorist, stranded beside the freeway with his car’s hood raised. A mile further down the highway, a car was pulled over for speeding, the flashing lights of a patrol car cutting through the shimmering heat. A two-car fender-bender at an exit ramp made me wonder if the heat might turn a minor traffic accident into a homicide in the 120-degree temper-flaring heat.

Who in his or her right mind visits Phoenix in August?

Determined grandmothers who want to see their grandsons baptized, that’s who.

37 YEARS, 24 HOURS, AND COUNTING

2010-08-05T14:44:00.006-05:00

Thirty-seven years and 24 hours ago, it was 90 degrees in the shade with 90 percent humidity. My hair, which had been optimistically washed and curled earlier in the day, had wilted into a sticky, lanky mop. I stood at the altar in my simple white dress, a steady stream of sweat rolling down between my shoulder blades and pooling at my waistband. My hair stuck damply to the veil I had borrowed from my sister-in-law.

Churches back then were not air conditioned. A couple would have to be absolutely deluded to plan a wedding at 2 p.m. on a hot and humid August 4th afternoon. But we were young and in love and thought the weather gods would smile fondly on us. That was the last time we ever really counted on the weather gods.

In 1973, it was all about the hair. (Remember the musical, Hair? –“Hair, flow it, show it, long as God can grow, my hair!”)

Our wedding in 1973 was back in the hippie days when people got married barefoot and made up their own wedding vows. Tom and I did wear shoes, but the vows were original. Prior to the wedding, I had written out my vows on a yellow legal pad and carefully memorized them. When the appropriate time came, I recited my vows word for word.

Tom, on the other hand, had jotted down some ideas for his vows on a paper napkin the day before and had a general idea what he was going to say. However, once he was at the altar and it was his turn to speak, he forgot everything he planned and just kind of gave a political-type extemporaneous list of compliments and promises . Neither one of us remembers a word of what he promised, but later one of my roommates told me that she was in tears listening to his earnest declarations. The big fake. (Tom, I mean, not the roommate.)

The reception was downstairs in the church basement where the women from my mother’s Ladies' Aid church circle served cake and ham buns. It was so humid in the church basement that the floor had puddles. I had never been so hot in my life.

I like to think that the more realistic and gritty the wedding, the greater the chance for a successful marriage. We had no illusions during our wedding—no Cinderella, fairy tale, happily ever after, I-want-to-be-a-princess illusions. It was hot, we were sweaty, we ate cake, and the marriage has lasted 37 years and 24 hours.

Celebrating our anniversary in 2010, 37 years later, when it’s not so much about the hair.

The secret is not in the dress or the music or the flowers or the $50 a plate reception. The secret is in the person you marry. Thank goodness we both got that right.

CAVORTING WITH THE BUTTERFLIES

2010-08-02T11:21:00.005-05:00

It’s been a busy summer, and it seems like every square on the calendar has had some obligation or event written on it. But occasionally, among all the appointments and command performances, are pleasant surprises.

One of those pleasant surprises took place a week or so ago with a visit to the “Blooming Butterfly” exhibit at the Como Zoo in St. Paul.

The exhibit itself looks like a caterpillar-shaped greenhouse, and we first had to stand in a line because the exhibit doorkeepers only allowed in about thirty people in at a time. While most of the visitors’ reactions were ooohs and aahhhs, a few people couldn’t get out of the butterfly exhibit fast enough. They were unable to get away from the fact that these were insects and they were everywhere and they were crawling on their clothes.

Oh, well. More room for the rest of us.

But here was our reward:

Tom’s gold Scheels’ Hardware cap attracted a couple of beautiful specimens.

A little girl standing next to me was wearing the perfect cap to lure a beauty.

I was certain that a butterfly would land on me. After all, I am usually an insect magnet. If there’s one mosquito in a roomful of a thousand of people, invariably I’ll be the one to be bit.

But minutes passed and I was forlornly butterfly-less. Just when I was convinced that my plain blue shirt wasn’t the type of clothing to attract the very fastidious butterflies, a smiling man standing next to me pointed to my shirt. There, like a perfect, delicate brooch, a butterfly sat poised near my collar bone, fluttering its wings. I quietly handed the camera to Tom, and he got this picture:

I didn’t move a muscle for thirty seconds while the butterfly rested. “It likes me!” I thought to myself in a shrill Sally-Field-like voice. “It really likes me!” (Is there something pathetic about a grown woman who needs the affirmation of a butterfly to believe in her own self worth?)

Anyway, who would have guessed that one of the high points of my summer would be that I became the butterfly landing pad for what I believe was the rare, endangered species, Lycaeides melissa samuelis blue butterfly.

(And please, any butterfly experts out there, don’t tell me it was the Commonus wooleating mothus. Let me live in my fantasy world.)

CAUTIONARY TALE

2010-08-01T21:17:00.004-05:00

Everybody has a story to tell. But Tom’s oldest sister, Phyllis, has a million stories. A million.

Last night, we were at a family wedding reception, and Phil told her vacuum cleaner story. I had heard it once before, but a couple of her sisters hadn’t. Besides, I don’t mind hearing her stories twice because every time Phil re-tells a story, a few details get added. Embellishment, I think you call it. Every re-telling gets a little more interesting.

So here’s Phil’s cautionary tale about vacuum cleaners—whom to trust and whom not to trust.

About three or four years ago, Phil (who is in her early 80s) was talking to a friend of hers about her vacuum cleaner. It’s important to understand that Phil loved her vacuum cleaner. It was a reliable Sears Kenmore that she had been using for years. It was old, but why get a new vacuum cleaner when you already own the world’s best vacuum cleaner?

Her friend, however, had just taken her own vacuum cleaner in to be refurbished with a new carpet-roller brush. “Those brushes get worn out over time,” she had cautioned Phil. So she gave Phil the name of the local vacuum cleaner shop where she had brought her own machine to be refurbished.

Phil, being a conscientious home appliance owner, promptly called the shop and arranged to bring her beloved vacuum cleaner in to be serviced. When she brought it in to the shop, she talked to a young man at the counter who tagged the vacuum cleaner with her name and the date, and told her it should be ready in a couple of days.

So a couple of days later, Phil called the vacuum cleaner shop to check on her machine. The owner of the shop answered the phone. Phil told him who she was and asked if her vacuum cleaner was ready to be picked up.

“Um, just a minute . . . “ he said and put her on hold. What seemed like an awfully long time later, he returned to the phone and said, “Um, ma’am? I can’t seem to find your vacuum cleaner.”

“You can’t find my vacuum cleaner??” Phil asked, her voice rising an octave or two. Remember now, Phil loved her vacuum cleaner. “What do you mean, you can’t find my vacuum cleaner?”

“Actually, it doesn’t seem to be here,” he said, a little defensively.

“And where exactly does a vacuum cleaner disappear to when you can’t find it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“W-e-ll,” he hesitated, “I’m guessing somebody sold it.”

“Sold my vacuum cleaner??” Phil shouted into the phone. “I love my vacuum cleaner!”

“Things like this happen,” he said. “We sell used vacuum cleaners here, too, you know. And if people don’t come back to claim their vacuum cleaners within a reasonable period of time, we assume they can’t afford to pay for the repairs or don’t want them and just sell them.”

“But I only left it there two days ago!” Phil said, shouting into the receiver.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said matter-of-factly. “Things like that just happen.”

“So you need to buy me a new vacuum cleaner,” Phil said firmly.

“Umm . . . uh, I suppose we could give you store credit and you could pick out a different used vacuum cleaner here,” he said reluctantly.

“But you don’t sell Sears Kenmores,” she wailed. “I loved my Sears Kenmore vacuum cleaner.”

Finally, the man grudgingly agreed to reimburse her the monetary value of her old vacuum cleaner, and she went to Sears and bought a new one. Unfortunately, in addition to costing more than the reimbursement, the new model wasn’t anything like the old trusty vacuum cleaner that she had loved.

“It’s too heavy,” she sighed, shaking her head. “It’s hard to push. It doesn’t pick up the dirt like my old one. I loved my old vacuum cleaner.”

Moral of the story: Don’t get too attached to your vacuum cleaner because it really sucks when something happens to it (old joke, couldn’t help it—sorry).

Note: No one ever found out for sure what happened to Phil’s vacuum. I have visions of it in a vacuum cleaner chop shop somewhere, being dismantled for black market parts.

However, I did mention to Phil that she should find out where the vacuum cleaner shop owner brings his car for an oil change. I suggested that she slip the oil change guy 20 bucks to lose (temporarily, of course) the vacuum cleaner guy’s car after the oil change. Well, you can probably figure out the rest. But here is the important part: Phil needs to convince the garage guy to shrug his shoulders and say, “Things like that just happen.”

I like to start trouble.

AIRPLANE IN THE FIELD

2010-07-29T23:03:00.004-05:00

I haven’t heard a new story from my 91-year-old mother in quite a while. But today, when I visited, she had just had her hair freshly washed, set, and combed. There must have been something about feeling all spiffed up with no place to go that helped her remember another tale of growing up in Carlisle.

She had been looking out the window of their assisted living room when she spotted a small plane flying overhead. “A plane!” she said excitedly, a little like Tattoo on “Fantasy Island” used to shout to Mr. Roarke at the beginning of the show.

She scared the pitootie out of me, but my dad, who was fast asleep in his chair, didn’t move a muscle.

I turned around to look out the window, too. “Do you remember the first time you ever saw an airplane?” I asked, watching the plane fly out of sight.

She looked blank for just a minute. Then she got that faraway look in her eyes that I have come to recognize as ‘data bank retrieval.’ She had remembered something.

“We had planes flying overhead occasionally when I was a girl,” she said, “but I remember the time a plane landed in Ugstad’s field.”

“Where was Ugstad’s field?” I asked.

“Right between our farm and the Eide farm,” my mother said. “It was on our path to school.”

“Did you see it land?” I asked.

“No, it landed on the weekend,” she remembered, “but we walked right by it on Monday morning when we went to school. It must have been the early 1930s.”

“Why did it land in Ugstad’s field?”

“It had engine trouble, I guess. It was a big transport plane that carried cargo, flying from Minneapolis to Canada, and it had engine trouble over Carlisle. So it had to land in the field. Luckily it was spring and they hadn’t done any planting yet.”

Source: Wikipedia

“Did you walk over and see the plane?” I asked.

“Oh, everyone around Carlisle went to see the plane.” Then she got a sly look on her face. “But they did something kind of bad that made those airplane people angry.”

“What did they do?” I asked, surprised that the good Norwegian Lutheran farmers around Carlisle would purposely sabotage the plane.

“They all started writing their names on the tail of the airplane,” she laughed. “It was covered with names. I guess they all thought it would be fun to have their names flying around in the sky.”

“Did you write your name on the plane?” I asked.

“No, we were just school children. It was the older ones who wrote their names on the plane’s tail.”

“How do you know the airplane people were angry about the names?” I asked.

“The day the men came to fix the broken parts on the plane, my father walked out to the field to talk to them. He said they were hopping mad. They were repainting the tail so the names wouldn’t show,” she smiled. “Oh, they were mad all right.”

“Had your father put his name on the tail?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” my mother said quickly. “He wasn’t the ‘writey’ kind. He was quiet.” I thought about that one for awhile. It isn’t every day that you find out your grandfather wasn’t into graffiti.

“Well, that’s a story you haven’t told me before,” I said finally.

“I had forgotten it,” my mother said, that faraway look back in her eyes, gazing out the window. “It was a huge plane. Or maybe it wasn’t so big, but I thought it was big because I had never seen an airplane up close before.”

I looked over at my dad, hoping to verify some of her facts, but his eyes had been closed during my entire visit. I wasn’t sure if he was sleeping, because even though he’s sometimes half awake, he doesn’t have the energy to keep his eyes open.

I secretly hoped that he had been one of the young men in Carlisle who had written his name on the tail of that plane. I suppose I’ll ever know for sure, but I’d like to think my dad’s signature is on a vintage plane somewhere, hidden under a coat of paint.

QUESTIONS FOR GOD

2010-07-28T16:22:00.007-05:00

I am a list maker. Back when I was a productive member of pre-retirement society and had an actual job, I had a forever-and-ever-never-ending “To Do” list on my desk. I’d check tasks off as soon as I’d get them done—and sometimes, if I did a task that wasn’t even on my list, I would write it down post-completion for the sheer pleasure of checking it off.

Since I’m still a list-driven person, I recently decided to start a new list. This is in addition to my daily To-Do list, my grocery list, my Target list, my bucket list, my list of books to read, etc. The new list will be “Things to Ask God When I Get a Chance.”

I’ve already decided on the first question I plan to ask Him.

Normally, on a Wednesday morning, my back yard looks like this:

It’s a lovely back yard that rolls gently into the Methodist Church parking lot. It’s always nicely mowed and trimmed. We couldn’t ask for nicer neighbors than the Methodists. I’m not sure what all the tenets of their church entail, but evidently they believe in keeping their church grounds neat and tidy. I think that says something inherently good about Methodist-ism. However, this morning, a typical summer Wednesday, my back yard looked like this:

A parking lot.

Today, the Methodists had a memorial service for a wonderful 61-year-old retired teacher and basketball coach who fought a losing battle with cancer. The church was full of neighbors, relatives, friends, fellow teachers, former students and team members. . . hundreds of people who came to pay their respects to his family.

Sometimes we were rolling on the floor, laughing at some of the stories friends and family shared about this unique man. And sometimes, we needed Kleenexes or handkerchiefs—or a surreptitious sleeve—to handle our emotions. There’s such a fine line between laughing and crying, and occasionally we were doing both at the same time.

So back to my list.

I’m no dummy; I realize that there may not be a “question and answer” period at the Pearly Gates. And I certainly don’t want to be disrespectful of the heavenly in-processing system. But just in case there is an opportunity, I’m starting my list of questions.

So here is Question Number 1 on my list for God:

If, on one hand, there are people praying in a heart-felt way to spare the life of a productive, younger man who is the rock of his family and community; and, on the other hand, a different group of people are praying in a heart-felt way to help an elderly man pass away quietly and with dignity—well, why does it go the opposite way?

I’m not questioning God's wisdom; I just want to understand something that seems so incredibly unfair as I’m looking at it from my lowly perch here on earth.

TRAIL HOWDIES

2010-07-21T07:07:00.005-05:00

On Monday morning, I decided to do the four-mile route on the Central Lakes Trail that runs just a few blocks from my house. It’s a wonderful trail and I’ve written about my hikes on the trail over and over again. But what I haven’t mentioned is trail etiquette: what is the polite way to interact with other people on the trail?

Volumes have been written about trail etiquette in general—the golden-rule, common-sense advice for being a good trail sharer like: stay to the right, leave your *!#&**! cell phone at home, bikers yield to hikers, etc.

I thought it might be helpful if I shared my ten years of trail-walking experience in offering proper trail greetings to your fellow trail users.

Rule 1: A single hiker meeting another single hiker raises one hand in greeting (to show that you aren’t carrying a weapon), smiles slightly, and says, “Hi” or “Morning.” It is not necessary to say the entire “Good morning” greeting. Three syllables are w-a-a-y overkill and make people feel a little creeped out. One or two syllables are plenty.

Rule 2: A single hiker meeting a runner needs to evaluate clothing before deciding on a greeting. If the runner is wearing mesh shorts, a tank top with a number on it, and a Timex Personal Trainer heart rate monitor, you might as well save your breath. The runner is probably already on mile number 19 and his or her glazed eyes don’t really see you anyway. Just stay as far to the right as possible and try not to get hit by flying sweat.

Rule 3: A single hiker meeting a runner who is 40 pounds overweight and wearing a pair of “mom” or "dad" shorts, huffing and puffing red-faced along at 3 miles per hour, should greet the runner warmly. Smile, encourage, give a thumbs up, and say, “Way to go!”

Rule 4: A single hiker meeting bikers wearing racing spandex and aerodynamic helmets while riding Litespeed Carbon bikes should be very cautious. The hiker should just get as far to the edge of the trail as possible and stay out of their way. These bikers don’t want to say “hi” to you. In fact, they really just wish you would stay the heck off their trail. You are only a blur in their peripheral vision, so do not—I repeat, do not—attempt to make friends.

Rule 5: A single hiker meeting a biker dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a sweaty 1984 Rolling Stones tee-shirt should raise one hand in greeting (again to show that you are not carrying a weapon) and say, “Hi.” The biker will always say “hi” but may or may not return the wave, depending upon how skillful he or she is at riding the bike. For some amateur bikers, a hand off the handlebars can result in a serious, death-defying swerve. Do not take it personally if the hand-lift greeting is not returned.

Rule 6: A single hiker meeting a dog-walker evaluates the situation based on the size and aggressiveness of the dog. Large dogs with sharp teeth straining against leashes are not a good risk. Stay as far right as possible. Do not raise your hand in greeting as the large dog may think your hand is lunch. Do not fall for the old line, “Slasher just wants to make friends,” that many vicious-dog owners use to lull unsuspecting hikers into a state of trust. Slasher does not want to be your friend. Slasher wants to take a chunk out of your leg.

Rule 7: A single hiker meeting a dog-walker with a three-pound toy dog of any breed, especially if the dog-walker is over the age of 60, should be prepared to stop and talk for at least 15 minutes. If you think you can sneak by with a simple hand wave and “Morning,” think again. The word “morning” will trigger an entire conversation about the afore-mentioned morning including the temperature, the day’s forecast, what we all had for breakfast—which somehow leads to everyone sharing their cholesterol numbers, both their systolic and diastolic blood pressure numbers, what surgeries they have had, and what type of medication they are on. Unless you want to spend another 15 minutes talking, do not even mention the dog.

Rule 8: A single hiker meeting a child biking on the trail must unfortunately just keep walking without greeting or waving or doing anything that might be interpreted as child accosting. Sometimes I wish it were 1963 again and grandmas walking along the trail could smile at kids without being viewed as pedophiles.

So there you go. Rules for hikers. If you find yourself in an etiquette quandary out there on the trail, don’t say you haven’t been told.

PARENTING

2010-07-18T20:57:00.005-05:00

Tom and I mostly stumbled our way through parenthood. From 1975 through 1999, from the time our first child was born until the last child left home to go to college, we were pretty much faking it. I’m not even being modest; we had no idea what we were doing.

We never read a book on how we should raise our children. Come to think of it, there weren’t that many child-rearing books out there when our kids were small. Even if there had been, we wouldn't have been able to afford them anyway.

We often said the wrong things when we should have been offering wise parental counsel. We occasionally fed them junk food instead of healthy food. We were sometimes lenient when we should have been tough—and sometimes got all hard-nosed and pissy about things that didn’t matter. Sometimes we put too much pressure on them to do better—and other times we didn’t give them enough credit for what they had already done.

They wore hand-me-down clothes from their cousins (thank God for those clothes!). I had to work, so they were shuffled off to day care on a regular basis. We dragged them to church every Sunday and insisted they be home in time for dinner at night. They got very little sympathy when they were sick, so they learned not to be sick very often. Sometimes our parental patience was so thin we could hold it up to the light and see through it.

But despite Tom’s and my amateurish efforts at parenthood, we ended up with three good kids. And those three good kids, through their own efforts, became three fine adults.

Our family keeps growing. On Saturday at 5 o’clock mass, the kids all got together and baptized Luke, the newest member of my son and daughter-in-law’s family. Aunt Shannon was honored to be the godmother, new cousin Tommy and his mom and dad were there, and Tom and I cheered them on from 1,700 miles away.

But when Tom and I saw this picture, we couldn’t help but be grateful that despite all of our stumbling and bumbling as parents, we have been rewarded with these eight beautiful people:

Which brings up an important question: How can parenting be so humbling—while at the same time make us feel so proud?

YOU’VE BEEN FLOCKED

2010-07-17T17:12:00.004-05:00

Imagine coming home from a three-day absence and finding a yard full of this:

The Youth Mission Group at our church is having a fund raiser for a trip to Mexico this summer, and for a fee, anyone can “Flock” someone's yard. The sign our our door said, “Congratulations! You’ve been FLOCKED!”

Who would do such a thing to two mild-mannered, community-minded, God-fearing senior citizens like Tom and myself? Who would look at a bin full of pink flamingos and think, “Let’s flock those geezers!”?

The culprits?
You know who you are! (And most likely, it was the short, blond one’s idea.)

You’d better watch out—Tom and I are famous for our devious plots to get even! We may be old, but we have many, many tricks up our sleeves—and we have friends in low places. Be afraid—be very afraid . . . heh, heh, heh . . .

AMAZING GRACE

2010-07-16T07:36:00.011-05:00

My sister-in-law Phil has rented the same cabin on Grace Lake, east of Bemidji, Minnesota, for 25 years. For the past few years, she has been desperate enough for company that she has encouraged Tom and me to join her at the lake for a couple of days. This year, because Tom chose Alaska over Grace Lake (no accounting for taste), I ventured off to Bemidji by myself to keep Phil company.

A little background: Tom comes from a family of 12 children, born between 1928 and 1951. Phil is No. 1 child and Tom is No. 8. Using your deductive math skills, you can figure out Phil’s age without me telling you exactly ('discretion' being my middle name).

The rented cabin sits about 20 feet from the shoreline of this clean little lake. I suppose nowadays, there would be lakeshore zoning laws that would make this illegal, but back when the cabin was built (in the 1940s?), people could build their cabins wherever they wanted. And whoever built this cabin wanted to be able to put his or her toes in the water while sitting on the front deck.

I look forward to coming to Grace Lake because of:

1)The incredible sunsets . . .

2)The simple, lovely meals that magically keep appearing on the table through no effort of my own . . .

3)Surprises like an egret taking a leisurely morning stroll along the shore, or a bald eagle landing on the dock to eat its breakfast . . .

(Unfortunately, when I opened the door to take a picture of the eagle, it got scared and flew away. Its breakfast was later consumed by three 47-pound crows.)

4)Phil’s stories about my husband’s family (and you know how I love a good story) . . .

5)Lazy, leisurely days where the tempo of the day is set by the sound of the water lapping the shoreline . . .

6)The security of the county sheriff living in the house next door . . .

7)Violence confined to the occasional swatting of a bottle fly that finds its way inside the cabin. . .

I've always dreamed of living on the water, so I am grateful for family and friends who are willing to share their water with the water-less people in their lives.

“Amazing Grace” reads a sign in one of the neighbors’ yards as Phil and I go for an afternoon stroll along the lake. Grace Lake—I really do feel like I “was lost but now am found” as I sit on the dock with my feet in the water.

MY HOUSE GUEST SNORES

2010-07-13T20:07:00.005-05:00

So, out of the kindness of my heart, I opened my home for the summer to a house guest who is not exactly related to me—and it turns out she has some habits that are a little annoying.

First, she snores. I didn’t really notice the snoring until Tom left for his Alaska fishing trip and the house got really, really quiet. “Zzzzzzz-thweeee. Zzzzzzz-thweeeee,” she breathes in and out, in and out. ‘Get your adenoids checked,’ I think crossly and move to another room.

Second, everybody knows that the worn-out, rust-colored chair in the living room is mine. It’s got all my important stuff around it: the book I’m reading, my crossword puzzle, my flash drive. It’s my chair. Everybody knows it . . .

Everybody, that is, except my house guest. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into the living room in the past month to find her sacked out in my chair. Sprawled all over it. And she doesn’t make a move to vacate it, even when I glare at her. “What?” her body language silently challenges, acting all innocent. “What’s your problem???”

Third, I’m a modest person who needs her own space and privacy. My house guest doesn’t have a modest bone in her body. She just bops on into my bedroom any time she feels like it. She’s even opened the bathroom door when I’m getting out of the shower. Oh, there’s always a reason—she needs a drink of water, she just wants to socialize—always a flimsy reason.

You’ve probably figured it out by now. Poppy, the foster cat, is back for a few months while daughter Shannon spends the summer in Arizona.

So here she is (Poppy, not Shannon), shedding in my chair, napping on my bed, lapping water off the shower floor, and snoring.

And absolutely refusing to let me feel lonesome when Tom is 2,000 miles away, off on his adventures.

Poppy and Friends in 2009

(File photo necessary because Tom packed the camera when he went to Alaska to take pictures of the alleged 400-pound halibut and alleged 35-pound salmon that he plans to catch.)

TELL ME A STORY, MOM

2010-07-12T19:59:00.005-05:00

Tom is away for a week, fulfilling one of the dreams on his personal bucket list: fishing in Alaska. Halibut, salmon—he plans to bring home coolers full of it. So I’m on my own for a few days, which means I hang around my folks’ assisted living facility a little more than necessary.

“Tell me a story, Mom,” I said this morning when I went over to visit. Sometimes I sound like I’m around five years old. She looked at me over the top of her glasses. For some reason, they don’t stay up on her 91-year-old nose as well as they used to.

“A story about what?” she asked. I shrugged. I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear a story.

“Maybe about when you were a teacher,” I suggested. My mother taught in a one-room school house, District 111 in Oscar Township, from 1939 to 1941. “Didn’t you tell me a story a l-o-n-g time ago about a student who had trouble passing a test . . .” My voice trailed off because I could see that her memory had been triggered.

“Eugene Johnson,” she said. “That boy’s name was Eugene Johnson. I don’t know whatever happened to him.” She stared out the window a minute, thinking.

“It was the State Boards,” my mother continued. “All the eighth graders had to take the State Boards and we teachers worried and worried about whether our students would pass. Eugene was always absent from school, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to pass his State Boards at the end of the school year.”

“Was he absent because he had to help his father with the farm work,” I asked, “or was he sick?”

“Oh, he had health problems,” my mother said. “I don’t remember what was the matter with him, but he had to stay home a lot. His father was a singer and his mother was an organist. Eugene was an accordion player. My, he could play that accordion! His father was handsome, unusually handsome, and Eugene’s sister Marjory was just as beautiful as her father was handsome.”

“But Eugene had trouble making it to school,” I prompted, trying to get her back to the story. She seemed a little fixated on how handsome Eugene’s father had been.

“He missed so much school that year that I was certain he wouldn’t pass his State Boards,” my mother shook her head. “But when I got the scores back, he had passed. I couldn’t believe it.”

“I suppose Eugene was pretty happy,” I said.

“I don’t remember if Eugene was happy,” my mother laughed, “but everywhere I went that whole summer after school was out, there was Eugene’s handsome father telling everybody what a wonderful teacher I was—how I was one in a million—how I was such a great teacher that Eugene had passed his State Boards.” She shook her head. “I was embarrassed, but he kept telling everyone.”

She sat in her chair for a minute or two. “I still don’t know how Eugene managed to pass his State Boards” she said. “But I do know that I had nothing to do with it. He was just lucky. But that father kept bragging about me. My, he was handsome.”

My mother sat in her chair, thinking.

“We teachers used to really worry about the State Boards. We heard that when Mabel [my father’s oldest sister] was teaching in Carlisle [around 1933], she was living at home. Several mornings in a row, Olga [Mabel’s mother] went upstairs to wake her for school and found her crying into her pillow. ‘Are you pregnant?’ Olga had finally asked. That got Mabel to sit straight up in bed and demand, with her eyes snapping, ‘Mama, what kind of a boyfriend do you think I have??!?’ It turned out that she was crying every morning because she was so worried about her students taking the State Boards.”

We laughed at the mental picture of my very prim and proper aunt Mabel sitting up in bed and scolding her mother. My dad opened his eyes when he heard my mother and me laughing. “Do you remember hearing that story about Mabel?” I asked my dad.

He slowly closed his eyes again. “I don’t remember any more,” he whispered. And he went back to sleep.

HAVE A SAFE 4TH OF JULY WEEKEND!

2010-07-02T20:37:00.002-05:00

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

2010-07-02T09:16:00.006-05:00

I have been retired for one year, five months, and two days. Why I should start worrying now, of all times, is beyond me. But that’s exactly what I’ve started doing.

Fretting.

Second-guessing.

Looking at the (gasp!!) want ads.

Worrying that I’m not productive enough to justify the 388 cubic feet of oxygen I am inhaling on a daily basis.

Up until now, I’ve enjoyed the retirement freedom of self-scheduling. Only people with 32 years of appointment/planning books based on breaking a day down into 15-minute increments would understand how liberating self-scheduling is. It’s the luxury of not having to be in a certain classroom at 7:55 a.m. or in a particular meeting at 3 p.m. or at an appointment with a struggling student at 4:10 p.m . . . The luxury of using the bathroom whenever you feel the need rather than at 7:52 a.m., 11:57 a.m., and 4:13 p.m.

But now I’m worrying about things as insignificant as—well, as insignificant as blurring my clothing lines. In the past, my work clothes were definitely my work clothes and my non-work clothes were definitely my non-work clothes. Last weekend, I looked down at my shirt as I sat in church and realized that it was the same shirt I wore when I swept out the garage the week before. When did that happen? When did my wardrobe become just one big shapeless, all-purpose, one-shirt-fits-all-occasions blob?

Is this the dreaded “retirement letdown” that I’ve heard other people talk about? Is this the lack of “meaning, fulfillment, and challenges” that the retirement experts warn about?

Or is it just constipation?

Or a misunderstanding with a vital ally?

Or an in-between-projects ennui (I’ve always wanted to use that crossword puzzle word in a sentence.)

Or lack of Vitamin D or iron or riboflavin in my diet?

Or loneliness for my family that lives 1,700 miles away?

Or sadness at seeing my parents growing more frail by the day?

Or mourning for the worn-out elastic on my favorite sweat pants?

Whatever it is, I need to get ahold of myself before I do something irrational—like update my resume.

I need a project or a cause or a crusade! I need to regain that just-retired joie de la vie—joy of life—that I had in abundance one year, five months, and two days ago!

QUATTRO MIGLIA

2010-06-18T09:26:00.005-05:00

I woke up this morning with a group of Benedictine monks singing a Latin Gregorian chant in my brain: “Et exsultavit spiritus meus quattro miglia,” they intoned solemnly. Loosely translated, it means, “My spirit is exulting because today, I will walk four miles!”

Actually, I exaggerate. Despite two year of high school Latin, I can’t Gregorian-chant my way out of a paper bag, even in my dreams. But I did wake up this morning resolved to walk four miles.

In the middle of March, when I first developed the patellar tendinitis, I had to completely give up the “2 to 4 a day” walking routine I had done for years. Walking was just too painful. I iced, rested, elevated, braced, prayed, cursed . . . and occasionally I would hobble a mile or so, with shooting pains anywhere there was a tendon in my left knee. By mid-April, the shooting pains had subsided to aches, and I was able to limp a little farther. At the beginning of May, I got a knee brace that allowed me to walk with more confidence—and by mid-May, I was walking 2 to 3 miles regularly—no pain, minor aches, and some stiffness.

This morning was THE morning. Four miles. The Gregorians had spoken—er, chanted.

I hit the Central Lakes at 6:45 a.m. Although I didn’t break any speed records, I walked four pain-free miles. My blog title is legitimate again: 2 to 4 a day. Halleluiah!

Three months after my original injury, I have learned the following truths:

1)I am not a runner. I am a walker. If God had wanted me to be a runner, He would have given me four legs, a tail, and a mother with a partiality for the name “Bambi.”

2)My mental health is directly—and I am serious when I say “directly”—linked to lacing up my walking shoes. I am only one short walk away from Prozac. Some of my toughest days in the past three months were the days when I wasn’t able to do some walking, even if it was only hobbling a few blocks down the street and back.

3)I will never again take the privilege of walking for granted. Every step is a gift; every mile is a reward.

The dream was on hold for three months—you know, the “I dream of hiking into my old age” quote from Marlyn Doan that I optimistically keep in my blog banner. But the dream is back again. In fact, I was dreaming it this morning when the chanting Gregorians woke me up, telling me it was time to get my butt out of bed, lace up my walking shoes, and walk four miles again. And chanting Gregorians never steer you wrong.

TAKING A DAY TO SING THE BLUES

2010-06-15T07:33:00.004-05:00

My life is actually quite good. I have the requisite food, clothing, and shelter. I have had the same faithful husband for nearly 37 years. My children are all grown, productive members of society, and not a single one of them asks me for money to support a drug habit. I do not have to visit anyone in jail on the weekend.

But every once in awhile, I give in to some strange, moody funk that goes against everything I was taught as a child. You know—Garrison Keillor’s observation that all Norwegian-Lutheran children are admonished to “Cheer up, make yourself useful, mind your manners, and above all, don’t feel sorry for yourself.”

Well, yesterday, I allowed myself to be un-cheery, un-useful, ill-mannered—and to top it all off, I kind of moped. Yes, moped.

It wasn’t that I wanted to listen to fifteen hours of books-on-tape while driving across the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It wasn’t that I wanted to stay in a Days Inn in Colorado Springs and eat the pop-up toaster waffles in their breakfast bar at 6 a.m. this morning. But when my husband Tom and daughter Shannon loaded up the car yesterday morning to leave for Arizona to see the new grandbabies, I felt a little mopey. I had already had my three weeks out there. Fair is fair. I had held the babies and chased Colbie and made a general nuisance of myself. Now it was their turn.

Tom and Shannon Deserting Me at 6 a.m.
So yesterday I visited my parents. I had lunch with a friend. And then, with rain coming down again for what seems like Noah’s fortieth day in a row, I had an afternoon movie marathon that stretched into the evening. I watched “Shirley Valentine” about a 42-year-old woman who runs away to Greece to feel alive again. I watched “Seraphine,” the true story about a mentally ill artist/cleaning woman. I watched “Walk to Beautiful,” a sobering Nova documentary about the Women’s Fistula Clinic in Ethiopia. They were all wonderful movies, but all just a bit on the Debbie-Downer side. They fit in perfectly to my self-imposed mopey mood.

I didn’t clean my house like I should have. I didn’t go for a walk. I didn’t cheer up, make myself useful, or mind my manners. I just allowed myself to shuffle around in sweatpants, sighing and feeling sorry for myself. In my head, scolding voices with suspiciously strong Norwegian accents berated my woe-is-me attitude. I secretly wondered if I was getting enough ketchup in my diet (another Norwegian belief, according to Garrison Keillor, is that ketchup will cure depression).

Today will be different, I know. I will rise up, meet the day, and move a mountain or two. I’ll throw a little ketchup on my Cheerios, if I need to. But yesterday, I just needed to let myself feel a little down in the dumps.

MARY

2010-06-11T09:07:00.003-05:00

I usually call my 93-year-old father “Grandpa” or sometimes “Dad.” Mary gets to call him “honey.” Or “sweetheart.” Or "buddy."

When my father reminded Mary that she missed a spot while she was shaving him yesterday morning, Mary just laughed and punched him gently in the shoulder. “You like to give orders, don’t you, buddy?” she teased as she re-shaved the offending spot in a gentle, rotating motion.

My father’s voice is barely above a raspy whisper these days. But when my father gives me orders, I still bristle a little, even though he is 93 and I am 61. ‘Why,’ I think in annoyance as I jump to follow his directive, ‘is it so gosh-darn imperative that the Kleenex box is at a 90-degree angle to the telephone book?’

Mary squeezes her considerable bulk past my father’s chair as she is working to tape a half-moon-shaped sponge underneath the silver-dollar-sized melanoma that weeps and drips on his left cheek. “You keep getting more handsome every day,” she teases him. My dad, who started getting Hospice services a couple of weeks ago, actually smiled for the first time since I had come into my parents’ room at the assisted living facility that morning.

“Cutie,” she grins at him. He grins back. His eyes even twinkle a little, just like they used when he felt well.

I envy Mary and her easy way with my father. I wouldn’t dream of calling him ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart’ or ‘cutie.’ I just couldn’t punch him teasingly on the shoulder or tweak him under the chin or rub his head like he’s six years old. I just couldn’t. He’s my father.

But sometimes when I see Mary do it and catch a weak smile and faint twinkle reminiscent of old times, I wish I could do it.

Mary once told me that she works a lot of double shifts and holidays because her husband has a bi-polar disorder that prevents him from holding a full-time job. Mary is the sole support of her family. That’s why she’s on duty on Christmas Day—and Mother’s Day—and most other holidays. She didn’t tell me so that I would feel sorry for her. She told me in exactly the same tone of voice that she would use to tell me she needed to go grocery shopping. Matter of fact, no self-pity.

My dad loves Mary. God bless the people like Mary who are willing to mop up drool and clean weepy melanomas and help old people in the bathroom. Cheerfully. Like it’s fun. Like she has nothing she would rather be doing. Like she loves the people she’s doing it for.

TOMMY

2010-06-09T18:42:00.001-05:00

He’s named after his two grandfathers, Thomas James. We call him Tommy. He came the hard way—after 25 hours of labor. But he was worth every minute of it (easy for me to say since my daughter was the one going through the labor).

His grandfather, the one he’s named after, couldn’t be more proud. His grandmother, who has met him and held him and rocked him and fed him, couldn’t be more in love.

Meet Tommy!

BACK IN THE GREEN

2010-06-09T18:04:00.004-05:00

When my plane flew over the Red River Valley south of the Fargo airport last Sunday evening, what struck me was how green everything was. Green fields, green windbreaks around the farms, green ditches between the lanes of I-29—miles and miles of green.

After three weeks of Arizona brown, the green looked almost surreal.

And I felt surreal. My trip to Arizona was really over. No more chasing the sandy-curled Colbie. No more cuddling my two new grandsons, Luke and Tommy, born on May 6 and May 30. I really had gotten on a plane and left them 1,700 miles away.

I felt flat and empty as I grabbed my carry-on bag from the overhead bin and pulled it down the aisle, exiting the airplane. Three women ahead of me, stretched three-abreast across the passenger jet bridge, moved at a snail's pace, completely blocking a speedy exit from the plane. They were old; I should have been patient, but I didn’t feel patient. What I really wanted to do was go back to Arizona.

I hadn’t checked luggage. I had just worn the same clothes over and over (and over and over) again during my three-week stay in Arizona. They have washing machines in Arizona, I had told myself as I had packed just a carry-on suitcase three weeks earlier. Now I was so weary of my clothes I would have liked to set a match to them.

Why hadn’t I stayed another week? I looked down at the sleeve of my shirt and saw that there was a little spit-up near the cuff. It made me lonesome for Tommy and Luke. I searched in my purse for my cell phone to call Tom to tell him that my plane had landed. Instead, I found a small plastic bag containing some crushed Goldfish crackers, a souvenir from an outing I had taken with Colbie. That made me lonesome for Colbie. Tucked down next to my wallet, I found a little envelope—“Grandma,” it read on the outside. It was a note written by my daughter-in-law, thanking me for helping out. It made my nose sting.

I wasn’t really watching where I was going; I was just fumbling for Tom’s cell phone number in my contacts list. Then I heard my name being called. I looked up and there he stood, grinning from ear to ear. He held up a tablet on which he had written my name in magic marker—in case we didn’t recognize each other after three weeks apart. “You are so weird,” I laughed. Tom looked pleased—happy, excited, even grateful—to see me.

And suddenly, it wasn’t so bad to be home again. I had missed the little Frenchman. But at the same time, I wouldn’t have given up those three weeks in Arizona for all the tea in China. What a gift!

What a special gift.

Grandma with Colbie (17 months) and her new brother Luke (born May 6)

Grandma with Tommy (born May 30)

OFF ON AN ADVENTURE

2010-05-14T08:45:00.004-05:00

Just a quick post to say goodbye! Tomorrow morning is the Autism 5K in Minneapolis; and then, as Peter, Paul, and Mary would say, "I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again . . . "

Be sure to eat your vegetables and say your prayers while I am gone. Signing out . . .

STALLING FOR TIME

2010-05-11T08:39:00.003-05:00

Since the purpose of this blog was to document my daily walking (thus the “2 to 4 a Day” title), the last two months have been a blatant, out-and-out, shameless stalling for time.

I’ve told you about my new grandson, about my elderly parents, about flowers and picture projects and big walleyes. I’ve told you about birthday parties and field trips and poetry contests. I've even stooped to telling you about sheet creases, for gosh sakes.

And yes, sometimes I whined about my bum knee.

I’d walk one day and have to take the next day off to rest the knee. I’ve purposely kept my walking routes close to home in case of a knee malfunction—sometimes walking in circles and squares and spirals, just so that I’m never more than a few blocks from my house. And I’ve resorted to the treadmill again (for those of you who've glanced at “Last Movie I Watched,” you probably noticed a larger-than-normal turnover in that section).

But I’m happy to report that I can once again tentatively, legitimately blog under the title “2 to 4 a Day.” With the help of my new unattractive-yet-functional knee brace (see below), I am regularly managing two miles a day, and sometimes throw in a little more for good measure. On Mother’s Day, my daughter and I walked three miles on the Central Lakes Trail (hurray!). And in four days, I am determined to walk that Autism 5K (3.1 miles) around Lake Calhoun that I had originally intended to run.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know if my knee is a whole lot better than it was a few weeks ago. I do know that walking does not make it worse, which was my original fear. And I think a person gets used to aches and pains after awhile, accepting them as the norm, and moving on with life.

I suppose if I stopped to listen to my knee at any given time, it’s still there, protesting any type of an activity like a whiny, overtired child. But just like anything annoying—person, place, or thing—after awhile, it’s best to just tune them out. Life’s too short to listen to my niggling knee.

I’ve got places to walk, you know. The world is full of wooded paths to ramble and hidden lanes to explore.

SHEET CREASES

2010-05-10T08:06:00.002-05:00

Everybody gets sheet creases. You know, those lines on your face you see in the mirror right after you get out of bed in the morning. The pillow case folds and wrinkles underneath your facial skin, so you are left with those tell-tale marks. Sheet creases. You know what I’m talking about. Everybody gets them. No use pretending you don’t.

What I didn’t realize is that the older you get, the longer it takes for those sheet creases to relax back into plain-old, ordinary, regular-looking skin.

In your teens, the skin practically pops back out before you finish brushing your teeth.

In your twenties, the skin normally regains its smoothness before you have to be at work or school or wherever you need to go that morning.

In your thirties, forties, maybe even your fifties, the skin boings back eventually. It may take awhile, but you never doubt it’s going to boing back.

But now that I’m in my sixties, there might be a new twist to the story.

Last Sunday morning, Tom was a reader at 8 a.m. church. I got up at my usual 6 a.m. so there was plenty of time to get ready--I thought. What I failed to take into consideration was that this was the morning of the extra-deep, industrial-strength sheet crease. I noticed the Grand Canyon-esque wrinkle slashing across the left side of my face in the mirror while I got ready. But then I forgot about it again as we went to church, came home, and made breakfast.

I ended up back in front of the bathroom mirror again at around 10 a.m. Imagine my dismay when I saw that the pesky sheet crease I had noticed at 6 a.m. was still emblazoned across the side of my face. Like Al Pacino in Scarface. Like Seal. Like Harry Potter’s lightning-shaped blaze. There was my sheet crease for all the world to see.

I figured as long as I’d made it that far into the day (and that everyone around me at church had seen it and knew exactly what it was), I would make lemonade out of my lemons and attempt a personal record. How long could I keep this sheet wrinkle on my face without it popping back out?

I think I set a new record: an eight-hour sheet crease. That would be a personal best. I admit that I purposely was very, very careful not to have my face make sudden movements: no laughing, no crying, no shock, no delight.

Eight hours. I’d like to see any of you young whippersnappers with your youthful elastic skin top that.

SEEMS LIKE JUST YESTERDAY

2010-05-10T07:40:00.005-05:00

Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday that I posted a picture of Colbie coming home from the hospital?

Remember her little pink hat? Remember how tiny she looked in her car seat? Remember how peacefully she slept?

And now her brother Luke is coming home, looking so tiny and serious in his car seat.

How can that possibly be when it was only yesterday that Colbie came home from the hospital?

Where did that time go? There's that Warp 10 speed again.

THE PROJECT THAT ATE MY OFFICE

2010-05-07T20:42:00.012-05:00

If my current life was a movie, I think “The Project that Ate My Office” would be a fitting title. I have outgrown my desk, moved my stacks to the bed, and finally, in desperation, set up a card table in the middle of the room.

Remember my ambitious goal of scanning the old family pictures and giving copies of them to all my siblings? It was my way of saying to them, “I’m w-a-a-y too irresponsible to be in charge of these family heirlooms all by myself.”

I’m trying to sort and organize the pictures in a logical way: 1) my father’s family, 2) my mother’s family, 3) my father and mother from birth until 1941 when they got married, 4) pictures that show their family growing over the years, and finally 4) individual pictures of each of the six children in my family.

My oldest sister has approximately a bajillion pictures from birth through college graduation. She had so many that I finally ended up scanning them six at a time to save space. My brother, second in line, has about a half a bajillion pictures. Even my next older sister, third in line, has at least a quarter of a bajillion pictures documenting her life.

Below: Six of the approximately ten katrillion baby pictures of my oldest sister. Seriously, Mom and Dad, did you just lie around all day taking her picture?

It’s we three youngest sisters who are in trouble, photographically speaking.

First of all, we are rarely photographed alone. We’re always mixed in with a mob of older siblings or cousins or company visiting from California. It was like my parents were afraid to be alone in a room with a camera and any one of the three of us.

Below: Rare photo of “The Three Little Ones” in 1957.
Second, we must have had leprosy or the bubonic plague because whoever photographed us always stood at least a half-mile away while forcing us to stare directly into the sun. In most of our pictures, we sisters are off on the distant horizon, squinting at the camera. This explains, perhaps, why all three of us were forced to get glasses at a fairly young age.

Then came the early 1960s. My dad, who never bought anything at full price in his life, decided to buy a brand new Polaroid Land instant camera. He probably got such a good deal because it was the original beta model, before Polaroid had worked out all the bugs.

Right: Oh, that’s what the pink goop was for!

I suppose the fine print on the Polaroid camera box warned us that failure to smear the tube of sticky pink goopy stuff on the pictures after they emerged from the camera would result in streaked or faded pictures. (Note to my siblings: whoever of us had the job of goop-smearing is fired.) Whatever the reason, those 1960s pictures did not survive the test of time. An entire decade of family pictures are ghostly, discolored, streaky photos that require imagination to interpret. But since those were our awkward years, maybe it is better that way.

I had thought this project would take a week or so. Now I’m just hoping to be done by the end of May—which, by the way, is National Photography Month. Freaky coincidence.

I’m usually a little on the OCD side in regard to my surroundings. I like things neat and spare. That in itself is an incentive to invest in some overtime and put this project to bed (or, rather, get this project off the bed and back into plastic storage boxes).

JUST IN TIME FOR MOTHERS’ DAY

2010-05-06T18:58:00.004-05:00

Colbie wasn’t entirely sure how she should react to the news that her new baby brother arrived this morning at 9:52 a.m.

“This will be a good thing, right?” she seems to be asking. “I’m going to like this new arrangement, aren’t I?”

Yes, Colbie. It will be a good thing.

And welcome to the world, little Luke.

Grandma and Grandpa sure wish they lived closer to you. But then, that's why they invented airplanes. We'll see you soon!

THIRD GRADERS, LANCE ARMSTRONG, AND REGRETTING FAILURE

2010-05-04T12:52:00.006-05:00

I spent the day yesterday helping chaperone about 75 third graders who were taking part in a day-long camp at Voyageur Environmental Center in Mound, Minnesota. I was assigned to help herd “Group C,” consisting of 24 very enthusiastic, very energetic 8- and 9-year olds.

As you know, third graders aren’t exactly my area of specialty. So I was given a glimpse of third-grade humor when one of the camp counselors, a “lumber-yack” named “Yohnny Yohnson from Visconsin” welcomed all the “tird graders” to his environmental session on logging in Minnesota. As soon as the Scandinavian pronunciation of “tird graders” fell from his lips, the kids started with the elbows and tittering: “Turd,” “turd,” “turd,” they whispered and giggled to each other in delight. Yohnny Yohnson just grinned at them. He was no fool. He knew exactly what tickled third graders’ funnybones.

The kids were dressed in all kinds of outdoor attire. It was a windy, cloudy day with the temperature in the low 50s. Most at least had a hooded sweatshirt. But there were shorts, sandals, hockey jerseys, blue jeans, sun hats, stocking caps, sweaters, and even a plastic grocery bag from Cub Foods—you name it and some kid had it on.

However, all day long, there was one shirt I couldn’t seem to shake. Every time I turned around, there was that pesky third-grade girl in her gray, long-sleeved tee-shirt. At first I couldn’t quite make out the words; there was so much printing on the back of the shirt that it was hard to read. Third graders sit still for approximately two seconds at a time and third-grade girls just love to hang all over each other. So between the moving and the fabric wrinkles and the draped arms of classmates and the fine print, it took me three or four tries before I got the whole message. This is what it said on the back of that little girl’s shirt:

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong

For some reason, that girl’s shirt reminded me of an incident a few years ago when some members of my family decided to climb Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. Everybody climbs Camelback Mountain when they go visit Phoenix. I knew I could do it because I was a walker, a hiker, and a darn-stubborn woman.

But to this day, I can recall what that rock looked like about three-quarters of the way to the top—the rock where I stopped, sat down, and declared I couldn’t walk another step. My legs were like rubber. I couldn’t breathe because of the altitude. I just sat down and quit. Everybody else kept going, and there I sat, waiting for them to descend again. After I had regained my legs and my wind, I was embarrassed and regretful. But by then, it was too late. I had missed my chance.

I remember what the sky looked like that day because I had plenty of time to look at it while I waited. I can’t think back on that day on Camelback Mountain without feeling regretful, and I know now that I might not ever get a chance to try again. Like Lance says, “ . . . If I quit, it lasts forever.”

Next time I chaperone a bunch of “tird graders,” I’m going to stand behind someone wearing a “Lookin’ Like a Fool with Your Pants on the Ground” tee shirt. My mom-jeans are always neatly pulled up right around my waist, snapped nice and tight. I could read that shirt without any of those annoying conscience pangs that haunted me throughout the day yesterday, with Lance Armstrong gently reminding me that sometimes if we quit, we don’t get another chance.

WE JUST COULDN’T BRAG

2010-05-01T16:04:00.006-05:00

When I stopped by to visit my parents today, I mentioned that Tom and I were going to Minneapolis on Monday to help chaperone a field trip at the school where my daughter is an elementary school social worker. Each spring, she helps plan an outing for all the third graders to a nearby environmental camp for a day of learning and fun.

Me: Last year when I helped chaperone Shannon’s camp, I was really proud of her. She was so organized and efficient. And the kids just loved her.

Grandpa: We couldn’t say we were proud of you kids. We would have been criticized.

Me: Why would you have been criticized?

Grandma: People just didn’t brag about their kids back then. It wasn’t right.

Grandpa: We knew you were all above average, but we had to say that you had trouble with this or that in school. It was expected.

Me: That doesn’t seem fair. Why did you have to say we had trouble?

Grandma: You didn’t want people to be jealous—in case their kids were having trouble in school. So we just didn’t brag about our kids.

Me: Maybe there just wasn’t that much to brag about. I seem to remember that we got into trouble a lot.

Grandma: No, you all behaved very well in public. You were very good children.

Grandpa: It was the paddle, you know, the one without the ball. (He made some up and down motions with his hand.)

Me: Ping pong?

Grandpa: Without the ball. And no rubber string. The paddle.

Me: Ah! The paddle! So did you learn that trick from your own parents? Did they scare you into behaving with a paddle?

Grandpa: No, my father was soft-hearted. Once my mother was mad at me for teasing the girls [his sisters]. She made Pa take me out to the woodshed. But after we got to the woodshed, Pa and I just stood there. He didn’t paddle me. He couldn’t do it. We never mentioned it to Ma.

Me: Did your pa warn you not to tell?

Grandpa: No, Pa didn’t say anything. I just knew I shouldn’t mention it to Ma.

Me: Maybe your dad could afford to be tender-hearted because your Grandpa Martin and Uncle Carl [my dad’s grandfather and bachelor uncle who lived with the family] were so tough on you kids.

Grandpa: Sometimes when Grandpa and Uncle would get after us children, Ma’s face would be bright red, she’d be so mad at them. But she never said a word. I think that’s why Pa joked and laughed with us so much—to make up for Grandpa and Uncle.

Grandma: Your father was cheerful. My father was stern.

Me: Did he ever take you kids out to the woodshed?

Grandma: He didn’t have to. He just looked at us and we knew we’d better behave. If he was reading the newspaper and we were acting up, he just laid that newspaper down and gave us that look. [She shivered.] That was all it took. We behaved.

Me: What about your mother? Was she tough on you?

Grandma: She just nagged. We behaved so she wouldn’t nag.

Grandpa: [thinking] Ma had a buggy whip laying on the top of the window frame in the pantry.

Me: Did she use it?

Grandpa (looking thoughtful): I don’t remember that she ever used it. But we knew it was there. When you have six kids, you have to have some way of keeping them in line.

Me: I suppose if parents used ping pong paddles and buggy whips today, they would be in big trouble.

Grandpa: I suppose they would. It must be harder to make kids behave nowadays. Sometimes talking doesn’t get through to them.

Grandma: My father was always in charge, even when my brothers were grown up. When my father got older, my brothers did all the planning and field work on the farm, but Pa kept the checkbook and his billfold locked up in his safe.

Me: I suppose that was the way he could stay in control.

Grandma: He was in charge, all right.

Grandpa: We didn’t go to Europe. Instead, we took you kids with us to a restaurant once in awhile. You always behaved at the restaurant. Some people go to Europe. We took you to a restaurant instead.

Me: [slightly confused, trying to make whatever mental leap my father had just made] Um--that was good of you to spend your money on buying hamburgers and milk shakes for us instead of going to Europe. And I’m glad we behaved at the restaurant. We were probably just scared of the ping pong paddle at home.

Grandpa: No, you were good kids. We just couldn’t brag.

Grandma: No, we would have been criticized.

Full circle. We had come full circle. Time to go home.

My parents in 1941--before they started having children. Not a ping pong paddle in sight.

DECISION TIME

2010-05-01T08:37:00.006-05:00

It’s May 1st, decision time. If you were with me in January when I made my bold yet ill-fated decision to run in the Minneapolis Autism 5K on May 15, then you were probably also with me when I reported on my knee failure in March. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, count yourself lucky. You can skip this entry and spare yourself hearing about one more old-lady ailment.

After injuring my knee, I decided to hold off making a decision about running in the 5K until May 1. I figured by then, I would know—one way or another—if my knee would miraculously heal or whether I would have a weak link in my otherwise goddess-like, jock-machine of a 61-year-old body.

Well, it’s May 1, and I have a weak link. But I have decided that my knee is recovered enough to walk the 5K. I just will not be running it.

After this experience, I will no longer take any well-performing body parts for granted. For years, I just assumed that my left knee would always be there, doing what it was supposed to be doing: bend, straighten, bend, straighten, day after day, ad infinitum. No more. I’ve learned my lesson. Every day that the knee feels like it’s improving, I heap on the praises: “Wow, left knee! Way to go!! You are really coming along.” And on the days I feel it slipping backwards a little, I say encouragingly, “Come on, left knee! You can do it! You’re a champ. Think positively.”

I’ve also tried to pay more attention to body parts that in the past I would have ignored because they weren’t causing me any problems. When was the last time you thought of your elbows, for instance? Yet, they’re hard-working hinges that don’t get any credit. “Yea, elbows!” I’ll shout in a random, Turrets-style moment, startling fellow Target shoppers. “You guys are the best!”

And when was the last time you gave any credit to your liver? Or your spleen? Or any number of other internal organs that just do their jobs, day after day, without complaining? For example, I’ve decided that May 13 is going to be Gallbladder Day, and I’m going to go out of my way to thank my gallbladder for its many years of faithful, uninterrupted bile-secretion service. "Go, gallbladder! You rock my world!"

So the decision has been made. My left knee injury scared me. It made me realize that even though I’ve been walking 2 to 4 miles a day for ten years, that privilege could be taken away from me overnight. I’m only one injury away from an idle life on my faux-leather couch clutching the TV remote control. It made me re-appreciate an important life activity that I had begun to take for granted.

So, here’s to May 15 and appreciating that I will be able to at least walk those 3.1 miles!

You’ll have to excuse me now. I’m on my way to Hallmark to buy a thank you card. It’s Vertebrae Day, and I’ve got about 33 extremely special vertebrae that I need to thank for their years of faithful spinal service.

LATEST PROJECT

2010-04-30T07:15:00.005-05:00

More than ten years ago, four plastic under-the-bed storage boxes full of old pictures found their way to my basement. They were a “gift” from my parents when they downsized in 1999, moving from their house to an apartment.

You’ve seen some of the pictures in this blog—the old black and whites, some of them dating all the way back to the 1800s. Most of the photographs in the boxes were pictures my parents had taken, but many were passed down from their parents. My Aunt Clara’s pictures even ended up in the mix after she died in 1995.

Retired people are required by the laws of common decency to have projects to keep them occupied. So these four boxes of pictures have become my latest project. I’ve started scanning some of the pictures so that all of my siblings and their children will have access to this photographic family history--whether they want it or not. I don’t want to show up at a family reunion one day and see someone wearing a tee-shirt that reads, “You got all the historical family pictures and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt.”

All this week, I’ve been sorting, organizing, stacking, piling, (and even throwing) until the four plastic boxes were reduced down to two plastic boxes.

Yesterday I started scanning.

I found that my father has exactly 12 pictures that represent the first 24 years of his life from his birth in 1917 to 1941 when he got married. My mother has exactly 15 pictures that represent her life from her birth in 1918 to 1941. (Compare that to a baby born in 2010 who will have 800 digital photographs taken prior to leaving the maternity ward of the hospital two days after its birth.)

My goal is to reduce these piles into one neat electronic storage device that can be copied for any family member, whether child, grandchild, great grandchild—or all the great-greats that will follow:

Occasionally I’ve stumbled across treasures such as the two pictures below, taken of my three older siblings in about 1948 or so, before I was even born.

I’ve got 150 years of family history spread out all over my office, the priceless pictures that create a link between the great-great grandparents who came over from Norway in the 1860s to the current family in 2010. Treasures. I know I have possession of the real family jewels.

YOU BE THE JUDGE

2010-04-28T12:13:00.004-05:00

After people retire, their telephones start ringing for an entirely new reason. Besides the usual family, friends, telemarketers, wrong numbers, etc., the newly retired start getting these calls:

“Would you be interested in volunteering to . . .” fill in the blank.

Last week alone, my retired husband Tom was asked if he would: 1) Help unload a truck at the food shelf? (yes) 2) Run for county commissioner? (no) 3) Read at mass next Sunday? (yes) 4) Check on a lake cabin for an out-of-town friend who is coming up for a fishing trip? (yes)

I am much less popular than Tom and only got two phone calls: Would I be interested in running for parish council? And—would I be interested in helping judge a poetry writing contest for grades 5-12 in the school district’s Student Showcase Celebration?

First of all, regarding the parish council offer, I haven’t checked lately, but is hell frozen over?? I distinctly remember saying after I retired from teaching that I would only voluntarily attend another meeting in my lifetime when hell was firmly frozen over. I detest meetings. I loved to teach but felt that every moment that I spent in meetings was the time equivalent of being stretched out on a rack in a castle dungeon. While having my fingernails ripped out. While having boiling oil poured on my skin. Did I mention that I hate meetings?

But the poetry writing contest intrigued me. I have a degree in English, but it’s a different kind of English. You know, the technical writing, business writing, practical writing, add a pie chart, put in a spreadsheet kind of English. I did take the mandatory poetry classes in college, but that was 8 bazillion years ago. That was back in the old days when onomatopoeia and alliteration and rhyming were really big. I wasn’t even sure if they were still big.

Still—occasionally it’s nice to have a reason to comb my hair and put on some of my dusty old teacher clothes for a day. Just a day, that’s enough.

And it was surprisingly fun to read those poems and talk about composition and execution of theme and creativity with three other judges who had also said “yes” to the telephone call. And it felt good to talk about sensory details and figurative language and vivid images, even if the poet we were discussing was a fifth grader.

It felt good to put on my slightly out-of-date teacher clothes and feel a little smart again. Just for old time’s sake. Just for a day.

BIRTHDAYS

2010-04-27T07:07:00.003-05:00

Back in 2003, when my dad was about to turn 86, he kept warning us not to plan a party. His own father had died at age 85—just one day before his 86th birthday. So using male logic, my father had it in his head that he, too, would pass away before he turned 86.

“Don’t plan a birthday party!” he kept insisting back in 2003. “I won’t be here.”

In the recent weeks leading up to April 25, 2010, my father kept saying, “Don’t plan a birthday party. I won’t be here.”

“Where are you going?” I would ask him, being a smart-mouthed daughter. “Are you taking the senior bus to the mall?”

He would give me “that look” that fathers can give their daughters to let them know they’re skating on mighty thin ice. Mighty thin.

So on Sunday, we celebrated the 93rd birthday that my father insisted he wasn’t going to have. He must have decided to bypass the mall trip and showed up at the party instead.

So much for male logic. What he chooses to forget is that his mother lived to the age of 101.

So what’s the lesson in all of this? It’s like the old saying, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."

Happy 93rd Birthday, Dad!

LONELINESS AND WORD SUBSTITUTION

2010-04-23T07:22:00.001-05:00

Tom is gone for three days. No, not fishing, although that would have been a logical guess. Actually, he is down near the Twin Cities attending a silent auction.

Aw, NUTS! I did it again. Tom is not in the Twin Cities attending a silent auction. He’s at a silent retreat.

Why do I keep doing that?

Yesterday, Tom and three other men from our church got into a car and drove to Demontreville near Lake Elmo where they are attending a silent retreat—not a silent auction.

I can’t tell you how many times in the past 24 hours I have flashed a mental picture of Tom walking around a table, adding his name to the bid list: ‘Oooooh! $25 for a Joe Mauer autographed bat,’ or ‘John, did you see these crocheted pot holders? They’re already up to $7.50. Do you think that’s too much? Should I put in a bid?’

‘No!’ I’ll tell myself sharply. ‘Silent retreat—not silent auction.’

Jesuits silently praying in a chapel. Men listening to inspirational speakers and learning how to practice the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Nobody is bidding on Joe Mauer bats and crocheted pot holders.

Gosh, I wish I could get that out of my head: silent retreat, silent retreat, silent retreat. Tom is at a silent retreat!

Although I could use some new potholders.

90-YEAR-OLD LOGIC: DID YOU FOLLOW THAT??

2010-04-20T07:34:00.004-05:00

I usually stop to visit my 91- and 93-year-old parents for a while every day. Sometimes I leave uplifted because they’re bright and ‘with it.’ Other days I leave a little confused by their logic.

Grandma: They were training in a new girl [a certified nursing assistant] today.

Me: Really?

Grandma: I can tell she’s not going to be a good one.

Me: And how can you tell that when it’s just her first day?

Grandma: She stood with her arms crossed.

Me: Her arms crossed?

Grandma: She was supposed to be watching the other girl, and the new one just stood with her arms crossed.

Me: Well, I suppose she was told to just observe the first day.

Grandma: The good ones can’t help it. They just pitch right in and work. They don’t cross their arms.

Me: I hope you give the new girl a chance.

Grandma: Oh, sure. But she won’t be a good one. She crossed her arms.

Grandpa: Whose alarms?

Me: No, arms—not alarms. Arms. The new girl—Grandma said she just crossed her arms.

Grandpa: The new girl has arms?

Grandma: Remember at dinner? She just stood there and crossed her arms. And didn’t smile. She won’t be a good one.

Me: Maybe you could at least give her a chance? Maybe she was very nervous and serious her first day on the job.

Grandma: We had to work hard when we were kids. I can tell which girls had to work hard at home when they were growing up because they know how to work when they come here [to the assisted living].

Me (trying to change the subject): So what were you expected to do when you were kids?

Grandpa: Who has a kid?

Me: No, when you were a kid. What work were you expected to do when you were a kid?

Grandpa: I was tall and skinny—six feet tall when I was 13 years old.

Grandma (to Grandpa): I remember when you grew so fast at that age that they couldn’t keep up to you with pants. During Norwegian School one spring, your father told my mother that you grew out of a pair of pants every week.

Grandpa: I grew fast.

They both stopped to think about that awhile. Finally, my mother spoke.

Grandma: Do you remember when Irving jumped twenty feet off the side of the silo because he thought the silo was falling down?

Grandpa (laughing): He was putting up pipe on the side of the silo during silo-filling. It was a windy day. He looked up and saw the clouds moving by the top of the silo and he thought the silo was tipping over—so he jumped.

Grandma: Uffdah, he didn’t realize it was the clouds moving instead of the silo.

They both laughed.

Me: Was he hurt?

Grandpa: I don’t remember that he was hurt.

Grandma: Just his pride. Everybody teased him about that—“The silo is falling, Irving!” (She laughed.)

Silence.

Grandma: We worked when we were kids. I helped my aunt feed the men during threshing. We didn’t cross our arms. The new girl won’t be a good one because she crossed her arms.

I think that’s where I came in.

EXTRA HOUR

2010-04-18T09:20:00.003-05:00

Without my usual 2 to 4 daily miles, I have (drum roll) an extra hour, give or take, every single day.

I know, I know. Extra-hour envy. Some of you are so busy that you would kill for that extra hour a day. In fact, I can remember other times in my life where a 25-hour day would have been welcome, especially back in the 1980s and 1990s when I was a working mom with a job, three kids, and only two hands. So if I could figure out a way to give that hour away to someone deserving—or even put that extra hour on Craig’s List and sell it—I would.

However, my time is my time, and there’s no way to hand it off like a relay baton to someone who needs it more than I do. It’s mine to use productively or waste as I choose.

So far in the past five days, I’ve spent that extra hour: eating, reading, lollygagging, moping, loitering, whining, diddling, hemming, hawing, and frittering. Oh, and I’ve also loafed and lounged a little.

Since the point of this self-imposed knee rest is to rest my knee, I have purposely not done things like clean the garage, plow the South 40, or rearrange the heavy furniture, all of which need to be done. I have also not done non-knee-straining activities like feeding the poor and visiting prisoners. To say that I have not used this extra time wisely would be humblingly accurate.

I last walked on Tuesday, April 13, so on Wednesday, April 21, come hell or high water, I am going to give it another try. It seems to me (with my vast personal knowledge of orthopaedic medicine) that my knee has improved somewhat. Three more days of self-imposed abstinence might help me turn the corner. Or at least it might allow me to walk around the corner.

Keep your fingers crossed that these days of frittering and squandering a perfectly good hour are almost over!

FULL PUBLIC DISCLOSURE

2010-04-16T08:45:00.004-05:00

It’s time to admit that my blog title is currently a fraud. I can no longer walk 2 to 4 miles a day.

There. I said it. I’ve been avoiding admitting it as long as I could, hoping a miracle would happen. You know, like healing the sick and curing the lame and making the blind see. Just your everyday miracle.

After deciding to take on the new challenge of running a 5K (after ten years of walking 2 to 4 miles a day), I finally have to admit that my 61-year-old knee let me down. I thought I was training correctly. I thought I was progressing in stages. But since the middle of March, I haven’t even been able to walk on a regular basis, let alone run 3.1 miles.

Currently, I am on knee rest. I have promised Tom that I won’t even try taking walks for a week. I watch forlornly out the window when he leaves for his daily hike, my nose pressed against the glass, trying not to covet his knees. His nice, bendy, un-painful knees. His springy, cooperative, Arizona-tanned knees.

I had always suspected that my 2 to 4 miles a day were directly tied to my mental health. Now I know it for a fact. Walk—and I feel happy. Don’t walk—and I feel sluggish and gosh-darn snarly. Walk—and I sleep well. Don’t walk—and I toss and turn. Walk—and I eat normally. Don’t walk—and I feel like consuming candy-coated chocolate in 8-pound bags.

So, now I’ve admitted my failure—my sham of a blog title. I’ll wait a week—ice packing, elevating, ibuprofen-ing, praying for that miracle. And being patient, even though I’m feeling very impatient. Snarly, even.

I just hope it doesn’t mean I’ll have to change the name of this blog to “View from the Couch— Touch My M&Ms and You Die.” Like I said, snarly.

ANOTHER STORY FROM MY PARENTS

2010-04-14T08:07:00.005-05:00

My father, who will turn 93 in a few days, and my 91-year-old mother have been having a tough time lately. Instead of the “bad days” they usually experience, they have been having “bad weeks” stretching into “bad months.” I really thought that my parents' story-telling days were over.

However, another story emerged this week, brought on by finding out that one of the staff members at their assisted living facility had a great-great relative-or-other who lived in the Carlisle area where my parents grew up. Whenever my parents meet someone new, it’s always exciting for them to make a Carlisle connection, no matter how remote or how many generations removed.

I didn’t quite understand how the nursing assistant was related to this Carlisle family, but it brought out the story of the Weiby’s.

Mr. Weiby was the blacksmith in Carlisle when my parents were young. His blacksmith shop sat directly across the road from the schoolhouse in Carlisle. My dad attended grades 1-8 in that school while my mother attended a rural school closer to the farm where she grew up. However, both of my parents attended “Norwegian School” in June (after their regular school was dismissed for the summer) which was held in the Carlisle schoolhouse.

One of my parents’ memories was of the open schoolhouse windows on those warm June days that allowed the sounds from the blacksmith shop to float across the road. It was the first time my mother had ever heard what she called “strong language.” Whenever Mr. Weiby had difficulty calming a skittish horse for shoeing, he could be heard swearing loudly, an ear-startling phenomenon in the conservative little Norwegian-Lutheran community.

My father was close in age to the Weiby’s youngest son, Richard. Although Richard was a year older than my dad, they were in the same confirmation class at Hedemarken Lutheran Church.

Confirmation class, Hedemarken Lutheran Church (approximately 1930). My dad is in the back row, second from the right. Richard Weiby is in the middle row, second from the right.)

After Richard finished eighth grade at the Carlisle school, he did what many of the boys did who were not needed at home: he found a job as a hired man on a local farm.

The story of Richard Weiby ended early and sadly. My parents said that in their rural community, farming accidents involving horses and cattle were common. Richard had gone to work a couple of miles from Carlisle on a farm a belonging to my father’s cousin Ralph’s family.

At the age of 16 or 17 years old, Richard wasn’t a very big teenager, short and small. My mother speculated that Richard had been given the job of cleaning manure out of a calf pen. In those days, cleaning out the calf pen required using a wagon hitched to a team of horses and shoveling manure into the back of that wagon. While Richard was working, something spooked the horses, causing them to rear and try to break free from their load.

The wagon that Richard was working with probably looked something like this. (Source: www.art.com)

“He should have run the other direction,” my dad said. “But he stood in front of those horses and tried to stop them.” The center pole of the yoke struck Richard in the chest, and he died as a result of that injury.

Ironically, Richard’s father, the blacksmith, had been adamant about keeping children away from horses that local farmers brought in for shoeing. He had a firm rule rule: no playing around the horses. It was too dangerous, as his teenaged son Richard found out the hard way.

I’m still not quite sure how the young nursing assistant who helps my parents is related to the family in this story. All I know is that she triggered a memory of the early 1930s that caused my parents to think about an event that happened 80 years ago in their little community in West Central Minnesota.

BIGGEST WALLEYE EVER

2010-04-12T07:58:00.003-05:00

I decided that I would roll my Wife Calculator back to zero in honor of Tom’s monumental achievement. While up at Rainy River over the weekend, he caught the biggest walleye he has ever caught in his life: 30 inches, nose to tail, and approximately 10 ½ pounds.

He caught it, proudly held it up for his fishing partner to photograph, and gently returned it to the river. Hopefully, that same fish will survive to make another fisherman’s dream come true, too.

So he gets this fishing trip for free—no hours will be recorded on the wife calculator. There's just something about a man holding a walleye that turns my knees to mush.

What a fisherman! What a walleye! What a thrill!

RESETTING THE WIFE CALCULATOR

2010-04-10T18:33:00.004-05:00

We had barely walked in the door after driving back to Minnesota from Arizona when Tom started packing again.

He put away the shorts, tee-shirts, and sunscreen from Arizona and started neatly rolling his jeans, long underwear, and fleece into little bundles. It was time for the first fishing trip of the season.

Word from “Up North” was that the ice had gone off Rainy River (the river that empties into Lake of the Woods from the east, between Ontario and Minnesota), and enthusiastic reports of ginormous walleye were filtering in.

“I thought fishing season didn’t open until May 15,” I noted politely—or maybe I whined.

“This is Rainy River,” he explained patiently. “There are different rules for different bodies of water.”

“Well, excuse me for my ignorance,” I sniffed. “But do you really want to get in a pickup truck pulling a boat and drive five hours to the Canadian border to go fishing when you’ve just spent three days in the car driving back from Arizona?” I tried not to sound judgmental.

He looked a little impatient. “But the ice is off the river,” he said firmly, as if that explained it.

While the rest of Minnesota doesn’t open its lake-fishing walleye season until May 15, fishermen can fish for walleye from March 1 until April 14 in the 70-mile-long Rainy River that empties into Lake of the Woods, the huge island-filled body of water that stretches between Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota.

I kept thinking Tom would change his mind. After all, his legs were still tan from Arizona. His thick Minnesota blood had thinned down to a watery consistency in the 70- and 80-degree Arizona sun. And it’s still cold up there in northern Minnesota. Even if the ice is off the Rainy River, Lake of the Woods itself is still mostly frozen. It takes a long time to thaw a 1,700 square mile cube of ice.

However, by last night, I knew Tom was serious. He went out to the local bait shop and bought a fishing license. He asked me set the alarm clock for 4:30 a.m. Two fishing rods leaned against the doorframe in the kitchen, ready to be loaded into his friend’s truck at 5 o’clock in the morning. His bag was packed. He had ‘the look’ in his eye.

He was going. Come hell or high water—or in this case, frozen water—he was headed to Rainy River to go fishing. He will come home with a bag of dirty laundry, a runny nose, cold feet—and maybe a couple of fish, if he’s lucky.

I’d invite you all for a walleye dinner, but just because Tom’s going fishing doesn’t automatically mean there will be fish.
Source: candyofthemonthclub.com

So I will reset the old Wife Calculator to log in the first hours of the 2010 fishing season, and off we go again.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING

2010-04-09T08:06:00.007-05:00

After sitting in the car for three days and logging somewhere between 1,700 and 1,800 miles, we are home! We drove 11 hours a day for the first two days and then yesterday, we drove 8 hours—listening to books on CD and singing along (badly off-key) to every oldies radio station we could tune in along the way.

Our house was still standing, exactly where we left it in February. The only thing missing was the snow—the piles and piles of snow. The air was Minnesota crisp—a sunny 50 degrees—but the trees have budded out and the grass is starting to turn green. We even had time for a walk on the Central Lakes Trail before it got dark.

Our front yard when we left in February . . .

Our front yard on April 9 . . .

Now the clock is ticking:

It’s only 21 days until Grandbaby No. 2 is due to be born.

It’s 7 ½ weeks until Grandbaby No. 3 is due to be born.

And . . . I have only 36 training days until the 5K race on May 15. Thirty-six days. Five weeks . . . 864 hours. Sheesh--what have I gotten myself into?

The tendonitis is still causing problems. But at least it’s not any worse. And maybe it’s getting better, at the speed of tiny snails being towed through sludge by reluctant old tortoises. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. I am hoping that my brand new running shoes will magically cure whatever ails me. Or at least, they will make me look hot. At my age, the goal is always to look hot.

Brand new hot running shoes

So the exciting countdowns begin: 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .

GOING HOME

2010-04-05T13:35:00.009-05:00

I didn’t want to think about it, let alone write about it. Going home.

It’s not the sorting and the throwing and the culling of all that we’ve accumulated in the past six weeks—although just thinking about it makes my head ache.

It’s not the packing—although just thinking about it makes my back ache.

It’s not the three-day drive—although just thinking about it makes my butt ache.

It’s leaving behind my family that lives in Arizona—and just thinking about it makes my heart ache.

The past six weeks have been family . . .

Family . . . Family . . . Family . . . Family . . . Family . . . Family . . . Family . . . And did I mention ‘family’?
I can take a Tylenol for my backache and my headache and my buttache. But what can I take for my heart?

TEA FOR TWO

2010-03-26T19:22:00.001-05:00

Back in Minnesota, Tom spent a lot of time watching the Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel is an integral part of any retired guy’s life. It is important to know how to plan your day: how to dress, where to fish, and whether or not to put away your snow blower and take out the lawn mower. Important decisions were made based on the information provided by the Weather Channel.

However, down here in Arizona, the Weather Channel isn’t so spellbinding. The weather is just kind of sunny and in the 70s or 80s—day after day after day. Sometimes it clouds up a little and sometimes the wind blows a little harder than other days. But it’s not worth spending much time watching the Weather Channel to get the details.

So how does a retired guy fill the time that formerly was spent watching the Weather Channel?

He expands his social life—hits golf balls, goes for walks or runs, skims leaves off the pool—and goes to tea parties.

No, really. He goes to tea parties.

Everyone on the “A List” was there: Mickey Mouse, Suzie-the-blond-doll, Frog, and, of course, Colbie—you know, the Hollywood crowd.

I kept hoping that the weight limit on those little chairs was at least 160 pounds or so. If Grandpa breaks a chair at a tea party, he might not get invited back.

And then he’d have to go back to watching the Weather Channel. Alone. No tea. Life would be empty.

HEALING AND IDIOCY

2010-03-25T09:43:00.004-05:00

First, the healing.

Yesterday morning for the first time in a week and a half, I was able to walk a three-mile trek at my normal pace. Progress! The tendonitis is still there, but it gets better every day. Now that I know I’m not going to be permanently crippled, chronically maimed, or everlastingly scarred, I am more confident about increasing the pace and the distance.

But I have learned a lesson about warming up and stretching out, before and after running. I have learned about ice and elevation. I have learned about the structure of a knee, especially tendons.

Always read the fine print.

Second, the idiocy.

Yesterday, while I was watching Colbie, I told her that we would go outside to play. She knows that means putting on shoes, so she happily trotted over to where I had kicked off my shoes by the front door and brought one to me. Upside down. Imagine my surprise when I looked down and saw this:

In the four weeks since we’ve been in Arizona, I have completely gone through the bottom soles of my shoes. I was walking/running on the cushion insoles (or whatever cushion was left of them). How dumb could I be? I will need to replace these shoes before I try running again.

I plan to try a short sprint again this weekend, using a McDavid runners’ knee band (to reduce pain from patellar tendonitis) that my daughter-in-law lent me. Just think: two weeks ago, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as patellar tendonitis. And two weeks ago, I had no idea that a guy named McDavid was dreaming up a knee strap just to help people with conditions like that.

I will also need to find a shoe store which will sell a pair of shoes to an amateur runner who is too dumb to consider that part of her problem might be that her shoes are worn out.

Anyway, I’m back on track. Just thought I’d admit that I’m not getting any smarter as I age.

DESERT IN BLOOM

2010-03-24T08:47:00.007-05:00

In my other (pre-retirement) life when I lived in Minnesota during the month of March , the first day of spring, March 21, always seemed like a mistake--a cruel-joke calendar miscalculation on the part of the ancient Egyptians.

In Minnesota on March 21, there was often still snow on the ground—and even if the ground was bare, there was always a spring snowstorm or icestorm being threatened on the weather channel. We were never completely out of the woods snow-wise until maybe June 1 or so. So March 21st was just a date on the calendar—not safely and absolutely spring.

Arizona is certainly the desert state, full of cactus and sand and heat (if you’ve ever been here in July when the temperatures are in the 100s, you’d know for sure). However, the month of March truly is spring out here. Right now, the yard of the house we’re staying in is in full bloom—flowers everywhere.

So instead of cactus, we’re looking at this:

And instead of tumbleweed, we’re admiring this . . .

And this . . . And instead of snow banks, this . . .

And this . . .

Everybody here is bracing for the Arizona heat and dryness that are surely on their way. Summer is the time of year when Arizonians run their air conditioners like we Minnesotans run our furnaces in the winter. But right now, the scenery is spectacular and it’s hard to remember that there might be snow on the ground anywhere else in the world.

TENDONS AND OTHER ANATOMICAL STRUCTURES

2010-03-22T08:14:00.004-05:00

I haven’t been doing so well in the last week.

Er, wait a minute . . . that sounds pretty melodramatic. People whose houses are being foreclosed on or who are being held hostage in guerilla prisons in third world countries—well now, those folks aren’t doing so well.

So let me rephrase that: I have been doing fine. But my knee hasn’t been doing so well in the last week. After my personal life-changing 3-mile run a week ago, my knee started acting its age. “Hey, buddy,” I coaxed the achy-breaky joint, “61 is the new 51! Didn’t you get the memo?”

A mild, self-diagnosed case of tendonitis in my left knee has forced me to temporarily shelve the running and cut back on my walking to a tortoise-paced two miles a day. I’ve iced and elevated and rested the offending knee. I’ve even taken Aleve a couple of times.

It’s not a serious case; I can easily keep up with a 15-month-old toddler’s pace, so I can still fulfill my important grandmotherly obligations, thank goodness.

It’s just frustrating. I felt like I had finally broken down a mental barrier with that 3-mile run, and now this setback.

When I read up on tendonitis, the first thing my source said was that “middle-aged adult runners are very susceptible to tendonitis in the knees.” If middle-aged runners are susceptible, do the math and imagine how susceptible senior runners are. Guess I should have read the fine print before I decided to run a 5K.

Anyway, the knee is slowly getting better. At my age, everything occurs slowly. Why should knee healing be any different? I still plan to run in the 5K on May 15 but will need to be more careful about warming up, wearing the right shoes, and eating lots of chocolate (I just added the last one to see if you were paying attention).

This is not really my knee. But let’s just say this knee looks the way my knee FEELS!

And I don’t want to hear anyone saying, “See, this is proof that old ladies weren’t meant to run in races.” Seriously, don’t say that. Don’t even think that.

“Buzz . . . buzz . . .mumble . . . murmur . . . if God had intended old ladies to run in races . . . would have given them titanium knees to begin with . . . ” What did I just say??? I don’t want to hear it! Don’t even whisper it!

Even with the tendonitis, I would still much rather have my tombstone read, “Died while hobbling along in a 5K” than “Died on living room couch clutching a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos watching Real Housewives of Orange County.”

So seriously, no smug ‘I told you so’s.’ I am still convinced that this has been a very positive experience, and that in the end, I will earn the tee-shirt that comes with finishing the race. (In the final analysis, it’s pretty much all about the tee-shirt.)

CHASING

2010-03-20T09:14:00.004-05:00

Some people chase their dreams. A few people chase rainbows or dragons. Other people chase their destiny or ghosts or storms or pirates.

I chase curls. A squirrelly little mass of light brown ringlets.

The curls are usually toddling away as fast as the two little legs beneath them can carry them.

I toddle along behind, smiling happily. Grandbaby curls.

SERIOUS TALK WITH MYSELF

2010-03-13T21:34:00.003-06:00

This morning, I got up early to run. I knew I was going to try to run the entire three miles, even if my training schedule said I only had to try for 2¼. Sure enough, I was able to do it—three miles.

Slower than molasses in January, but three miles nonetheless.

In my own defense, I did have a few spurts of a graceful, gazelle-like running gait inspired entirely by vanity. If a car was stopped at a stop sign waiting for me to cross the street in front of it, the driver idly watching me run, I would feel compelled to step it up a notch. The fake gazelle-like gait would last exactly as long as it would take for me to get across the street and for the car to drive away. Not a moment longer. Then it was right back to my own personal old-lady shuffle.

Once I got home, I decided to have a serious talk with various body parts that have, over the past three weeks, been protesting my new pastime of running.

“It’s not like I’m asking a lot of you,” I said firmly to an obscure muscle in my upper left thigh, maybe the Sartorius muscle, but don’t quote me on that. “I’m not asking you to run a marathon or even a 10K. It’s just a little 5K, and I wish you’d cooperate.” I gave the muscle a nudge. “You’re well padded in squishy layers of fat and saggy skin. I’m not making you slap against a bare femur with no cushion . . . Whaddya want? Packing peanuts?”

“Then you—you behave.“ I scolded my left knee. “You can be replaced, you know,” I threatened in my most severe voice. “They have these really cool titanium and polyethylene artificial numbers, so it’s not like I have to put up with your nonsense.”

“And you, you freeloader,” I said, exasperated, to some obscure trapezius muscle on the side of my neck. “What in the world do you have to complain about? It’s not like you’re doing any of the grunt work in this whole process.”

I know that most runners are lean and thin, so their muscles and joints aren’t under quite so much strain. I could easily weigh 105 pounds—if you surgically removed all my bones and internal organs and just threw what was left on the scale. But that’s not going to happen, if you know what I mean. I come from a long line of eaters. Me and my kin, we like to eat.

I did bring a bottle of Aleve along to Arizona with me for emergencies (accidental limb amputations and the like). I’ve probably taken about five Aleves in the past year all put together. But lately, I’ve found myself thinking—obsessing—about that bottle of Aleve. Thinking it would probably feel pretty good to toss down a couple after breakfast—maybe one or two before I go to bed. I might be on the slippery slope to drug addiction, I’m not sure. So far, I’ve fought the urge, hoping that my various body parts would grow accustomed to actually working a little for their room and board. So I’ve tried hard to just say no to the drugs.

Old age, new problems. I feel like such a jock.

RUNNING AND SAN DIEGO (no, not running TO San Diego)

2010-03-11T11:49:00.007-06:00

First, an update on the 5K training situation. This morning, I ran for two miles without stopping and walked the last mile. Progress, progress (please hold your applause).

Oddly enough, the longer I run now, the more normal and even my breathing gets. It seemed like I sounded in more distress for the first half mile than I did for the last mile and a half. Is there a physiological reason for that? (Anyone? Anyone? Is there a doctor in the house?)

Second, we did a two-day trip to San Diego on Tuesday and Wednesday. Riddle for the day: What has four legs, four arms, two heads, and doesn’t stop talking for 24 hours? Answer: Two old army buddies who haven’t seen each other since February 1969 when they left Lai Kai, Vietnam, to come back to the U.S.

Tom and his army buddy have kept in touch over the years at Christmas and birthdays (they share a birthday—same month, day, and year). And since we were only a few hours away in Arizona, Tom decided that it was time to see his old buddy in person. When his old friend opened his front door, the men smiled, shook hands, and immediately assured each other that they hadn’t changed a bit except for a little less hair. It was like those 41 years melted away and they were “Jimbo” and “Tombo” again.

“We haven’t changed a bit."

Our very good hosts took us to see some beautiful spots around San Diego including Coronado Island, Cabrillo National Monument Park, Balboa Park, Old Town San Diego, and the San Diego Bay area.

Here are a few shots of the breathtaking scenery.

Sunset on the Pacific Ocean

View of San Diego Bay from Cabrillo National Monument Park

Old Town San Diego

Of course, we needed much more than a day to see San Diego, so we put it on our list of places to visit when we can stay a little longer.

However, the main purpose of this trip wasn’t to see San Diego. It was a chance for Tom to revisit a time of his life when he was young and in a war zone, very far away from his sheltered life in North Dakota. His old friend “Jimbo” was one of the people who helped him make it through that tough time in his life. After five minutes of checking each other over, those intervening 41 years disappeared. Once again, they became 24-year-old second lieutenants, laughing over pranks and reminding each other of names and places they had in common from the 1960s.

It was like they had never been apart.

BREAKTHROUGH

2010-03-09T07:11:00.006-06:00

There’s an old saying that it takes three days to develop a bad habit and three weeks to develop a good one. I’m going to modify that old saying a bit as it seems to take me only three minutes to develop a bad habit—while the good ones, it seems like I battle with forever.

But I did have a breakthrough yesterday.

After six weeks of struggling with short sprints/walking in my 5K training and seemingly getting nowhere, I finally made significant progress. Right after I hit the “Publish” button on yesterday’s whiny, negative blog, I tied on my running shoes, girded my loins (whatever that means), steeled my mind, and hit Palm Valley Road.

And I ran without stopping for 1 ½ miles. Without stopping even once. That’s half a 5K.

I didn’t struggle, I didn’t think I was dying, and I wasn’t afraid. I just ran.

I passed a much younger, thinner person walking down the road who smiled encouragingly at me. I passed an old man pushing a toddler in a stroller, holding a dog on a leash, who nodded at me. An 80-year-old man on a bicycle rode past me and said encouragingly, “Lookin’ good!” I ran past a postal worker emptying mail from a blue drop box, and she didn’t even look up, so my panting must not have been EMT-summoningly alarming.

And I ran. Just like Forrest Gump. Well, slower. Much slower. It wasn’t pretty, but I ran.

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR

2010-03-08T11:12:00.003-06:00

What in the Sam Hill was I thinking when I agreed to run in a 5K on May 15? I never was an athlete. Ever. I may not have been the very last kid to be picked on the team, but I was certainly the second to last kid to be picked.

I will be fair: there is improvement. When I first kicked up the speed on my treadmill back in February, I was able to run for a grand total of 30 seconds. And then I felt like dying. Last Saturday, I ran/walked 3 miles and one of my sprints, the longest, was 5 minutes and 15 seconds. After which, of course, I felt like dying.

The positive thing is that 5 minutes and 15 seconds is 10½ times longer than I was able to run a month ago. The negative thing is that I need to be able to run for about 35 or 40 continuous minutes to run a 5K.

The calendar is ticking away. (Do calendars tick? Mine does—like a time bomb.)

My body is protesting: my thighs ache, my heel goes numb, my finger hurts (well, to be honest, I sliced my finger on the jagged edge of a can I was recycling).

My left lung may have collapsed (why else would breathing be so difficult?). My heart has developed an extra chamber to accommodate the increased blood pumping, and my face has taken on a permanent ruddy/sweaty/blotchy pallor. (What happened to that healthy glow all the fitness magazines promised?)

Then there’s that funny spot that developed on my left foot, so I put Tinactin on it. I have no idea what the spot is, but Tinactin is my cure-all for everything even remotely foot related including club feet, hammer toes, gout, and blue toe syndrome.

If God had wanted me to be a runner, I think He would have said something earlier and not waited 61 years to tell me. It would have been more like a Forrest Gump inspirational thing. Remember Forrest?

“That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.”

No, I’m no Forrest Gump. There’s no Mrs. Gump saying encouragingly, “Run, Rachel, run!” There’s just the sound of my time-bomb calendar ticking away to May 15.

WARP-10 TIME

2010-03-05T22:01:00.003-06:00

Nobody ever told me that when I got to be the age I am, time would hurtle by faster than the speed of light. I kind of thought that in my senior retired years, time would just totter along on a walker or a cane, each minute hobbling by, stretching into long, old-lady days.

Instead, just the opposite is true. It doesn’t matter how early I get up in the morning, there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done that I want to get done. If I get up at 6 a.m., before I know it, it’s 9 a.m.—and then it’s noon—and then it’s late afternoon—and then it’s time to go to bed. Our Arizona vacation is already one-third over, and I feel like it has hardly started.

Especially when I’m with Colbie, the time just flies by. Was that two hours? Unbelievable! Naptime already? Time for bed? Where did that precious time go?

So let me warn all you young whippersnappers out there. If you are waiting for retirement and your senior sunset years to leisurely do all the things you want to do, don’t count on it. Do it now—make the time—travel, write your novel, climb that mountain . . . whatever.

Old age is like Warp-10 speed on Star Trek: the maximum speed limit for the galaxy when you can be at all places in the universe simultaneously. A new day starts, and then suddenly it’s over, blazing by at 500 times the speed of light.

PUFFING DOWN PALM VALLEY ROAD

2010-03-03T09:14:00.002-06:00

With all the traveling we had been doing in the past week-and-a-half, the 5K training program had been put on the back burner. While we were in Minnesota, all I had to do was trot down the basement stairs and jump on my treadmill, the evil machine that measured my time and distance with space-shot accuracy.

After we arrived in Arizona, the 60- and 70-degree temperatures outside made it easy to do the daily 3- or 4-mile walk. But the big question became, where could I run? I was used to running in the privacy of my cellar with no one to see me except the non-judgmental spider in the corner. The thought of running in a public place made me very uncomfortable. Would someone call the police? Summon an ambulance?

I shouldn’t have worried. Phoenix is a city of 5 million people, and they all seem to be in their cars driving somewhere. Fast. But I think I’ve found a place or two near our temporary home where nobody will panic if they see old people running down the street. In fact, I’ve found that Phoenix is a place where you see lots of old people running down the street. The place is crawling with old people running down the street. In fact, you feel a little out of place if you aren't running down the street.

So if you are in town and want to see and hear much huffing, puffing, panting, and perspiring (and who doesn’t), you might catch me on Palm Valley Road:

Don’t dial 9-1-1. Don’t stop and offer us CPR. Don’t offer us a ride home. It may look like a medical emergency, but I’m just training for a 5K with Tom trotting by my side for moral support. It may look like we’re gasping for our last breath, but that’s just an optical illusion. In reality, we’re floating along in a smooth, slow motion shot, with “Brian’s Song” swelling in the background. At least I think it’s “Brian’s Song.” It’s tough to tell over the sound of our gasping for air.

MOUNTAIN RETREAT

2010-03-01T12:01:00.009-06:00

Just when you think you’ve seen darn near every beautiful place on earth, up pops another one. This time, the beautiful spot was at the south end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the area of the Sequoia National Forest, overlooking Kernsville (California), the Kern River, and Lake Isabella.

We spent the weekend at a cabin that my daughter-in-law’s family built with their bare hands, 18 months of sweat equity, and a jackhammer. Nestled into the side of a mountain overlooking Kernville is their weekend retreat, a cabin that gives you the feeling of floating somewhere up near the clouds.

In order to get there, we first did some seat time in the car. Colbie is not a car sleeper. She stayed awake every minute of the eight-hour ride to the cabin and the eight hours back. What a trooper, although Mickey Mouse on the video player helped a lot!!

My traveling companion, Colbie

Arriving at Lake Isabella

View from the Deck of the Cabin

View of the Inside of the Cabin (every board, every beam, every coat of finish has a story)

Walking in the Mountains

View of the Cabin from Above

Colbie and Grandpa Visiting the Kernville Museum

Since Tom and I are not handy-type people, I am always amazed at what other people can dream and build. This cabin was built with incredible skill and an equal amount of thought and love. The dream was to build a retreat where the family could be together, a place where the grandchildren would love to come and hide out in the fort or climb the rock wall, where there would always be something to do and somewhere to explore. And their dream was successful . . . a beautiful retreat at the top of the world.

ROAD TRIP

2010-02-25T07:35:00.003-06:00

We're taking off on a long-weekend road trip. I get to spend a total of 16 hours in the car with 14-month-old Colbie. This is the true test of our grandmother/granddaughter relationship. Will we love each other as much when we get back as when we started?

My guess is that this will bring our relationship to a whole new level. She will probably hear every song I've ever learned, including the lyrics to all Broadway musicals from the 1960s and 1970s. (Little known fact: I can recite all the lyrics to "Trouble in River City" from Music Man.)

My guess is that Colbie and I will get along fine, but everyone else in the car will want to drop me off at a truck stop somewhere near Timbuktu. I'll report back on Monday!

PROJECTS

2010-02-22T21:35:00.007-06:00

The house we’re staying in while we’re in Arizona belongs to a friend of our son’s. My son is officially the “house caretaker” while his friend is out of town for a few months, so that’s how the plan for us to stay here was hatched.

His friend is a single guy and has only lived in the house for eight months. Like many bachelors, interior decorating/home improvement is number eleventy-billion on his list of activities to spend his time on. So part of the deal while we are here is to do just that—home improvement projects—under the guidance of our son, the home improvement guru.

We love it. It’s a beautiful house that just needs some TLC, and we feel at home in it already.
So today, after I’d given the inside a thorough cleaning, I attacked the back yard. The weeds were as high as an elephant’s eye. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure if some of them were bushes or weeds. After awhile, I just shrugged, and my motto became “When in doubt, pull them out.” It made me feel kind of patriotic.

Before (yes, those are weeds):

During:

After: Do you want to hire Tom and me as your gardeners? All offers will be entertained.

(For those of you who remember my primary reason to be here, I also got to take care of Colbie this afternoon while her parents were busy. She talks and talks and talks . . . we have actual conversations that make sense! Fourteen months old, and she’s already my very best friend. PLUS--PLUS--Tom and I took a four-mile walk OUTSIDE this afternoon. How terrific is that?)

NOT IN KANSAS ANY MORE

2010-02-21T11:27:00.003-06:00

. . . as Dorothy said to Toto. Actually, we were only in Kansas for a portion of the time. The rest of the time we were driving (three days on the road) through Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Speaking of Arizona, here’s our new home for the next few weeks. You will be able to tell that we are not in our regular surroundings because of the following:

1) There is no snow.
2) There is no grass.
3) There is a palm tree in our front yard.

I’ve already hugged Colbie—and my pregnant daughter-in-law and my pregnant daughter. It was amazing to realize last night that I had three grandchildren all in the same room, even though two of them are a little hard to see at the moment. But I’ve felt them kick—little ninja boy and little soccer boy. They’re very good kickers.

I haven’t gone for a walk yet because it’s been raining since we got here—but it’s Arizona and it will quit raining very soon. After sitting in the car for three days, I’m afraid rigor mortis has set into my joints, but I’ll get my knees bending normally again sooner than you think.

We’ve been spreading our belongings around our very nice house, trying to make it look and feel a little like home. It’s in a regular neighborhood this year, not the maximum security gated community for incarcerated senior citizens (i.e., Perfectville) that we lived in last year.

In fact, Colbie lives across the street from me.

Dangerous, you might think: an across-the-street grandma. How soon will it be before Colbie’s mom and dad change their phone number and install extra locks on their doors? I have told myself I will not just sit on the curb and wait for her to come out and play. I cannot ring her doorbell before 5:30 a.m. I have my rules. There’s a fine line between a pesky grandmother and a helpful one. What an exercise in self control this will be. It’s like Colbie is a little magnet and I am a pile of metal shavings . . .

It’s good to be here. Out of the snow, out of the ice, across the street from my beautiful grandchild. It feels like I have died and gone to heaven. But it’s really Arizona, and I’m very much alive.

THE EXTRA TWENTY

2010-02-15T07:37:00.008-06:00

Saturday marked the beginning of Week No. 3 of my training for the 5K run in May. Three months from today, I will be running around Lake Harriet on my tanned, muscular legs (or my 61-year-old pasty-white, cottage-cheesy-cellulite legs, whichever show up that day).

Week No. 3 includes 3-minute sprints (up from the 60-second sprints in Week No. 1 and the 90-second sprints in Week No. 2).

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The first minute of sprinting is comfortable—my legs are cooperative and oxygen flows freely into my lungs. I feel capable and positive. As Helen Reddy would say, “I am woman, hear me roar.”

The second minute starts to get a little tough. My breathing is a little more ragged. I keep checking the clock. Hasn’t it been three minutes yet?

The next half-minute is painful. And the final half-minute is excruciating. It’s that final half minute that makes me wish I were 20 pounds lighter and 20 years younger.

While I’m at it, I also wish that my I.Q. was 20 points higher and that my bank account had 20 percent more money in it.

And as long as I’m wishing . . . I sure wish my eyesight was 20/20.

Final Report: Week No. 3—running 3-minute sprints. Not dead yet. I’ve stopped using my lavender-scented, lace-trimmed handkerchief to delicately dab at my upper lip, and I’m now using a full-sized beach towel to mop up the drip pools.

As soon as I can run ten 3-minute sprints in a row for a total of 30 minutes, I can run a 5K! Piece of cake! (Cake??!? Did someone say ‘cake’??!!)