Capturing Our Life Through Art

October 29, 2015October 29, 2015Leave a comment

Once the weather starts turning cooler in the fall, I have an overwhelming need to dig in closets and drawers and try to start nesting for the winter. As much as I love summer and the water, and outdoor activities, I enjoy fall for the colors and the crisp cool air and I enjoy the quiet peacefulness and coziness of a weekend in a warm house in the winter.

My need to dig through closets and spend time cleaning house and getting rid of stuff that I do not need probably starts because the hustle and bustle of summer leaves this wake of stuff laying around that we didn’t take the time to put away, rushing from one activity to another before summer passes us by. We fit a lot into one season. It is probably good we do not live in California with the fine weather all year round. We would never have a winter to recover. Don’t get me wrong, we do plenty in winter, but it is no comparison to the summer and the back-to-back fun-ness in which we engage. When the weather starts turning, I clean coolers and put them away, hang the lifejackets and the bikes, and put away the adventure pants. I dig in my drawers and closets and donate all things taking up space that are no longer used. The cleaning and organizing process is easier now that we are empty nesters. It is just less space and people to pick up after.

In cleaning drawers this week I ran across a large box and folder with black and white photos of my family. When the kids were younger and we lived in the woods of Blaine, we had a really nice 35mm camera. I decide to try black and white photography. I love the look of old black and white photos and this was before everybody carried a phone with a camera that has black and white options. It does not seem that long ago that I decided to get artsy and try black and white photography, but the pictures are telling of how long ago it was. My kids are all now in their twenties, so looking at the photos was really fun and brought back a lot of good memories. My kids were really good sports about it. I brought out the costume box and they were willing to participate with multiple costume changes and my direction for an attempt to capture different settings and emotions through my new found artsy photography interest.

Our costume box was amazing. We had every kind of costume you could imagine, from beautiful dresses and dance costumes, to Harry Potter, goulash masks and pretend bloody hands for zombie costumes and of course the gorilla and banana. We had boxes of hats and we had wings, and we had props like fake crows and swords and a staff. Even neighbors borrowed costumes from us when they had an occasion for such things. I loved our costume box and the kids and their friends had a lot of fun with them, even when it was not Halloween. We were known in the neighborhood for our selection of costumes. I think part of the fun for the kids with the “photo” sessions was that they did get to pretend and wear a lot of different costumes. I had to always wait for a sunny day to have the right lighting, but I used our woods as a backdrop and took most photos outside.

I had a lot of fun doing that with the kids and after a weekend of shooting photos, I would take my film to Wal-Mart, who by the way did a great job developing black and whites and actually used real black and white paper for the processing. I could not wait to get the final product back
and the kids and I had a lot of fun looking through them afterwards. Some seemed great by accident and others were definitely not keepers. The fun part in looking through them this fall is that I had kept them all, good and bad. Surprisingly, some of the ones I would not have considered keepers turned out to be some of the best ones with hindsight.
I had a perfect picture of the kids in black and white that I had considered so good that I used it as our Christmas card that year, but the photos leading up to that photo were some of 3some2 the best ones that captured their sense of humor and their sheer joy of goofing off together. I can ask my kids to smile on a picture and they did well, but when I accidentally captured them laughing with each other in between pictures or them trying, unsuccessfully to put on a serious face, for a more dramatic picture, I actually captured them in their most honest and true sense. It is unrehearsed and pure. I see their personalities when I look back at those pictures and I see a family of kids that will always be friends. I see sheer joy in the moment and a camaraderie that they will always share.

As different as they are in many ways, they are close siblings with many fun and loving memories together. My stint of trying my hand at the art of black and white photography actually captured our family in a moment of time when we all lived together and enjoyed every aspect of life, including those slow Sundays in costume together, trying to capture art and emotion, in the
woods of our backyard. I thought I was being artsy, and by accident I created a box of memories that may have faded with time. I look at the photos and I am there in time enjoying the moment.

3some3 Time passes so quickly and even though it seems like yesterday to me, these kids are now gone and forging their lives and making new memories. We still have a lot of great times together, but they will never again be those giggly, young kids who were willing to go along with Mom’s idea to try something new and play dress up, while she tried to get just the right shot. I actually entered a couple of the photos into an art contest in Blaine and even though I did not win, they were displayed in the City Hall for a few months. I felt proud that they had been accepted into the contest and I felt accomplished that I had tried something new and actually enjoyed it more than I thought. We went as a family to look at all of the art and it was special that they could see themselves in an art display.

I did not know it at the time, but I had actually captured our life through art in a moment of time that we will never have again. Make your memories each day, because in the blink of an eye, today is gone and tomorrow is a memory. Days turn into weeks and weeks into years. Don’t let those days fly by without taking time to enjoy each moment and to create beautiful memories for those around you.

Try Anything Once

September 10, 2015September 9, 2015Leave a comment

Anyone who follows my writing and knows me well knows that I am more of an outdoor girl than an indoor girl, and I have never been known for my sophistication. I like to keep it real and simple, and I have no problem embracing and loving my farming roots. Even though I would rather be at an Eagles or Fleetwood Mac concert, I actually like a lot of different kinds of music.

When I was in college in Duluth at St. Scholastica, in the late 1970’s, we were required to take a class or community education item that had nothing to do with our major. It had to be approved, but the number and variety of choices were very great. The school really pushed us to have a well rounded education. It was a really good school. In my very first year of college, I selected season tickets to the Duluth Symphony Orchestra of all things. As I say, you need to try everything at least once and even at that age I knew it was more fun to get out of my comfort zone and try new things than to embrace the same old things.

I was in the nursing program and loved my science classes including the anatomy and physiology courses that came with the mandatory cadaver lab. I actually liked cadaver lab. I grew up on a farm, so life and death were a part of our existence, and being from a small Catholic community, everyone attended every wake and funeral that occurred. The wakes always involved open caskets with viewing of the body and the kids came along to the wakes from an early age. I was not bothered by a dead human and found the study of human anatomy fascinating.

So when it came time to pick a class unrelated to my major out in the community, I chose the symphony, something that had nothing to do with science or memorizing the parts of the body, and something we did not listen to on the farm. It was not expensive thanks to a relationship between the symphony and the college. Two other friends signed up with me and surprisingly we enjoyed it a lot more than we expected. We had talked beforehand and decided it may be quite boring, and as tired as we were from studying anatomy until all hours of the night, we would probably fall asleep. However, that was not a problem at all. We never fell asleep. We actually really looked forward to it after a while.
There was a monthly concert and I was excited for it. We dressed up and went to dinner before hand and it got to be a real event. It was so different than what I had done in the past. We were listening to Aerosmith and Bob Seger and we went to rock concerts. The symphony music was so much better than I thought it would be. I was really surprised how emotional the music felt. It could make you move in your chair or it could make you feel nervous or excited or be completely relaxed where your mind could wonder. It was surprising. I am glad the school required us to expand our education and interests; otherwise I never would have bought tickets to the Duluth Symphony on my own. I would have gotten too busy with the tasks for my classes and what must be accomplished; unless forced to do this required education I would not have had that wonderful experience.

It was more than 30 years ago, but the educational affects of trying new things still lingered. A couple of years ago I heard one of my law partners talking about his daughter who is an opera singer. She had the lead in the Romeo and Juliette opera at the Ordway in St. Paul. I was really excited about that. I had never been to the opera and my first reaction was that I don’t like opera. But I caught myself. How could I dismiss it so easily as something I don’t like, if I have never been to one, and this would be extra special because we kind of knew someone in it or at least we knew her mother and father, and we knew they were really nice people. We had heard about their daughter Elli, and how she lived in New York and she was a sought after opera star in Europe and the U.S. We had also seen pictures and she was a beautiful girl. I was definitely in.

I knew I could count on Joe because he is always a good sport about trying new things, but I wanted to make it a real event and why not pass on that Scholastica philosophy of trying new things? I asked my kids if they would go and I explained who Elli was and that we would have to dress up. They were all in. They had never been before, but they always took the opportunity to do something new as well.

I invited my parents too. I knew they would be up for something new, exciting and different. They were farmers from Buckman, but they were well traveled having been to Australia and all over Asia, and of course all over the U.S. This made it even more special because now there were three generations of us all dressed up and going to the opera, all of us for the first time. It was interesting because we had all been camping, traveling, boating and fishing together for years, but never the opera. Not all three generations. I was so proud of all of them, kids and parents alike, for being so adventurous and willing to try something new and so upbeat. I love this crowd. They are never a bunch of complainers or whiners, and they try to always be positive. My parents and my kids are all a lot alike. They are fun to be around, because they are all adventurous, fun and positive people.

We dressed up at my house so even the getting ready was an event. We went to dinner first and then the opera. Joe dropped us off at the door like dignitaries, and we went in to wait for him. The opera was surprisingly good. Beautiful costumes and great singing. Of course Elli was amazing and looked lovely and even though the opera was in Italian, you knew exactly what was going on. It was a cultural experience for everyone that again took us a little out of our comfort zone, but again reminded me and of course taught my kids that you should try everything at least once. Don’t assume or jump to the conclusion that you will not like something until you have experienced it.

We also learned that when you try new things, you will actually enjoy them if you are with the right people. Going with positive people is a key to enjoying new adventures and frankly the key to a happy life. Some people look for the things that are negative or look for things to complain about. No one likes being around that, because it makes everyone feel bad. It takes practice and the right attitude to find the good things in life and enjoy life. To always find the good and positive things to say about anything and anyone. That is the attitude of my people—my parents and kids— and that is the attitude that makes new adventures fun! Practice positivity. It is never said better than in the old adage: if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all. Surround yourself with positivity and you will be happy and you will be able to find something great and enjoyable in every new thing that you try.

Puppies Everywhere

August 26, 2015August 26, 2015Leave a comment

I am a dog lover. Don’t get me wrong, I like cats too, especially the farm cats we grew up with, but I love dogs more and cannot imagine living without them. I have two rescue dogs right now. One is a Pug Shitzu who looks exactly like an Ewok from Star Wars if you would put a little leather helmet on him, and I have a Sheltie who was surrendered because he has a genetic defect in his front leg joint. We got him as a puppy and he is now ten years old. He limps sometimes, but does pretty well.

I grew up with dogs on the farm and we had mostly mutts, but at the height of gas and cattle stealing, we had a Doberman. He was a really nice dog for us, but if a stranger drove in the yard he looked like he was going to attack. It really cut down on the salesmen visits. We had one dog on the farm, Prince, who pulled a red wagon in a harness my grandpa and dad built. One of us sat in the wagon and the others rode bikes down the driveway, and that dog would run down that driveway giving us the ride of our lives. Prince was a nice dog.

When my kids were young they wanted a puppy, and so did I, and so started the parade of pets we had at our house over the years. We had fish, birds, a rabbit, a turtle and of course the dogs. We had our own dog, but we also did foster care for the Humane society. The kids always wanted puppies to play with, and so I thought our best option was to do foster care for puppies. It was perfect. They came for about two to three weeks to be well fed, to play and grow, and be socialized. Just long enough so that everyone was tired of cleaning up after them, when it was time for them to go back to the humane society to find their forever homes.

Our first assignment was to care for and socialize six black lab puppies that had lost their mom. They were as cute as could be. The puppies were high energy, exploring everything and crawling around on the kids. The kids were so gentle with them, but wow those puppies put out a lot of poop. We luckily had a large mud room with a linoleum floor that we fenced off and covered in plastic and than heavy red paper used in the construction industry and then layers of newspapers that could be changed frequently. We went through a lot of newspapers. The Humane Society gave us stacks of them and we could come and get more anytime we needed.

Luckily it was summer and the kids took the puppies outside a lot on the lawn to play. They liked being outdoors and the kids had a blast. A lot of their friends came to see the puppies and play with them. We had a deck in the backyard that was about a foot and a half above the ground. One of the puppies strayed under there and the kids did not want to crawl into that abyss of spider webs and darkness under the deck to retrieve the lost puppy. Guess who had spiders crawling in her hair after that rescue. Those kids owe me big-time.

We had a big loud family and our house was always full of commotion. Kids coming and going, and TV’s on, and loud music. I always said our house was the best to socialize puppies. They were not afraid of anything or anyone when they left us. They were used to loud noises and used to being held and handled. I had to get up early every morning to change their mat of newspapers covered in puppy poop and feed them mushy food and change their water. That was the largest group we ever had. I was very happy to see them go to find their real homes. I was tired after a few weeks and while the kids helped a little, it was still mostly me and it was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night. After that, we only had one or two or three at a time. Never six. It was just too much. Live and learn.

We once had two husky lab mix puppies and they were my favorite. The kids always named the pups, and with the huskies we had one that was mostly white with a little black and had one blue eye and one brown eye. It was a beautiful dog. The kids named her Bobby. She was smart and kept escaping from her pen. I would be cooking and all of a sudden she would be walking around my feet. She stood on things jumped on things and could escape that pen no matter what we tried. After a while we gave up and let her roam, but we had to potty train her and that went as well as could be expected.

Once we got a call from the Humane Society that they had a pregnant dog that needed foster care. Her name was Penny and we were glad to take her. I had been a Labor and Delivery nurse, so having a dog that would have puppies was a fun prospect for me, and I was glad to have my kids experience that as well. We had a nice bed for her and we followed the directions we got from the Humane society to give her space and let her nest and rest. She was a small dog and cute as a bunny. Very gentle and well behaved. Not sure why someone gave her up. She was such a nice dog.

We kept watching for those puppies and one Saturday afternoon there was one squirming little puppy. So cute. Black tan and white just like Penny. She had another puppy to be born, but it just seemed to be taking too long. I called the humane VACBot012 Society, but they always said the same thing. Just let nature takes its course. Probably good advice. The kids and I watched and waited giving Penny her space, but keeping an eye out occasionally. Finally, the second pup was born, but it was not breathing. Penny tried her best to get it going by vigorously licking it, but to no avail. When she stopped, I took the puppy and tried
to give it gentle mouth to mouth and chest compressions. If I could have built a defibrillator with two forks and the toaster I would have. I felt so bad. I wanted to save that puppy, but despite my best efforts, I could not save the puppy.

The kids had watched me try and I finally gave the puppy back to Penny who had been standing by patiently waiting for me, as if knowing it was not meant to be. She nested with her lost puppy for a while, but after a few hours, pushed it out of the nest and focused on her live squirming bundle of joy. It was good for the kids to see real life and death and to know that despite our best efforts sometimes things were not meant to be.

The first puppy grew fast and was loved and held constantly by the kids. They would watch movies with Penny on the couch and the puppy would be crawling all over them. Most of the time it was no problem to separate from our foster puppies, but Penny and her puppy were special. They were a little harder to return to the Humane Society, but they let us be there when both were adopted and we were glad to see them go to good homes.

It is important to have our children see and experience sadness as well as joy, happiness, separation and letting go, as it is a part of life. We cannot have complete joy without having experienced sadness and we have to know how to deal with all of life’s ups and downs. On the farm it is easier to experience and understand that death is a part of life. That was a harder lesson to teach in the city. We started doing foster care to have puppies to play with. We did not appreciate that it would teach life lessons in such a personal way.

Everyone Needs an Adventure Buddy

August 13, 2015August 8, 2015Leave a comment

My husband Joe and I just got back from our second trip to Voyageurs National Park by Lake Kabetogama on the Minnesota-Canadian border. We load our big Lund fishing boat, wear our adventure pants, head up north to a resort called Moosehorn, and rent a cabin for a week offishing Walleye. This is our second time to the resort because the owners, Christy and Jerry work really hard to make sure you catch fish and have a great time. We caught some really nice Walleyes, and more importantly, we were able to spend a really nice week together. I caught the biggest Walleye. More on that later.

You can do these types of things whenever you want when you are empty nesters. Joe and I have been on some very fun adventures together since our nest became empty. You can read more about by browsing the Practice Fun Living and Empty Nest Shenanigans pages on this site. We loved raising our kids, but the reality is that those years are about them, as it should be. We spent a lot of time in those years, through all of the different phases from diapers and then school, and all of the activities such as soccer, hockey, dance, plays, band and our wonderful family vacations. It was a hectic time, and with all of the kid activities, we sometimes had to work really hard to stay connected as a couple. We did stay connected; we now have been married for almost 30 years, and we can once again appreciate each other’s company as we are back to having things more about us and what we want to do.

I look back on those family years and even though some of them are a blur, one thing is for sure. I married a really nice guy who took care of us all and would do anything for his family. We recently sold our family home in Blaine, and I was talking to a friend and I told her that none of the light bulbs in that house had ever burned out in 25 years. At first she looked confused and then it dawned on her that of course they had burned out, I just did not have to change them because Joe quietly always replaced them. I don’t even ever remember having to ask him to replace any. He just took care of them. I also had my last car for ten years and during that time it never once ran out of washer fluid. Another thing that he just made sure was always done.

Over the years he has had to do a lot of things for his family. I have come to the conclusion that it is not big spectacular things, but the small things that make a good dad and husband. He has not had to defend his family against an intruder or wrestle a bear or cougar in a National Park so the kids and I would not be mauled, although that would be a good story, but over the years he has had to take care of all of their gadgets that break, whether phones or cars, and schedule and keep track of oil changes on sometimes as many as five different vehicles. He has paid a few parking tickets for our college students—luckily no one has ever done anything serious, and when they were in High School he had to help them with their math and calculus, since he has a PhD and actually easily understood that complicated homework.

Over the years Joe fixed many a broken door, screen, window, dresser drawers and toys. He was there for them when they needed him and he has always been a low maintenance guy. Joe loves watching his Twins baseball and he is so easy going that he seldom complains. As our kids say, he can live off of a handful of peanuts and is happy with that. He mows the lawn, pays the bills, and would drive his family thousands of miles on family vacations. He had to put up with all of the pets our kids wanted over the years and had a real tolerance for all of the noise in our house when the kids were teens and had their friends over for movies, music and games. Those teens ate everything in the house like locusts, and were so loud you needed ear plugs sometimes, but it had to get really bad before he complained.

We did a lot of fun things with those kids over the years, and we had a lot of fun together. The guy has skills other than mowing lawns and fixing broken stuff in the house. When we took a driving vacation around Europe for our 25^th anniversary he bossed it up on the roads, including keeping up with the Germans on the Autobahn, and he caught on quickly to driving without obeying the traffic signs and weaving around the hundreds of motorcycles on the streets of Rome. I had my hands over my eyes more than once. Yes, we got a couple of tickets in Europe for driving down the wrong way in Amsterdam and in Italy, but that was my fault as the navigator and it was well worth it, for the great sites that we saw on that vacation. There was not a scratch on the car and after being in Europe for about two weeks. I knew he had this driving thing down like a local when we went to a German restaurant for pork hock night and he parked our car with two wheels onto the sidewalk, just like the locals.

It is good to have an adventure buddy with balls who is not afraid to try something new, and a guy with some skills who knows how to do everything from fix the computer to catch fish. We have zip lined, snorkeled, and we have sat our butts in the Natural hot springs of the blue lagoon in Iceland. We have visited the cliffs on the Mediterranean at the Cinque Terre in Italy, stayed on a farm in the Alps by Innsbruck Austria, and a castle on the Mosel River in Germany. We have hiked and fished in Hawaii, Alaska and Costa Rica and we hope to have many adventures ahead.

It is good to have the right adventure buddy. We encourage and reassure each other and more importantly we have fun together. If you cannot have fun together, a marriage will not last for 30 years. I have found that you have to find common interests, and the key is that you enjoy being with the other person.

We enjoy many things and we can still have fun at things we have been doing for years. We work together on the planning and preparations for our adventures and we have a list of future adventures that we already know we want to try. Last week at Kabetogama, as usual with our fishing adventures, there is a lot of trash talking about who will catch the biggest fish and the first fish. I make him take pictures of every fish I catch, no matter how embarrassingly small it is. I did catch the biggest fish this year and have been rubbing it in since we are back, but he reminds me that he caught the first fish. Most importantly, we enjoy our time together. We go with the flow; we enjoy not only the adventure, but the planning, preparations and getting there and back, and talking about it afterward even when it is trash talking about who caught the biggest fish.

Picking the right adventure buddy for both your vacation adventures as well as your own life adventure is crucial to enjoying your time on this earth. Who would have thought, looking from afar that the quiet guy who gets little recognition when he changes the washer fluid on the cars and changes light bulbs in the house, the guy who is mowing the lawn and paying the bills, going unappreciated and almost unnoticed most of the time, would be the best husband and dad a family could ask for. The kids and I have appreciated the things Joe has done for us, even though we have not expressed it as often as we should.

Appreciate your adventure buddy, your quiet guy who has done his duty for his kids and wife; the guy who asks for little in return, but shows up for everything from changing dirty diapers to hauling the kids stuff to college. It has been a fun ride and we have many more adventures ahead. Life can be fun with the right Adventure Buddy!

Running with the Girls

August 6, 2015August 6, 2015Leave a comment

IMG00519-20120715-1055 A number of years ago, I decided it would be fun to participate in some of the 5K runs that were becoming so popular. Many were being used as a way to raise funds for charitable organizations and some to get more people active and into running. It seems like the more fun they could add to the experience, the more likely they were to get a lot of runners.

Making the 5K run’s fun worked. It attracted a lot of us and they still do. I have done a number of Color runs, where you show up for the 5K in all white and by the end you look like a rainbow. The course has IMG00514-20120715-1011 various color stations that you run through. As you run through the color station, a powdery shower of yellow, purple, green or blue is sprayed at you by the volunteers, creating a multitude of colors on your clothes and also covering your hair by the end. The colors are safe or so they say. Good thing too because you feel like you are breathing them during the run through the color stations, and after the color run you are sneezing colors and wiping colors out of every part of your body—yes every part, even those parts.

These runs were a good way to connect to other women including family. My daughter Sara got me involved in the Color runs, and she invited her friend Megan and my sister Kathy and I, to a run at night, called the Glow run. The Glow run was really fun because it was at night and we had to make matching shirts with glow in the dark paint, and we wore glow in the dark jewelry and glasses. Getting ready for this run was half the fun.

It was held at Valley Fair, so the amusement park atmosphere fit the glow run craziness. During the run we had to be extra careful not to step in a hole or trip in the dark, which added to the fun, but also made it the slowest run ever. We got through the run without any injuries and had a great time. There were hundreds of runners and they had all kinds of colorful moving lights throughout the trail that added to the nighttime mystique.

I also invited my sister Kathy, and Sara and Megan to a charity run called Women Run the Cities. It was sponsored by a great organization I belong to called MNCREW, and the beneficiary of Women Run the cities was a charity for at risk young girls. The charity was started by Ann Bancroft, the Arctic and Antarctic explorer and author. Ann has been one of those amazing women that has succeeded in her own quests to explore and educate, and has worked so hard to make opportunities for other women and girls. We did this run many times and we did get to meet her and it was not disappointing. She was as gracious, energetic and down to earth as she seemed when we had seen her speak on prior occasions and on TV.

My daughter Sara, Megan and I signed up for one of the most fun runs in all the Twin Cities called the Anoka Halloween fun run. This is a 5K that you run in a Halloween costume. We learned quickly to pick your costume carefully. Anoka is known as the Halloween Capital of the world, and those Anoka residents take their Halloween very seriously. The costumes people were running in were amazing. One group of people were actually pushing a large, fifteen foot homemade Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue Ox. It took a group of eight people in lumberjack shirts to pull that off and rightly so, they won the costume contest. Sara and I dressed like luffas and Megan dressed like the Hamburgler, which were all fairly easy to run in.

Luckily no one takes their running times very seriously at these runs. Serious runners and competitive people probably do not spend a lot of time on these fun runs. Many of us are talking the whole time, laughing and tripping over our own feet. What I have discovered is that these runs are more than a good time with the girls, my friends, daughter and sister. It is a bonding experience that starts with the calls and texts to each other, convincing each other to join the run and getting the group together. The next bonding experience is getting ready for the run, whether that is the fun of shopping to find a costume to be able to run in or all white clothes or glow in the dark items to wear at night. The texts and calls fly back and forth and the bonding continues. My daughter Sara has been a real instigator in finding some of these fun experiences, and my sister, who is normally a competitive runner and one with impressive times for her normal 5K’s, has been such a good sport in joining us for these fun runs, even though she has to drive from the South Dakota border to get here.

The runs provide some exercise, but they 140220 732 are so much more. They provide a fun, noncompetitive activity that is not the cliché shopping. Running with the girls helps us appreciate the fun things in life, helps drop away our little worries of the day, puts the stress of work or home on hold and provides a connection with some of the best women in our lives. A run that is really no run at all, but provides an outlet to share a laugh and a hug and a little sweat, and rub off some love and sometimes color on each other. Run with your girls and appreciate the sometimes very simple pleasures in life. Housework, homework and work obligations can wait. Run with the girls!

Everybody Loves Dinosaurs

July 30, 2015July 29, 2015Leave a comment

In the early 1980’s I was a nurse at Ramsey Medical Center. In college I had worked two jobs and went to school full time, so after I graduated and had only one job to go to, no studying and I was single, I thought I had too much time on my hands. You can only do so much drinking and chasing of guys. I always liked Dinosaurs (who doesn’t?), so I went to volunteer my time at the Science Museum of Minnesota, in St. Paul. I worked in the Paleontology laboratory with the Dinosaur bones. They had a dig site in North Dakota and the Paleontologists would spend part of their summer unearthing the large bones and then would ship them back to the Science Museum for further work and study.

In the field they would see a small part of the bone sticking out of the ground and would dig way around it so that rock and dirt were still surrounding the bone, and then they would lift out the large specimen containing the fossilized bone and would wrap it in casting material, like a doctor uses to cast a broken arm to protect it during transit to the museum. It was then put on a train to St. Paul and taken to the museum. Once at the museum, the people working in the lab would carefully remove the casting with a cast removal saw, just like at the doctor, and then use dental tools and picks to slowly and carefully remove the bone. This was my job. They had a lot of fun people working there who were students learning to be paleontologists, people who actually were paleontologists, and then a bunch of us interested volunteers.

I always liked learning new things and this was something I knew nothing about other than what I had read in National Geographic or learned in school. It seemed really exciting and something completely different than my nursing. It was also an opportunity to work quietly by myself after the hustle, bustle and intensity of a hospital shift that sometimes involved life and death. This was a quiet place to reflect and think of other things, while carefully working on the specimen. I could come whenever I wanted to and work as long as I wanted. The lab was set up so that I had a work area that was always the same and whatever specimen I was working on was mine and no one else worked on another’s specimen. I had some really cool bones over the couple of years that I worked there.

Once I was working on a large specimen, and was early on in uncovering what was inside, and as I worked carefully, an animal skull started to appear. It was very exciting. The next time I came back, it was gone. One of the Paleontologists had taken it for further study because he identified it as a type of prehistoric pig and was doing his PhD thesis on that particular species and whether they had a type of bone disease at that time. It was all the buzz around the museum and how exciting it was for the paleontologist, since he needed these pig skulls for his work.

It was a great experience. They took volunteers to North Dakota every summer to help at the dig site. I just could not make that work without quitting my regular job and career as a Labor and Delivery Nurse, but I would have loved to go along.

One of the benefits of volunteering at the Science Museum was that I had free admission any time I wanted, and free Omni theatre productions. That was amazing. I went to every exhibit and I went to every new Omni show when it came out. I actually went to many of the Omni presentations multiple times. I could also get passes for my family and took my parents to a number of shows at the Omni. After my kids were born, I took them to the Science Museum multiple times per year. It was a great winter activity in Minnesota and I liked it just as much as they did.

I would always point out the lab that I had worked in a few years earlier and they thought it was pretty cool that I had helped to dig dinosaur bones. I even made pretend dinosaur digs for them and even brought it to their schools a couple of times. I boiled and bleached some cow bones I got from the meat market and then placed them into metal pans and poured a mixture of sand and plaster over them, so that one had to use tools to get them out, but it was not too difficult so that the younger kids could help. I gave them safety glasses and some small tools and they were able to have a pretend Dinosaur dig. I think I had as much fun with that as the kids.

One of my most fun stories is when I brought a pretend dinosaur dig to school for my son’s kindergarten class. I had it all set out and the teacher and students were very excited. The teacher was so nice and patient. She was asking the kids about what they knew about dinosaurs and they were eager to tell her about all of the things they had read. Not to be outdone, one of the boys insisted that he had not only read about dinosaurs, but that his grandpa owned a live pterodactyl. It flew around his house, but he put it in a cage when they came over so that it did not try to pick them up with its talons. The teacher was speechless, but then said is that a real story or a pretend story. Of course he insisted it was real, so she politely just moved on to something else. Smart teacher.

When I was volunteering at the museum I would walk around on breaks and talk with other volunteers. It is one of those places where each time you go you see new things or notice things you did not notice before. They had other volunteers in various areas and I remember one particular incident where I was looking at a strange instrument called an Angklung, originally used in Indonesia, as I understood it. The other volunteer went to great lengths to explain its origins and at that time he was allowed to demonstrate how it worked. It was a beautiful instrument making the most interesting sounds of clicking and yet it had a musical quality to it from the ringing of the bamboo.

Years later, when I was dating my husband he took me to a concert done by Andreas Vollenweider. This was in the eighties and the New Age sound was all the rage. Andreas was from Switzerland and made the most romantic and beautiful music ever. His music is actually still quite popular because it has such a unique sound. It is mostly instrumental and he plays an electro acoustic harp and is backed up by talented musicians who play multiple instruments, including some interesting percussion instruments from all over the world. As I sat at the concert, letting his beautiful sounds wash over, he played a song that made me sit up in my chair. The sounds were so unique; I knew right away his percussion section had an Angklung. It was absolutely beautiful. It was so odd to make that connection so many years later. I still listen to Andreas and the song I heard at the concert with the Angklung is still one of my favorites. He uses the Angklung in many songs on that particular album, but no other song features that Indonesian instrument like that one. When I listen to it now, it reminds me of my past and of my good memories from the Science Museum.

I only volunteered at the science museum for a very short time. I think it was less then two years, but it is amazing how that short time had such an impact on me. I took my family on trips to see fossils and dinosaur digs on our family vacations, and I had my kids at the Science Museum and museums like it many times. It is funny how that very short time from my past had such a great impact on my experiences. Had I not volunteered, I would not have learned about the Angklung and I would not have known so much about fossils and dinosaur bones. It is interesting experiences like this that make life itself interesting. I have often said that I have never regretted the new things that I have tried in my life and the experiences that I have had. It is these experiences that have made my life interesting and full.

One Man’s Trash

June 18, 2015June 19, 2015Leave a comment

When I was three years old, my parents bought their own farm by Buckman, Minnesota, after initially living on my grandpa’s farm. The farm house at the new place was in rough shape and so they made a decision to tear it down and build a small new house for their growing family. The farm had great land, but the buildings and farm yard had been somewhat neglected over the years. They cleaned it up over the next few years, and over 30 years made it one of the nicest places in the area. They took a lot of pride in their farm.

When we first moved in the farm had what we lovingly referred to as the junk pile. It was back in a wooded area behind the barn and not visible from the house or driveway. It contained 50 years or more of discarded machinery and parts, an old car, fence posts, a sink from the turn of the century, a fish house, railroad ties, wagon wheels, hitches and harnesses for horses, old glass bottles, an old suitcase, tires, tools and the stuff went on and on. There were trails through the things, many of which where getting very overgrown by this time in the 1960’s and there was even a tree growing though the discarded car body. In hindsight it looked like the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the leaves and trees are growing over the statues and you have to swipe the green leaves away to reveal the treasures being hidden by years of jungle growth.

As we were growing up this should have been named the treasure area. We were fascinated by it. I spent a ton of time back there digging through the piles and piles and into the ground around it looking for treasures. I had a large ring where I collected all of the keys I found out there. I had glass bottles in multiple colors and I had treasures that I did not know what they were, but I kept them because they were cool. Hopefully I had a tetanus shot back then, because a lot of these treasures were rusty and some were sharp. I don’t ever remember getting hurt, but I do remember spending a lot of time looking at stuff, digging for stuff and collecting stuff. I still have some of that stuff.

On a back eighty acres on our farm, far from the farm yard was also an old farmstead sight. It was cow pasture for us, but in the 1800’s it had been a homestead for a local family. Many farmers in the 1800’s only had about 40 to 60 acres. As time went on and equipment got better, each farm could support more land. So more of the homes went away and land was sold to neighbors to increase the size of their fields. We knew little about this old homestead, other than we could see part of the foundation sticking out of the ground and the earth was all sunken around where the house used to be. A stray lilac bush stood a ways away almost as a silent tribute to a woman who had once lived there and tried to bring a little beauty to her prairie homestead. We had heard tales that the couple who had lived there traded and got along well with the local Native American tribe and in fact the woman would get a visit from the local Native Americans when she baked pie or bread and she would share it with them. I cannot remember where we had heard that or even if it was true, but it made for a really nice story to go along with the mysteries of the old homestead.

Growing up we found a lot of arrow heads in the fields all over our property and at our grandpa’s property. My mother still has a box of spear points she has collected form the farm land around there. We pulled old pottery pieces from the ground surrounding the foundation and we even found old tins and medicine bottles. I was reminded of all of these digs the other day when talking with my daughter who is studying Archeology. She is doing exactly what I was interested in back on the farm. I just did not know what to call it. I dug stuff up and I tried to figure out what some things were or were used for, and I tried to learn something about the people that had lived there. I day dreamed about it. I always wanted to know more about them. I missed my calling. I should have been an archeologist. She had said once people are messy and I love looking at their garbage from the past. I said me too.

I have always liked to read about past cultures and see their things. So it occurred to me, was it a genetic predisposition for my daughter to get her interest in digging into the past by looking at another man’s garbage, or in raising her did I make that sound interesting, or is it something that we humans all find interesting. I think we all want to know someone else’s story, especially a story from an era gone by. I would have loved to have met the young woman who planted the lilac on the prairie and gave bread and pie to the Native Americans. We make connections in this world on a daily basis with those around us, but when we dig into the earth and look to the people of the past, I feel we gain better insight into our own existence and it reminds us again to appreciate our time here on this earth. It reminds us that man has been living and loving on this earth long before us, and will hopefully continue long after us. What is important is for us to live each day to our fullest, to follow our dreams and passions and in the process to build good will, be kind and leave behind something to inspire others.

My Mom Has Skills

May 28, 2015May 28, 2015Leave a comment

My mom is one of the most competent people I know. She has never been afraid to try anything, and in any situation, she always seems to know what to do. Even though she is in her eighties, she can work her cell phone to text her children and grandchildren, and she can even send pictures. She is on Facebook and can navigate her computer better than many people who are a lot younger than her. She has really kept up with the new technology.

When I was growing up, she sewed our clothes on the farm, kept a clean house, and could bake the best bread and pie. She cared for the farm animals and her family as if she had advanced medical training. My brother once dislocated his shoulder playing Tarzan in the big barn, and when he came screaming into the house she grabbed his arm and snapped the shoulder back into place and he went back to playing. Growing up we believed she could do anything.

She has many talents, but she has always had a knack for caring for both babies and animals. After I had my first baby, she came to help me within a few hours of our return home from the hospital. Even though I had been a Labor and Delivery nurse for seven years, the baby and I were both crying within an hour of being home. Between hormones and exhaustion, I really needed her. She barely had her coat off and she sent me for a nap, while she rocked my baby to sleep. I invited her into the operating room with my husband and me for the c-section birth of my third child. We have always been close.

She is legendary with my kids when it comes to animals. They know she kills spiders with her bare hand and is not afraid of anything. My kids tell the story of one particular Thanksgiving at our house. Mom and Dad were there, and lots of relatives. The house was full and loud with pre-dinner activities. The kids were pre-teen and running around playing. While setting the table and cooking the meal, the kids accidentally let the parakeet out of its cage. It was a mild mannered bird, except if you tried to hold it. Then it was a crazy biter and they referred to it as birdzilla. They were afraid of it. Mom suggested that the kids just pick it up and put it back in its cage. They were insistent that one could not touch it, because it was a biter. My mom just laughed and told them it’s just a little bird, as she swept it up so quickly the bird did not have time to fly or know what happened. To the surprise of everyone, she had it in one hand with its little head between two fingers. The kids were in awe as she did not flinch; while it was biting her all the way back to the cage. She just talked to it in a soothing voice.

When we were growing up on the farm she cared for our farm animals, and taught us to help as we got older. She tended a large garden and we grew a lot of our own food. She was the one who almost always said yes to our pet requests. She brought home a little baby house dog for us when we were very young, and we all agreed on the name Sparky, with her help.

She brought him home and set him on the floor with us, as we sat around in a circle. I think I was only about three at the time and my sister was six and my brother was five. She told us to be very gentle and she showed us how to pet our new puppy, so as not to hurt it. She was such a good teacher. Giving us the knowledge and know how to take care of him and yet not hurt him, even if it was by accident. She showed us how to put a mother cat at ease by petting her and talking calmly to her, reassuring her that it was OK for Mom to hold her kittens and show them to us. Animals were at ease with her.

A few years later she let us get a larger outdoor farm dog when our cousin’s dog had puppies. We were convinced that the one puppy wanted to go home with us after playing with them. She made sure we were responsible to feed him. Forgetting to feed him and give him water was not an option. She made it clear that the animals depend upon us. We ended up being very close to that dog. He was never more than a few feet away from us as we played on the farm.

She and my dad still fish a lot in their boat, and she has learned to run their GPS and fish finder with great ease. She can even trouble-shoot and change settings as she needs to, depending on the lake they are on. She is good at fishing and loves traveling. She and dad have been everywhere in their RV, and she has been the navigator for them through mountains and in large cities.

My mom was as strict as she needed to be, to keep us from getting into trouble and making sure we did well in school and respected our elders. I distinctly remember my mom sending my brother and me out to weed the corn field after she caught us shooting homemade bows and arrows at the playhouse door while our sister was inside. She came and got us after an hour or so and made us promise never to do anything that dangerous again. She had to deal with a lot of shenanigans.

She had a lot of tolerance for our love of pets. Once when we were pre-teens we visited the elderly farmer next door and came back with a box covered with a towel, and carefully carried it into our kitchen. We walked very gently, and my mom had just finished putting dinner on the table and could see that we had what we thought was a treasure. She came over and asked what was in the box, knowing she probably would not like the answer. We giggled and pulled the towel off showing six puffy yellow baby geese. We told her our neighbor Lawrence had given them to us and we were going to keep them in our room. She rolled her eyes and without hesitation said you cannot keep them in your room, but she did not say we had to take them back. She told us they have to be under a warming light and she helped us set it up in our kitchen, until they were big enough to go outside. I loved those geese. They were like watch geese. They were very loud when someone drove into the yard.

Likewise she let us keep a horse from that same neighbor when we convinced her that it kept coming to our farm because it was lonely, because Lawrence told us he was getting too old to ride it and he said we could have it. I had my own calf every year to bottle feed and we had chickens, baby pigs, and once she let us get a chinchilla. She helped us nurse a pigeon back to health after it hit a window and hurt its wing. She helped bandage its wing and showed us how to feed it oats until it was healed enough to fly. Mom taught us to milk a cow and how to pick chicken eggs. She taught us how to give medicine and vaccinations to calves, and once in a particularly cold rainy spring, she brought a newborn calf into the house to save it. It was in bad shape and would have died had she not dried it out by putting it into a large box and warmed it up with an old bonnet hair drier.

Mom could fix our ouchies with a kiss, and she could fix the bailer when it broke. She always looked good, and even though she had all of us, we were clean and well behaved in church on Sundays. Her house was clean and we were well fed. She accomplished it all and kept up with the farm. Looking back on it, I do not know how she did it all.

Mom was good to us in tolerating our curiosity, and she has always been good with her grandchildren in teaching them kindness and care of animals. My mom taught us to be gentle and to care for soft, small helpless things in this world that depend upon us. We all have called her often over the years for advice on kids, puppies, baking, fixing things, and just to talk when we were stressed.

I have only fond memories of growing up on the farm with her, all of us running barefoot, playing with the animals and eating tomatoes right out of the garden. Mom showed no fear in how she approached any project and we have tried to show her same confidence and competence in our endeavors. She taught us independence, self reliance and she had confidence in us that we could accomplish anything.

Cool Change

May 21, 2015May 21, 20151 Comment

Many people may not know this about me, but I sing in my car on the way to and from work, and back and forth to Court, and pretty much any time I am in the car. If my employees knew this, they would have made me a soothing playlist long ago, to set the mood on the way to work, before I hit the doors. I should not admit this, but normally I am a pretty type A personality at work. It is just the type of work that I do, with lots of deadlines and demands. We are a very productive bunch. Being a litigation attorney is not a relaxing, stress-less job, so setting the mood with music would help.

I have always liked music. Back in the 1970’s I had one of those round plastic radios that you could carry around and also hang on your bike. I got it for Christmas and I still have it. The signal was so bad back when I listened to the greatest hits sent via the air waves from Little Falls to our farm in Buckman. Even though the signal was terrible and scratchy at best, I listened to it all of the time. Luckily the quality and choices for music has improved significantly. I can put whatever I want on my iPod and play it in the car and on our boat or wherever. I listen to some of those same songs that I first heard on my little red round Panasonic.

Even though I am from a very musical family, I was not born with that talent. My parents were good about giving us a variety of experiences and seeing what we liked, whether it was sports or music or theater. My older sister Kathy was very talented on the piano and the guitar, and she had the coveted honor of being asked to play in church, so my parents maybe thought I had talent too. Kathy was very good and still sings in her own church choir and plays the piano.

I took three years of piano lessons when I was young, and I think after three years of piano taught by the Catholic school Nun, who played the organ in church, she politely broke it to my parents that maybe their money would be better spent elsewhere then on lessons for me. I was totally fine with that because, after all, I was such a tomboy that I did not want to stay in the house long enough to do any practicing. I would rather bottle feed a calf in the pasture or play with the dogs and cats than learn piano. Despite my lack of talent, I loved to listen to music and I still do.

Sometimes I select the music by my mood and other times I select the music to change my mood. Now, I listen to everything from 1970’s music, to pop, rap and piano music by George Winston. No matter what I listen to, it does affect my mood. I have the theme from Miami Vice on my iPod and, I will admit that listening to it on the boat while we are driving fast brings me right back to that opening scene from the show. Those guys were so cool in their Hawaiian shirts, driving a super cool boat, super fast on the Miami shores with the wind in their hair. Also, who cannot listen to Phillip Phillips’ song Home and not be put in a calm and loving mood, and on the other hand NEVER listen to Led Zeppelin’s song called, Rock and Roll while driving. You will speed and you will get a ticket! I dare you to try.

Everyone knows what kind of mood Barry White songs put you in. (Insert sexy growling noise), but no matter what your favorite jam, songs are poetry and the lyrics and beat affect our soul.

When our kids were young and we went on multiple driving vacations we referred to the song Born to be Wild as the vacation song and played it often and loud. The kids loved it with the windows rolled down and singing that crazy song and it made everyone in the mood for an adventure. There are many times like that in my life that we developed a “theme song.” When we went hiking in the deserts of Utah, our song was Hotel California by the Eagles. Of course it starts with “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair.”

Interestingly last year when Joe and I were in Costa Rica and decided to move forward with a sale of our family home and find a place on the lake now that we were empty nesters, we had the song by Little River Band called Cool Changes in our heads. We had lived in our family home and raised our kids for 25 years. As the song goes, “Now that my life is so prearranged, I know that it’s time for a cool change.” We love that song and it has been our theme song to make this exciting and yet terrifying change to a new home on the lake, just the two of us. We are aways from retirement yet but we have always loved the water and decided that there was no reason to wait. We couldlive on the lake and still work to retirement.

I played Cool Changes when I needed some bravery as we signed things to put our home up for sale and to buy our new one. I needed it while I emptied closets full of toys and childhood memories, and we all made decisions on what to move and what to store or donate. After all it is not easy leaving a place that has been your home for 25 years. Our home held so many happy family memories and good times.

We had three acres in the woods of Blaine on the edge of a large preserve, so while we technically lived in the city it felt like the woods. It was home for us in every sense of that warm and comforting word. By the time the day arrived where we moved our possessions out, we were so ready for our Cool Change that there were no tears. We know that while it was our home for so many years, we always know that home is where we are and where our kids and family come to relax, talk, play, laugh, consult, cry, rest, eat, drink and be LOVED.

Now that we are all moved in and settled in ourroutines, we love the lake life and each time Little River Band’s Cool Change comes on the playlist, I am grateful that we had the bravery to give something new a try. It is always easier to keep things the same, but it is good for the soul to change things up. We had a dream of living on the water and we made that happen. As the song says, We May Never Pass this Way Again. Chase your dreams.

Freezer Roulette

February 12, 2015March 10, 2015Leave a comment

February is clean out the freezer month at our house. Over the year, and especially over the holidays, we buy too much food and stock that freezer as if we are planning for a disaster that will keep us from the store for months.

Of course that never happens, but we stock up anyway. Each night in February we pick something to get rid of, something that is either getting old or looking old and needs to be eaten before it gets too freezer burned and goes bad. Sometimes it is the last two corn dogs in the large box that is mostly now empty, or it is the venison burger with the processing date rubbed off and unreadable. Yeah, that one went right to the garbage.

Each night it is like playing Russian roulette with dinner. Will we have the freezer burned beans with one chicken Kiev (which you know we will fight over) and some leftover meatballs, or the shrimp that looks like it has a little white beard on each one with the two sausages left from Christmas and the frozen stir fry vegetable blend that, lets face it, no one likes.

At our house this has always been a great month to lose weight. None of the food is very good, but you know what Mom used to say, “waste not, want not.” So on we go dreading February for not only the bad weather and boring activities in the cold tundra of Minnesota, but the nightly freezer roulette and its inevitable heartburn aftermath.

Fun Living

Stories by Joan Quade

Category: Daily Life