Frozen

Frozen is a different kind of Disney movie.  I watched it the other night and was impressed that for once, the true love that saved the day was (sorry, spoiler alert) was the love of one sister for another sister. Yay!  Sisterly love rules!  The princess in this story is awkward and clumsy, brave and adventuresome, assertive and outspoken.  She is just loveable. This was a great Disney movie.  The art, the music, everything was top notch.  And in this show the princess had both a mother and a father.  Usually the mother is missing.  In this story the parents are not wise and not caring though.  They offer poor advice that messes up the sisters for years.  It's times like this that I miss having small children.  Great movies like Frozen are even better when you watch it with a child.

Telephone Troubles

Some unknown woman has been calling me repeatedly and causing problems.  This started on Friday as I was busy cooking dinner for my children.  She called three times in succession.  The first time she asked for a female first name and my last name.  She pronounced my last name correctly.  I informed her she had the wrong number.  She called back immediately so I didn't pick up.  She left a message asking for a different female first name and my last name.  And then she giggled before she hung up.  The phone rang again and I was a little miffed when I picked up the phone and it turned out to be someone I knew.  And then she called again and I didn't answer and she just left a giggle on the answering machine.  The next time she called was at 4:40 a.m. on Sunday.  I answered expecting bad news. The same woman was calling and she asked for a female first name.  I recognized her voice from Friday.  I angrily said it was 4 o'clock in the morning and she had the wrong number.  She giggled!  I hung up.  She called right back.  She left a message.  She said, "Did Larry watch the Twilight Zone like I told him to?"  And then she giggled.  Her giggle was super annoying at this time of the morning. My dang answering machine beeps every 15 seconds until I listen to the message so I had to get out of bed and play the message.  She called again at 4:43 and I just picked up the phone and hung it up on her.  I dialed *57 to trace the call in the morning which costs me a dollar but if she calls 3 times I can have her number blocked.  She didn't call back until Sunday afternoon when I was out. Two of the the three messages were hang ups. The third message said, "Hi. This is Timmy's wife. Um, I want a baby doll.  And you guys have lots of them laying around the house.  Just to borrow until I get my own.  I am going to buy them at the antique shop.  Just a couple. You know Tim was laughing at me.  It's not even funny. Then I explained that you have all these dolls sitting around the house.  It's perfectly natural for a woman to like them.  You start out as a little girl liking them.  Not me though  I had a little brother.  Ever since I was 2 and a half.  So plastic couldn't measure up.  Bye now."  After hearing that message I am convinced that this woman has problems.  She might be mentally ill or she might have dementia but she has some kind of problem.  Poor soul.  I couldn't call *57 after the call on Sunday because I don't know for sure that she was the last number who called.  Someone else might have called after her and didn't leave a message and I don't want to trace the number unless I know for sure it was her.  I want to be compassionate because someday I might be the forgetful one leaving strange messages.  I sure hope I don't call anyone at 4:40 on a Sunday morning.  But I get what she is saying.  I had a little brother too. Plastic doesn't measure up to little brothers.  Even with her brain problems she has profound thoughts.

The Last Kayak Trip Of The Season?

The weather was too nice to stay home tonight so I went out on Round Lake.

I was greeted by red winged blackbirds calling, "Ta Wee!"  Will this be the last time I hear them calling until they return next spring?

The water was smooth making for beautiful reflections.

It was so quiet and peaceful that I noticed ring billed gulls by seeing their reflections before I saw them in the air.

The air smelled fresh and clear.

I paddled right toward the sun.

There is my car waiting for me on shore.

Will this be the last kayak trip of the season?

Harvest Day

Lots of leaves on my lawn meant I needed to mow and bag up the lawn.  Before I did that I had to empty my compost piles.  But before I did that I had to harvest most of what is left in the garden including carrots,

Red kohlrabi,

and blue and yukon gold potatoes.

My Eulogy

I went to a funeral this week of a woman who died too young.  Her coworkers and friends and family spoke about her in glowing terms.  This woman was a force of nature.  She made an entrance when she came into a room.  It's hard for me to imagine that her energy can possibly be extinguished. Her dedication to her work, her friends and to her family was abundant.  I wonder if anyone will speak of me as highly when it is my turn to go.  And what can I do about that?  Should I cultivate new friends who are good public speakers, look good in black, and can charm an assembly of people with funny stories?  Or should I plod on living my life and appreciating the little things like she did?  I hope my coworkers will say kind word about me at my retirement, not my funeral.  This woman died before she was able to retire.  I guess we never know when we are making an impact on someone.  So if you notice someone has cute hair today, give them a compliment.  Don't wait.  They may style their hair worse tomorrow so off that compliment as soon as it comes into your head.  Cherish your relationships.  Don't spend your time chasing fame and fortune.  Fame and fortune won't come and speak at your funeral.  Life is short.  I learned that lesson again this week.   

Turkey Visit

On this day where we are turning away from the sun, nine turkeys came to visit my chickens.  The wild turkeys came from the south and walked on the east side of the coop gobbling up the grape vine leaves that have started turning from green into maroon.  How nice to see a poultry gathering as dawn breaks on the fall equinox.  Too bad they were camera shy.  As soon as I stepped onto the deck with my camera they vanished.  Poof!  All evidence of their visit is gone except the lovely images I have in my head.

The Other Story

Tatiana De Rosnay wrote Sarah's Key.  I liked that book very much and that is why I picked up The Other Story.  If I had read this book first I don't think I would have read Sarah's Key because it just wasn't as compelling.  In this story the main character is a 20 something French man who can't put down his blackberry and can't stop checking his Facebook page to see how many likes he got on his last photo. He's not very likeable.  He's had a huge success with his first novel and everything is been downhill since then.  The story takes place over a long weekend at a posh resort on a Tuscan island in Italy.  In the end this character does something that makes us like him more.  And although this story is readable, it is no where near the quality of writing I read in Sarah's Key.

All Connected

I had a physically challenging weekend with biking, lifting, carrying and toting.  Despite asking my body to perform above and beyond the normal call of duty, I wasn't in a lot of pain relatively speaking.  Today I went swimming after work.  I reach forward with my right arm, left arm, right arm, left arm, kick and breathe.  Repeat over and over again.  All that reaching seems to work out the kinks and knots. I push the water below and behind me.  I feel less like separate joints in various states of discomfort and more like one whole organism.  Swimming exercises the whole me including my lungs and my heart.  Sharp edges are sanded smooth with each lap back and forth.  Right arm, left arm, right arm, left arm and breath and kick making my body whole again.  Shoulders and hips connect my back to my extremities.  Other exercise doesn't have the same body connecting benefits.

Long Time Ambition

Thirty years ago I listened as my Grandmother told my Mother about a certain relative who biked all the way to Stillwater from Saint Paul.  The point my Grandmother was trying to make was the irresponsibility of biking farther than you can get home.  This relative called for a ride home from Stillwater.  What I remember is that she BIKED ALL THE WAY TO STILLWATER!  I wanted to do that someday.

Today I biked all the way to Stillwater.  22 miles.  I biked 22 miles today.  I borrowed an awesome orange bike from my nephew.

And I got a ride home.  The ride home was arranged ahead of time.

We had the awesome Gateway Trail to bike which I'm sure is much nicer than what was available 30 years ago.

Much of the trail was shaded.  We saw squirrels, snakes and a turtle on the trail.

Most of it was flat and easy to bike.  A few overpasses challenged my thighs.

We had a fun day biking and a great lunch at the Freighthouse.

My legs aren't sore today.  My rear end isn't sore.  My arms aren't sore.   But my pinky finger is still numb and I stopped biking over 6 hours ago.  I never would have guessed my pinky finger would be the body part that would suffer.  I guess I was leaning too hard on the handlebars.

Eggplant Parmigianino

Here is another recipe inspired by my CSA allotment.  It was, how you say, delizioso!

The sauce is why it is so tasty.  I had to move the sauce to an orange bowl so I could use my favorite cast iron frying pan to brown the eggplant.  With sauce this awesome even fried cardboard would have tasted good.

Tomato sauce and cheese on top?  Yum!

I've had this dish in restaurants but it never tasted as good as what I made tonight.

Ingredients:  1 large eggplant peeled and cut into 1/2 inch slices, 2 tsp. salt, 1 extra large onion chopped, 1/2 colored bell pepper (mine was purple) diced, 20 crumbled leaves of basil that have been air dried this week, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp dried thyme, 3 TB olive oil, 2 roma tomatoes and 1 slicing tomato diced, 2 6 oz cans tomato paste, 1 TB honey, 1 1/2 tsp lemon-pepper seasoning, 4 minced garlic cloves, 2 eggs slightly beaten, black pepper,  1 1/2 cups dried bread crumbs, 2 TB butter, 8 cups grated mozzarella cheese

Directions:  Place eggplant slices in a colander; sprinkle with salt.  Let stand 30 minutes.  Meanwhile in a large skilled saute the onions, bell pepper, basil, oregano and thyme in oil until the onions are tender.  Add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, honey and lemon pepper.  Bring to a boil,  Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.  Add garlic.  Simmer 10 more minutes.  Rinse eggplant slices and dry on a clean towel.  Pat dry.  In a shallow bowl combine eggs with black pepper to taste. Place bread crumbs in another shallow bowl.  Dep eggplant into eggs then coat with crumbs.  Melt butter in a frying pan.  Add half of the eggplant slices and brown each side for about 3 minutes.  Do the same to the other half of the eggplant.  In a 9x13 inch greased baking pan, set the eggplant slices down.  Top each slice with a generous scoop of the delicious sauce and a handful of mozzarella cheese.  When the bottom layer of the pan is full, stack the eggplant slices on a second layer. Continue until all the eggplant, sauce and cheese is in the pan.  Bake at 375 for 35 minutes or until bubbly.

Obviously this recipe takes a lot of time which explains why my dinner was delayed until 7:30 tonight but it was worth the wait.  DELIZIOSO!

The Postmistress

I read The Postmistress by Sarah Blake.  The postmistress works in a small town in Massachusetts near Cape Cod in the early 1940's.  She is a minor character in the novel but vital because she is the link between the major characters.  One of the major characters is Frankie.  Frankie happens to be a journalist working in England during the war with Arthur R. Murrow.  Past fiction and part history, I learned much about air raid shelters in London during the bombings from Germany.  Frankie happens to meet an American doctor one day in London who turns out happens to be from the same town as the postmistress.  I don't want to give too much away but I will say that this novel illustrates the strange disconnect people have during a war.  People in Massachusetts go along their ordinary lives as if nothing is happening in war torn Europe just like people in Minnesota go on with their ordinary lives as if American men and women are not dying in Afghanistan.  Sarah Blake uses 1942 as a way to open our eyes to what is happening in 2014 in a very captivating fashion.

End Of A Season

I believe summer is over.  There is a nip in the air and, as you can see in the photo near the Anoka library, color in some of the trees.  I wanted this summer to be great.  I wanted this summer to make up for the summer of last year when I was recovering from a leg injury.  I believe the summer of 2014 was a great one for me.  The weather was good although rainy.  We had some heat but not too much.  Stormy weather was at a minimum.  I can't remember hearing the tornado sirens other than on tornado awareness day.  I had a really good mixture of activities.  I went camping 3 weekends and a full week.  So I had plenty of time sleeping on the ground.  I went on a couple nice, long bike rides.  I went kayaking quite a few times as well.  The warm weekends in early September helped achieve all these great adventures.  The garden was good but not great.  I haven't harvested the carrots, potatoes, kohlrabi or gourds yet but I got plenty of jalapeno peppers.  The sunflowers, as usual, were ruined by the deer.  This year the deer teased me by waiting until the sunflower was 3 feet tall before biting the top off of it.  I grew castor beans hoping for a "Jack in the Beanstalk" type of giant plant.  But my castor beans are about knee high.  In any case, it was a good summer.  I hate to see it end but it was a good summer.  I enjoyed it very much.

I Agree!

Turnip Sweet Potato Jalapeno Soup

I could call this soup "CSA Surprise."  I have never bought a turnip in my entire life.  But I got one today with my CSA allottment and decided to make soup out of it.  It's tasty too!

Ingredients:  one turnip, peeled and diced, one sweet potato peeled and diced, one onion peeled and diced, 2 sections of garlic peeled and diced, one pepper diced ( In included the seeds which makes it spicier than if I had removed the seeds), 2 TB butter, 3 cups water, 2 cubes vegie broth, 3/4 cup whole milk, salt and pepper to taste, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 2 fresh basil leaves, one handful fresh parsley, cayenne pepper to taste.

 jalapeno

Melt butter and saute onion, pepper, and garlic.  Add water, turnip, sweet potato and vegie broth and simmer for 30 minutes until vegetables are soft.  Add spices.  Puree ingredients with immersion blender,  Add milk and stir until warm again.  Serve.

I never thought a turnip would taste so good.  Raw it has a similar taste and texture to kohlrabi.  

Measure Twice

I started this deck project 14 months ago and I'm still at it.  Offspring #2 helped me put up deck stair railings and balusters.  Many thanks to Offspring #2. She is awesome at carpentry.  She is a master driller and a competent screw driver. Some times we get the giggles while working to the point where neither one of us can breathe. We have four sections to complete and we got 3 done.  This involves cutting the plastic wood at and angle and attaching it to the posts.  We do it carefully because this involves not only the length of the wood but the angle as well.  We figured the angle to be about 33 degrees, or 31.6 or 32.  Yeah, about that.  We held the boards carefully where we wanted them to be.  And we marked them with permanent marker exactly where we wanted the cut to be. Then we carried the wood down to my miter saw.  The miter saw is great.  This saw cuts through the wood like butter.  We held the wood to the miter saw and lined up the saw exactly where we had marked.  And then moved it an inch longer.  We cut 9 boards in total and in 8 of the 9 boards, an approximate inch longer than what we had measured turned out to be exactly right.  Only the last board needed to be cut exactly where we had measured it.  This project just about maxes out my carpentry abilities.  By the time we finished the railings on the deck it self I had become a master at it.  Stair railings are a whole new ball of wax.  I have one section of stair railing left to complete.  After that we need to attach the fascia board.  I have no idea how to attach the fascia board but I'm not going to worry about it until the railings are done.  What I do know for sure is that my next project is going to be a whole lot easier  and quicker than this one.

Am I A Creeper Because I Keep Binoculars In My Car?

We were driving around Minneapolis the other day.  As we drove around Lake Calhoun I caught sight of a wind surfer speeding across the white capped waves.  I was fascinated.  I pulled over to a parking spot along the lake and grabbed the binoculars I keep under my car seat.  "Mom!  Don't be a creeper," says offspring #2.  Am I a creeper for having binoculars in the car?  In that case, all twitchers (bird watchers) are creepers.  And I guess I can see why someone would think that. Seeing a person seated in a car looking through binoculars would draw suspicion.  Someone might think I was a private detective. I focused my binoculars on the wind surfers.  There were three wind surfers.  One had a red sail and was the fastest.  As he turned direction, he gingerly stepped around the sail and moved to the other side.  That turned his craft from west to east and he went zooming so fast over the waves he cut through the water like the prow of a motor boat.  The blue sailed surfer wasn't as fast and he had to get off the craft to turn direction.  The yellow sailed surfer had a smaller body and was either a female or a child.  The yellow surfer was the slowest.  All 3 surfers wore black wet suits.  I enjoyed watching their adventure with my binoculars.  I think if you're going to go wind surfing on a lake in the middle of Minneapolis you must expect some people would observe you. The next day I saw the Star Tribune was there and had taken a photo of one of the wind surfers and posted it in the paper.  So who is the creeper now?

Fairy Garden Re-Do

I had two overgrown fairy gardens.  The plants were too large for such a shallow pot and were looking tired.  So I took them apart, washed the pots, rocks, and decorations and repotted them.

I bought a tiny succulent because it was so lively and lime colored.

I bought a strawberry looking plant for beauty.

I took some moss from my yard because I have plenty and it's cheaper than buying moss.

And I put them all together in the pot, including the blue footed booby I bought in the Galapagos Islands.

What a fun project for a Saturday afternoon.

Actually German and Polish Heritage

Blame

My book club read Blame by Michelle Huneven.  People liked it. I liked it too. The story was a bit confusing at first because the prologue is written by a character named Joey. Joey is a young girl and reading her story I came to like her a lot.  But then in Chapter 1 Joey isn't heard about again.  By the time you read about Joey you've almost forgotten she was in the prologue.  The story is about Patsy.  Patsy has a PhD and teaches history at a college.  She is also an alcoholic.  Her driving license has been suspended.  When she wakes up from a drinnking bender in jail she learns that two people have been killed by her car and she was found in it.  How Patsy copes with the fact that she has killed a young mother and daughter is the basis for the story. Patsy tries to change.  After two years in prison she goes to 90 AA meetings in 90 days.  Can a person atone for such a sin?  Even if she spends the rest of her life repenting for her mistake will it ever be enough?  The very nature is blame is examined in this book.  Despite not hearing enough about Joey, I would recommend this book.

Sudden Onset of Emotion

As I drove to work this morning I listened to a story on CD.  This story is set in London in the year 1941.  The Germans are dropping bombs on the city.  Londoners go about their business during the day and in the evening, as the sun sets, gather together in underground bomb shelters.  They sleep sitting upright on metal benches, fully dressed, and leaning against strangers.  They breathe in the fetid air.  In the morning they wait for the "all clear" signal before stretching and getting up to leave the shelters.  One 7 year old boy at the bomb shelter was waiting for his mother.  She told him to wait there for a minute while she went to get his Grandmother.  But she didn't come back all night.  A woman walked him to his house so he could look for his mother but his house was gone.  So that was the frame of mind I was in when I came up to the Main Street bridge over Highway 10.  I saw a fire department ladder truck. The ladder was fully extended and suspended below the ladder was a United States flag.  Firefighters stood on the bridge.  I gave them a thumbs up from the passing lane.  The semi beside me honked the air horn.  The firefighters saw my thumbs up and waved back to me.  And suddenly tears are streaming down my face.  The sudden onset of emotion took me by surprise.  It's true that I cry easy.  I cry at commercials.  I cry when I laugh.  I cry watching some movies and at every Hallmark special show on Sunday evenings.  Today I cried at a bridge.  It was more than the bridge.  It was the flag and the fire fighters and the wave and the memory of things that happened on 9/11 that set me tears off.  

 

 

Birthday Trip to Como

Offspring #2's birthday today.

Join me on a photo tour of the conservatory where the lily pads are huge

and the bodies of the statues are admirable.

Where the temperature is warm and the foliage lush.

And green berries grow on a bright orange bract.

Everything is so beautiful here.

Pink water lilies hide the koi.

Yellow roses smell pretty sweet.

The whole room smells beautiful.

Purple roses too.

Orchids.

This white orchid looks like an alien with teeth.

Violet stemmed taro.

I think this one was called macaw plant.

These always remind me of my Mom who called them little boys.  Nice way to spend a birthday!