Water

One of my favorite activities in the spring is ditching the driveway.  My gravel driveway fills up with water.  I have puddles 15 feet long, side by side, one for each tire track.  A good volume of water collects in these puddles and it's best to drain it off before the ground melts.  If I don't remove the water I'm in mud up to the hub caps.  And it's impossible to get the mail without getting my feet wet. So I dig little ditches to drain the puddles to the west side of the driveway where ephemeral ponds form every year.   Dirt shovel in hand I pick the most likely lowest spot and dig out a little trench.  I move aside the snow and dirt to form a rivulet.  I made a great one today because the water gushed off the driveway faster than you can drain a bath tub.

So satisfying!  The water formed ripples so I moved aside the materials so the water could drain faster.  An old oak leaf floats down and causes an obstruction.  Have to remove that!  Then I ditched another ravine between the tire tracks so I could drain both puddles at once.  Now the water flows even faster. There is something about diverting the water flow and focusing on the water drainage speed that I find is as mesmerizing and relaxing as riding a motorcycle.  I had other chores to do outside like collecting maple sap and cleaning out chicken runs and emptying the compost bucket.  None of those are nearly as much fun as ditching the driveway. 

A Great Saturday Morning

I had the best Saturday morning today.  I had signed up for a bird walk at a local county park.  I didn't have high hopes for this walk.  Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees and woodpeckers is all I thought we would see.  Six of us gathered for this walk.  Our leader took us on the trails so I was glad I wore boots.  The weather was warm enough that I didn't need to wear a hat.  The sun actually felt warm and there wasn't any wind to speak of.  As we walked from the parking area toward the river we saw cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and nuthatches.  Canadian geese flew over us.  Robins chirped in the trees but we could barely hear them because the snow was so loud under our feet.  The sun made the snow sparkle like millions of diamonds.  A northern shrike (!) posed at the top of a tree. That was cool.  I was glad I came now.  A few crows flew by.  Suddenly I heard that familiar call of the red shouldered hawk.  One sat on a power line pole and the other flew toward the river.  This park is only a couple miles north of my house.  Could this be MY red shouldered hawk?  We saw hairy, downy and pileated woodpeckers.  We were walking on top of the snow pack.  As we looked at the footprints of people who walked this way before us we could see that sometimes they broke through the icy shell.  Those holes were deep too - way past the knee.  I hoped I would stay on top of the snow shell.  We heard the trumpeter swans before we saw them.  Five swans flew right over our heads while two swans kept fighting for the lead position.

We walked along the path.  Our leader was taking us on a right turn when a woman in the group said, "I saw something with large wings glide into those trees!"  She said it with much excitement.  So we didn't go right, we went straight.  We walked for 10 minutes without seeing anything except some blue jays acting all agitated.  Then we came upon a barred owl sitting in a tree being dive bombed by blue jays.  He or she was awesome!!!!  As I watched the owl through my binoculars I could see the blue jays actually strike the owl on the head.  They would not leave it alone.  Blue jays are bossy birds.  A chickadee jumped from branch to branch within inches of the owl and didn't mind it being there.  We made sure everyone in the group could see the owl.  Then we let the photographer of the group go ahead and get a better picture.  As he moved forward the owl swiveled it's head between us and the photographer.  Then the owl let loose a spray of whitewash and leaned forward.  We knew it was ready to take off.  The owl flew to another tree thirty feet away and settled there.  We watched for another five minutes until we thought we'd leave the owl in peace.  Right next to the river I saw a bug slowly crawling across the snow.

A sign of spring!  A winged creature walking away from the river toward I don't know where or why.  You can see he is about to go across a human footprint.  Our leader showed me where the red shouldered hawks have their nest.  As we walked up the hill a big bird loudly took off and flew low in the trees.  It was a turkey!  Normally I see turkeys strolling, not flying.  We progressed to a prairie area.  The northern shrike was back.  We watched the shrike hunt.  The shrike stared at a spot from a tree.  It moved to another branch to stare at the same area.  Then it moved to another tree to see the same spot from a new angle.  We watched as the shrike flew down and sat on the ground for a minute.  The shrike came up empty footed; it must have missed.  In the distance we heard the sound of sand hill cranes.  As we walked back to the parking area we saw an immature bald eagle soaring while the pair of red shouldered hawks circled the sky with it.  We saw that the pussy willows are out. Some parts of the path were icy and difficult to walk across.  At one point I had a space of five feet of grass to walk across.  What a luxury to walk on grass that was not only silent but not slippery too.  One of the red shouldered hawks flew over us carrying red oak leaves in it's mouth - a definite sign of breeding behavior.  The last bird of the hike was a red bellied woodpecker.  We tried to see woodcock by gathering near a sunny hill side and playing the woodcock call on an iPad.  No luck with that technique.  I really enjoyed my morning.  The other people on the hike were enthusiastic and fun companions.  We had a long discussion about Grizzly Adams which was a television series in the 1970's.  We predicted that with the warm weather forecast for tomorrow the ice on the river would rise, break up, and flow away.  Bird watchers are fun people.

Hoot Hoot! I Passed!

Last night, after almost two hours of study, I passed my owl certification test.  I need to pass this before I do our annual owl route near Pierz.  This is the fourth, maybe fifth year that I've done this route and taken this test.  You'd think it would be easier.  I guess it is easier than the first year but it still took quite a bit of time last night.  More than I thought it would anyway.  I listened to all ten owl species calls first.  The ten species are the barn, barred, great gray, great horned, short eared, long eared, northen hawk, boreal, Eastern screech and northern saw-whet owl.  I heard them all twice.  I wrote down what I thought they sounded like.  The Northern Hawk owl, for example, sounds to me like a fast "Oooo" repeated 18 times like a bouncing ball followed by the sound of a slow gunshot.  Then I took the test.  The test involves matching the ten owls to 14 different sound clips.  It was hard!  We also had to learn the snipe, the woodcock and the ruffed grouse/spruce grouse sounds because it's easy to get them mixed up.  The thing about owl sounds is that each owl makes at least three different noises.  And the test doesn't always call for the most common calls.  Frankly I never could hear the sound of the boreal owl on the clips.  One sound clip sounded entirely silent except for one croak of a green frog.  I remember the loose banjo sound of a green frog.  And I guessed that was the boreal owl because of the process of elimination.  And I guessed right.  I didn't pass the first time I took the test.  I got two wrong.  And I didn't pass the second time either - only one wrong.  I only have five chances to take the test.  But I passed the third time which was good because it was getting close to 9 p.m. and I was tired of listening to owls.  I also have to pass a frog certification test and I think frogs are easier.  The frog test is hard because you never know if the answer to a sound clip is one frog, two frogs, three frogs or even four species of frogs but at least frogs generally have only one call.  Well, I guess the leopard frog and a long, slow snore followed by a chuckle but for the most part frog calls are more distinctive than owls.  If you want to hear the sounds of the Minnesota owls, go to this website: 

 http://www.hawkridge.org/research/springowl.html

Pheasant!

I've had my eyes and ears open for flying migrants from the south.  Other people have seen great blue herons and red winged blackbirds and horned larks.  I haven't though.  Coming down Highway 10 though, at a spot near a huge wetland where I usually have my eyes up at the eagle nest, I happened to glance down at the shrubs that grow closest to the highway.  And under that shrub, walking around in the thicket, was a proud Mrs. Ring Necked Pheasant.  Pheasants don't migrate but I was happy to see it.

Gulp

Mary Roach is a modern science writer and the author of Gulp:  Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.  The book was fascinating from top to bottom.  She started at the top, the mouth, the chewing, the tasting, the bolus formation, and the swallowing.  She goes on to the esophagus and the stomach.  She tackles questions like why doesn't the stomach eat itself?  What would it feel like to have stomach acid spread on the skin of your wrist?  Why is crunchy food so appealing?  Even more interesting was the small intestine where the villi absorb most all of the nutrients and the peristaltic action moves things along.  Some animals eat things twice.  Gross, am I right?  If rats, for example, aren't allowed to eat their own body products, they don't gain enough weight to maintain life.  And the most expensive coffee you can buy is the coffee made from the beans that have passed through the civet, a small wild cat in Indonesia.  That is correct, someone picks out the coffee beans from the cat box and sells it for huge amounts of money.  And then we get to the large intestine and rectum.  Fascinating.  Stories about "hooping" (smuggling cell phones, drugs and office supplies into prisons via the body's natural pocket) followed by the miraculous abilities of the anus.  This sensitive body part can tell, with almost 100% accuracy, the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas.  A handy talent for us, right?  The process of elimination is as complicated as the process of swallowing - a mixture of muscle tension and muscle relaxation that has to be well coordinated to work properly.  So think of that the next time someone calls you an a$$hole because it just might be a compliment.  And then the story of Elvis, the poor man, who died in the act of responding to nature's call.  That is not how I want to die. Suffering from constipation most of his life, he ended up with a mega colon.  At his autopsy they found he was impacted the entire length of his descending colon and half of his transverse colon.  Four months earlier he had a medical procedure in which he was given barium.  At the autopsy they found that barium was still there.  The large colon, which removes most of the liquids from our digestive tract, had turned that barium into cement.  The poor, poor man.  Mary Roach says constipation is way worse than diarrhea.  And wouldn't you know, there is an inexpensive, easy, drug - free cure (not treatment but cure) to a common cause of diarrhea.  The medical community and especially the medical insurance industry is not behind this cure because it's icky.  So even though fecal transplants have been used successfully since 1958 insurance won't cover the minimal costs.  At the end of the book she says she underwent a colonoscopy without sedatives so she could get a full view of her organs.  Crazy you say?  I admire her for it.  Maybe I'll try it myself.  I highly recommend this book and this author.

Separation Anxiety

At lunch we were talking about separation anxiety.  Some times children are so attached to their parents (mothers) that they can't let go to get on the school bus or enter a classroom. I used to have a neighbor who's four year old daughter clung to her leg so tight she looked like an alien creature coming across the lawn.  One of my friends described her now 20-year old, over six foot tall son as a spider like creature who planted his hands and feet against the school bus door frame and would not get on the Head Start school bus.  No way.  No how. She tried.  She followed the school bus for two weeks in her car.  She stayed in the classroom with him for two solid weeks before she gave up and kept him at home.  Another friend's little kindergarten girl would not stop crying for the first half hour the first week of kindergarten.  She sobbed uncontrollably for five consecutive days.  Both these children overcame their separation anxiety eventually.  My offspring never had that problem.  They got on the bus willingly and never looked back which was good because I didn't want them to see the tears in my eyes.  When they went to school that meant they were growing up.  And I know as a parent that is what the ultimate plan is supposed to be.  Kids are supposed to grow up.  But it made me sad because I enjoyed their preschool years so much.  And when I was a child I did not have separation anxiety.  I might have had the opposite of separation anxiety if there is such a thing.  I can remember my first time on a school bus vividly.  A big yellow bus with a stop sign on the side came down Dale Street.   My aunt, A, got on the bus.  And I followed her and sat in the seat next to her.  I was so happy to go to school!  I had a big smile on my round little face.  But Grandma said I had to get off the bus.  Grandma said I could not go to school. WTH!  I remember having a tantrum.  I was crying and kicking and clinging to the bus seat.  My poor Grandmother peeled my chubby fingers off the seat and physically hauled me off the bus with my feet off the ground.  She set me down on the grass outside and the yellow school bus pulled away with out me while I continued to cry.  She wasn't happy with me.  I wasn't happy with her.  I wanted to go to school and she wouldn't let me!  This was totally out of character for my Grandma.  Normally she was kind and understanding.  A got to go to school.  If A got to go, why couldn't I?  A and I did everything together.  We lived next door to each other.  We played together.  We were the same age.  And even though she was my aunt she felt like a sister to me.  Or maybe a cousin.  So when she got to go to school I naturally assumed I'd be going with her. Why didn't anybody explain that A got to go to school and I didn't?  What possible reason could there be for this injustice?  My separation anxiety, if I had any, was being separated from A.  A's first day of kindergarten was a hard, hard day for me.  I guess I'm still a little upset about it. Things between A and I were forever different.  She was older.  She was a year ahead of me in school.  And oh, how that hurt at first.  A year seems like forever to a 5 year old but eventually I got to get on that school bus too which is where I belonged and where I SHOULD have been a year earlier!

Felt Like Spring Today

I know, I know.  It snowed a couple inches today of the flakey white stuff.  But it felt like spring.  Even before I heard my girlfriend saw 3 sandhill cranes fly over her house in Ham Lake it felt like spring.  And why is that?  It felt like spring because I made my first camping reservation of 2014.  Looking forward to Memorial Day weekend!

I Was Born Under a Wanderin' Star

I saw this clip on youtube last week and got intrigued.  I'm a fan of old cowboy shows and this cowboy movie stars Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood AND it was a musical.  A young Clint Eastwood singing?  Sign me up!  I borrowed "Paint Your Wagon" from my library.  Clint Eastwood does sing.  He isn't the best singer but that was okay because it was real. Clint and Lee Marvin were actually good actors in this musical - not all fakey and overacted like in many musicals.  And Lee Marvin!  With his gravely voice and scruffy exterior, well, my heart just melted.  The best line is "soap can make your eyes burn but only people make you cry."  This movie would have been a good one to see on the big screen back in 1969.  And for 1969 the female character in this movie was way ahead of her time with her successful suggestion of a plural marriage (both Lee and Clint!).  I sure enjoy a good cowboy show.

Twisted Sisters

This book came recommended on my library website under "new fiction."  I am a sister and I have sisters so I decided to read Twisted Sisters by Jen Lancaster.  And although I am naturally sarcastic and am accustomed to a certain level of sarcasm, this book gave me an overdose of sarcasm.  Wow.  The sarcasm goes too far.  The main character is the middle sister, Reagan Bishop.  At first I identified with her.  She tries hard to be successful at her job as a psychologist. She exercises and tries to eat right. As the book continues we begin to realize that Reagan is the twisted sister. I liked the description of the Chicago neighborhoods.  In the last third of the book the author employs some new age magic that is way over the top. Some moments were funny but this book made me question the library choices for best new fiction.     " 

Bingo's Run

I would not have guessed that this book was written by a Mayo Clinic physician.  Bingo's Run is about a drug runner who lives in Kibera, the slum area of Nairobi, Kenya.  James A Levine, who is not from Africa, wrote the story about Bingo who runs drugs from the drug lord to the customers.  A little person, Bingo has a good sense of humor and an odd commitment to be be the best drug runner he can be. He has a purpose in life and take pride in his work. Bingo runs down Kenyatta Boulevard.  When I traveled to Nairobi, I rode down Kenyatta Boulevard past Kibera.  I saw the piles of trash, the many paths between the tin structures, and the kids hanging out.  I remember feeling appalled and fascinated at the same time.  Reading Bingo's Run makes Kibera come to life for me just as I imagined it would be; a horrible place.  Bingo is resilient, adaptable and criminal.  I enjoy books that take me out of my own life and put me in another place.  And this book definitely did that.

Best. Car. Ever.

I do not recommend taking photos of your odometer when driving at 65 mph but this was a special day.

This 2003 Honda Civic has been the best car I've ever owned.  The odometer turned to 200,000 today and to celebrate I filled up the gas tank and bought the ultimate car wash.  The ultimate!  And then I took a photo before I drove up my muddy driveway and got it all dirty again.  The car is running great.  I've bought new tires 3 times and had the brakes redone twice.  I've had all the recommended oil changes and tune ups.  Basically nothing has gone wrong with this car after all these miles.  I've driven it to the west coast twice and to the east coast twice.  I drive 35 miles round trip to work five days a week.  I had to have it towed only once - when the battery gave out after 8 years of working just fine.  I've never even had a flat on the road with this car.  This car doesn't look new but it doesn't look decrepit either.  It has a few canoe scratches on the roof and some worn spots in the carpeting.  In my lifetime I've owned a Rambler American (68), an AMC Hornet (74), a Plymouth Horizon (81), a Plymouth Sundance (88), a Plymouth Voyager (94), and this Civic.  None of my other cars ever made it anywhere near 200,000 miles.  All of them had major issues which made them unreliable and not worth spending money on.  When I bought this car I hoped it would last until 2011.  Huh!  2011 has come and gone and the civic keep plugging along without issues.  Best. Car.  Ever. 

Surviving The Winter

I'm holding a chickadee in my hand.

Last night I went to the North Metro Master Naturalists meeting.  Jim Lane was our speaker.  He teaches biology at a local high school and I've heard him speak before.  He is young and tall and full of unabashed enthusiasm which makes it very entertaining.  Tonight he spoke about how winter is survived.  Some plants, he explained, lose their leaves to save energy and to protect themselves from breaking their limbs holding up the heavy snow.  Other plants keep their leaves or needles to save energy from growing new ones in the fall.  The cells inside the plants have to move the water out of the cells to protect themselves from cell damage.  When water freezes the molecules make sharp points like on snow flakes.  That is why the bark on smooth barked trees like maples may split in the spring.  The sun warms up the bark and the water moves back into the cells.  If the temperature goes down quickly when the sun sets the cells may freeze before they have a chance to move the water out forcing the bark to split.  The birds who stay with us all winter are generalists.  They will eat a variety of foods.  Specialists like warblers who eat only bugs could not survive here so they migrate.  Some insects migrate as well including Monarch butterflies and one kind of green darner dragonflies. Chickadees, he says, are bada$$ birds who tough it through the winter.  They will eat black sunflower seeds if they're available but can survive without them.  They'll eat suet or peck at a deer carcass if available but can survive without them.  Chickadees will search the tree branches for insect eggs which are full of protein.  Daily they'll eat between 10 and 60 of their body weight.  At night their body temperature goes way down and they can loose up to 15% of their body weight. When the sun goes down the chickadees gather in chickadee gangs and hunker down in chickadee dens. In the morning it can be 30 degrees below and the chickadee will come by and say, "Sup?"  They don't even look cold out there.  Turtles survive by hunkering down in the mud at the bottom of bodies of water.  Snapping turtles like to position themselves head down with their rear end pointed toward a spring or rushing water.  And they breathe through their butt!  Some frogs hunker down with the turtles at the bottom of lakes.  That is why when ice anglers open up the belly of a pike they find a meal of fresh frogs.  Other frogs just freeze solid in the woods.  Their entire body, including the heart, freezes.  And even though their hearts are not beating and they're not breathing, they are alive.  Isn't that amazing? When spring comes they thaw, stretch, and start moving.  Mammals vary on how they handle the winter.  Beavers party all winter in their dens eating a supply of branches they have stored in their ponds outside their den.  Some mammals grow thicker fur to stay warm.  Some mammals go into torpor - a long winter nap where metabolism is slower.  Some mammals, like possums and raccoons may not have survived our exceptionally bitter winter this year.  And then we got to the bears.  Jim got to explore a bear den at Camp Ripley at about this time of year in 2013. The sow had a collar so they found her den easily.  They dug into the den and poked her with a sharp stick until she changed position so her shoulder was exposed.  They administered a tranquilizer and removed her two cubs.  A rope was tied around the bear and she was hauled out.  She was measured and weighed (240 pounds) and examined.  She had two sores on her neck because her collar was too tight.  The wounds were cleaned and stitched.  The collar was put back on.  Before a half hour was up they slid her back into her den.  But before that Jim crawled down in there to see if he could fit and to experience being in a bear den.  All six foot five inches of him fit in the den if he curled up.  He had photos.  He said he reeked all the way home.  Her cubs were tucked back into the den with the sow and the den was covered again.  In the spring one of the first things a bear will eat is deer dung.  Deer dung gives the bear the bacteria it will need to digest plants.  The baby bears will smell the mother's breath to learn what plants are edible.  And that happens in the spring which is the season that comes after winter.  We had a great evening.  The speaker was having fun telling his story.  All of us in the audience participated by laughing, asking questions, and adding our 2 cents.  We had a good evening together.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce wrote The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, her first novel, when her father was in the final stages of lung cancer.  It was a great little story.  A retired man named Harold goes to mail a letter.  He doesn't stop at the first mail box or the second mail box.  Instead he ends up walking 500 miles to see Queenie, a former female coworker who is in a hospice.  Harold is a quiet and passive man; extremely passive.  Walking 500 miles on a whim is totally out of character for him.  Sometimes the book is a little bit slow.  But walking 500 miles is also slow for a retired man like Harold.  Some days he can only walk 6 miles.  He didn't plan for this trip.  He doesn't have the right shoes.  He forgot his cell phone.  He doesn't even have a map.  The story takes place in Britain where they have towns that are 6 miles apart because such a pilgrimage would never work here.  Our towns are too far apart.  I worried about Harold on his pilgrimage.  Will he make it before Queenie dies?  Is he physically able to walk that far? Will someone hurt Harold? What about his marriage with Maureen?  What about his relationship with his son, David?  If you read this book you will likely come to like Harold as much as I did.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Lucky!

I had lunch with a good friend of mine. She is a great friend; generous, positive, funny and she shows me things that are beautiful that I never noticed before.  I feel like I could tell her anything.  And I have told her everything and she has shared it all with me.  In the 25 years that I have known her I feel she has made me a better person.  I am grateful to have her in my life.  The icing on this friendship cake is that she is a good ten years younger than me.  So when I'm old and lonely because many of my friends have died, I will, most likely, have her.  I may not have fame and I sure don't have fortune, but I am rich in friends and that makes me a very lucky woman.

An Unexpected Grace

If you are looking for a little book to fill an afternoon when the weather keeps you inside, An Unexpected Grace by Kirsten Van Kiesler is the book for you.  The story is about a golden retriever who helps heal a woman while healing herself.  Grace is the name of the retriever.  Although Grace is nothing like Ruby, my golden retriever, she had a couple similarities that brought back fond memories for me.  Grace is timid.  Ruby was confident to a fault.  Grace isn't sure of herself.  Ruby was sure she was the Queen of Sheba and pity the fool who didn't understand that.  Grace is gentle.  Ruby was Ethel Merman.  Grace pays attention to the moods of the humans around her.  Ruby did that too.  I wouldn't say this was a great story but it heart warming.

Like A Branding Iron

Now that I have recovered from my pink eye and don't have to self-administer drops every three waking hours, I remember something from my parenting years that I had blocked out forgotten.  When Offspring #1 was a little tyke, he got pink eye repeatedly.  Every time he got a cold he'd get pink eye to go along with it.  I think the worst year was when he was two years old.  Being an experienced victim of pink eye, he remembered that he hated the eye drops.  Normally a laid back little boy he would scream when it came to eye drop time.  He would scream bloody murder.  I do not exaggerate.  An outsider would think we were branding

him on the flank like a cowhand brands a steer on the range.  As soon as the drop was administered and we released our hold on him, he'd calm down immediately.  As a parent I tried every idea I could think of to make this easier for him.  Distraction!  I tried distraction but when the medication is administered to the eye, he could see it coming.  Persuasion!  Epic fail with persuasion.  I could talk till I was blue in the face and he would not be persuaded. You try reasoning with a two year old.  Bribery!  Positive Reinforcement!  Nothing I offered was enough to consent to the eye drops.  Books, candy, hot wheels, ice cream, money, bars of solid gold, stocks and bonds - he turned them all down.  The stern tough-love approach also failed.  After trying all these approaches numerous times we settled on the "no-warning-get-it-over-with-as-soon-as-possible" technique.  We had to get those drops in or he might go blind. One of us would scoop him up and lay him across our lap and hold his head while the other parent pried his tight eyelids apart and administer the drop.  Then we'd let him go and he'd walk away and instantly be fine. Strange how he could turn it off so quickly.  We switched roles so he never knew which one of us would grab him next. This technique reduced the screaming bloody murder time to a minimum.  At home this was no problem at all.  The problem came on vacation one summer.  Pink eye symptoms appeared halfway across South Dakota. We were traveling in a white Plymouth Horizon without air conditioning. Phone calls were made.  The prescription for antibiotic eye drops was filled at Wall Drug.  Since we were tent camping we had minimal privacy.  Sometimes we would have to pull off the road to give the eye drops.  We'd stop at a gas station, maybe get gas, and walk around a little bit.  This cute tow-headed boy, perfectly healthy except for pink eye, walking around in his OshKosh b Gosh overalls in a gas station parking lot, would be rudely snatched up without warning by one parent while they sat on the cement parking barrier and restrained by the head while the other parents pulled his eyelids apart and put drops in while he screamed his little head off.  This drew rebuking stares from other gas station patrons.  We looked like evil child abusers for those 30 seconds of medication administration.  We noticed the disapproving stares.  We felt the judgement.  Returning the accusatory stares with a smile was one option.  Ignoring them was another.  Trying to compensate by being overly nurturing after the eye drops seemed too artificial.  We had no good options at gas stations.  Let them think what ever they want.  Our little boy's vision was at stake.  And although we had a great time at Mount Rushmore and enjoyed seeing buffalo roam at Custer State Park, we were glad to be home where we could treat the pink eye in private.  If you asked me now if I wanted to travel to Rapid City with a two year old while tent camping out of a compact car without air conditioning in the month of July I'm not one hundred percent sure I would agree to go.  But I was naive young then and it seemed like a great adventure. 

Best Meeting Ever!

Intense day at work today.  My absurdometer was off the charts.  Four months of work on the database circling the proverbial drain.  The irony was so thick I could taste it.  Frustrations were building to a pressure point. Perspective lost.  I had to suppress giggles over things that were not even funny.  And at a staff meeting (that I almost forgot to go to) we had a drawing.  Names were put into a basket.  One name was chosen for a fabulous prize.  Holy guacamole, my name was chosen.  What would be the fabulous prize?  The way my day was going my hopes were not very high.  Surprise!  A $25 gift card for Target!  Best meeting ever! Some days karma has a way of evening things out.

Cutting For Stone

I was sad to come to the end of this very long book Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese.  I listened to it on CD and the reader, Sunil Malhotra, is so good he could read the phone book and I'd be interested.  He's so good that hot is part of his name.  Most of the story takes places in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  What a gorgeous name - Addis Ababa.  And I love the syncopated beauty of the name of the country Ethiopia.  The story is about identical twins, Marion and Shiva Stone.  These two orphaned boys are as close as can be growing up in a mission hospital and raised by doctors from India.  Both boys become leaders of medical surgery.  Their story and the story of their birth parents and their actual parents is fascinating, lovely, sad and joyful.  Like I said, I hated to have this book come to an end even though it was 19 cd's long.  Someday I think I want to travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Reading this book has stirred up an interest in me. I have four categories for travel: 1. not safe to go, 2. would go with a guided tour, 3. would go with a friend and 4. would go on my own.  Ethiopia I think I would go with a guided tour.  I'm too afraid to go alone or even with a friend.

Sping!

Like a mouse in the kitchen, spring has snuck up on me.  My favorite season has showed itself to me today.  Welcome back spring - I missed you so!  When I got home I changed my shoes and put on my sorels, strapped on a pair of snow shoes and hiked out to my maple trees with two empty gallon milk jugs, two lengths of plastic tubing, two tree taps, and my cordless drill.  I must have looked ridiculous in my black dress, gray tights, brown boots, blue snowshoes, blue spring jacket and no mittens or hat.  The air was warm and the sky was blue but it was quite a hike to the maple trees.  The snow has gone down at least six to eight inches but is still deeper than my knees. Now that the trail has been blazed all subsequent trips will be easier. Walking in snow shoes with big clumps of heavy wet snow on top of the snow shoe gave my quads a good work out.  I drilled new holes in the south sides of the two maple trees, inserted the taps, attached the tubing and set the milk jugs on the ground.  If the weather stays above freezing during the day and below freezing at night, my maple trees will send sap up and outward and into the milk jugs.  I still have a couple cups of syrup left from last year but I am excited to collect more.  When I accomplished my mission and retraced my steps the walking was much easier.  I noticed that my gait changed.  Where the walking was difficult because the blackberry brambles tripped me up, my gait was close together.  Where the walking was easier I  saw an 8 inch tall white wall of snow between my feet.  It sure felt good to be outside doing something functional other than shoveling snow.

Equilateral

If I don't have a certain book in mind when I go to the library, I stroll the aisles between the shelves and look at the books.  I search for the books that are on the end shelves facing outwards sitting on little book stands.  I think the librarians put the best books on display like this so we can find them easier.  I've had a lot of good luck checking out books that I got out of book stands.  And that is why I grabbed Equilateral by Ken Kalfus; it was not shelved spine outwards like the others but in a book stand.  I didn't know a thing about the author or the book.  The curly haired woman on the cover was intriguing.  I never would have guessed that this book was about an astronomer digging a 300 mile equilateral triangle in the Egyptian desert, filling it with petroleum, and lighting it on fire in the hopes of making contact with life on Mars.  900 miles of digging!  At first the writing was about the mathematics and the engineering.  Trucking water out to the desert to sustain the work of 900 workers digging in the sand is no easy feat.  As the book continues I began to realize that this astronomer has been out in the sun too long.  Malaria is suspected but so is insanity.  So much time and effort has been put into this project by investors from France and England that it's too late to turn back now.  At first I thought this book had nothing to do with modern day life.  In the second half of the story the conflicts between science and politics, Muslims and Christians, and men and women makes it seem all too much like modern day.  Ken Kalfus has a very creative mind to come up with this plot.  This book is like no other. 

Cheese

I've been on a DIY kick in the kitchen this year.  I've grown my own beansprouts which are easy and delicious.  I've made my own yogurt for the second week in a row.  Also delicious but not as easy.  And today I made mozzarella cheese.  The cheese wasn't so easy because I had to drive to St. Louis Park to buy supplies but once you have the supplies, it's quicker to make than yogurt.  With yogurt you have to wait for the milk to heat up and cool down.  With the cheese, you just have to heat the milk up until that magic moment that comes between 100 and 105 degrees when the whey separates from the curds.  It's very exciting to watch it happen.  Success bubbling up before my eyes.  After straining the whey I microwave the curds and knead the whey out of them.  Microwave, knead, add salt, microwave, knead and it's done!  The cheese gets stretchy like taffy.  I hear squeaks when I chew it.  And it tastes pretty good too.  Makes me wish I had some home grown tomatoes and fresh basil to make a delicious salad.

Two Faced

I tried to keep my professional face on at a meeting today but I know I wasn't entirely successful because the woman across from me turned around to see what I was looking at out the window. In our conference room I always sit so I can look out the window.  And I was paying attention, I swear I was.  But I saw a soaring bird being attacked by two crows.  The soaring bird made huge circles in the sky while the crows dive bombed it.  The crow actually hit it in the head.  The soaring bird was huge and it had a white tail.  Was it a bald eagle?  No, the entire underside was white.  And it was big but not as big as an eagle. Could this be a snowy owl being attacked by crows?  By now it is true I had quit listening to the discussion.   Excitement must have showed on my face.  What I wanted to do was yell, "Is that a snowy owl being chased by those crows?" and run to the window, open the vertical blinds, and disrupt the entire meeting.  But I didn't do that.  I am a professional. I tried to keep my "paying attention" face on.  I can squelch my personal excitements for the sake of a meeting when I am paid to do so.  I watched as one crow broke off the chase and the other one kept up the harassment.  Could this be an unusually white breasted red tailed hawk?  The head shape wasn't sleek and pointed like a hawk but more rounded like an owl.  How exciting! I never got a good look at the back of the bird against the cloudy sky but it seemed very light.  I think this is a snowy owl!  Eventually the crow and the soaring bird circled out of my sight.  Back on track now, I reengaged my brain into this meeting.  This particular group of people has some very charming people in it so it wasn't hard to get my mind on the topic.  But I think I may have seen another snowy owl.  I haven't heard of any being in Blaine but you never know.  I am 60% sure I saw a snowy in Blaine.  So this was a good meeting and I didn't even mind that much that it went 40 minutes longer than I had hoped.

But Come Ye Back

Beth Lordan wrote But Come Ye Back: A Novel in Stories.  This delicate piece of fine writing tells the story of Lyle and Mary's marriage.  After raising two sons and entering retirement age Lyle and Mary decide to move to Ireland, Mary's home.  Relationships change in a new environment and the author gets this idea across in her subtle and exquisite style of story telling.  This wonderful story is short and easy to read.  Someday I'd like to travel to Ireland and stay over in a town, walk on the promenade, see the tide come and go, stop at the grocery store and the chemist.  I just might see a couple like Lyle and Mary walking their dog before heading home for tea and biscuits.

Al

We got off topic at a meeting at work today.  Someone was talking about the television show Casey Jones and her childhood memories.  She mentioned a milkman who delivered milk to her home.  "Oh, " I added, "we had a milkman too.  His name was Al."  Turns out we lived in the same neighborhood and we had the same milkman.  Now, with all the stuff in my head, how do I remember the name of the milk man who delivered our milk in square glass bottles with foil tops?  With all I have to remember, why is there room in my gray matter for the man named Al?  I can't remember what he looked like but I remember his scrawled name on the paper receipt.  I remember he joked about chocolate milk coming from brown cows. Al had a white milk delivery truck. I don't have a lot of room in my noggin for remembering things.  Important things like paying my mortgage and returning my library books escape me.  With cell phones I don't have as many phone numbers to memorize but I have a boat load of passwords to remember.  I'd trade Al the milk man in a New York minute if I could remember my health insurance password.

And The Mountains Echoed

I just finished Khaled Hosseini's third novel And The Mountains Echoed.  He's a good writer.  I enjoyed The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns which he wrote before this one.  This story doesn't track as well as the first two.  It's more of a series of short stories than one long tale.  Much of the story is about sibling relationships.  A brother and sister combination begin the novel and end the novel.  Many of the other characters in the story are related to this brother or this sister but not all of them are.  Put together, this puzzle of individual stories paints a vivid picture of life in Afghanistan from the 1960's to present day.  If you can get past the confusion of not knowing how all the characters are related I think you would enjoy this story very much. The characters he creates are real and complex.  Some characters are more likeable but all of them are flawed in some way.  Khaled Hosseini, a novelist and a physician, must be a good student of human nature.

Midwest Supply

Offspring #2 and I went shopping at Midwest Supplies - a warehouse store in St. Louis Park.  I wanted to pick up some cheese making enzymes and supplies.  I bought vegetable rennet, sheep lipase, muslin cloth and other stuff I needed to make cheese.  She bought some pH paper, French herbs and calcium chloride.  What was fun was looking at all the other things to buy.  You could buy oak barrels, copper stills, and corks by the bagful.  Liquid karma was for sale and also bat guano.  Where else could you buy guano?  I've never seen guano for sale before.  I could have bought a bag of Alaskan topsoil or a bag of coconut hulls.  They had flasks and test tubes for sale.  They had a whole room full of grains and hops for making beer.  They sold little kegs for beer shaped like pigs and even pig blankets to insulate the little piggy kegs.  One section of the store was for hydroponic gardening.  They sold lights and hoses and tubing.  They even sold tents for growing plants in a well lit and warm environment.  Normally I'm not a shopper.  I don't enjoy going to a mall or selecting new clothes.  If I do enjoy shopping it's usually a hardware store or an antique store.  But this Midwest Supplies store was an enjoyable place to shop.  We walked up and down every single aisle so we could see it all.

Seriously?

I thought I was too old to get pink eye!

Who Can Resist

I walked into a Walgreens store to buy a few things and was startled by a sales pitch.  "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?" said two girls in uniforms, simultaneously.  I looked up and saw two girls and two Moms standing by a table stacked with colorful boxes of expensive cookies.  Feeling bad I said, "I didn't bring money in."  "We take checks," said both girls in the exact same intonation, time and style.  I said I didn't bring checks either and walked off to make my purchases.  The fact that the girls greeted me in total unison plus the fact that I have worked way too many cookie booths in my day resulted in me scrounging through my car to come up with eight dollars - enough for one box of trefoils and one box to donate to the food shelf in Anoka.  I told the girls that I was back because of their amazing stereophonic sales pitch.  They guessed they had sold about 60 boxes so far which I think is impressive for a little store like Walgreens.  Who can resist an energetic Girl Scout sales pitch?  Not I.

Chatterbox

Today Offspring #2 and I did a little shopping and then had lunch at the Chatterbox on France Avenue.  This is  a cute place that has booths, tables, and chairs in front of televisions hooked up with gaming consoles.  Board games and video games are available to play before, during or after your meal.  We played Trivial Pursuit (the 90's).  And then our order came.  I had a spinach artichoke frittata, a biscuit, hash browns and we split blueberry cheese blintzes.  I took a bite of hash browns.  They were darker brown that I usually see and very crunchy. What is this sensation coming over me? They were delicious!  The crunchy bits of brown potato - I took another bite.  These hash browns were so good I would have thought I had taken an appetite enhancer pill if there was such a thing.  Normally I would focus on the protein (frittata) and just pick at the carbs such as hash browns but I could not stop myself; they were that good.  And when the hash browns were gone I peeked under my frittata to see if any delicious hash brown remnants were hiding from me.  Lucky me!  I found some more.  I ate some of the frittata and it was good too.  And since I already blew my diet on the hash browns I ate the biscuit.  The biscuit was carb heaven but not as good as the hash browns.  Since I knew I couldn't eat all this food, I thought I'd have one of the blintzes too.  Wow!  The cheese and the berries - it was so freaking delicious!  When the waitress came by I asked, "What makes these hash browns taste so delicious?"  She said the secret was the green onions.  I asked if they were cooked in bacon fat.  I told her I was a vegetarian and I hoped they weren't cooked in bacon fat.  Frankly, I was ready to give up being a vegetarian to get hash browns like this again.  Later she returned and reported that the hash browns were fried in clarified butter.  She boxed up my frittata.  The Chatterbox has lots of vegetarian sandwiches and burgers. But forget that!  I'm going back again someday and I'm getting the hash browns.  As we drove away down France Avenue, my gut was sending pleasurable feelings to my brain.  These hash browns were so delicious I enjoyed them as I ate them and as I digested them.