Adventures of Ole & Lena

Guilty until proven innocent?

2008-07-27T13:10:00.001-05:00

I’ve thought long and hard about this entry and have gone from “yes, post it,” to “no, it won’t make any difference anyway” numerous times. So in an effort to clear some of the air here I decided to do this. Also, last time I checked, this was the United States, a place where you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

Apparently, according to a lot of you, I made a great mistake when I befriended Art and contributed to the Rescue Zipper fund. When I sent the money I had no intention of getting it back. I sent it out of good will and because I was concerned about Zipper and what his fate would be. I also thought that getting Zipper back would help Art’s emotional state. And I also thought that Rosie was a wonderful person going to all the effort that she did – giving of her time and energy to help Art out not only in rescuing Zipper but in taking him into her home and helping him to come out of his shell so to speak.

I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes at Rosie’s house, although Rosie made some vague statements that things were not all okay. Then Art started blogging about “issues” and the next thing I read is that Art had been asked to leave. When he opened up a new locked blog he left a very negative rant about Rosie. I guess that was to be expected considering the circumstances and Art’s state of mind. I must say that Rosie continued to be a lady and just kind of skimmed over it in her diary, only stating that things weren’t right and that Art was gone. One of the negative comments that Art had left in his blog was a reference as to how Rosie had spent the money collected for the Rescue Zipper fund. I was so taken aback by the reference that I questioned Art in the comments of his LOCKED diary and asked for clarification, which I never got from him. When Art initially sent the email out to his friends announcing that he was opening a new blog, all the addresses were on the top of the email. Obviously someone who was on that list was also good friends with Rosie and felt it their duty to either give Rosie the password, or pass the information on to her, I don’t know which. But it didn’t take long and I received a defensive email from Rosie regarding the question I left about how she spent the money. I also wrote in my diary (http://thelifetimesofolelena.blogspot.com/2008/07/theres-mole-in-our-midst.html ) referencing the fact that I felt someone was overstepping their bounds by sharing information that was supposed to be private and that I found that very distressing. It really wasn’t hard to figure out who it was that gave Rosie the information. I thought I made it plain in that entry that I wasn’t upset about however Rosie had spent the money. That was water under the bridge and couldn’t be changed now. What I was upset about was that someone had so little respect for another blogger who had trusted them with their password, to pass on private information.

NEVER ANYWHERE IN MY WRITING DID I MENTION POOLAGIRL’S NAME AS THE OBJECT OF MY SUSPICION. In fact she even called me after I had posted that entry and asked me point blank if I thought it was her, and I said NO!! We got that cleared up and followed with a nice chat. I enjoyed our visit and told her that I was sorry that I wouldn’t be in Tombstone to meet her in person. I assumed we had the issue cleared up at that point. But I guess not.

She followed with a post that her heart had been broken: (http://poolagirl.diaryland.com/grandheart.html) and everyone jumped on the bandwagon to support her, which I think is wonderful with the exception that it seemed to be at my expense.

Reading comments like the following and knowing they were aimed at me got a little old and hurtful. You’re all up in arms about someone hurting Poolie, but yet it’s okay for you to put out bullshit, make no nevermind about how it makes your target feel. But I guess it shows true colors, doesn’t it. The following comments were posted after I decided to close my blog.

“The good thing is that after all is said and sifted, the people who are real will still be there, and the dead weight will have dropped away.”

And from a different blogger:

“And you are right about the dead weight! It seems to be dropping away as we speak. People that live in their perfect little world and wear blinders, alluding to innocence (HAH!) have no fooking clue!”

One last thing: I DID NOT ACCUSE POOLIE. I DID NOT MENTION HER NAME ANYWHERE IN MY DIARY IN REFERENCE TO THIS ACT OF GIVING AWAY PRIVATE INFORMATION.

I have tried to make this entry as accurate as I can. If any of you who have been part of this fiasco feel it’s inaccurate in anyway, please feel free to leave that information here.

One of the statements that keeps recurring in people’s blogs and in comments is that you should be able to write whatever you want – it’s your diary. That’s my right and I’m going to express it now:

To you who have participated in this mess - Go to hell, all of you.

Adios

2008-07-26T22:57:00.005-05:00

I've had enough.

I've had enough of all the "oh, poor me" syndrome and everyone feeling sorry for those who write about the "oh poor me" syndrome.

I'm done.

I've received the LAST of the emails sputtering excuses, etc., and the last of the emails written in self-defense when trust has been breeched and entries have been exaggerated to protect one's self.

It's time for everyone to take personal responsibility and be truthful. Lies only hurt not only themselves but also those surrounding.

Good bye Cyberworld. I'm signing off. I don't need this.

There's a Mole in our Midst

2008-07-26T10:34:00.002-05:00

After much discussion with Ole, I’ve decided I won’t be attending the Great Javalina Hunt in October. The major reason is because of Ole’s health and the strong possibility that he may be having surgery on his leg in October. But there is one other reason for my not attending, and I might as well just put it out there for ya’ll to know because I'm VERY disappointed.

Remember, I’m a Minnesota girl – born and bred – grew up a conservative Norwegian Lutheran – and I admit that I’m naïve and a very trusting soul when it comes to people. I take folks at face value and expect them to be what they say they are. In turn – what you see – er – read is what you get. That’s me. No fluff, no pomp and circumstances, just me. That’s the way Ole is too, and I think we’ve raised Lovely Daughter to be the same way. There’s a term up here called “Minnesota Nice,” which means there’s some morals and ethics involved somewhere.

There is a foul wind that has blown up among some of those planning to attend the Javalina Hunt. It’s gotten rather ugly on both sides, and now has widened out to include several others. I’ve become very disillusioned with some of the Javalina Hunters, and all the backbiting and posturing that is taking place, not to mention trust issues – like sharing passwords to locked diaries, or passing on information that was entrusted to you by giving you the password to a private diary. You know who you are. I won’t mention names, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. Just the fact that I left a comment in Blogger #1's private diary, and immediately received a rather caustic and defensive email from Blogger #2 regarding that comment because I know that Blogger #2 didn’t have the password. The comment I left was certainly not negative about anyone; I was just asking a question. And I certainly feel that I should be able to make a comment in a LOCKED diary without fear of repercussions from an outsider – one who isn’t supposed to be there in the first place!! I guess I was very wrong when I thought I could trust mutual bloggers. There’s a mole in the midst.

Just to make things perfectly clear, I'm not now, nor have I in the past, taken sides with either Blogger #1 or #2. They each have their own opinion. Not having met either of them in person, and knowing that folks aren't always what they appear to be, I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. I could have dealt with that, but when the mole entered the picture things became a bit skewed. I can do nothing more than throw up my hands and excuse myself because I now have a trust issue.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Ole gets released - for now

2008-07-25T15:44:00.002-05:00

Remember, I said I couldn't wait to see how things would be changed today? Ole was discharged this afternoon and is currently at home.

But, I'm okay with it this time. Even I could see marked improvement in his leg.

When I called Ole this morning about 8:30 and he told me he was to be discharged this afternoon, I blew. Indian lady doctor was at it again. She had instructed her senior resident to write the discharge orders and the process had begun. By the time I got up there I was fuming and went straight to the nurse's station and asked for a patient advocate. I also informed them that I would not take Ole home until he had been seen by both the infectious disease doctor and the surgeon. It just so happened that both of them happened to be on the floor at that time and a meeting was arranged in Tony's room. Yesterday the surgeon had ordered a surgical stocking to be put on his leg all the way up to his hip. That apparently helped tremendously because a lot of the redness and pain had disappeared over night and he was now able to walk with very little discomfort. Both doctors very thoroughly examined the leg, ordered further blood work and after getting the results they decided they were comfortable with Tony going home this afternoon. The blood work indicated there is very little infection left. Of course Indian lady doctor was nowhere to be found.

I questioned them thoroughly about activity levels, etc. so both Ole and I understand just what can and can't be done.

I can't tell you how relieved I was after talking with both of them. Prior to this I felt like I was being kicked in the stomach every five minutes.

One very interesting thing about this entire scenario. When Ole was admitted to the hospital on Monday he was put in a double room and had a roommate. Never during the entire time that he was in this room did anyone gown when they came in. I thought this was rather strange because I know that staph is very contagious. But at that point, I ASSumed they knew what they were doing.

Thursday, when the infectious disease doctor got involved they were suddenly able to find a private room for him and everyone started gowning when they entered with the exception of the ID doctor. When he was in the room at one point and a nurse came in gowned he asked her why. He then informed her that Ole definitely did not have staph - the bloodwork that he had done indicated that it was strep. Now all week long he's been being treated for staph, which requires different antibiotics than strep. When a second antibiotic was added that treated strep, that's when he started making progress. Then the damn lady doctor would come in and change the orders and hang something entirely different, something I'm assuming that was for staph only, as each time she would change the meds his situation would quit improving.

Lovely Daughter and I met with the patient advocate about noon and laid everything out. We had both been keeping notes so there wasn't much that we forgot. Lady Indian doctor has only been at MeritCare for 30 days. I don't know where she came from, but she is titled as the attending physician and has a senior resident and an intern following her around and teaching them - if you could call it that. I informed the advocate that the nursing staff was superior, but of course they have to take their instructions from the attending physician. The attending physician is Internal Medicine. And what right she had to override the specialists orders amazes me. So the patient advocate wrote up the report and assured me that it would be turned in as they supposedly take these kinds of things very seriously. I requested a follow-up call because I want to KNOW what the results are. I'm sure she'll just get her fingers slapped, and then be told to go on her merry way - if that.

I also told the advocate that I was just happy to be bringing Tony home alive and with all his parts - at least at this point. I assured her that if there was a reoccurrence of this I would certainly NOT bring him back to MeritCare. Nor will I bring him to Innovis, the other large medical facility we have in town as I've heard horror stories about things there also. I'll just put him in the van and head for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

He has 3 followup doctor appointments next week - one with the surgeon, one with the ID doctor and one with the senior resident that was following Indian lady doctor around. We'll definitely keep the two specialist appointments, but we'll have to THINK about the resident appointment.

I'm exhausted. I'm going to go take a nap.

%&@#*^!+!!!

2008-07-25T09:20:00.004-05:00

I was so tired when I got home from the hospital last night there was no way I could sit down to write an entry and have it make any sense. I'm really not sure I'm any better off this morning, but I'll give it a try.

Recap: When I left the hospital on Wednesday night the Infectious Disease (ID) guy had been in, changed the medication in the IV drips and told Ole he would be there for at least a couple more days. He also ordered an MRI. The interesting thing is that the doctor from the ER that had admitted Ole also ordered an MRI way last Monday. Obviously Indian lady doctor didn't think it was necessary, because there hadn't been one done. Remember - she's the one that wanted to discharge him on Wednesday. She also changed the IV drip meds AGAIN that had been prescribed by the ID guy. I think this woman has a control issue. And I think it's at Tony's expense. I'm going to connect with a patient advocate today and discuss things with her.

The MRI was done on Thursday afternoon. It showed that the infection has not reached the bone, but some of the subcutaneous tissue has started to degrade (die). That's the tissue that is right below the surface of the skin. This is definitely not good. So the ID guy called in a surgeon to consult (another Indian by the way) So far we haven't seen a white doctor other than in the ER. The ID guy was Indian also.

The surgeon came in last night while I was still there so I got the whole lowdown. I was a bit taken aback when I read his name badge and it said, "Dr. Mistry - TRANSPLANT DEPARTMENT." He feels that Ole doesn't need surgery right now, but will in the future. How far in the future depends on how he heals at this point. Ole's leg is still very red, the tissue is very hard and causes him a lot of pain when he walks. It's this doctor's opinion that the pain is not being caused by the infection, but by the large varicose veins that Ole has in that leg. He thinks they need to be removed or this problem will be frequently reoccurring. He also told us he wouldn't be discharging Ole before Sunday - depending on how things go. I wonder if Indian lady doctor will come along and change those orders too.

So far, since being admitted to the hospital Ole has seen 5 different doctors and has received 5 different opinions. It makes my head spin and I don't know which way to turn anymore. I truly need some added advice from someone who has Ole's best interests in mind - not their own ego trip.

I'm headed to the hospital shortly to sit in the chair and wait for the doctor(s) arrival. I just can't wait to see how they're going to change things around again today.

The one good thing that happened yesterday is that they moved him to a private room.

More as things develop.

AAAACCCCKKKK!! Where do I start??

2008-07-23T23:37:00.003-05:00

It’s been a long day and I think my brain may be a bit on the fried side, so please bear with me, and I hope this all makes sense.

First of all Ole has made more progress in the last 24 hours. The area of coverage is reduced and the intensity of the redness is reduced. So that's all good. But he still has a lot of pain. Says when he steps on the leg it feels like it's going to explode from the pressure.

Yesterday the doctor I spoke with on the phone said they were going to keep Ole for a minimum of two more days with IVs. Today I was supposed to meet with the two doctors and one intern that are overseeing him. Well, I did. That's where the AACCCKKK comes in.

All three are Indian, and difficult to understand. I'm beginning to wonder if The Big Hospital even HAS any white doctors anymore - doctors that speak AMERICAN ENGLISH.

Anyway, the head doctor of the team is female - not that there's anything wrong with that - BUT - - she marched in, looked down her nose at me and told me that they were discharging Ole today. They were going to take him off the IVs and send him home with two new oral antibiotics. She assured me that these new oral pills would cover a broader spectrum of "bugs" than the ones he had been sent home with before. And IF he didn't get better on these pills then I should just bring him back.

NOT!!

First of all, if he's finally making progress on the meds he's on now, why not let him make a bit more progress before changing things again. Second, why was I told one thing late yesterday afternoon and now the whole plan was 180 degrees different - yesterday I was told he had to be there for at least two more days and now you want to discharge him. What happened that made such a drastic difference in the treatment plan? Third, these three Indian doctors are Internal Medicine. Why hasn't someone from Infectious Disease seen him, as was ordered by the doctor in the ER on the day Ole was admitted.

Lady Dr. informed me that she had consulted ON THE PHONE with someone from Infectious Disease, but she didn't feel that anyone needed to see him from that department. She felt that he had made sufficient progress in the last 24 hours that he could be taken off the IVs and put on oral meds. I explained to her AGAIN what had happened the first time he was taken off IVs too soon - that's what caused him to end up in the hospital. I told her I wanted him to make MORE progress than just 24 hours worth before I would be willing to take him home.

We battled verbally back and forth for several minutes but she would not change her mind about anything. Finally Ole just gave in and said, okay, let's try it. I gave up also - because I could see there would be no changing this woman's mind. I think her ego was getting in the way and she was refusing to listen to what we were saying.

After Lady Dr. left I called Lovely Daughter and explained to her that her father was being discharged. I could hear the explosion from where I was sitting – 3 miles from her office. I guess there are times when it's okay for your daughter to be assertive and aggressive. She came over to the hospital immediately and asked to see Lady Dr.. She and I went through the same scenario again - let's get him a bit better before we make changes, and again she wouldn't hear of it. Finally Lovely Daughter pulled out the Big Guns and told her that we wanted a second opinion - according to the Patient's Bill of Rights we have the right to have a second opinion and we wanted it from someone from Infectious Disease. Lady Dr. was so taken aback - you could see in her face that she didn't like it, but that she couldn't deny us the second opinion, and said she would make arrangements for someone from Infectious Disease to come over tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile the doggers had been shut up in the garage for more than 8 hours so we decided to run home and let them out. By the time we got back to the hospital the Infectious Disease guy (another Indian by the way) had been to see Ole, looked at his leg, shook his head and said there was no way that he should be sent home. His plan is to keep him on IVs for another 48 hours THEN evaluate. His theory is that once you find something that's working you don't change it - let it work. Although he has added Augmentin to the "syrup" that Ole’s getting. Augmentin is a kind of penicillin specifically used for skin infections - and is super powerful - more so than the oral drugs he had been given.

WHY should things have to be this difficult. I think this woman's ego was getting in the way of practicing good medicine.

Following this entire scenario, Ole's nurse, came in and told us that she was caring for 4 patients on the floor. Lady Dr. wanted all four of them discharged today. In the nurse's opinion only one was ready to be discharged, and if the other three (which included Ole) were discharged she was going to write up a safety report on each case so that if they had to be readmitted to the hospital there could be some documentation regarding care. If this were to happen she advised us to contact a patient advocate and proceed from there. She also told us we could fire Lady Dr. from Ole’s case. If this kind of care continues we just may do that.

So there you have it - at least as much as I can remember as I think my brain has turned to mush. It's been a long day with a lot of stress. You shouldn't have to go through this type of thing when you are in, or have a loved one in a medical facility. You should just be taken care of and not have to worry about getting correct and proper care.

A Teensy Bit of Progress

2008-07-23T08:47:00.002-05:00

I spent the evening at the hospital last night and I'm happy to say that there has been a SLIGHT improvement in the infection in the last 24 hours. His leg is slightly less red and the area encompassed is slightly smaller. So maybe we're making progress. They added a second medication to the IVs and that seems to have made the difference. He's now getting vancomycin and ampacillan constantly. It takes approximately two hours for the bags to run through, and each two hours there are new bags put up. They're still giving him meds for pain and will gave him a shot of morphine last night so that he could sleep.

I spoke with the doctor over the phone tonight. He's Indian, so I had a bit of trouble understanding him, but I think I got most of it. I'll be meeting with the three doctors today at noon, so I'll clarify everything at that time. But here's what I think I understood.

They intend to keep him for a minimum of another couple of days and then will evaluate at that point. Depending on how he's doing they may send him to a transitional unit, which means possibly a nursing home (isn't he going to LOVE that) because they may want to have IVs administered for another 10-14 days. If they feel he's doing well enough they may send him home and have a home health nurse or a pharmacist come out to the house and administer the IVs. Or they may just keep him in the hospital for the duration. That would be my choice, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Then, after he's over the infection and has had a chance to heal, about 6 weeks later he will have to see a vascular surgeon about his leg. He was real happy about that also. The doctor I spoke to said if he doesn't do something about the surface veins he will guarantee that this will come back again.

They still aren't sure whether it's a staph infection or a strep infection. When I asked the doctor why they couldn't tell he explained that the latest blood cultures that they did were masked because he has been on antibiotics for so long so they couldn't get a true picture. So at this point they're treating him for both.

HE thinks he's still going to Sturgis and will go to the VA hospital down there to have his IVs administered. I wonder what fantasy world he lives in.

Thanks to all of you who have sent good wishes and said prayers for both of us. I’ve passed on all the messages to him. And K-Lo, I delivered your very best smooch last night and told him it was from you. That gave him a good chuckle. His comment was, “Well, at least in this position she could reach my lips. Standing up she would have only reached my belly button!”

Ole had a lot of company yesterday, even Jane stopped in after work. She ONLY stayed an HOUR AND A HALF!!

Well, I’m off to the hospital.

Never count on anything

2008-07-22T09:02:00.003-05:00

My friend, Genny, told me a long time ago that she's just quit counting on anything because she always gets disappointed. She also doesn't plan anything in advance because she gets the same results - disappointment. She kind of flies by the seat of her pants throughout most of her life and has learned to roll with the punches.

I need to learn how to do that - desperately.

Ole and I were supposed to leave on our month's vacation yesterday. This is the third trip we've planned since last March that we've had to cancel. Ole was admitted into the hospital yesterday instead. He wasn't getting any better over the weekend so on Monday morning I threatened him with either getting in my car and going back to the ER or calling 911 and having him taken in by ambulance. (I have my ways, you know.)

After waiting for over two hours to see a doctor, it was decided to admit him where they will pump him full of antibiotics every four hours instead of ever 12. Along with that they'll give him IV pain meds because he was in pretty bad shape. After talking with him on the phone this morning he sounded pretty droopy - hadn't had much sleep last night because somebody was always poking and prodding him. The doctor had been in to visit this morning and said he was surprised that there was very little change in his leg, although the blood work showed the infection was localized and not spread throughout his bloodstream. Thank heavens for that. I know that staph is an extremely difficult infection to get rid of and with Ole's complications of diabetes and crushed cells and surface veins in his affected leg, this will only be more complicated.

I have one friend whose husband died from a staph infection that couldn't be brought under control, and another friend whose uncle died from it also. I'm extremely worried - and a lot scared. So put in a good word with the Man Upstairs for Ole, please, and I could use one too, to keep my sanity. Thanks in advance.

One little bright spot in my life right now is Lucy. Isn't she a pretty little thing?

I have a lot of difficulty working on the computer because as soon as she sees me sitting here she's up on the desk in front of the monitor chirping at me. She doesn't meow, she kind of chirps like a little bird. I had her in for shots and to be spayed so she's truly mine now. For a free little cat that came to my house I've now got over $300 invested. Oh, well, if you can't afford to take care of your pets you shouldn't have them.

Senior Citizen Simon has been such a gentleman throughout Lucy's arrival. Never a fuss or fume from him about anything regarding her. When they're outside she follows him around like a little shadow and he acts like he's showing her the ropes. I can't believe how much she's grown since she came here, but I guess getting some good food in her helped that issue. No more ribs and backbone sticking out. And she's such a little lover. I'm so glad she came into my life.

Oh, what a week

2008-07-15T10:56:00.003-05:00

Oh, what a week it’s been. I haven’t posted anything for eleven days – sorry. Beat me with a piece of lutefisk then, if you must.

I’ve been trying to get my yard in order because the Ya-Ya’s are coming out on Thursday afternoon. We’re visiting each other’s houses to see our flower gardens. And I’ve got weeds that are higher than my flowers in some places. Things have really gotten away from me this year. It’s either too hot to work outside, the bugs are too bad, or it’s raining. Do I need any more excuses? We had one cool, windy day last Saturday and I managed to get a lot done, so at least part of it looks good. I’m on my way outside now to spray some more thistles – better living through chemistry you know. You just can’t dig those suckers out because of their long taproot, and not all sprays will kill them. So I’ve managed to come by a farm chemical that Farmer Neighbor Dave introduced me to, and when you hit those babies with this spray they’re dead – they just don’t know it yet. So MAYBE I’ll have everything ready for the Ya-Ya’s. Then we’re going to sit by the fire pit and have a margarita or two.

Ole was going to make us margaritas and a burger or two on the grille, but I think that went by the wayside. I think Ole will still be hobbling around and maybe spending a better portion of that day on his back in bed. Remember me saying that every time we have decided to take a trip ever since last spring, something has happened and we’ve had to cancel? Well, that might be happening again.

Last Wednesday night Ole went to bed feeling just fine. About 3 o’clock in the morning he woke up in a terrible amount of pain in his neck, shoulders, back and legs. He was running a temp, hot and cold, all the symptoms of a good old-fashioned flu. During this time he wouldn’t eat anything because he also had a sore throat. Didn’t matter what I did, he wouldn’t eat, and if you’re a diabetic, you know that doesn’t work very well. Friday afternoon the end result was that he started to go into diabetic shock. Really scary. I told him if he wouldn’t start cooperating I was going to call 911 and get the First Responders out here. And since he IS one, he thought that might be a bit embarrassing, so he drank the orange juice and the regular Coke that I gave him and ate the PB&J toast that I made. About 45 minutes later he felt better in that respect. Damn men – you have to beat them over the head sometimes, right?

Then I noticed that his left leg was turning bright red from his ankle to his knee. About 30 years ago Ole was in a motorcycle accident and crushed some of the surface veins in that leg right above the ankle. Diabetics have issues with circulation in their legs anyway, so those crushed veins didn’t help his current situation. His leg was red and hot to the touch and swollen and I was afraid a blood clot was developing. I tried to get him to go into the walk-in clinic on Saturday morning, but again – men – beat them over the head with a stick and they still don’t cooperate when it comes to medical things.

So Monday morning I picked up the phone and told him I was dialing 911 and he finally consented to let me take him into the ER.

Well, if THAT wasn’t an experience. We waited an hour and a half to see a doctor (very kind man) who ran ultrasound tests and determined that there was no blood clot – thank heavens – but that he has a bad case of cellulites. That’s bad enough, but at least much more easily treated than a blood clot. He received an IV of some very strong antibiotics that took two hours to drip and then was told that he has to report back to the ER every 12 hours for the next 3 days to receive a 2 hour IV drip each time. From then on he’ll be on oral antibiotics for at least 30 days. But, according to the doctor, at least we’ll be able to go on our trip. We would both have been extremely disappointed if we’d had to cancel again.

So Ole was scheduled to go back to the ER last night at midnight. What a zoo. You can’t imagine what comes out of the woodwork between midnight and 2 a.m. in an ER. They’ve recently done a remodel of the triage area in the ER. All the nurses previously were out in the open or in a little cubicle. They are now all behind walls with bulletproof glass in the windows and steels doors that are locked. I can understand this in big cities like New York or LA, but our little town – it’s only 150,000 people.

In between all of this the county fair opened and of course Ole, Lovely Daughter and I always enter exhibits. Ole entered two bottles of homemade wine this year and won Reserve Grand Champion on one of them. He’s pretty proud and of course plans to bring a stash along down to Tombstone so the Javalina Hunters can all sample. And Lovely Daughter won Grand Champion on an afghan that she crocheted. She was amazed that she had gotten Grand Champion, but she did a beautiful job on this particular piece. I didn’t enter any photography this year. Things have just gotten away from me this summer and I didn’t have time to get anything ready that I thought was exhibit quality. Oh, well, there’s always next year. And with our upcoming trip I hope to get some great pictures.

Then also in the midst of all of this commotion we had to deal with the dike guys. We’re trying to get our property diked so that we don’t have to worry about the mighty river flooding our property every time we get a heavy rain. When we first moved out here back in 1974 we didn’t have all these problems. If they got 3 inches of rain upstream from us you wouldn’t even notice the river rise. Now if they get 3 inches of rain upstream from us the river goes up 3 to 5 feet within a matter of 36 hours. So there is a program in the state of Minnesota where the feds will pay for 50% of the cost of a dike, the state will pay for 25% and the landowner pays the other 25% to have a ring dike built around your property. We’ve been dealing with the Watershed Board for two years and they finally agreed they would start proceedings by having the soil tested to see if it’s stable enough to support a dike. You can’t imagine all the hoops you have to jump through to get something like this done. Then the board has to get permission from FEMA and from all the landowners for many miles surrounding our property to see if there are any objections and run tests to see how our dike will impact the water flow and the level on everyone else’s property. I won’t go on because I just get angry, but at least the proceedings are started. We’ll see how far we get.

I took little Lucy in to the vet this morning to get spayed. I will be able to go pick her up this afternoon sometime. I have errands to run in town before I pick her up. Need to go to Best Buy and buy some lens filters for my new camera. I particularly like a star filter and used it a lot on my old camera, but haven’t gotten that far yet with my new one. Also need to pick up a stand and a case for my new keyboard, as Ole wants me to bring that along in the RV also. I’m not sure why, because we’ll be spending most of our time on the bike, but I’ll bring it along to humor him.

I know this is a cartoon about a dog getting neutered, but it still fits with Lucy getting neutered. Hope you get a chuckle out of it.

I’m also chairman for a parking lot party that our church is putting on Wednesday night. We’ve hired a band to play in the parking lot and will serve free ice cream and lemonade throughout the concert. We just want to do something fun for the community and show them we aren’t a bunch of stodgy old Lutherans, and especially the Finlander Lutherans that K-lo wrote about recently. The band is a group that has been together for many years, from the local area, and they do a terrific job on the old 50s and 60s stuff so we hope to have a great turnout.

Now I need to go get busy and start packing the motor home.
Later Guys - -

Bing, Bang, Boom & Splat

2008-07-05T08:20:00.005-05:00

I didn't miss the 4th of July - I just didn't have time to post - life was just a bit busy yesterday. I trust that you all had an enjoyable day and didn't lose any fingers or toes blowing up fireworks.

Now isn't this just the epitome of an old fashioned Independence Day celebration. I wonder if anybody has frog jumping contests anymore? One of our little local towns has turtle races, but no frog jumping contests.

When I was a kid, celebrating the 4th of July was a big deal. We'd have tons of fireworks that we would work on all day long and then at night there would be many neighborhood displays. Do you remember those little cracker ball thingies that you would throw at cement and they would pop? How about snakes and zingers, and all those kid things that were so fun. And sparklers - how we would wait for twilight so Dad could light the sparklers and we could make all kinds of spectacular designs.

Today, in the state of Minnesota, it's against the law to buy or set off any kind of fireworks with the exception of what is called ground based fireworks of 75 grams or less (that's pretty small). Anything that goes up in the air is illegal. So in our little town last night, there were a lot of law breakers. There were a number of neighborhoods that spent several hours exploding beautiful things high up in the air. You could also see displays throughout the countryside where people were celebrating by blowing things up. I often wonder what it would be like to be flying in a plane and looking down on the 4th of July night.

Ole also participated in making loud noises last night. Several years ago he built a black powder cannon and loves to outdo everyone else with the big boom that he can make. He announced our arrival at Bob & Carol's house last night by blowing the cannon and rattling the neighborhood windows. Everyone was in the backyard and I was told jumped out of their skins when the cannon shot. Of course, that's just what Ole's looking for so he got his chuckles last night. Oh, and don't worry - he doesn't use cannonballs when he shoots it - he wads up kleenx and just blows shreds all over (snicker).

When I was a kid we always used to travel to my Uncle Emil's who had a dairy farm in central North Dakota. This was always the best because I got to spend several days with my favorite cousin, Jean. She was a year older than me and we were just like sisters. Celebrating the 4th of July there was always a really big deal. The celebration lasted for a couple of days. It always started with a pancake feed and lots of visiting around with the town's folk and the people who had come back to celebrate. There was a big parade in which Uncle Emil always rode his horse, all decked out in a beautiful saddle and red, white and blue ribbons. The horse was a gorgeous Palamino and was extremely well trained to do tricks. Then there was a big family picnic in the park and horseshoe tournaments. And a big rodeo in the afternoon - this was cowboy country, you know. The evening encompassed a musical play on stage out at the ball park and ended with a spectacular display of fireworks put on by the City. Somewhere around midnight our parents would pile us in the car where we would fall asleep in the backseat before they could drive us the two miles home and toss us into bed.

Cousin Jean and me

So belated happy 4th - I've got places to go and things to do.

Later, People.

Garden Tour 2008

2008-07-02T12:12:00.000-05:00

Good thing the weeds don't show in these pictures!!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

And in the Words of Forrest Gump -

2008-06-30T10:13:00.001-05:00

Well, here it is Monday – the weekend is over – and I bet you’re all just dying to hear about Jane’s big surprise party for Dick, heh?

Ole and I didn’t arrive until about 6:30; visited with various folks for a while, put the steaks that WE brought on the grille and ate from all the dishes that were “brought to share.” Mmmm, there was some good stuff there. Potlucks are wonderful in that way, aren’t they? You get to taste everything. Anyway, there was a lot of food there and if anyone went home hungry it was their own fault.

About 8:30 the sex toy lady started hauling her suitcases full of stuff in and setting up her display. There were more colors and glow in the dark dildos than I could have ever imagined. There was stuff on that display table that I had no idea what it was used for – but then that could be my Norwegian Lutheran upbringing too, ya’ know. Kept in the dark all my life, that’s me.

The Fun Bus arrived promptly at 9 p.m. and all the guys that “were allowed” to go got on the bus. Dick was kind of hanging back, I’m not sure why. In fact I heard him say to another guy, “Do I have to go?” Anyway, the bus was full when it left Dick’s house, with the promise that they would be back in an hour or so. Bwahaha! What a joke.

Bob & Carol, Ole & I left shortly after that, stopped at Krabby’s for a drink, got blasted out by the music and were home by 10:30 – such party animals we are.

Bob said he saw Dick the next day (Sunday afternoon) and he was still in the bag with slits for eyes. Dick said Jane was still in bed after having been up all night. So I have no racy stories to tell about the happenings because we chose not to hang around and witness all the garbage. Besides, I have a difficult time being in the same room with Jane anymore and find it’s much better for my peace of mind to vacate the premises when she’s around. The only reason we went at all is because of Dick.

But tonight is half-price burger night at the Watering Hole, so I’m sure we’ll hear some stories tonight and I’ll fill you in.

Now, here is my philosophy. If you don’t want to hear it, just click the little red “X” in the upper right hand corner.

I am not a tea-totaler by any means. I do my share of consuming and I’m certainly not against anyone having a good time. Where I do have a problem is when someone gets so trashed they’re still in the bag the next day. Life is too short to waste the entire next day recuperating from the night before. Most generally the only thing you do when you’re in that condition is make an ass out of yourself, anyway.

So in the words of Forrest Gump, “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

The Big Surprise Party

2008-06-26T10:38:00.005-05:00

I got tagged from Yankee Chick – she actually wants me to use a bit of brain power and write a six-word memoir. Now how in the world am I going to describe myself in six itty-bitty words when there’s so much to me, you know. I have so many wonderful traits and characteristics and to have to sum them all up in such a minor manner – I just don’t know if it can be done (snicker).

Lena loves lefse but not lutefisk.

So how’s that one then. I guess it certainly brings out my ScandiHOOvian characteristics. Now I’m supposed to tag five more bloggers and invite them to play too. Here’s the rules if you want to play along.

Write a six-word memoir.
Post it to your blog including a visual illustration if you would like.
Link to the prson who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogsphere.
Tag 5 more blogs with links.
Don’t forget to leave a comment in the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

So Saturday night is the night of the big surprise party. Just to refresh your memory, Jane is having this big surprise 50th birthday party for Dick. The invitation came out to bring your own meat to put on the grille, bring a dish to pass, BYOB. At 9 p.m. there will be a bus to pick up all the men WHO ARE ALLOWED TO GO and take them to the local strip club. Please be prepared to share in the cost of the bus. Once the guys are on their way there will be a sex toy party for the ladies. And because it’s a surprise party her last statement on the invitation read: “Now don’t let the pussy out of the panties, okay?”

It will be interesting to see how many guys hop on the bus.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I'm supposed to tag 5 bloggers to play. Okay, let's see now - - -

Cosmic, Capitolady, Bluesleepy, Art, Meggie Lou

Okay, Folks, let's see what you can do.

3 Ways to Lower Gas Prices

2008-06-25T09:11:00.002-05:00

And that's all I have to say about that!!

Life with Lucy

2008-06-22T11:45:00.000-05:00

Anybody know who Connie is? She left the following comment on my previous post regarding the picture of the young man standing in the tractor bucket with a chain saw. She identified herself by her first name but signed in as ANONYMOUS and left no link to let us know if she’s a blogger or not.

“Sorry but my husband is a safety expert and that photo just became part of his photo gallery of how to kill or mame yourself quickly and easily.Connie”

Sorry to have offended your senses, Connie, but the method used in taking down that tree was not Ole’s idea – he’s a bit smarter than that. Bulletproof Man is in the business of taking down trees and that’s the method that HE chose. He carries his own insurance, etc., and was paid to do the job. Maybe I took your comment wrong, but it sounded rather critical of Ole’s intelligence. Besides that, it would have been nice if your safety expert husband would have asked permission to use that picture as part of his gallery considering it’s part of his business.

Life with Lucy continues to be exciting. I’m dogger sitting this weekend as Ole, Lovely Daughter and Lars are all in Minneapolis attending the Annual Back to the 50s Weekend at the State Fair Grounds. Lucy was out with me yesterday afternoon when I was working in my flowerbeds, sticking quite close, rubbing up against me and chattering to me as she sat in the dirt watching me work. Beau and Daisy were lying out in front of the garage waiting diligently for Ole to come home. Suddenly, around the corner came Beau, saw that Lucy was outside and decided it was time to play Chase the Cat. Lucy, being afraid of dogs in the first place, took off running but unfortunately Beau caught her by the hindquarters. She screamed in terror, I yelled at Beau, who dropped her and came slinking back and lay down on the ground in front of me. Lucy managed to keep going and ran up a tree somewhere down by the river.

The most humiliating discipline that either of the dogs can receive is to be swatted across the behind with one of Ole’s caps, which I promptly did. Beau got about four hard swats and decided that he was going to growl and snap at me. I knew I couldn’t back down or he would win and then think he ran the show. NOT AT MY HOUSE! So he got four more swats and he growled and snapped again. So he got four more swats, this time across the nose. And I won – he gave in and cowered on the ground. I promptly took him in the house and made him sit by the door in the back hallway for the remainder of the afternoon. There will be no kitty chasing of any kind at my house.

Daisy is such an easy-going dog. She minds so well and does what she’s told. Beau, on the other hand, being a boy dog is much more stubborn and thinks that rules are made for everyone else but him. As a result he always has to be told two or three times before he’ll mind. When you’ve got big dogs you HAVE to be in control at all times. Beau has been quite meek and mild and minded quickly since that scenario.

Lucy finally came back to the house last night about dark, none the worse for wear fortunately. I think it will be a long time before she goes outside again. Poor little thing.

Her week’s worth of regular meals is beginning to show. There seems to be a bit of meat on her little ribs and her backbone doesn’t stick out quite so far. Big Brother emailed me this morning and asked me to take her in for shots. It’s his intention to take her home with him this fall when he comes to visit. That was my intention also, as I truly don’t need another cat, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to let her go by that time.

I had best sign off for now. I’ve got work to do and I have to go give Lucy a cuddle.

Love Lena

I Love Lucy

2008-06-19T10:56:00.007-05:00

Good grief, Charlie Brown - where has the last week gone. I haven't posted anything since last Thursday. And I bet you've all been wondering/worrying about me too, right? Well, never fear - I've been busy.

First of all, we have a new little resident at our house. Her name is Lucy.

This picture doesn't do justice to the bright blue eyes that she has.

She came wandering up to the deck one evening when we were all sitting around the fire pit. She was very tentative and needed a lot of encouragement, but Lovely Daughter finally got ahold of her. She was skin and bone - you could see every rib and her backbone stuck out. Poor little thing was so hungry. I suppose someone dumped her off. What usually happens is the poor dumped animals find a haven in our storage building to get out of the weather and eventually due to loneliness make their way up to the house to find some human companionship. That's how Senior Citizen Simon arrived about 12 years ago.

My guess is that she's only about six months old - just a baby yet. She's very loving and appreciative of anything you do for her. For the first few days I fed her in the screen room and put an old blanket in a chair for her to sleep in. She snarfed her food down so fast I thought for sure it was all going to come back up. I don't think she slept in the screen room at all, because every time I would see her outside she was coming from the river in a heavily wooded area. She always had muddy feet from being on the river bank and her fur was full of leaves and seeds. I'm surmising that she was living in some brush pile or a hollow tree or something down there.

I eventually allowed her in the house and she very tentatively went through the patio door and investigated the entire house then wanted out again. Senior Citizen Simon was very much a gentleman, touched noses with her and then followed her around from a distance. It was like he just wanted to make sure she didn't get herself into any trouble of any kind. The first couple of evenings that she spent in the house, but along about midnight she always went to the door and wanted out. It was like she just wasn't sure about being in the house. Like her escape route had been shut off. Last night was the first night she spent the entire night in the house. When she got up she wanted out immediately and went to the screen room to find HER food bowl. She absolutely will not eat out of Simon's bowl and he's very willing to share. I've even tried to feed her from a separate bowl in a different area of the kitchen but she prefers to eat in the screen room by herself.

There's already five cats on this property. Lovely Daughter has four and I have one, so I'd really like to find a good home for her. Big Brother is coming to visit in September and would like to have her, but that means I have to keep her until then. I'm afraid if I do that I probably won't be able to give her up. She's already wormed her way far to deeply into my heart. I'm such a sucker for animals that haven't been treated properly. I guess we'll see what happens. As of this moment Lucy is tucked deeply into a wooly afghan on my bed, sound asleep.

The YaYa's met again yesterday. Our group is growing. It started way last fall with three of us and now we're up to seven. One of the gals drove all the way across the state to get together - and we do have fun.

We're tossing around some fun ideas - like a 50 year reunion for our 6th grade class. So far we haven't gotten the guys from the 6th grade involved yet, but they all live within an easy driving distance, so it certainly would be possible.

One of the gals who hasn't been able to join us yet runs a restaurant in a little town about 50 miles from here. So yesterday we decided if she can't come to our gathering we'll bring the gathering to her. We'll all hop into the YaYa Mobile and make an afternoon of it. Drop in on her for lunch and a bit of chatting.

We're all big into gardening also with the exception of one gal who lives in an apartment. So we decided we're going to have a garden tour and go to everyone's house. The gal in the apartment says she has a big flower pot on her deck so we'll go to see that too. Anyway, we'll end up at my house, Ole can cook us some burgers on the grill and we'll have a fire in the firepit that night - even if it's warm it will at least chase away the bugs.

We had to take a large tree down in our backyard. It had so many weak branches, and with the storms we've been having lately we were afraid it would come down on the house. And having just replaced the roof, I don't think our insurance company would appreciate having a tree come through. So down it came. The young man who helped Ole take it down was 19 years old (bullet proof at that age, you know) and was like a monkey with a chainsaw. He climbed in the bucket of the tractor and just stood there hanging onto nothing while Ole raised the bucket. And there he stood - stretching out with this running chain saw in his hands to reach the lowest branches and cut them down. My insides were tied in knots the whole time he was up there.

Then the main trunk came down. The tree was approximately 75 feet tall, so it made quite a crash when it hit the ground. I had my very own Axemen that day.

Well, guys, suppose I better go accomplish something.

Later, okay?

Lena

Pickled Javelina Feet??

2008-06-12T10:28:00.006-05:00

Don’t you sometimes wonder how some people’s brains work? Where do their ideas come from? Their creativity?

My Internet provider has a filter system that keeps all the junk mail and viruses from reaching my computer. Periodically I’m directed to their site to check out the spam mail box and the virus mail box to see if they caught anything they shouldn’t have. As I was checking through things this morning I took notice of some of the email addresses. They really made me wonder. Here’s a sampling:

jimmyinelastic@
ferdinandsexoticboner@
dagmarshooters@
sallyscrumptious@
randyscreepycox@

Hmmm. I’m not going to say another word – I’ll just leave all that to your imagination.

Say, I want to comment on what a wonderful job all the ~~head honchos~~ organizers of the Great Javelina Hunt are doing. If you haven’t checked out their pages, please go over there and do so. Sounds like there will be lots going on to keep us all informed and entertained throughout the weekend. And if you haven't made plans to go, you really should because you'll be missing not only a lot of fun, but a great education in blogging. Rosie, Ole’s wondering if he can go along on the great javelina hunt – just in case there’s a javelina that decides to get rowdy he wants to be available to protect us all as he says he’ll be ‘packin’. (That’s a joke here, People, a joke. He wouldn’t shoot a cute little javelina!)

I guess there is a difference between a javelina and a wild pig, huh? Big Brother lives in New Mexico in an area where there are quite a few wild pigs/boars. A couple of years ago his neighbor was outside in the evening checking out some strange noises that she had heard. She located the strange noises, all right. They were emanating (neener) from her backyard where she found a big boar rooting around in her garden. She turned to run back to her house with the pig after her. He caught the back of her leg with his tusk and ripped it open. She made it into the house and managed to call 911 and the neighbor who came over with a large rifle, but by the time he got there with the gun the pig was gone. This guy was definitely not cute little Porky Pig.

Now I know I’ve talked in the past about eating some strange things – not necessarily me, but strange things that have been eaten by my family or folks I know. Of course there’s the well-known lutefisk fiasco. My mother used to make both blood bread and blood sausage (put a clothes pin on your nose as it smells as bad as lutefisk.) Then there was headcheese. Read about it – it’s disgusting. In Iceland we were offered sheep's head, which had all the wool singed off it,

fermented shark, which was cut into slabs, burried at the high tide mark for 6 weeks, then dug up and eaten,

and large slabs of whale meat. This looked like a huge chunk of beef, although much grainier with absolutely no fat.

There’s also pickled eggs (put a cork in the backside of anyone who eats those), pickled herring, pickled beets and pickled pigs feet. My father always thought they were a great delicacy. He would sit by the table and eat them as a bedtime snack. Can you imagine?

Now maybe the Javelina Crew has ulterior motives planning this hunt. Maybe Chef Art is going to prepare some great delicacy for us. Just don't put too many hot peppers in mine, okay, Art? My spice cabinet consists of salt, pepper and ketchup. This could end up bein' a lot for a Meat & Potatoes ScandiHOOvian girl to swallow. Just sayin' is all.

Happy IVGLDSW Day!!

2008-06-06T10:54:00.002-05:00

I got this in an e-mail from one of the YaYa’s this morning and I wanted to share it with all of you. It says it’s for women, but I certainly don’t want to be sexist, so I’ll share with everyone – men included. Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day. Remember this motto and live by it:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand,wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO what a ride!’

I’m workin’ on it, Folks, how about you? I’ve got my chocolate in one hand, but I don’t do beer or wine so I’ll have to find a substitute for that, the ole’ bod’ is beginning to show signs of wear and tear, and I have been known to yell “WOO HOO” on more than one occasion.

Speaking of wine and those of you that I know are ~~winos~~ wine aficionados, Ole plans to bring a few bottles of his homemade wine along to the Great Javelina Hunt. (Don’t worry – it definitely won’t be a drunkfest .) He’s got his own label and everything – The Barefoot Winery, from the Valley of the Buffalo River. He wants all you wine lovers who might want to taste it to know that he always wears socks when he stomps on the grapes, so everything is totally sanitary. Besides that he’s been a blue ribbon winner at the county fair now for several years in a row. He doesn’t share his homemade wine with just ANYBODY, you know. You have to be very special people to be awarded that pleasure.

His homemade wine goes really good with a sheet of lefse smeared with butter and sugar or a few lingonberries. You non-ScandiHOOvians just don’t know what you’ve been missing all your life.

Speaking of non-ScandiHOOvians – I have some very special events planned for some of you. You can actually become honorary ScandiHOOvians at some point during the Javelina Hunt. What greater honor could you possibly want. There will be a very short course at the Uff Da University and you’ll get a diploma and everything!! How about that!!

Three Cheers for the YaYa Mobile

2008-06-04T15:35:00.003-05:00

I really should be outside running this huge magnet with wheels over the lawn and driveway to pick up all the nails and staples that have come flying off the roof while the roofing project was happening. I really should be out doing that while it’s not raining and before we get the heavy rains that are forecast for tomorrow. Ole is up on the roof all by himself finishing up some odds and ends making sure everything is sealed down and waterproof. He finished up the first half of the garage last night at 10:30 p.m. using a big construction light that he has. It’s so bright I’m sure you could see it from outer space – you know – just like the Luxor in Las Vegas. We’ve got the front half of the garage to go yet, but because of the forecast for tomorrow he’s going to leave it all intact and wait for a sunny day when he won’t have to fight the weather.

We have a tragedy in our midst, Bloggers. If you’ve been reading KitchenLogic2.0 for the last couple of months, you know that she’s had some issues in her family that are going to prevent her from going to the Great Javelina Hunt in October. I’m going to miss her dreadfully because we would have been two Minnesota-sisters-in-arms. We would have been excellent examples of what folks from the Far Nort’land are like. (She’s Norwegian, too, ya know.) But now I’m going to have to wing it on my own. That’s a heavy load to carry, but I’ll do my best.

So Ole and I were brainstorming the other night – that gets dangerous around this house. Just to let everyone know how generous Ole truly is he made this proposal: We plan on loading Ole’s little 1929 Model A that’s been street-rodded, onto a trailer, along with the Harley, and pull it behind the RV. Now Ole has a very strict philosophy about our motor home. It party’s 12, feeds 6, but only sleeps 2. Period. But Ole said that K-Lo could ride in the Model A on the trailer – all the way down to Tombstone – free – no fuel to buy – but ONLY if she promises to make motor noises when we’re on the road.

Just kidding, K-Lo. We’d love to have you come along – even inside the RV – but I know your circumstances and understand. We all yust need a little laugh even when things are on the bleak side. But isn’t that a cute word picture? Can’t you just see K-Lo riding in the Model A that’s on the trailer, windows rolled down, wind blowing through her hair, steering that steering wheel back and forth and making motor noises going down the interstate? Come on – you know it’s funny.

I’ve told you many times about the YaYa Sisters – the gals that went to school together from 1st through 12th grade and now get together periodically and laugh and have lots of fun? Well, one of the gals was in need of a car – just something to tool around town in when she’s running errands. She wanted something economical – hubby wanted something that she would be safe in. He bought her a 1965 Cadillac Deville convertible. It’s a hoot. We’re calling it the YaYa Mobile and we’re going to have a magnetic sign made up stating that. Our first road trip will be to a small town about 60 miles from here where one of our old high school friends owns a restaurant. We’ll have to pick a nice day so we can put the top down and wear scarves that blow in the wind just like the real YaYa’s did. We’re having SO much fun. I guess there are some positives about growing ~~old~~ older.

The YaYa Mobile - isn't it cute?

Well, I guess I better get my butt outside

A DOUBLE NEENER ENTRY

2008-06-03T17:34:00.003-05:00

A Double Neener is about all any Swede is capable of.

Okay – it’s official – the reservation for the Great Javelina Hunt has been secured.

You see, we aren’t too concerned about a shortage of hotel/motel rooms because we travel like turtles and bring our house along with us. I made reservations for our rig and Big Brother’s rig out at the Tombstone RV Park and Resort, just north of town a stone’s throw. We’re bringing both a car and the Harley so Ole can play taxi for me as I come and go to the various events. And Big Brother will come along to help keep Ole out of mischief while I’m busy with the Javelina Hunters. I think that’s pretty well planned out, don’t you?

I’ve printed off the Javelina Hunt registration form, will write a check and get that in the mail to the appropriate folks within the next couple of days. Javelina Hunters look out – here we come!!

After The Hunt our plan is to wander around the southwest for a while, possibly spending some time on the beaches of Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point) in Mexico, visiting long time friends in Lake Havasu City, AZ, and definitely wending (neener) our way to Las Vegas where my nephew lives. We just may not come back north until the following spring because we haven’t traveled for the last two winters.

Anyway, by that time we should be good and bankrupt with the price of diesel doing what it’s doing.

Maybe I’ll have to have Ole and Big Brother set up shop on a street corner in Tombstone with a tin cup, asking for contributions to fill the tank of the RV. That would certainly keep them out of mischief, huh.

Let’s see. What else.

I spoiled myself today. I had a pedicure. It was so nice and relaxing that when I got home I had to take a nap. Senior Citizen Simon didn’t mind that at all. He noogied (neener) right down in the fluffy blanket I was relaxing under, rolled over on his back asking to have his belly rubbed, and snored up a storm. Sometimes he even drools, but you can expect that from any old man, can’t you?

Ole’s been quite frustrated today. It started raining last night and hasn’t stopped all day. That doesn’t make for good roofing weather for a garage that’s half stripped of its shingles. It did stop about an hour ago so leave it to Ole to be creative. He climbed up on the roof with the leaf blower and dried the tarpaper that way. I hear the thump of the airnailer now so he must be back in business.

Oh yes, by the way, all Javelina Hunters will be welcome to stop by our campsite for a visit if you would like to meet Ole. I know he’s got some paparazzi out there. You’ll be able to tell which rig is ours because Ole will be sitting out front wearing his Vikings helmet and munching on lefse. No lutefisk though. I promise I won’t pollute the clean, clear Arizona air. And then, as I was making our reservation online this morning, the thought came to mind about what kind of clothes should I bring along for the Javelina Hunt. What does one wear when hunting javelinas? I mean, other than carrying a wash cloth to wipe one’s arm down after the sticky puffy marshmallows have dripped all over, does the javelina have a preference? Well, I think I’ve solved that problem – here’s part of my wardrobe.

I think I'll bring along Ole's Red Ryder BB gun with the compass in the stock.

How NOT to Start Your Monday Morning

2008-06-02T10:18:00.002-05:00

How NOT to start your Monday: Head out the back door intending to go to the garage fridge to grab a diet coke (I don’t do coffee). Just as you reach for the door handle your left foot lands in something soft and squishy. Pick it up instantly and say, “Oh yuck,” and put your right foot down which also lands in something bigger that’s soft and squishy. Say, “Oh, shit,” in a louder voice and before you place your left foot back on the floor you look to see what you’ve gotten into.

Hairballs and all that go with them!!

And there, out on the back step, looking lovingly up at you is Senior Citizen Simon, depositor of said hairballs on the rug inside the back door. He must have puked, decided to vacate the premises so he wouldn’t be blamed, run downstairs through all the flippy cat doors and outside. Why complete your job OUTside when you can do it INside!! Oh well, a good shake and another load of laundry will make everything right – right?

Ole, Lovely Daughter and Lars are all having a hard time wiggling this morning. I don’t know about Dick, Ted or Scott as I didn’t witness their attempts to wiggle (ugly word picture, huh?) All this after a marathon-roofing project this weekend. All the shingles are replaced on the house, one side of the garage is stripped and tarpapered, and the other side has yet to be done. And of course the forecast is for rain off and on for the entire week. As cool a spring as we’ve had so far, wouldn’t you know that this weekend, the weekend Ole chose to do the shingling was the hottest so far this year. It was in the mid 80s with high humidity. I couldn’t keep enough cold water on hand to keep these guys going as they were sweating it out faster than they could consume.

I will be so glad when the job is done and the mess is cleaned up. Then we’ve got to go over the yard and driveway with a BIG magnet that Dick has to pick up all the staples and nails to avoid any flat tires.

I played gopher for this project. You know – go fer this and go fer that? But that’s okay. I’d rather do that than be up on the roof. Somebody had to be on the ground goferring to the fridge and throwing water bottles up on the roof. I even hit Scott in the head once – sorry Scott. But at least I got it up on the roof, right?

Anyway, one of the things I had to do was run to town for forgotten parts, or things they didn’t know they were going to need. One of these things was a 3-inch roof vent cap. After Ole explained to me what it was used for, I knew pretty much what I was looking for. You can’t be married to Ole for 41 years and not know about construction stuff. Anyway, just to make sure the Big Construction Supply Store had it in stock (duh), Scott called the store to verify. He got the name of the young man he talked to in Building Supplies (Brian) who knew that I would be coming within 15 minutes to pick this piece up. Now this is a new Big Construction Supply Store (from here on known as BCSS) that has just opened up close to us, a subsidiary of another one just across the river in the sister city. The interior of the store covers about 7 acres (so they advertise) and it’s only been open about 3 months, so I’ll give the sales clerks some slack that they may not know all their inventory yet.

So I trot into the store and head for the building supply department and ask for Brian.

“Who?”
“Brian.”
“There’s no Brian here. Oh, yeah, he went on break. Can I help you?”
“Okay. I need a 3” roof vent cap.”
“A what?”
“A 3” roof vent cap.”
“Oh, that’s not in this department. That’s over in plumbing. I’ll take you over there.”

So I follow young clerk 1, (that you could tell was really green) over to the plumbing department where he looks and looks and looks and doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what he’s looking for.

“Just a minute, Lady, I’m going to find the guy in charge of this department.”
“Okay.”

I can see young sales clerk wandering up and down various aisles looking for a coworker but not finding one. Finally sales clerk 2 walks by and I snag him, tell him what I’m looking for and he says, “They’re not in this department, they’re over in heating. I’ll take you over there.”

First of all, the building supply department is in one corner of the store. The plumbing department was in the opposite corner of the store, and now we’re going to the heating department, which is in a third corner of the store. All of this in a store that covers 7 acres, and I’ve got a knee that is flaring up saying “Don’t be doin’ this stuff – don’t be walkin’ this far on all this concrete flooring.”

We got to the heating department where clerk 3 and clerk 4 were standing around bullshitting, leaning up against the shelves. Clerk 2 tells them what I’m looking for and clerk 3 pulls one off the shelf and dumps it into my cart. BUT – I knew that wasn’t what I was looking for. What I wanted had nothing to do with heating; it had to do with venting your sewer stack off the roof. I told him politely that wasn’t what I needed, and explained to him what I did need.

“Oh, that’s over in plumbing.” (which is 18 miles away over in the other corner of the store.)

By this time, I’m losing my cool and my knee is screaming at me saying, “We’re bone on bone here – don’t do this.”

But I headed out across the tundra, following clerks 1, 2, 3 and 4, none of whom knew their backside from a hole in the ground, when I just couldn’t help myself and said, “You know, Guys, I’ve been across this store three times and I still don’t have what I need,” when clerk 3 turns to me, puts his hands on his hips and sarcastically says, “Well, Sooorrrryy – but we have SO MANY different kinds of stacks that unless you explain yourself thoroughly we have no way of knowing just what it is you want.” Clerk 3 was an arrogant little shit about 22 years old named Billy who thought his you-know-what didn’t stink. And I was about to tell him so when I thought better of it and just decided to get the piece I needed and get the hell out of Dodge.

Now it was obvious that Billy was in charge of teaching the newbies, clerks 1, 2 and 4, the ropes. What he was teaching them was how to destroy customer relations and send them somewhere else.

For all you Billies out there, what your teaching the newbies, and what they will eventually find out is, “I am the customer. I am the reason you have this job. You treat me badly and I will go away. And if I go away you will eventually not have a job.”

BCSS’s first faux paux was when they were supposed to deliver the shingles to the roof on Thursday between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. Dick even took time off from work to come out and help Ole offload the shingles from the crane device that they use to get them to the roof. This was just over a $4000 order – not exactly what I would call chicken feed. So here sat Dick and Ole waiting for the shingles. Four o’clock came – no shingles. Five o’clock – no shingles. Finally Ole called the delivery desk and the young man claimed they hadn’t set a time for delivery. Only that they would be delivered on Thursday SOMETIME. Funny thing – Ole had it written on the paperwork (a photocopy of the young man’s handwriting) they were scheduled for 1-4 p.m. on Thursday Then it started to rain and after many phone calls back and forth between the delivery desk, the truck driver who was supposed to deliver the shingles and Ole, the truck driver called at 6:30 p.m. and said he wasn’t going to deliver shingles in the rain. What? What’s the difference – shingles are going to get wet eventually when they’re on your roof anyway. And it wasn’t doing more than just sprinkling.

Back to the delivery desk:
“Okay, when can you deliver the shingles? Tomorrow morning?” (Meaning Friday morning.)
“No, our schedule is all booked for Friday. MAYBE after everyone else is delivered we could run them out – say – after 6:00 p.m.”
“Uh – no – I think you better put us ahead of your scheduled deliveries for Friday.”
“We can’t do that sir. I can send them out after 6 only if the driver is willing to work overtime. Otherwise it will be next week sometime.”

And Ole didn’t explode here – good thing I wasn’t on the phone. Ole just gritted his teeth and said thank you. I’ll call you back when I decide what I want done. Ole went into BCSS on Friday morning and after much negotiating and discussing the issue with the manager he got them delivered Friday afternoon – only about 28 hours after they were SUPPOSED to be here. Ole’s aim was to start shingling on Friday morning instead of Saturday morning. If that had actually happened we could have been done with the project by Sunday evening instead of still having the garage left with rain in the forecast for everyday this week.

BCSS, as I said, has only been open in this location a few months, but Ole and I have had three major episodes of poor or nonexistent customer service in dealing with them already. Lovely Daughter and Lars have had several also. So once this roofing job is over with I doubt that they will get anymore of our business. We’ll go back to their sister store across the river even though it is farther away, where we can be treated like people, not a pain in the neck, and when they say they’re going to deliver, they deliver.

I’ve been making notes and will write the manager of the new store a letter stating situations, dates, and names. Will anything come of it? I doubt it, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I said something. After all, it’s management that allows this kind of behavior – shit rolls downhill, you know.

As I get older I get bitchier and refuse to take the shit that a lot of people dish out.

Customer service is virtually nonexistent anymore – and that’s a sad thing.

How to end the war on Terrorists

2008-05-31T08:46:00.002-05:00

Mornin' Folks - Ole here.

Lena's busy cooking in the kitchen and said she wouldn't have time for an entry today, so I'm just sneaking in here to put my two cents in. She's out there slaving over a hot stove cooking up a storm because we've got the threshing crew here today and they're going to be hungry. Well, actually it's the shingling crew. Dick, Ted, Scott, Lars, Lovely Daughter and I will be up on the roof ripping off all the old shingles and installing new ones.

Lena has told me that she rarely gets into anything political or religious on her blog - everybody has and is entitled to their own viewpoints and regardless of what you say you're never going to change someone else's - so she just leaves it alone. But - - I have some thoughts on how GW could end the war and come out smelling like a rose politically.

Here goes:

Send Service Vets over 60. I am over 60 and the Armed Forces think I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older than 42 to join the military.

They've got the whole thing ass backwards. Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join a military unit until you're at least 35.

For starters: Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old farts only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry. We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for awhile.

An 18 -year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch.

If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at, and we're used to soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling. (Uh-oh - here comes Lena with the rolling pin - Just kidding, Lena).

They could lighten up on the obstacle course, however. I've been in combat and didn't see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. I can hear the Drill Sgt. in the New army now, 'Get down and give me ... ER .. one.' Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I've never seen anyone out run a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave and to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way. Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see right now is a couple of million pissed-off old farts with attitude and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them.

If nothing else, put us on border patrol...we will have it secured the first night!

And that's all I have to say about that.

It's been fun, Folks. Enjoy your day!

Ole

Tweaking Mrs. OCD

2008-05-27T12:30:00.003-05:00

Okay, Folks. I know your chomping at the bit to find out how Jane acted at our potluck and bonfire on Sunday evening.

Just as I expected.

Dick and Jane arrived with their daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter and daughter’s 3-month old puppy, none of whom were invited. She arrived with a very sour expression on her face and the only people that she spoke to all evening were her immediate family. Everyone else was laughing and telling stories and generally having a good time, but Jane never cracked a smile all evening. Bob said he made a point of watching her and if she had smiled her face would have cracked. It was very evident that she didn’t want to be there.

About the time that Ole started the fire Jane disappeared into the screen room and talked on the phone for a very long time. Then I saw her walk through the garage, down the driveway out to where their car was parked. When she didn’t come back after a period of time I went into the house and looked out my bedroom window. She couldn’t see me because the room was dark – but I could see her!! There she was sitting in the car listening to the radio. I guess we were all too boring for her to hang around with – or maybe it was because she wasn’t the center of attention. She didn’t have Bernie and Beth to feed off of and act up with. Tsk, tsk, tsk, too damn bad, isn’t it. Last time they were together at one of our bonfires they all drank way too much, pulled up their shirts and bras and walked around with their boobs flopping all over the place. And these women are all in the 50s and wear at least a 44DD.

Now I KNOW we weren’t boring because there was a lot of story telling and joke telling going on. I ran into Bob and Carol the next day and Bob said his sides still hurt from laughing so hard. I guess it’s just Jane’s loss if she refuses to have any fun. And if she thinks she’s making the rest of us pay, well, she’s being fooled now, isn’t she. I just wish we could invite Dick and tell him to leave Jane at home.

Well, actually I guess we could. Dick’s 50th birthday is coming the end of June and Jane is planning a party for him. She’s told one of her friends, Lee, that she’s invited, but she has to leave her significant other home. He’s not allowed to come because he gets to be such a horse’s arse when he’s been drinking. Now if SHE can do it, why can’t I? The only problem is that she would make life so miserable for Dick that he wouldn’t come either.

Maybe Jane was so miserable on Sunday night because she would rather have been out with her male “friend” than with any of us.

Enough about Jane. Now I have to tell you something funny. Well, at least Ole and I thought it was pretty funny.

Let me give you a bit of background: There is a lady, we’ll call her Mrs. OCD at this point, who is currently on the alter guild at our church. This means that she’s in charge of seeing that the correct clothes are on the alter, the appropriate wall hangings are hung, and that the flowers and candles are arranged nicely. She’s also to see that everything is laundered and pressed. Well, us gals who have worked with her on other projects know that she is truly a fussbudget. You know, one of those people who think they are the only ones who can do anything right. They follow behind and redo everyone’s work to their satisfaction and specifications. Nobody wants to work on any committees with her because she’s such a control freak and there’s only one way to do something – her way.

So anyway, Ole, being a trustee of the church was there on Saturday afternoon installing a new hot water heater. The closet that the hot water heater was in happened to be located where he could see what was going on in the sanctuary. It took him about an hour and a half to get it all installed and when he came home he told me that was the most frustrating hour and a half he had spent in a long time. Not that anything had gone wrong with the installation, but Mrs. OCD was there checking on the alter to make sure everything was in place for Sunday morning. He said she spent the entire hour and a half rearranging flowers. She would turn the vases a quarter of an inch and then walk back halfway to the door to look from a distance. Obviously they weren’t right, so she’d turn them another quarter of an inch, walk back, check. Nope – still not right so she’d have to slide the vase a little more to the left or right – walk back – check – nope still not right. An hour and a half, People, turn, walk back, check, nope – wash, rinse and repeat. He said he had the greatest urge to just run up to the front of the sanctuary, take all the vases and just dump all the flowers all over the floor.

Anyway, later that evening Ole decided he needed to go back to the church to check all the water lines for leaks and make sure everything was up to snuff on the water heater. I rode along, as did Lovely Daughter and Lars. He had been telling Lovely Daughter and Lars about how Mrs. OCD spent her afternoon and I thought they would split a gut. Anyway, we all got out and went into the church, Ole to the closet to check for leaks. Lovely Daughter had something else on her mind – she opened the door to the sanctuary and pranced right up to the alter and started moving vases of flowers – twisting a half a turn here and there and moving the vases so they were no longer in the center of the flower stand. Nothing to the point that it looked bad, just enough to skew everything. Just enough to drive Mrs. OCD crazy.

Ole and I went to church the next morning and sat two rows behind Mrs. OCD and her husband. She obviously had gotten there late enough so that she couldn’t go up front and correct everything, but she kept leaning over and whispering in her hubby’s ear and pointing at different things up at the alter. Poor thing – I bet she thought she had lost her mind.

So later, when fellowship was almost over, I was sitting at a table with our Pastor and several other folks. I knew they all had a sense of humor so I told this story. I thought the Pastor was going to roll on the floor from laughing. Everyone else really gave it a cackle too. I wonder if Mrs. OCD will ever recover?

I guess you can tell that Lovely Daughter is definitely her father’s daughter – always up for a trick or a practical joke. Now I would never do anything like that – nuh-uh.

The AUDACITY of that woman

2008-05-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Well, Folks, it’s the beginning of a holiday weekend. And what are your plans? Do they include driving somewhere? I bet there’re a lot of plans that have been squashed due to the gas prices. So sad.

We have a friend who drives truck and hauls fuel from refineries in various locations in the upper Midwest to gas stations in our local area. He’s very interesting to visit with right now as he’s done this for 40 years and has some interesting insight into all this stuff. I visited with him yesterday when he was on the road and his speculation at this point is that within two weeks gas will be over $4 a gallon in our area and diesel will be over $5.

So Ole decided to fire up the RV yesterday and take it into town to fill that 160-gallon tank so we could begin the process of going bankrupt. I was out in the Back 40 (for you non-Midwesterners – that means in the farthest piece of the property) when I heard this loud air horn go off several times. Then a couple of minutes later it went off again so I toddled my riding lawnmower up to the house to see what all the racket was about. Ole was sitting behind the driver’s seat in the RV with one dog sitting on his lap looking out the window and the other with front paws on the dash looking out the window. He rolled down the window and said, “Hey Gorgeous (I love that Ole), wanna go for a ride?” So I got off my mower, brushed myself off and hopped into the passenger’s seat. It felt SO good.

$733 later we were on the road back home, and when we reached our driveway Ole said, “Shall I just keep on going?” I was very tempted to say yes, but being the responsible person that I am I decided I had to put my lawnmower away first. So we went home instead (sniff).

We cancelled our trip earlier this spring to the Great Smokies in North Carolina, and have decided to take a couple of shorter trips over the summer before we go for the big one and head west to Sturgis in August. At this point we’re planning to go the first weekend in June to a place about 100 miles from here called Fort Sisseton in South Dakota. They have a black powder event that weekend and re-enactment of the military days of the late 1800s when the Fort was active. Ole is quite interested in black powder shooting and has several pistols, so I’m sure he’ll enjoy it. We’ve been there before, but only for a day. So it will be fun to spend the entire 5 days there.

Part of our activities this weekend include having a potluck and a bonfire in the backyard on Sunday evening. We’re furnishing all the meat for the grille, and I’ve asked everyone to bring a dish to pass and whatever alcohol they want to drink. I’ve got a fridge full of soda. I sent the invitation out several days ago to the usual group of folks – about 18 if they all come. The email hadn’t been out 5 minutes when I heard back from Alice (of Ted and Alice). Alice is the one that worships the ground that Jane walks on and tries so hard to emulate her. Alice’s response was that they would probably be there, but they both have colds so she’ll have to see how they feel. This is Alice’s standard response whenever I invite her to anything. What’s reality is that she has to wait to find out what Jane is doing before she truly makes up her mind. She always has to leave herself an out. Oh well, at least I made the attempt.

Then yesterday I heard from Jane. When I sent the invitation out I sent it BCC specifically so Jane couldn’t see who I invited (tweak, tweak)! Jane’s response was that yeah, they would probably be there (see a parallel here?) and she told me what she would probably bring. Her next question was, “Who did you invite? You did invite Donnie, Bernie & Beth, didn’t you? And can my kids come?” Her kids are 24 and married with a child, and 26. Yeah, I guess they can come if they don’t have anything more fun to do than hang around with “old fogies.” And as for Donnie, Bernie and Beth, they are Jane’s paparazzi. Yes, they are nice folks, but they are JANE’s friends, not Ole’s and mine. But you see, that’s Jane’s way of ensuring that she has a circle around her that adores her, because nobody else in this group does. As I said, they’re nice people on their own, but when they get together with Jane I can’t stand any of them.

The audacity (neener) of being invited to something and then wanting your friends invited too. But this is very typical of Jane – she’s done this to me many times. I think I’ll just not respond to that email.

Later – Guys

Happy Friday!!

Love Lena

An Open Letter to Jane

2008-05-22T10:08:00.002-05:00

Dear Jane,

No, I shouldn’t start this letter “Dear” because you most certainly are not dear to me. At one point in time we were good friends, but long ago you lost that status in my eyes, and became merely an acquaintance. You wouldn’t even hold that position if it wasn’t for your husband who is a very kind, caring and loving individual; he is everything you are not. Unbeknownst to you, he has managed to smooth over some very rough spots for me in the past several years regarding our relationship – years when you’ve been “at your best” for lack of better sarcasm.

I truly thought that I had gotten over my anger toward you for all the things that you have done to and said about my family and me. Something happened yesterday that brought up old memories and all the hatred came to the surface again. The only consolation is that it doesn’t surface as frequently as it used to. Anger is such a wasted emotion and takes so much energy. I really need to channel that energy and emotion somewhere else – I certainly don’t need to waste it on you. Ole always tells me not to let someone else control how I feel – because if that enemy knew how he had affected my life he would be dancing in the streets. So, dance, Jane, dance. Because I truly do hate you for the things you have done and said.

Your husband, Dick, stopped over here last Thursday afternoon, sat on the deck in the sunshine and had a beer with Ole. Dick seemed so down – not the usual, smiley person that he always seems to be, although his positive attitude is truly a miracle considering he lives with you. By Sunday night Ole and I heard why Dick has been so down lately.

You’ve been caught, Bitch, with your pants down in more ways than one.

Dick had planned a canoe trip to the Boundary Waters (WAY northern Minnesota) with some buddies for the weekend, but cancelled the trip because the ice isn’t even off the lakes up there yet. You had apparently made some plans of your own that didn’t include Dick, and when you found out that Dick had cancelled the trip you flew into a rage. That alone should have told Dick something, but I think he loves you so much he’s choosing not to see all the signs.

Just why he loves you I can’t figure out. You’re about 50 pounds overweight, you dress like a slob, you have a bitchy personality, control issues up the wahzoo – the only thing I can think of is you must be really good in bed. One out of five isn’t bad, I guess.

Your plan was to go for a ride on your new Harley – ALONE – or so you said. Being Dick was going to be home he decided to go along, which you promptly negated. It was a horribly windy day – not a good day for riding at all – and under normal circumstances I don’t think you would have ridden but you had “something” in your back pocket you needed to complete. You think you’re so sneaky, but everybody can see through you – you’re about as transparent as a pane of glass. Your reasoning for not allowing Dick to ride with you was pretty transparent also – you wanted to go visit your grandmother’s grave and you might cry and you didn’t want Dick to see that. What a bunch of shit.

So Dick took off with a friend and went fishing. What a coincidence that your “friend” would call AFTER Dick leaves and want to go riding with you – in that terrible wind. How convenient. But like I said, you got caught. There was a bike accident, your “friend” went down, was injured and smashed his bike.

Jane – something’s really rotten in Denmark. You wouldn’t allow your husband to go with you to supposedly visit your grandmother’s grave, but it was okay for your “friend” to go along? A number of folks also find it interesting that you openly meet this “friend” on a regular basis at one of the local bars after work. It was also noted that the last time this “friend” was at the Watering Hole on burger night that you were making cow eyes at him, and kept him 100% engaged in conversation so that he couldn’t talk to anyone else. It’s also been noted that you have certain males that you “cling” to on karaoke nights and get quite upset when those certain males speak to other females. You want ALL of his attention. It was also quite interesting to watch you on the picnic table out back of the Watering Hole one night during karaoke. The gal who first spotted all that activity was horrified at the show you were putting on.

Dick stopped to visit with Bob and Carol on Sunday night following your road trip with your “friend.” Dick doesn’t confide in Ole and I anymore because I don’t think he wants to add fuel to the fire regarding my feelings toward you. But he does confide in Bob and Carol because he doesn’t know/realize they can’t stand you either. Judging from Dick’s actions of late, and his depressed mood, and little comments that he makes, I truly feel that Dick is very suspicious of your actions. I think he’s finally seeing the light.

You’ve burned a lot of bridges over the past several years, many that won’t ever be rebuilt. You told me back when we first became acquainted that you didn’t care what other people thought of you. I must say you are a woman of your word – you really don’t care. You are truly a disgusting person. Happy Hunting, Bitch.

His partying days are OVER!

2008-05-17T08:40:00.003-05:00

WARNING: This is graphic.

If you have a weak stomach, don't read this!!

Remember the entry from a couple of days ago when I wrote about how Man-About-Town Herkie entices Senior Citizen Simon out to party all night long?

Well, Folks, those days have ended as of this morning. I got up at 7:30 this morning, wandered out to the kitchen to get my glass of orange juice and looked through the dining room out the patio door. And what did my wandering eyes focus on? All these pieces of something spread all over the carpet. As I stepped closer I threw my hands up in frustration, turned my head and gagged until I thought my stomach and esophagus were going to turn inside out.

It was bunny parts that had been somewhat disgested. Well, actually, it wasn't just parts - it was the whole bunny. I could tell, but I won't go into detail here, okay?

Had enough folks? Don't read on then, okay?

Now being a mother and having raised all kinds of puppies and kitties all my life, I'm used to what can come out of either end of kids and animals. And I've done my share of cleaning that material up. You just hold your breath and do it. But this was by far the most difficult thing to clean up I have ever done. And it was spread all over, not just in one spot, which made it even more time consuming to clean up. Couldn't just pick up a few pieces and be done - nope - had to crawl all over the dining room floor picking up pieces of fur, bone, body parts, etc. (sorry guys). I think I gagged for another 10 minutes even after I was done and then went to scrub my hands with disinfectant. Now I've got to clean the carpet too. What a way to start a beautiful Saturday morning.

So much for Senior Citizen Simon's nightly partying. I'm cutting off his supply of crack (cat nip) and doing an intervention here.

Some days you're the bug & some days you're the windshield

2008-05-16T13:16:00.004-05:00

Do you ever get so upset you just want to spit tacks? Well, that bicycle rider that made me so angry this morning better look out because next time I WILL be spitting tacks and a whole lot more.

What is it with bike riders that makes them think they own the driving lane? Don't they realize that the vehicle you're driving is several tons heavier than the vehicle they're riding? That said vehicle could squash them like a bug? I have never seen such an arrogant ~~bunch of bastards~~ group of people in my life, all dressed in their lycra and their pointy little helmets. Sorry if I've offended any of you bloggers that are bicycle riders, but I sure hope you have more sense than the one I just about had an accident over today.

I was on my way home from town this morning, driving along the 6 mile section of newly resurfaced highway that runs between my little town and The Big City. Mind you, when they resurfaced this highway they put a nice wide shoulder on it, almost as wide as the driving lane itself, and surfaced it with blacktop also. I had oncoming traffic which consisted of a big semi with a full load of gravel. Now I'm smart enough to know that I'm going to lose a battle with a fully loaded semi, so believe me, I ain't gonna start nothin' with him.

So as I round the curve I see the semi coming at me in his lane and I also spot a bicycle rider going the same direction as I am but is he off on the hard surfaced shoulder of the road? Not on your GD life. He's riding in the driving lane about six inches inside the white line. So I have my choice here - either tangle with the semi or take out the biker. I blew my horn and slammed on my brakes which of course threw everything around inside my car. As I came within three feet of the biker's back wheel the semi passed me in the oncoming lane and the biker gave me the finger!!

I just about blew a head gasket. That character with his little pointy helmet and empty space for brains had better be damn grateful that I didn't hit him and send him flying. I just about stopped in front of him and got out of my car to give him a piece of my mind.

This isn't the first time we/I've had this happen. We have a lot of bicyclists that train in our area - so frequently we come across them in droves spanning the entire driving lane and you either follow behind at their top speed of 30 mph or go around them.

Last summer when we were coming home from Wyoming in the RV we were traveling on some pretty narrow roads that didn't have shoulders - it was off the pavement and down in the ditch. And of course if you've traveled in Wyoming on the secondary roads in the mountains you know they're pretty curvy and windy. Here we are in this big 40' RV, coming around a curve, not going more than 35 or 40 because of the curves and the narrow road. What's in front of us? You got it - a group of about 6 bikers. What's oncoming? Another big RV. Now if any of you have ever traveled in a big RV you know they're a bit on the wide side, and even if you don't have anything else to be concerned about - like a group of bikers, you know you have to be careful because side mirrors have been known to hit and break off.

Ole saw the situation arising and laid on the airhorn and slammed on the air brakes but those bikers made no move to get out of the way. They just kept on at their bicycle pace as we screeched to a stop in back of them. All the dishes were falling out of my cupboards, closet doors opening and shoes falling out, etc. Even my ironing board came undone. Damn.

And those pointy little helmets. If you're going to wear a helmet get a REAL helmet.

Some days you're the bug and some days you're the windshield!

And in the words of Forrest Gump, "And that's all I have to say about that."

Senior Citizen Simon & The Man About Town

2008-05-15T06:26:00.002-05:00

You know how sometimes if your kids hang with the wrong crowd they can pick up some bad habits. Sometimes peers can be really bad influences. I think I have that going on in my house right now.

You see, Senior Citizen Simon used to be a real stay-at-home cat. He was always begging for someone to take a nap with him during the afternoon. And when I would go to bed at night he would instantly come from wherever he was in the house, climb into bed with me and noogie (neener) down for the night.

Next door neighbor cat, Hercules, was extricated from his loving home (Lovely Daughter's house) earlier this spring when one of her other cats went into heat and Herkie started marking his territory. You see, there's several things wrong here. No. 1, when Lovely Daughter brought Hermione home she was told that Hermione had already been spayed - NOT! And No. 2, Hercules is neutered. We know that for a fact because we had it done. I guess nobody informed Hercules that neutered cats don't mark their territory. So here's Hermione offering all her "goodies" to any male who would have her, and Herkie not wanting any part of that stuff, but still trying to keep the other neighborhood Toms away. That's why he became an outside cat.

Somewhere along the line Man About Town Hercules figured out how to gain entrance to my house through all the flippy dog doors that we have going in and out. You just climb through the back garage door, waltz down the steps going from the garage and into the basement, through that flippy door, through the store room where Simon's cat box is, stop and take a poop or two, then through the flippy door from the storeroom into the TV room, up the basement stairs, make a sharp right into the kitchen and TA-DA - there's Simon's cat food - have a big snack, which means clean out both the wet and dry cat food, and then locate Simon. Entice Simon with all kinds of promises of fun things to do outside at night and lead him back through the maze of flippy doors and out into the free world.

Then along about sunrise it's time to make sure that Simon gets back home safely. Lead him back through the maze of doors, (don't forget to take a poop in the cat box. After all, why would you want to poop outside when you can do it in kitty litter?) upstairs, and down the hallway to the bedroom. Watch and make sure that Simon gets up on the bed okay, peak around the corner of the bedroom door and let out one big meow so that the lady of the house wakes up and knows that you've delivered Simon safely back home.

So now Simon REALLY wants/needs to sleep all day after partying all night long with Herkie. Simon is 16 and Herk is only 9, so he's got a lot more stamina. Boy - don't I know how THAT works!!

Lately Herkie has taken to making more than midnight visits to pick Simon up for all these parties they've been going to. Last night as Ole and I were laying in bed watching TV, Herkie entered the bedroom. I couldn't see him but I could hear him. He sat in the doorway meowing for a few minutes and when neither Ole nor I paid him any attention he turned, tail straight in the air as though he was insulted, and left. I could see the tip of his tail as he marched out the door and down the hallway. Then something told me to sit up and take a better look. There, laying on the floor by the bedroom door was a baby bunny. It hadn't been chewed on or anything, just placed there on the carpet as though it was a gift to us from Herk. I guess he somehow knew that I've declared war on the rabbits around here and wanted to make a few extra points.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I fed them alfalfa all winter up on my deck because they were cute to watch, and now their progeny (neener) have come back to haunt me. Because I fed the bunnies all winter on my deck, some of them have now taken up residence UNDER my deck and are having lunch on the fresh green things that are finally peaking up from the ground. I planted a new bush about a week ago - a Blue Rug Juniper, which is quite prickly. The other day when I was out inspecting things I found that four branches had been chewed off that juniper right at the base of the plant and were laying there on the ground beside it. Now if they had chewed those branches off and eaten them I wouldn't have been nearly so upset, but to just chew them off for the sake of chewing - that doesn't fly. What was it my mother used to say? Don't waste your food. After all there are starving children/bunnies in China!!

The bush will still grow, but it'll be darn lopsided. Darn bunnies, anyway.

Senior Citizen Simon

Man About Town Hercules

I Love my Kids

2008-05-12T10:05:00.002-05:00

That's me, all right, up there in that cartoon. That's just exactly what I'm doing today. But the mess and the dirt aren't leftover from Mother's Day, they're leftover from the whole last week. You see, when I work in my yard, which I've been doing this past week, I totally forget about the inside, and then it piles up. THAT's what I should have asked for for Mother's Day - a cleaning fairy!! She could just buzz around here every morning and wave her magic wand and get rid of all the dirt and put everything back where it belongs.

I am making progress outside, though, and if it wasn't so frickin' cold and windy out I'd be out there today. But it's only May 12th - why would I expect warm weather and sunshine here in Minnesota??? (just a bit of sarcasm here, folks.)

It snowed here last Saturday - yes, people - snow on May 10th. It snowed from 10 o'clock in the morning until about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, or so I was told by several friends. You see we weren't here. We had a surprise 60th birthday party to attend down in Minneapolis. And what a wonderful trip it was, too. (There's that sarcasm again.) We drove in heavy rain for two and a half hours, then finally drove out of it about the time we arrived at the destination. Then about the time we were ready to leave at 6 o'clock it was pouring pitchforks and hay bales for two hours on way back. It rained so hard I think I even saw some livestock falling between the pitchforks and hay bales. And then, wouldn't you know, the wiper on the driver's side decided it was tired of flapping back and forth and started coming off. We had to stop several times for Lars to do first aid on the wiper so I could see to drive. AAACCCKKK!! Not a fun trip. But we blew the Birthday Boy away. He didn't have a clue his wife was doing this until he drove up in the driveway. Ha ha - gotcha!! That's so fun. There were friends from Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and even one from Arizona that he hadn't seen for 24 years. Can you imagine? It was lots of fun for Ole too, because the Birthday Boy and Ole worked together for 28 years, and many of the out-of-towners were old "company" coworkers. So there was lots of reminiscing that went on.

Mother's Day dawned bright and sunny but on the nippy side. Several of my plants got frost bite that night, but I guess they'll recover. I had a wonderful day. Came home from church and Senior Citizen Simon and I checked our eyelids for leaks. I didn't find any either for a couple of hours. That felt so good. By that time it was warm enough that I could work out in my flower gardens and accomplished a lot. Lars was worried that I was working too hard on Mother's Day and should be taking it easy, but I told him that this was a true source of relaxation for me - for one thing it gives me a real feeling of accomplishment to look back and see all the weeds pulled out, the edging done, a few new plants installed, and everything neat and clean. Then Lars and Ole put burgers on the grille, along with fresh corn on the cob and some sweet little red potatoes. They were SO good. Then we all spent about an hour in the hot tub and we were all ready for bed.

It was such a nice day. And it's so nice to be friends with your kids. Hi - Lovely Daughter - Love you!! (And Lars too!)

Montezuma will get you if you don't behave

2008-05-07T11:52:00.004-05:00

Lovely Daughter and Lars got home from Albuquerque on Monday night, two hours late. But what more can you expect from good ole' NorthWORST airlines. I guess all the airlines have their troubles but that seems to be the norm for Northwest, not the exception.

Ole and I used to fly a lot when he was still working. We've both come to the conclusion that we're glad we don't have to fly anymore with the exception of an emergency situation.

One year we were being sent to the Bahamas for a week by the company that Ole worked for. It was kind of like a convention/vacation for the top 10% of the sales reps in the company. So once we got to Ft. Lauderdale, we met up with a whole bunch of employees and their wives that would be on the plane going to Nassau. But of course the Air Florida jet that was supposed to take us there had mechanical problems, and they didn't have another plane available immediately. So we sat in the airport for 12 hours awaiting a plane that they were flying in from New York. Needless to say, that made everyone a bit on the cranky side. Sitting in an airport is no fun when you could have been on the beach in the sunshine for most of those 12 hours.

The plane finally showed up and we were all aghast. It was something left over from WWII - a DC3 tail-dragger - with two propellers - one on each wing. Okay fine. We'll do this thing. After all, we gotta get to Nassau and the beach, right? We climbed up the ladder to get into the plane, and as we tried to walk up the aisle we had to hang onto the backs of the seats because the plane was at such a slant. All the seats were facing backwards, and that certainly didn't give one a feeling of confidence. The next thing I noticed was that there was no insulation on the walls. You could see the skin of the plane and all the rivets that were holding it together. Again - lack of confidence. We all got seated, belted in, made sure we knew were our oxygen masks were, etc. And then the pilot started the engines and from that point on I watched the rivets twisting around in their holes due to the vibration of propellers. One of the sales reps, who had flown a DC3 in the Korean War assured everyone that this was one of the safest planes ever built. He told us that they could land with only one engine - AND USUALLY HAD TO!! About this time, the young pregnant gal that was sitting just a couple of seats in front me really lost it. She wanted out and off that plane right now - but too late - the plane was taxiing down the runway.

You'll be happy to know that we made the half hour flight safely and were delivered to the beach all in one piece. Fortunately by the time we left a week later we got to ride in a REAL Air Florida plane.

Then there was a flight we took to Cozumel, Mexico one year. Ole and Lovely Daughter are both scuba divers, and I'm told that Cozumel has some of the best diving to be found. I wouldn't know because my job was to occupy a beach chair and hold a margarita at all times. Because of that we went to Cozumel every winter for about 15 years running, and normally had a direct flight out of Minneapolis. One year we couldn't get the proper arrangements made to get that flight, so we opted for a direct flight to Cancun and then a connecting flight to Cozumel - about 20 minutes over the ocean. Unfortunately when we made these arrangements we had no idea what kind of a plane would be flying us over that 12 miles of open ocean. It was dark when we boarded the 6 seater baby plane - and as the pilot loaded all our baggage into the way back of the plane, Ole noticed that not only were the tires in pretty bad shape, showing tread, but the ceiling material in the back of the plane was falling down. Ole had the back seat so he had to sit all crouched down in order to fit under the ceiling. As we taxiied down the runway I looked out the window and could see sparks flying from the wheels. Ole told me later that the wheels probably had bad bearings. My only hope at that time was that we would get safely on the ground on the other side of the channel. We managed to land safely, sparks flying all over and as we came to a stop one of the tires blew up.

Then there was the flight home from Acapulco one year - I don't remember how many hours that was, but it was direct to Minneapolis. Can you imagine flying on a plane that was completely full, had only two bathrooms, both of which were plugged and inoperable, with a plane full of people coming from Mexico and suffering from Montezuma's Revenge? Not fun. Definitely not fun.

Many of you might know that Saturday is the opening of fishing season in Minnesota. This is always a celebrated event, and those dedicated fishermen are out there rain or shine. This year the ice isn't even completely off the lake, so they'll all have to look out for the icebergs. We don't need any repeats of the Titanic on our local lakes. Anyway, Ole and his buddy Sven usually make opening day in the wee hours of the morning, before it's even light outside. A few years ago they were having a good time while fishing on a small lake in northern Minnesota. They were drinking beer and feeling no pain when Ole hooked a big one. His prize catch was no fish though; it was a lamp and when he rubbed it a magic Genie popped out.

The Genie was grateful to be set free and to reward his rescuers, he granted them one wish. Without hesitation, Sven blurted out that he wanted the entire lake to turn into beer. The Genie nodded his head and the lake was instantly transformed into a sea of beer.

Ole was furious - he turned to Sven and yelled "You idiot, vhy did you have the Genie turn the lake into beer?". Sven was surprised at Ole's anger and asked "Vhat is wrong with a lake full of beer? Ve’ll never run out of beer while we're fishing again." Ole replied, "Yes the beer is great, but now ve’ll have to pee in the boat!"

Medora's Great Adventure

2008-05-02T10:42:00.004-05:00

Meet Medora. She's a 4-footed stinker, but cute as a bug.

As I've said previously, Lovely Daughter and Lars are in Albuquerque this week, so we're dog sitting and supervising their cats. This involves going over to her house every day, sifting through the litter boxes, making sure they've got food and water, and playing with them a bit. At the moment they have three cats in the house. But knowing their household, that could change to a larger number at any time.

Homer is a handsome old dude who doesn't know he's a cat. She got him at a rummage sale when she lived in Virginia. He's got a unique personality, and I swear if he was a human he would be gay. Then there's Hermione, a beautiful, long-haired white kitty who arrived at their house supposedly on a temporary basis until the original owner could find a home. You guessed right - Hermione is still there. The only real problem with this is that Lovely Daughter was told that Hermione had been spayed. Guess what - that wasn't accurate, and about a month ago Hermione went into heat, howling and rolling on the floor all night long, calling all the neighborhood Toms to come to her rescue. Hermione has a doctor's appointment the day after they get home. No more solos at midnight from her.

Well, this set off Hercules, who is an adult neutered male, who definitely didn't want all the neighborhood Toms invading his property, so he set off marking his territory. All over the inside of Lovely Daughter's house - which caused Hercules to become an outside cat very quickly.

Now Medora is a real social butterfly, and when I was over *visiting* the kitties yesterday she was so lonesome - so much more so than the other two - that I decided to bring her home with me. She's visited over here numerous times so I knew it wouldn't be strange to her. As usual she hopped out of her carrier and proceeded to investigate everything. Senior Citizen Simon follows her around everywhere she goes as though he's trying to keep watch so she doesn't get into any trouble.

Ole and I crawled into bed last night as usual - one dog on the floor by the foot of the bed, the other on the floor on his side of the bed. You have to be very careful if you get up at night because of the dogsticle course. There are bodies laying all over the bedroom floor. I expected Simon to climb into his usual place beside my legs, but he didn't. He was still supervising Medora. So off to sleep we all went. It didn't take long for both Ole and Beau to start snoring - and what a competition that is. Beau lays on his back with all four feet in the air, head tilted way back and saws logs. Ole lays on his back but he's missing the feet in the air (snicker).

Anyway, just as it was becoming light out this morning I was rudely awakened by some very loud howling and catterwalling. I sat straight up in bed thinking Simon and Medora had gotten in a fight, went racing out to the living room and kitchen, but no cats. I could still hear the howling and determined it was coming from outside, but who in the world could it be? I had made sure that all the little flippy dog and cat doors were locked so Medora couldn't get out.

The one thing I had forgotten to close was the bedroom window. I had left it open a crack (and didn't have a screen on it), just enough to get some fresh air into the bedroom. You have no idea how much body heat two big dogs can give off. Well, Medora, with her nosy nature, had apparently hopped up into the window and managed to slither through the opening and escaped to freedom!! I have no idea how long she had been outside exploring, but it had started to rain during the night, and she looked like a drowned rat when I found her. At least she was smart enough to come back to the same location from which she had escaped. She's very fortunate because she is definitely not street smart and we have a lot of wild critters around here that would have loved to have a little kitty for a midnight snack.

So I ran quickly out to the garage, opened the door and she came barrelling in, looking like someone had dunked her in a pail of water. She's long-haired, so all her hair was plastered to her body. I wrapped her in a towel and tried to dry her off, but she was so wiggley and squirmy it was hard to do. All she wanted to do was lick my face in what I presume was gratitude. Although she was pretty hungry (snicker) and when I put her down she immediately inhaled all of Simon's food.

And that concluded Medora's Great Adventure.

Technology Way Back in the Dark Ages

2008-04-30T10:39:00.010-05:00

I read Bluesleepy's blog this morning and she was writing about technology today and wondering how we ever got along before the days of cell phones and computers. It seems everyone is "plugged in" at all times these days.

That brought to mind all the business classes that I took in high school - among them were typing and shorthand - two necessities for women at that time who were planning on going into the business world. Back in the "Dark Ages" we were called secretaries and we weren't ashamed of it. Now they're called administrative assistants, as though the title secretary is something to be looked down upon. In most instances it wasn't the boss who ran the office, it was the secretary who saw to it that everything ran like clockwork. A good secretary could make her boss shine and in many cases she was the reason he got all those promotions that he did.

Anyway, I digress. Back to typing class.

The teacher (Miss Ronsberg) who taught both typing and shorthand was a bit on the outdated side. This was in the 60's, but she dressed like a Gibson Girl from back around the turn of the century. She wore her hair in an upswept fashion with all the ruffled "waists" as she called them. She wasn't as pretty as the Gibson Girl below though. I think she was about 95 years old (snicker) and had to weigh in at about 250 pounds. She was not petite by any means.

We learned on manual typewriters - you know the ones where you would reach the end of the line and have to lift your left hand off the keyboard, hit the return lever and start on the next line again. We had to have strong fingers back then to hit the keys hard enough to make the imprint on the paper. I couldn't do it today because my hands have become pretty wimpy from just using a computer keyboard.

She would walk up and down the rows when we were being given timed tests with her yardstick. You were taught proper posture, which was to sit straight in your chair without leaning against the back, ankles together and feet flat on the floor. That's where the yardstick came in - if you weren't sitting properly you would get whacked across the shins with the edge of the yardstick. Ouch!! It sometimes even left black and blue marks.

Because I was a good student I eventually got to use the one and only electric typewriter in the classroom. But even that didn't make correcting errors any easier. We had things called correcting tape and whiteout. But we also had to learn to use a typewriter eraser, which could really make a mess on your original if it wasn't clean. And then think of making multiple copies and having to correct the error several copies down. Ugh.

The IBM Selectric was a miracle typewriter because it gave you the option of being able to change fonts by removing and inserting a new ball on a peg, which would spin around to the appropriate letter and leave that imprint on the paper.

When I got my first job I thought I had died and gone to heaven because I worked on a self-correcting IBM Selectric. It had a spool of correct-tape that you inserted from one side, through the area where the ball hit the paper and then wound itself onto a spool on the other side of the carriage. If you made an error you hit a certain button on the keyboard and the typewriter would backup a space, remember the letter that had been imprinted, hit that letter on top of the correct-tape and leave a blank space. Then all you had to do was insert the correct letter. This was fine for the original, but you still had to weed through all the copies and correct them manually.

At the point in time when I worked Federal Civil Service up in Iceland every document that I prepared had to have an original and 8 copies. Each copy was a different color designating which department it went to and was made of a thin tissue-like paper which made corrections difficult because it was easy to erase right through the paper.

At one point in time I worked as the secretary for the president of a life insurance company. That was my first contact with computers in the office environment. The secretaries were all still using typewriters, but all the billing was done on a computer that filled an entire room, and hummed along like it was ready to take off into outer space. We named this monstrosity Big Bertha, and when she malfunctioned the entire office was in a panic because we then had to prepare 20,000 billing statements by hand. Regardless of what your position was, you prepared statements.

This is Bertha being repaired. It could sometimes take days.

My first personal experience in the office world with a computer was when I worked in the Placement Office of a local college. When Lovely Daughter started school the school systems were teaching computers and were using the Apple IIC, so we bought one for her to use at home. This little toy cost over $2000 at that time. And about all it was good for was playing games and writing letters. Now you can buy a laptop with a many-gig hard drive and lots of other bells and whistles for $700. My how times have changed.

So here I am, dumped into an office environment with a PC that I knew nothing about. I was absolutely certain that if I touched the wrong key that everything on the hard drive would disappear. What a relief to discover that wouldn't happen.

So through the years I progressed up the learning curve to today. Now I copy movies onto DVD, I'm currently digitizing all of our old LPs (that's the old 33 1/3 record albums for those of you who are to young to remember what an LP is) and burning them to CDs, all my photos are digital and stored on CDs, along with personal records and documents being scanned into the computer and stored. When I think of how productive we actually were before the age of computers I am truly amazed. Now I suffer withdrawals whenever mine goes down.

Psssst: Just as an aside, at one point in my career when I worked for a court reporter I could type 120 wpm and take shorthand at 150 wpm.

Lemons turned to Lemonade? Well, Kinda'

2008-04-28T10:27:00.004-05:00

There it was, the last weekend in APRIL and there was 9 inches of snow on the ground. We should have been out enjoying the spring in our backyard, but instead we had to have knee-high snowboots on in order to wade through all the darn stuff. So on Saturday afternoon Ole decided he wasn't going to let the snow get the best of him and he decided we were going to have a fire in the firepit in the backyard that night.

He hauled out the little snowblower, blew a path out to the firepit, blew out the surrounding concrete area, dumped all the snow off the chairs and loaded the pit with wood. Called some friends to come over - and we had a party.

He built a pretty big fire so we were all pretty warm. In fact it toasted our knees and some of us had to back up a bit.

So we took the lemons and turned them into lemonade and we didn't even use any "yellow snow." And goodness knows we've got plenty of that with two big shepherds running around here.

Lars and Lovely Daughter are flying the coop today - headed for Albuquerque, NM. Lars is quite a bowler and is involved in a high stakes tournament down there. They'll be gone for a week so Daisy and Beau will be spending the week at our house. Guess they're on vacation too because they'll get to sleep over here. Everyone's going on "vacation" except Ole and me (sniff, sniff). Big Brother lives about three hours from Albuquerque, so the kids will be renting a car and going to spend a few days with him when the tournament is over. Wish I was going too (sniff, sniff, wipes eyes with large hankie pulled from bosom of housedress). I haven't seen Big Brother for two years (blows nose hard with same hankie before stuffing it back into housedress). It would be easier to deal with staying home if there wasn't snow on the ground (sob).

Sympathy, people, I'm looking for sympathy here!!

Ole and Lena were ScandiHOOvian farmers who, unlike other ScandiHOOvians who farmed in northern Minnesota, farmed in the southern part of Minnesota, adjacent to the Iowa border. One day a surveyor came to Ole and Lena's farm to survey their property. After he finished, the surveyor met with Ole and Lena and said, "I surveyed your property, but I found a problem. All these years you thought your farm was in Minnesota, but my results show your farm is in Iowa." The surveyor looked at Ole and Lena for a response, but instead of them being upset, they looked pleased. "I thought you would be upset," said the surveyor. "Why do you both look so happy?" "Well," said Ole, "I'm so glad now. I didn't think we could stand another of those terrible Minnesota winters!"

Wormcicles

2008-04-26T13:11:00.003-05:00

Drat!! and Damn!! and any other kind of profanity I can think of, okay?

We've had a huge flock of robins in our back yard that have been digging in the ground finding their lunch and eating what bugs have come alive in the warm temperatures lately. Occasionally you would see them manage to pull a worm out of the ground and then squabble over who was going to get to eat it. It started snowing yesterday afternoon, and it didn't take long before all the green grass was about covered. The robins remained, puffing themselves up to try to stay warm and continuing their hunt, but now for wormcicles pulled out through the snow instead of the green grass.

As of this morning I don't know what the poor birds will eat because we got 9 inches of snow overnight and it's still snowing. They were all sitting in the flowering crab tree this morning. Maybe they'll have to exist on the fermented crab apples that are still attached to the tree. I just hope they don't fall out of the branches down into the snow in a drunken stupor because they could get frostbite.

We met Bob & Carol down at the Watering Hole last night for supper. We had thought of going into the City just for a change, but by that time it was too nasty to go any farther than the Watering Hole. We were there for a total of about 90 minutes and when Carol went out to have a cigarette the visibility had become so bad it was time to go home. Fortunately it was still light out at that time, or we wouldn't have been able to see the driveway to turn and would have gone in the ditch. It was truly ugly out.

As of this afternoon all the interstates and major highways going all directions out of town are officially closed. The highway patrol isn't allowing any traffic out of town.

When will it end???

Getting Dressed for the Wedding

2008-04-24T11:31:00.005-05:00

Hey, Guys - thanks for all the input from yesterday's entry, but I decided I didn't like the gold dress after all. It was a mail order item and looked good on the internet, but when I tried it on the color was great as was the basic style, but what didn't show in the catalog was that it had puffy caps on the sleeves!! I felt like a little football player wearing big shoulder pads with those sleeves sticking up above my shoulders like they used to do back in the 80's. Ugh. So back that dress goes. I love the general style and that part looked good on me, I've found several others similarly styled and they don't look like they have puffy sleeve caps so I'll order them and see what's what. One of them comes in a deep teal, which should coordinate quite well. Lovely Daughter and I have two more bridal shops in town that we haven't visited and plan on doing that on Saturday morning.

I told Ole he's going to have to rent a tux. You can imagine the reaction I got from that. His response was, "You mean I can't go in my jeans and flannel shirt?" Remember, since he retired his standard attire is blue jeans and a flannel shirt with a t-shirt underneath. I don't think he's had a suit on since he retired although I kept three of them and they're still hanging in the closet. It's funny what happens to those suits and dress shirts. You hang them in a dark closet and they shrink!! Easter Sunday I thought he could at least wear a dress shirt and tie to church. When he came out of the bedroom he had the dress shirt on but no tie. When I asked why not he said the shirt had shrunk enough that he couldn't get the collar buttoned!! Hmmmm. Something's wrong here, don't cha' think?

Speaking of flannel shirts, you know it's summer when Ole finally quits putting a flannel shirt on in the morning. And that isn't usually until the 4th of July around here. We were working outside the other day and it was really nice. Warm sunshine and temps up in the 60's. He was helping me dig some bushes up and started complaining that he was too warm. But did he take his flannel shirt off? Not on your life - it's not the 4th of July yet, you know.

Also, can somebody let me know again what the planned dates for the Great Javalina Hunt are in October? I've forgotten the exact dates and need to start laying some groundwork for that trip. Like taking 50% of our income each month and putting it away to buy diesel fuel so we don't go bankrupt!!! It's about 1600 miles from here to Tombstone, and when your rig only gets 8 mpg, you need a few bucks tucked away. And at THAT price, we better darn well catch a javalina with one of those flaming marshmallows!! I could have Ole ride the Harley out into the desert and scare them up for us, you know. Not even a javalina would mess with a biker dude.

Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Moe

2008-04-23T11:12:00.003-05:00

I need some help here, People!! You guys have never let me down and I know I can count on you this time.

Lovely Daughter is getting married in September, so it's time for me to shop for a Mother of the Bride dress. She and I went out one Saturday a few weeks ago and I did find something that I kind of liked that day. But I didn't buy it, I wanted to think about it a bit. It's not exactly the one shown below, but very close stylewise. This is shown in a pretty blue, but the one I looked at and tried on was in a color called truffle. That's kind of a dark burgundy with a brown cast to it.

Now here's the problem. Lovely Daughter really likes the truffle mother of the bride dress in the style shown above. On a scale of 1 to 10 it probably rates about an 8 in my book. It's got a couple of things against it as far as I'm concerned. First of all I've never liked a square neckline on me. Second, I'm really not into wearing any kind of brown, which truffle kind of is. And third, I'm not sure I want to be the same color as one of the bridesmaids. One of her bridesmaids will be in truffle and the other in cognac, which blend together beautifully.

Since then I've found another dress that I really like. This one rates between a 9 and a 10 in my book. I love the color and it's a color that I can wear, plus the fact that the style just looks more "me" if you know what I mean. She really likes the other dress and it is her wedding, but I don't know if I would be comfortable in the truffle dress.

Lovely Daughter is using all fall colors for her wedding. The flower arrangements in the front of the church will be in large baskets shaped and colored like a pumpkin full of fall flowers in gold, burgundy, orange, green, etc. The tableclothes at the reception will be in a burgundy probably with gold napkins folded like fans in the wine glasses and smaller versions of the pumpkins full of fall flowers on the tables. The table skirts will be white (I think) and hopefully we can find strands of gold lights to hang behind the skirts to give them a glow. Most of the big things are taken care of, we've just got the details to finish up now - like what color is the MOB going to wear.

Advice here, People - I'll be waiting!!

Humping to the Music

2008-04-21T11:23:00.001-05:00

Sniff, sniff, tears roll down cheeks, more sniffing, blows nose in Kleenex, more tears, wipes eyes, wash, rinse, repeat.

We’re not going on our trip to the Smokey Mountain National Park. We’re not going to Georgia to visit our long time friends that we haven’t seen in 20 years. We’re just not going. I’m so disappointed. I’ve looked forward to a trip to this location for over a year and now we’re not going.

We’re supposed to be retired!! Doesn’t that mean you plan your own destiny and do what you want when you want? I got news for all of you – that doesn’t happen. There have been too many things happen this spring that have gotten in the way of taking this trip. I won’t even go into all of them, but they have been important enough that we had to stay home and take care of them. The latest, and the one that made us throw up our hands and just give up, is a surprise birthday party. Very long time Buddy Don, who worked with Ole for 28 years, is turning 60 this year and his wife is planning a surprise birthday party for him. Don and Ole are just like brothers, so we just couldn’t miss this party. After all, you only turn 60 once, and Ole needs to plan a good roast. So that’s scheduled for the middle of May, and yes, we could go after that for several weeks, but we’ve already got commitments scheduled for the beginning of June. We just can’t win. Maybe it’s like I always tell my daughter – everything happens for a reason, and there’s a reason that we aren’t supposed to go on this trip.

We had decided the price of diesel fuel wasn’t going to be the deciding factor as to whether we travel or not, but honestly, every time I thought about filling that tank with $4.09 diesel, I almost wanted to throw up.

Okay, now that I’m done feeling sorry for myself and expecting all of you to also – on to another subject.

This sounds really gossipy, but just wait till you hear this!!

Last Friday night was karaoke down at the Watering Hole, and of course Jane was holding court with all her paparazzi, as usual. Ole and Carol and I sat at a different table not being included nor wanting to be included in her group. Then Pat & George and Lou & Burl showed up and joined us. The evening went on and everyone was having fun when a local man by the name of Kerry showed up. He’s a single man in his late 40s or early 50s, a very handsome outdoorsy man. And it’s quite apparent that he has the “hots” for Lee, one of Jane’s friends. It was also quite obvious that Jane had the “hots” for Kerry. She hung on his every word all evening and followed him around like a puppy making google eyes.

The time came for Pat & Lou to go out back to have a cigarette, and as they were about to open the back door they got a real eyeful. Pat came rushing back inside to get me telling me that if I really wanted to see something I better come now. I rushed to the back door, peaked through the screen and there lay Jane on her back on the picnic table with Kerry on top of her with a crowd standing around cheering. They were fully clothed, but (for lack of a better word) humping in rhythm to the music. They put on quite a show for the three minutes that the song ran. And Dick was back inside, visiting with someone else without a clue as to what his wife was doing out back. Icky, icky, icky.

Am I too old school? Too old fashioned? Too out of touch? What happened to self-respect? Is there no such thing anymore?

May I present the YaYa's

2008-04-15T22:25:00.005-05:00

And heeeerrrreee's the YaYa's!! (sounding like Johnny Carson).

L to R: Barb, Carol, me, & Chris

Now, none of us look like we're - - - - oh, never mind - I'm not going to tell you how old we don't look!!

We got together again this afternoon and had a grand old time. Ole always asks me what we talk about - today we yakked from 4 o'clock until after seven and still could have yakked longer. But I guess we'll save some for next time. One of the gals, Donna, was missing tonight.

Barb, on the left, was/is a twin. Her sister died from a type of thyroid cancer about ten years ago. Donna, the missing YaYa, is also a twin, whose sister also died almost 20 years ago now, from a form of skin cancer. How sad.

So we'll get together again when Ole and I come back from our trip the end of May.

Yes, we're finally going to get out of here - headed for the Great Smokey National Park and the Tail of the Dragon Highway - 318 curves in 11 miles going across the Smokey Mountains. Of course we'll see and do other things but that's the big draw for us at this point. Diesel fuel just turned to $4 a gallon here today, and consdering the tank in the RV is about 130 gallons, we may be headed for bankruptcy. I'll be sending emails out through the trip, as I usually do - so if you get one stating that we're stranded in Podunk, Tennessee and can't get fuel - just send money - okay?

We're pulling the Harley in a trailer behind the RV, and that's the only transportation we'll have once we get to our destination. So at least that will be cheap. I don't look much like a Motorcycle Mama in the picture above, but believe me, when I get duded up you wouldn't know me. Poolie was speaking the other day of running into her chiropractor at a Harley gathering that took place at her museum and having a difficult time recognizing him. I guess there's nothing like leather to change one's appearance!!

See, that way I can come to the Great Javalina Hunt in October incognito (neener) because Ole says we're bringing the Harley then, too. So, you Javalina Hunt planners, when you're making plans, make sure wearing chaps is appropriate at all events (snicker). I promise I'll wear something under the chaps too - not just chaps!! (Did I say that in my out loud voice??) After all, riding on the back of a Harley in a long flowing skirt to get to your destination could cause a problem or two - like getting wound around the spokes of the back wheel or some such thing . . .

Well, Folks, that's about all the old brain has got for tonight. I need to go make some ZZZZs so I can get up early for my dentist appointment (yuck)!!

Love Lena

Outhouses and 'Spenders

2008-04-13T12:45:00.003-05:00

Okay then – today’s entry can be attributed to Poolie again. She keeps tripping my trigger making me look back into my memory banks. Her entry about Shit for Brains and pictures of outhouses had me digging deep (no pun intended).

Way back when Ole and I first started dating when we were seniors in high school, he used to bring me out to his uncle’s farm on weekends. He spent a lot of his growing up years on Uncle Henry’s farm so it’s always held kind of a special place in his heart. Anyway, back then Uncle Henry didn’t have indoor plumbing. You had to visit the little Shack Out Back which could be quite an experience for a city girl.

It was a two-holer, no less, and you know how women like to go to the ladies room in groups. So in the summertime or during daylight hours, going to the bathroom could become quite a hen party. If you did end up going by yourself there was always something to read; old newspapers or magazines, or lacking that, an old version of the Sears catalog always seemed to be available to look at. Uncle Henry was quite frugal, so you didn’t always have toilet paper available and had to make do with whatever was out there. The best time of the year was when Aunt Mary would can peaches. She would save all the soft papers that the peaches were wrapped in and send them to the outhouse.

Along with reading material came a variety of spiders, spider webs and of course the local mouse family. Certain birds seemed to find it a safe haven, crawl through the little half-moon opening that was always carved through the door and build their nests inside, out of the elements. So when you opened the door to go in you just never quite knew what was going to come at you. Be prepared to duck, sweep webs from the hole or dance around scurrying mice.

During the winter there was always a path beaten through the snow. And believe me, that was not when you sat around reading magazines or looking at the Sears catalog. You got in, got done and got out. Imagine sitting down on a piece of wood that’s twenty below zero and has frost built up on it. Not the most comfortable of situations.

On the scary side was when Ole and I would come back to Uncle Henry’s late at night after having been out to a dance at one of the local roadhouses. The Shack Out Back was definitely out back a distance, located in trees and tall grass, and usually had some kind of a skunk population living in the vicinity. I would always make Ole escort me to the outhouse when we got home, stand and wait and then walk back with me. Uncle Henry had a coon hound at that time, one of those dogs with the long gangly legs, loose lips and lots of drool coming from his mouth at all times. His name was Bruno and he was a very friendly dog. You could count on him to escort you to the Shack anytime of the day or night. And you always knew exactly where he was – usually right behind you sniffing with his wet nose and drooling up and down the back of your legs as you walked out back. While you were in the Shack he would range around the area to see what he could scare up, but be right there when you opened the door to leave so that he could drool on the back of your legs all the way back to the house. Lovely dog.

Then the outhouse was put out of commission every few years when a new hole would have to be dug and the house moved onto it. You had to be very careful to dig to the exact measurements and certainly deep enough so that you wouldn’t have to do it again next year. It was a multi-man project with lots of interesting stories being told during the digging.

One year it just happened that Ole, Sven and Lars all had to dig new holes for their outhouses. It didn’t take long and there was wagering going on as to who could dig the deepest hole. So they each dug deep into their pockets and gave their wagers to Uncle Henry to hold until the projects were done. Then, of course, they had to give the new holes a test run. Lars went first. Into the outhouse setting over the new hole, he dropped his bib overalls, sat down on the seat and let one go. He counted to 10 before he heard it hit bottom. So of course he came out bragging that he’d reached 10. So Sven, not to be outdone and bragging a bit went into his outhouse setting over the new hole. He sat there awhile and then let one go and counted all the way to 20 before he heard it hit bottom. Well, that certainly was a new record. Then it was Ole’s turn. Ole entered the outhouse, dropped his drawers, sat there for a long time and finally let one go. He started to count. And he counted and counted and counted and got all the way to 100 and still hadn’t heard it hit bottom. My, he thought, maybe he better check on this situation. So he stood up to turn around and look down the hole and - - - - there it was - - - caught on his ‘spenders!!

The outhouse at Uncle Henry's farm.

Have a good day, okay?

The Morning After the Night Before

2008-04-08T11:39:00.002-05:00

Half price burger night last night and we had quite a group for our little “club.” The table was full (9 people). Dick was there by himself because Jane, of course, was running the city offices until 7:30. I was anxiously awaiting her arrival to see how she would react regarding MY friends and YOUR friends. Ole made sure he sat next to Bob and I made sure I sat next to Carol (tweak, tweak). When she walked in she took one look at the table full of people, stopped at the popcorn machine and motioned Dick to come over to her. She told him she wasn’t hungry, she was going home, and turned around and left. So that was that. I didn’t even get a chance to harrass her even a wee little bit – dang.

Dick hung around for a while and was having fun, but kept looking at his watch as though he didn’t dare stay too long. I’m sure if he had he would have hell to pay when he got home.

Let’s see, what’s on the agenda for today. Lots of paperwork. That always takes so much time and when you’re done you can’t physically see that you’ve accomplished anything other than the checkbook is always a lot emptier. Then more paperwork – I’m the treasurer of an organization and we’re having our quarterly meeting tomorrow morning. So I need to have all my ducks in a row for that. I need to make sure they can’t tell that I’m embezzling large volumes of money (snicker). Then I have to design some fliers to advertise a luncheon that our group is putting on in May and I haven’t even started them yet.

Well, Ole wakes up one morning and remembers that it is Lena's birthday. Now Ole and Lena have been married for over fifty years so Ole goes shopping and tries to find a gift for her. He can not think of a single thing she needs.

Upon passing a lingerie store, Ole realizes that Lena has never bought any lingerie in her life. He gets the idea to buy Lena something sexy to make her feel good and young. Ole goes into the store and tells the clerk to wrap up the most expensive, sheerest negligee she has. Ole takes the gift and excitedly returns home to Lena knowing that he has been a fine husband.

Ole finds Lena in the kitchen and tells her to take the gift upstairs and unwrap it. He'll wait in the kitchen. Lena thanks him and goes up to the bedroom. Once the package is opened she realizes that this is something she's never had before. She also sees that it is so sheer it leaves nothing to the imagination.

She thinks for a moment and then decides that she'll really surprise Ole and go downstairs without any clothes on at all. So she leaves the negligee on the bed and starts down the stairs stark naked.

Lena calls out, "Ole, come out to the hallway and look." Ole walks out to the staircase, looks up at his wife, and exclaims, "I'm sorry Lena, all that money and they didn't even iron it!"

They're MY friends - not YOURS!!

2008-04-07T15:10:00.002-05:00

Are we twelve or what? Is this grade school, or shouldn’t we be adults by now? Oh man, this Jane thing gets to be just like a soap opera, only I think sometimes she’s not really old enough to even watch soap operas. At least she acts that way.

Here’s the background:

Back when we first met Dick and Jane through a mutual friend, they traveled in a circle which included Bob & Carol and Ted & Alice. Alice is the gal who worships the ground that Jane walks on because Alice is so insecure. She tries to model herself after Jane and Lord knows that’s a real fiasco. Now it’s not that Ted and Alice aren’t nice people – they are – and it isn’t that Alice has been nasty like Jane has, but she does make some pretty snide and uncalled for comments at times that are quite hurtful. Fortunately, neither Ole nor I have been her targets like we have been Jane’s.

Then there’s Bob and Carol. We have become good friends with them – I think because they’re a lot like Ole and I. What you see is what you get. No facades. Yes, they speak their minds and make their points, but not in a nasty, caustic, mean manner. They are both very diplomatic when issues arise. They wouldn’t dream of hurting someone’s feelings on purpose and are always willing to give someone a second shot.

So way back when, Dick & Jane introduced us to Bob & Carol and Ted & Alice. I guess at that time we didn’t know that we would only be allowed to have one set of friends – that’s sarcasm, people – sarcasm! As I stated previously, over the winter Ole & I have become good friends with Bob & Carol and on occasion go out to dinner together to somewhere other than The Watering Hole or stop at their house for a drink when we’re out running the doggers. Last Friday night we decided to go to a little hole-in-the-wall place in a small town about 10 miles from here called Cully's. It’s been around forever, has no atmosphere, but really great food.

Well, apparently Jane found out that the four of us had gone out to dinner together on Friday night, and on Saturday night at a banquet to honor a local person, made quite a fuss about the fact that we had done this. Carol called me this morning to tell me about the tantrum that took place. To quote Jane, “I’m the one that introduced you to Ole and Lena and they’re MY friends. And now MY friends don’t even stop at our house anymore but they sure stop at your house a lot (meaning Bob & Carol’s). They’re MY friends and you’re taking them away!” And the tirade went on from there from what Carol said.

But that wasn’t enough. Sunday morning there was a pancake feed fund raiser and Dick & Jane happened to be there with their daughter and son-in-law at the same time that Bob & Carol were there. We didn’t go because Ole was involved in a car show this weekend. Jane’s comment on Sunday morning when she saw Bob & Carol was, “Well, did you get together with MY friends last night after the banquet?” By this time Bob had apparently had about enough of this nonsense and tried to explain to Jane that it isn’t YOUR friends or MY friends. No one owns anyone. We’re ALL friends together. Obviously Jane doesn’t have a clue that she’s no longer my friend but only an acquaintance.

Ole thinks she’s laying groundwork for something – posturing for some reason. It will be fun to watch as things proceed. I would imagine that we’ll be seeing her tonight at half price burger night. Bubba (remember him from previous writings?) thinks we should all get t-shirts that say The Monday Night Burger Club printed across the front.

Last Friday night was karaoke night at the Watering Hole. That’s the night we went to dinner with Bob & Carol. Carol loves to sing but we didn’t stop because she had to be to work at 7 a.m. the next morning. Lovely Daughter and Sven were there and she reported that Jane wasn’t her usually loud-mouth self that night – she was pretty quiet. I guess she was taking in the antics of Lee & Tim. Lee is a friend of Jane’s and Tim is her supposed fiancé. They are not young teenagers, if you know what I mean. They’re both old enough to “know better” and how to behave in public. I guess they got into quite a spat at the Watering Hole and she left him. Drove home without him. He becomes extremely obnoxious when he’s had a few beers. Actually, obnoxious isn’t even close to what he becomes. Anyway, I wasn’t there on Friday night so I only know what I was told. But I completely forgot to tell you about Tim & Lee on the night of Jane’s birthday party a couple of weeks ago.

Bob & Carol and Ole and I left early that night because things were getting so out of control. I think we were home by 9 o’clock. I heard the next day that Tim picked up Lee and was going to stuff her into one of the big trash cans full of garbage that Dick had sitting around. And of course she didn’t want to be dumped head first into that – I wouldn’t either. But Tim was totally inebriated so pursued the issue. It became a hair-pulling match along with a major struggle until Lee hit him in the nuts with her knee!! She thought that was the end of it when he was rolling on the floor groaning. But that was not to be – when he finally managed to get back up on his feet he picked her up again and tried once more to stuff her in the trash can full of messy paper plates and other stuff. I guess that time there were chunks of hair that got pulled out of both of their heads and she finally “nutted” him again, left him rolling on the floor, got into her car and headed for home.

I guess we miss all the excitement when we leave early!! We would have hung around but Tim is SO loud and SO obnoxious and Jane was becoming that same way what with it being her birthday party – so before I puked Ole decided it was time to take me home. And I had been drinking club soda all night!! So there - - -

Dirty Little Secrets

2008-04-05T11:41:00.004-05:00

It's Saturday - and I've got the house ALL TO MYSELF, with the exception of the doggers, of course. Ole is participating in a car show this weekend, sponsored by one of the local car clubs so he left the house at 9 o'clock this morning and I probably won't see him until 9 o'clock tonight. Tomorrow won't be quite as long a day. Lovely Daughter and Lars went to town to run errands and won't be home until later this afternoon.

I love having the house to myself because it just doesn't happen that often. So here I sit - it's almost noon and I have accomplished nothing - but the kicker is I don't even feel guilty about it. What an attitude, huh? And I have so much I want to do today.

It's a beautiful day here today. It's almost reached 60 degrees, but unfortunately we're under a winter storm watch for tonight and tomorrow with the possibility of the sky dropping six inches of snow on us. Will it ever end?

A couple of entries ago I promised more history lessons about my little town. For those of you who haven't read me for very long, it's probably become quite apparent that I love old pictures and have quite a collection not only of old family photos but also of my local area. I never was a history buff of any kind until my mother died and I got into geneaology. That made me want to learn as much as I could not only about my ancestors, but also about the area that I have lived in all my life.

My family moved here when I was just a wee leetle girl. You can read about how I ended up in this area by clicking here and also reading the next few entries. Not only am I a half breed, but also a gypsy. I'll let you figure out the rest.

Anyway, when I was a kid one of the things we really looked forward to for entertainment was the monthly meeting of the Community Club. Local families would gather together for a potluck supper at what was called The Hall back then. The building had originally been a combination hardware store and grocery store when it was built, and eventually was turned into a community center.

It was old and very drafty. The little side building on the right of the picture had been transformed into a kitchen, and was such that you could see outside through the spaces in the siding. There was no insulation, and in the winter the snow blew in through the cracks. A stage had also been built when it was taken over as the community center. That's where we kids used to put on all our Christmas programs, spring Maypole dances and any other performances that the teachers put together.

The adults eventually decided that they were going to hold monthly dances in The Hall. Then, a few years after that certain adults developed something called The 100 Club. This was kind of a hush-hush deal - but like all other hush-hush deals - everybody knew about it but nobody talked about it, at least openly. Once a month The 100 Club would hold a "social" in the community center. There was a live band, food and set-ups because you had to BYOB. When you entered the door the guys threw their car keys into a basket. At the end of the evening there was a drawing - get the jist? It was called The 100 Club because there were 50 couples that paid their membership dues; membership was by invitation only. You had to be "approved" by the Board.

Ole chuckles when he thinks about it - he says there's an entire generation of folks running around this community who KNOW who their mothers are, but aren't real sure who their fathers are!! Oh, what a little Peyton Place we had.

At the time we moved here there was also a very weird minister in our church. He had the most beautiful, perfectly waved hair every Sunday morning. Then the story got out that his wife would set it in pincurls every Saturday night before she headed for the local bar. She apparently "owned" a bar stool, and always came dressed with very long, bright red nails, and makeup so thick she needed a palette knife to scrape it off when she got home. She played the organ in church and there were plenty of Sunday mornings when she was late for church!!

It's Getting Ugly!!

2008-04-04T11:43:00.003-05:00

I don't usually pass on political advice or information, however we had all better wake up and start paying attention!

This morning, Pakistani Taliban Minister or Migration, Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that if military action against Iraq continues, Taliban authorities will cut off America's supply of convenience store managers.

And if this action doesn't yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed by Dell Computer customer service reps, AOL Help, Motel 6 managers and liquor store cashiers.

Who knew it would come to this. It's getting ugly!!

------------------------------------------------

On to things a bit closer to home.

A friend of mine, who runs a small business out of her home, received the following letter the other day:

Dear Madam:

Thank you for your recent order from our Sex Toys Shop. You asked for the large red vibrator as featured on our wall display. Please select another item. That is our fire extinguisher.

Well, CRAP!!

That's all I have for today, Folks.

Later - Lena

All the Muddy Foot Prints

2008-04-03T10:41:00.003-05:00

Ya know - every time I open up my blog I think I've got to find another design. I'm just not happy with this one, but I just can't seem to get something together that I like. Must be because it's spring and time for change.

Speaking of spring, I saw our first robins a couple of days ago. And yesterday afternoon when we were out running the doggers we saw lots of Canadian geese swimming in the water-filled ditches. Also heard them flying north overhead in their big "V" shape. Those guys are amazing in how fast they fly and for how long. They're so big and strong.

And finally, it's supposed to hit 50 today, and the snow is melting - finally. Now we can see all the trash in the yard. Where does it all come from? I had the yard nice and clean last fall before the snow fell.

It's also the season of muddy dogger feet and tummies and little muddy kitty tracks. Ole always takes the doggers out to the shop to clean them up. He's got a dog shower rigged up out there to get them clean, and then he blows them off with the air hose to dry them off. You wouldn't think they would like that, but they LOVE it. I really have to chuckle when he's done with them because they both look like they're having bad hair days when he's blown them off. But they both come back begging for more.

Then there's Senior Citizen Simon, who at this moment is stretched out on my bed with all four feet in the air. He's recovering from partying all night (snicker). Lovely Daughter has a big white cat named Hercules who comes to visit, and last night about 9 o'clock showed up on the back deck wanting to come in. We've got a dog door in the back garage door, and also one in the door that goes from the garage to the basement. Ole is supposed to lock that one when he's not working in the basement, but frequently forgets. Last night was one of those nights. Well, Herk's no dumby and knows that he can get in on his own and comes in to share Simon's food at night. So last night the Young Punk (Herk) decided to take the Old Grandpa (Simon) out on the town and taught Simon how to go through all the dog doors to get outside and go party. Lovely Daughter told me this morning that Simon followed Herk down the driveway all the way over to her house and even came inside when she opened the door. She said there was a kitty party in her living room because some of her old timer cats were so happy to see Simon. After all, he hasn't been outside much since last fall.

So that's another sign of spring - Senior Citizen Simon went for a jaunt.

But when he discovered that she'd acquired two new cats that he'd never met before he decided it was time to blow this pop stand and he and Herk proceeded to investigate the remainder of the night. He didn't come in until this morning, left little muddy foot prints all over my freshly washed kitchen floor, had a snack and came to bed. Now he'll probably sleep all day because at his age, he's just not used to being out all night.

Well, that's about all the excitement I can stand for one day - how about you?

Love Lena

A Little History Lesson

2008-04-02T10:34:00.010-05:00

First of all I want to thank Yankee Chick for nominating me for the Excellent Blog award. Thanks so much, Friend, I am honored. There you go giving this ole Swede a big head again!! I truly need to start writing more often than I have been lately, but it seems the days run short of hours and I just don't get everything done that's on my daily list. I'll try to do better, I promise.

I've always intended to give you a bit of history of the little town where I grew up and still live - not in - but just a wee bit out of in the country. It's got some interesting history if you're into that kind of thing.

The area is made up of people mostly of German descent. If you trace family histories back, all the German immigrants who settled in the area came from one area in Germany and were all related - brothers, mostly. So you can imagine by now, several generations later, what an intertwined mess (almost incestuous) of third, fourth and fifth cousins there are that make up the population of the little village and the surrounding farm area. So then you ask, what's someone from ScandiHOOvian descent doing living in this thickly populated German community? Just call me an immigrant in my own way. I'm not sure my father truly knew what he was in for when he settled in a community where everyone was related to everyone else. But that's another story.

The village started to take shape back in 1875 when the railroad came through and was named after a man who was a Minnesota state senator at that time. It didn't take many years before the little town became a large shipping point for all the potato growers in the surrounding area. We were quite a metropolis back then, and the town consisted of 3 general stores, a hardware store, whose business has grown so large since that point that his grandsons now have built 6 huge hardware/sporting goods stores throughout the upper midwest that give Cabela's competition, a meat market, a bank, 2 very large grain elevators, 4 potato warehouses, a blacksmith shop, a lumberyard, a harness and shoe shop, 2 hotels, a school, post office, candy store and a barber shop. Just for your information we now have 2 bars, a post office and a little general store. Quite a come down, huh?

I find this next picture quite interesting. The farmers are lined up waiting to load their potatoes into the railroad cars, but the interesting thing is the coat the guy in the center of the picture is wearing. It's made from a buffalo hide.

Now if you've read my blog for even a short period of time you're familiar with The Watering Hole. Before the Watering Hole was the Watering Hole it was a bank. Below is a picture of the back door of the building shortly after it was first built. Note the bars on the window to the left. The building was built in 1906 and closed in 1929 when lots of banks failed. It was sold in 1937, remodeled and then opened as The Watering Hole and has been a bar ever since. It's gone through several remodelings and additions through the years, but the original brick building is still the same.

Here's another shot of the front of the building when it was still a bank. Right next door is The Candy Store, which eventually turned into a bar too. Guess there's more money in beer than in candy (snicker).

The first school was built in 1882, had only one room and was also used as a church and Sunday school. There was one teacher who had up to 60 students when everyone attended. A bigger, two room school was built in 1909, and two teachers taught 1st through 8th grade. If you continued with school after the 8th grade you had to be bussed into the city 10 miles away. Ten miles isn't far in this day and age, but back then in the days of Model T's and the horse and buggy it was quite a feat to do that twice a day.

Below is the school I attended. This school was used until 1958 when it was torn down and a tennis court put in. The tennis court is now gone and a new fire station sits in the location.

I was at the fire station the other day, working out on their equipment. When I left I went out the back door, which is where the school playground used to be, and my mind flashed back to those days when we used to play softball during recess. The fence is still there - you know the one - when you hit it over the fence it was an automatic home run. Across the fence was where Babe lived - a very scary person to all of us grade schoolers. I'll tell you about him next time.

I also want to tell you about the Community Club and the INFAMOUS Key Club.

Stay tuned for the next episode - that is if you like this kind of stuff.

Later - Lena

Not the Nitty Gritty Details, but some pretty good stuff

2008-04-01T16:36:00.007-05:00

Ole and I have had some very heavy discussions lately about what's appropriate to share with all my on-line friends. He's always so full of ideas that I told him HE should start a blog. But, of course, he doesn't think he's got time, you know. Says he's way too busy drinking coffee in the mornings, reading his emails, playing with the doggers, and things like that. So I guess it's up to me to follow through on this sharing business.

One of the subjects that we've decided that it's okay to share is our sex life. I'm sure you guys just are waiting to hear every explicit detail, right? Well, if you know anything at all about Finlanders you know they're a ~~horney~~ HEARTY bunch. They have to be in order to have existed in Finland. And the same for the rest of the ScandiHOOvians - you know the Norwegians, the Swedes and I'm not so sure about the Danish because they live farther south, you know.

Those certain characteristics didn't disappear when all those ScandiHOOvians immigrated to the United States. They're still a very "playful" bunch of people with a wonderful sense of humor.

Now I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of every move, even though I'm sure you all want to hear every last little tidbit. But - - Ole and I certainly do our share of "fooling around." He always asks so nice and polite - and one morning we even took some pictures and decided to publish them. Would you like to see? Okay - here goes. Scroll down, okay?

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April Fool - Gotcha!!

Love Lena

Bitch and Gripe, Bitch and Gripe

2008-03-29T10:46:00.004-05:00

Can anybody guess who this is? (sorry, picture has been removed.)

Easter has come and gone and we still have snow on the ground with more in the forecast for the end of this week. I guess the Easter bunny must have survived because he and a number of his buddies were up on my deck this morning eating the spilled birdseed.

I have a tale to tell you this morning.

I promised myself some time ago that I wasn’t going to let Jane upset me anymore. I’ve done a pretty good job of not letting that happen - - until last Monday night. Let me start from the beginning.

Jane holds down a full-time job in the city, and managed to secure the position of village clerk on a part-time basis here in our little town. She’s paid much better as the village clerk than at her full-time job, so she manages to milk the clerk’s position for all she can get. She’s turned it from something that was supposed to be about 6 hours a week into about 20 hours a week. But, gosh, it’s a good place to get all your personal work done and get paid for it – you know – emailing your friends, writing letters, paying bills, etc. Anyway, I digress.

As the village clerk, it’s her responsibility to take care of renting out the community center for various events that people want to hold here. In the past there have been a number of Bosnian families who have held weddings, coming-out parties – that kind of thing. And even though they sign a contract that they will leave the community center in a neat and clean fashion and have to pay a cleaning deposit, that just doesn’t seem to happen. Things are usually left in a very disheveled, dirty manner. Last Saturday night there was a Bosnian wedding dance – the bride was 16 years old. And quite a party it must have been. On Easter Sunday morning the main street right in front of the community center was left littered with beer cans, broken bottles and trash all over. Dumpsters had been tipped over and trash strewn all over, etc. These things apparently happened after the party was over and security had gone. So with the main street looking like this you can imagine what the inside of the community center looked like. Apparently there was food that had been thrown onto the walls and all over the floor, drinks poured on the floor, and someone took a poop on the floor in the corner of the men’s bathroom.

Some community-minded citizen passing by and seeing this took it upon himself to call Bob about it. Bob is on the village council. Bob apparently went down to inspect it after church on Sunday morning and upon his arrival back home he called Jane just to inform her of the situation. It wasn’t that he expected Jane to handle the situation immediately, but just to give her a heads up so that she could contact the renting party on Monday and settle the issue. I guess Jane absolutely went ballistic – not because the community center was left in such a mess, but over the fact that Bob would have the BALLS (to use Jane’s words) to call her on Easter Sunday and ruin her holiday!!! Later that evening Dick stopped at Bob and Carol’s and requested that Bob call Jane back and apologize. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??? The sad part is that Bob did call her back and apologized for ruining her Sunday. He said he did it just to keep the peace because as a council member he has to work closely with her.

Whether it was Dick’s idea to request the apology from Bob or whether Jane made Dick’s life so miserable that he had to I don’t know. But either way, it’s a sorry situation.

Dick called me a couple of days ago to inform me that it’s Jane’s birthday today (Saturday) and that he was planning a birthday party for her. Right away my brain goes into overdrive trying to think of a quick excuse to get out of going, but nothing came to mind. It’s potluck, bring your own meat to put on the grille, whatever you want to drink and a gift. Any opinions on that statement? I’m going to keep MY mouth shut and not express MY opinion, which happens to be the same as Ole’s, and Bob and Carol’s.

Anyway, the four of us decided we’d put in an appearance, stay for a couple of hours and then beat feet. I have NO desire to hang around and watch Jane and all her antics when she’s the center of attention.

I had such a fun day yesterday. The YaYa Sisters met again for lunch and this time one of our girlfriends came up from Minneapolis just to have lunch with us. It was so fun – we sat and reminisced for almost four hours – and we never seem to run out of things to talk about. Our next date is planned for towards the end of April.

Lovely Daughter and I are going shopping this afternoon – we need to look for paper for wedding invitations and she wants me to start looking for mother-of-the-bride dresses. I said I would look, but I’m not buying anything until I manage to get a few of these extra pounds off. She’s still a bit up in the air about the colors for the bride’s maids dresses, so maybe we can get some of that settled today.

Speaking of trying to lose a few pounds – I’ve got just the best situation. As you know, Ole is a volunteer fireman. The new fire station has a complete workout room full of commercial exercise machines and free weights, along with an elliptical and a beautiful treadmill. Bob, who is also on the fire board, got permission for the wives of the fireman to use the workout room. I went three times last week and love it. I go about 10 in the morning and I’m there all by myself – just me and the TV with nobody to watch what I’m doing. Boy, I’ve needed this for a long time – so wish me luck.

All for now – got to get ready to meet Lovely Daughter and go shopping.

Puke, Gag, Wretch, Puke

2008-03-22T11:59:00.003-05:00

Sheesh - you guys - as of yesterday I was all caught up on reading blogs. This morning I opened up Google Reader and there was a long, long list again - so I've been sitting here reading and reading and reading and commenting. Either you guys lead a lot more interesting lives than I do, or you're writing fools. Maybe a bit of both?

So - exitement in my life? Not a lot. There was karaoke down at the Watering Hole last night so we stopped down about 8 o'clock just to visit a bit, not intending to stay for more than an hour or so. Yah, right - we came waltzing in the door at 11 o'clock. Pat and George were there having dinner so we sat with them and visited. They're such a fun couple. Bob and Carol weren't there because Carol had to work until 9:00.

But of course Jane was there holding court. Her entire entourage was there swarming around her so she was in her glory. A bit later one of Jane's neighbors and his wife came in. Wife sat down with us and had her dinner, but Husband Neighbor sat at Jane's table. I've been very suspicious of something going on there for quite some time, so last night I just kept close watch out of the corner of my eye. Never said boo to anyone about my suspicions, but later in the evening Pat asked me of there was hanky panky going on between Jane and Neighbor Husband. I don't know if it's reached the hanky panky stage yet, but it's extremely obvious that Jane has the hots for Neighbor Husband. VERY obvious. She can't keep her hands off him, but at this point he still acts as if it's all a big joke. Wife didn't stay any longer than it took to eat her dinner and then got up and left using the excuse that she was tired and just wanted to go home. And whenever Neighbor Husband would make an attempt to visit with anyone else, Jane would elbow her way into the conversation and take it over. That happened to me a couple of times last night.

Then Neighbor Husband got up to sing the Macarena and guess who was the ONLY one out on the dance floor - standing in the middle facing Neighbor Husband making moon eyes at him and dancing the Macarena? Yup - you got it - Jane, wiggling her big fat butt. I swear she wasn't wearing a bra last night because the way her 40DDs wagged around they could have done damage to someone's head if they'd gotten too close.

Anybody want to hang their head over the porcelain god with me while I puke???

A Grand Funk - Again!

2008-03-21T10:23:00.007-05:00

So far we've had a perfect spring melt. Warm thawing temperatures during the day and freezing at night. As of yesterday the fields were black, the ditches empty of snow with very little water standing in them with the only snow still visible accumulated in the trees around the farm sites. So the cabin fever that had been developing in my feeble little brain had mostly disappeared.

And then I woke up to THIS!!

Six inches of flippin' snow - heavy, wet snow. Will it never end?? How will the Easter Bunny ever manage to get through all of this stuff? He'll sink out of sight never to be found again.

So Ole is currently out blowing snow so that we can at least get in and out of our driveway. It's 10:30 and the snowplows haven't been out yet. There was just an announcement on the radio that they wouldn't be going out until the snow has stopped, which is forecast to happen around 4:00 this afternoon. Lovely Daughter and Lars left for work this morning with their 4-wheel drive engaged.

Oh, well, quitcher bitchin' - there's nothin' you can do about it anyway.

On to other things.

We have a new Super Walmart that has opened in our area. We had one previously, but it was waaay out on the west side of the city, (20+ miles) so I rarely went there. We had a regular old Walmart about 7 miles from my house, and that's the one I shopped at. Well, two weeks ago the old Walmart closed and the new Super Walmart opened so yesterday I made my first shopping soiree (neener) to the new store. I've done my grocery shopping for years at a local chain that's a bit more on the pricey side, but they have the best fresh produce and their own meat department where they do all their own cutting and packaging, besides cutting to order.

What I found was somewhat disconcerting - no - to be honest it made me downright angry. I was shopping for some Russet potatoes and was quite dismayed to find that they had all been packaged in Mexico. It was obvious that they had "been around" for quite some time as they were somewhat soft and wrinkled. Not nice and firm like a potato should be. What's going on here? I live in the middle of one of the largest potato producing areas of the United States and they expect me to eat potatoes shipped in from a foreign country? NOT!!! This prompted me to check more carefully on the other packaged produce - ALL OF IT had been packaged in Mexico, which also means that it had probably been grown in Mexico too. Who knows what kind of pesticides have been used on these items? I guess I certainly don't want to find out.

Then I went to find some tea biscuits - that was another exercise in futility and I left the store without them. Every package that was on the shelf had been squashed to the point that the biscuits looked like little pancakes. That's another thing about my local chain - they have their own bakery and are noted for their wonderful breads. They also make all their own deli selections - they don't ship it in in big tubs from some central warehouse.

What happened to Walmart's boast that they only sell American made products? Needless to say, I'll be doing my grocery shopping back at my pricey local chain where the food is fresh, they don't put the cleaning products in with the food items when they bag your groceries, they use paper bags that stand up instead of the plastic ones that allow your items to roll all over the back of the car on the trip home, and they carry your groceries out for you and put them neatly in your trunk or back seat. There's a reason my local chain is a bit higher priced, but I'm willing to pay for convenience.

And, oh yes, for those of you concerned about the use of paper bags by my grocery store. If you bring them back they issue you a nickel credit for each bag that is reusable. So they're not killing anymore trees than necessary.

So what are you having for Easter dinner/brunch? We're going to eat late afternoon and I'm making a turkey. We've had so much ham over the last month what with all the church ham dinners that have been around that I don't think I could swallow another piece. So turkey it is, with do ahead mashed potatoes, gravy, and all the other trimmings. We were going to go out for dinner on Sunday, but decided we'd miss the leftovers then. And besides, my back is finally better so I'm feeling up to cooking. It's not 100% yet, but almost.

And on that note I leave you with this:

Blame global warming!

Where Chocolate Easter Eggs Originate

2008-03-19T11:34:00.003-05:00

I think Lovely Daughter was about three years old one Easter when Ole and I decided to have a bit of extra fun with her and her Easter basket.

The Easter basket was loaded with the usual things - the hollow chocolate bunny, marshmallow filled eggs, peeps, and of course her favorite Cadbury eggs. I think there was a stuffed animal of some sort and a few clothing items. I had also bought a package of jelly beans.

The night before Ole and I put the basket together and Ole picked out all the black jelly beans. Then he proceeded to place them on the kitchen floor in a trail leading from the kitchen door over to the corner where her Easter basket was hidden. Fortunately the two dogs we had at that time didn't like jelly beans (snicker).

Easter morning she came tripping out of her room walking on her tip toes trying to be quiet thinking that she might actually catch the Easter bunny. Ole and I were sitting in the living room having coffee when she reached the kitchen door, let out a scream and came racing into the living room telling us all about how badly the Easter bunny had behaved by pooping all over the kitchen floor!! We finally convinced her that they were just jelly beans and that if she followed the trail she would find her Easter basket.

So, Easter bunnies, behave and don't leave a trail of bunny poop behind on Easter morning.

I've been feeding my wild bunnies all winter so I've got the real thing out on the deck. I don't have to resort to jelly beans this year!!

Leave the Dog Hair on the Floor - Dang It!

2008-03-18T13:23:00.004-05:00

Yup - it's time for every animal in our animal kingdom to blow their coat, and I don't think they leave ANY of it outside. I think every last hair is deposited on my carpet and my kitchen floor. Thank heavens for Rosie the Rhoomba.

But I still have to lean over to pick up the throw rugs - I haven't got her trained to do that yet. And as a result - last Saturday morning when I was doing this daily deed - I leaned over to pick up one of my kitchen rugs and I swear someone hit me in the back with a tazer gun. AAACCCKKKK! Well, actually I said a few other choice words than aaaccckkk - but we won't go into them here. Of course it was a Saturday so my friendly chiropractor wasn't open, and doesn't come into the office until Monday afternoon. So, needless to say I had a very uncomfortable weekend. Spent most of it flat on my back because when I tried to move I swear someone was poking me in the back with a cattle prod.

By Monday afternoon I hurt so bad all I wanted was to have someone shoot me to put me out of my misery. But my Miracle Worker at least got me upright and moving again with another visit scheduled for tomorrow. Then I splurged and had his massage therapist work on my lower back for a half hour. Sure wish I could have that done on a weekly basis.

So needless to say I didn't go down to the Local Watering Hole last night to drink any green beer for St. Patty's day. The thought of that makes me gag anyway.

I did go down long enough to eat a burger and visited with Carol for a bit. Lovely Daughter showed up so the three of us were talking wedding plans. Carol doesn't have any daughters (only three sons) so she's kind of adopted Lovely Daughter and is as excited about making wedding plans as if she were the mother of the bride. With three grown sons she says she learned to "keep her mouth shut and wear beige" when it came to making wedding plans.

Carol absolutely loves to bake and has offered to make Lovely Daughter's wedding cake/cup cakes, etc. She's also volunteered to make all the mints. I told her we would have a Mint Party sometime this summer - with Carol heading up the crew that could be a lot of fun. Carol is a riot.

Ole and Bob had already gone to their weekly fire department training when Dick and Jane came in. I don't know what kind of a hair Jane had up her butt; she looked like she could bite everyone's head off. So nobody bothered to speak to her for fear she would and because nobody paid any attention to her she managed to keep her trap shut, which made for a somewhat more pleasant evening.

Well, my back has about had it from sitting in an upright position. I wish I could figure out how to operate the laptop while laying flat on my back - then I could keep up with all you guys. As it is you guys are all writing fools, so I haven't been able to keep up with all your blogging. Sorry if I've missed anything. I'll try to catch up when I can spend more time in a vertical position.

St. Patrick Chased More Than the Snakes out of Ireland ~ ~ ~

2008-03-17T09:02:00.004-05:00

Did you know the reason the Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day is because this is when St. Patrick drove the Norwegians out of Ireland. It seems that some centuries ago, many Norwegians came to Ireland to escape the bitterness of the Norwegian winter. Ireland was having a famine at the time, and food was scarce. The Norwegians were eating almost all the fish caught in the area, leaving the Irish with nothing to eat but potatoes.

St. Patrick,taking matters into his own hands, as most Irishmen do, decided the Norwegians had to go. Secretly, he organized the Irish IRATRION (Irish Republican Army to Rid Ireland of Norwegians) Irish members of IRATRION passed a law in Ireland that prohibited merchants from selling ice boxes or ice to the Norwegians, in hopes that their fish would spoil. This would force the Norwegians to flee to a colder climate where their fish would keep. Well, the fish spoiled, all right, but the Norwegians, as everyone knows today, thrive on spoiled fish.

So, faced with failure, the desperate Irishmen sneaked into the Norwegian fish storage caves in the dead of night and sprinkled the rotten fish with lye, hoping to poison the Norwegian invaders. But, as everyone knows, the Norwegians thought this only added to the flavor of the fish. They liked it so much they decided to call it "lutefisk", which is Norwegian for "luscious fish". Matters became even worse for the Irishmen when theNorwegians started taking over the Irish potato crop and making something called "lefse".

Poor St. Patrick was at his wit's end, and finally on March 17th, he blew his top and told all the Norwegians to "GO TO HELL". So they all got in their boats and emigrated to Minnesota or the Dakotas ---- the only other paradise on earth where smelly fish, old potatoes and plenty of cold weather can be found in abundance.

The End.

Suicide - a Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

2008-03-11T11:00:00.004-05:00

Last Friday night I ran into a girlfriend from way back. We grew up together, actually being neighbors for several years of our lives and then attending school together all the way through high school. A few years after graduation she married a local man and moved to Milwaukee where he worked for a large company. Her younger brother and sister still live here, but her parents both died a number of years ago.

The picture above is of Vicki and me; we had taken dancing lessons together and were getting ready for a recital, so of course my mother had to snap a picture. Vickie is the one on the right.

Vicki and her brother were only two years apart, but her little sister I think, must have been an oops because she showed up 18 years later. By this time both parents were pretty bad alcoholics. Vicki did her best to cope with the situation but when her husband was transferred to Milwaukee she was truly relieved. She came home to visit infrequently over the years because it was more than she could deal with, and finally gave up in frustration and didn't come home at all for many years. I don't believe she even came home for her father's funeral when he passed due to an alcoholic infarction of the brain.

Now we have her brother and sister living around the corner from each other, but brother has thrown his hands up in frustration also. Little Sister, who is currently in her 40s, has been hooked on pain killers for years and years. She has two children but doesn't know who the fathers are, and is currently living with a man who soaks up alcohol like a sponge. Little Sister does her share of consuming also. Several times a year, over the last years, Little Sister has tried to commit suicide by overdosing with drugs. She's spent lots of time in psych wards getting cleaned up and dried out, but to no avail. She even has the audacity to call various people in the community looking for leftover prescription pain pills. I can't believe that people are stupid enough to give them to her knowing her reputation, but she's getting them somewhere.

Last week she had another episode. She had been into the ER due to some kind of an overdose. Her 16 year old daughter was driving her home when she grabbed a bottle out of her purse and swallowed the entire thing down. Well, needless to say she ended up back in the ER, and then in the psych ward again. Vickie was called home because they weren't sure she was going to make it this time, but again, she pulled through.

I called her brother's house this morning to try and connect with Vickie, to take her to lunch or have her out for coffee because it's been forever since we've had a chance to visit. But Brother told me Vickie and her husband left for home yesterday. They had initially planned to be here all week, hoping they could get some legal work done to commit Little Sister so she would have to stay in the hospital or some facility for a period of time - trying to get her some help. But in the State of Minnesota that's illegal. You can't commit anyone. If they are in a facility they are there on their own and can walk out anytime they want. So Vickie had gone home again in frustration, not being able to get any help for her little sister. One of these times this woman is going to be successful in her death wish. How awful life must be to feel that way. And my heart goes out to Vickie and her brother for trying so hard to find a solution and not being able to do so.

Little Sister walked out of the psych ward yesterday and is currently at home. I wonder how long it will be before the First Responders are called to her house again.

ADDENDUM: At Christmas time Little Sister sat down in the middle of the kitchen, doused herself with gasoline and held a lighter, threatening to set herself on fire. Another time she held a pistol to her head. Both of these situations took place on extremely cold nights. The 16 year old daughter ran barefoot to the neighbors to get help and to get herself out of the house. Unfortunately both the 16 year old daughter and the 20-some year old son have also tried several times to commit suicide.

Things Ain't Like They Used To Be - Or Are They?

2008-03-10T11:27:00.002-05:00

I was poking around reading various blogs this morning and tuned into one of my many favorites, Kitchen Logic. She’s having kind of a tough time right now with kid issues and wrote about “Getting Your Naughty On.”

Back in the Dark Ages, when Ole and I were growing up, things were pretty different. Big trouble back then would be considered a pretty minor incident in this day and age with all the negative opportunities that kids have today. But then, we grew up in a fairly sheltered area of the world, too, I shouldn’t forget that.

Ole was considered a “hood” back then. Anybody else remember what that term means? The dictionary defines it as short for hoodlum; a street tough. At least HE thought he was a tough guy and hung out with that group of guys – you know – leather jackets with collars up, ducktail hair styles, smoking non-filtered cigarettes, drinking beer out on the country roads on Friday nights, etc. Most of them spent their time standing around on street corners, chewing gum, smoking cigarettes and acting tough.

Our graduating class was 478 students, so it wasn’t exactly small. The year we graduated from high school was the first year I ever heard anything about drugs being used or sold; marijuana to be exact. Drinking beer and smoking seemed to be the worst offense. Although we had one guy who would get high on Vicks inhalers. He’d cut the end off and suck on the wick from inside the inhaler. Boy, would he get goofy, but for some reason he was never able to convince anyone else to do that.

Legal drinking age at that time in South Dakota was 18 while it was 21 in both North Dakota and Minnesota. Ole had a buddy who drove a Corvette Sting Ray (rich kid) who would make a weekly trip down to South Dakota, buy a bunch of beer, bring it back and sell it to his buddies for their Friday night parties. Now that guy is a well-known pediatric heart surgeon in the southwest.

I have to say the rest of Ole’s “hood” buddies all turned out okay with the exception of two. One turned out to be a successful restaurant owner, another owns his own body shop, another has retired from an upper level position with Northwest Airlines. And Ole wore a 3-piece suit for 30+ years and was able to retire at 55. Unfortunately one of the guys served in the infantry in Viet Nam and has suffered from PTSD ever since he returned 35 years ago. He has never married and has great difficulty holding any kind of a job. The other also served in Viet Nam and became an airplane mechanic when he got out of the service. A number of years later he divorced his wife of 20+ years and married a trophy wife. We haven’t heard of him or from him for many years.

Referencing Ole and his 3-piece suit days – to look at him now you’d never guess that was his background. Now I can’t get him out of his blue jeans and flannel shirts, and he’s even got an earring and tattoos. I guess he’s going back to his rebellious “hood” days.

Ole never got caught doing any of the things that “hoods” do – but I can’t say that for some of his buddies. One night one of the guys had a flat tire and no money to get it fixed or buy a new one. So they went to the After Hours Tire Shop (car parked on the street) and got one there. When Ole and buddy Junior found out the plan for the night they decided not to participate. Lucky for them they didn’t because that night the cops just happened by and the guys got hauled into the police station. They got their hands slapped and their parents were called to come get them. Having to have your parents come get you from the police station was worse punishment than having to spend the night in jail.

One of our major sources of entertainment back then was dragging Broadway. Have you ever watched American Graffiti? We truly lived it. The evening was spent driving up and down Broadway seeing who was there and who could be the "coolest." It was a great way to meet guys, arrange to meet them in some parking lot somewhere, then hop in the car with them and ride up and down Broadway in their car. Back then air conditioning was an option that not everyone had in their car. I remember being with a bunch of girls in a car without air in the summertime. Instead of dragging Broadway with the windows down we kept them rolled up so everyone would think we had AC in the car - being "cool" even without AC.

We had a dress code in school that was strictly enforced and this was public school. Girls could not wear jeans or slacks to school. The principal would walk the halls and if he saw a girl with a skirt that he thought was too short he would make her get down on her knees. If the skirt didn’t touch the floor she would be sent home to change. And of course no girl would have thought of having any cleavage showing let alone wearing a short top that exposed her mid section. Guys could not wear blue jeans and all pants had to have belt loops and they had to wear a belt. None of this letting the pants hang down around the hips thing. No t-shirts – had to be a collared shirt of some sort – and no logos on the shirts. Quite a change from today when kids run around with those big baggy pants hanging way down their hips and they look like they’ve dropped a load in them! Now I’m all for fashion, and being with it and all, but that’s just a bit too much for me.

So hang in there, K-Lo. Thing 1 will be fine once he gets through this rebellious stage.

By the way, Ole still says he’s mean, evil, bad, nasty and rotten, and besides that, he’s not a nice guy. Yeah – only in HIS imagination. He’s really such a big marshmallow, it’s pathetic.

Winter

2008-03-07T11:11:00.002-06:00

As I stumbled out to the kitchen this morning, still in a fog from having just awakened, and trying hard not to fall on my face as Senior Citizen Simon curled himself between my ankles begging to be fed, I glanced out my living room window to the east and saw the most beautiful sunrise all orange and crimson shining brightly between the frosted tree branches. As the sun rose into a crisp, cloudless blue sky it made the snow sparkle like diamonds all bright and shiny. And I thought to myself, oh, what a beautiful day this is going to be.

Then I looked at the thermometer and it said 22 degrees below zero. My next thought was:

This is the 7th of March - we're supposed to have snow melting now - not freezing even harder.

We stayed home this winter because we traveled last fall, and our intention was to travel again this spring headed for the Great Smokey Mountains. That's why we're enduring this winter that won't end. Oh well, just remind me of these cold temperatures when I'm complaining about 100 degrees and 90% humidity in July, will you?

Apparently general concensus is that you guys don't want to stop hearing about Jane - you're all curious about whether or not she can make a bigger fool of herself, huh? Well, okay. But I'm NOT going to let her upset me anymore. I'll just report. Okay? Latest report: Dick and Jane sat in the front pew at church on Wednesday night. Ole and I were seated strategically so we could see them, but they couldn't see us (sneaky, huh?) Jane spent most of the half hour service with her head on Dick's shoulder and stroking in arm from elbow to shoulder. Get a room, huh? Or at least sit in the back pew so nobody else has to watch. How about just conducting yourself with a little dignity and self-respect!

And, to quote Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

Actually I don't have anything to say about anything else either - - -

A Verbal Desert

2008-03-05T11:51:00.002-06:00

Well, that's not exactly true - I don't say "nothing" regularly because Ole says I talk ALL the time!! Be that as it may, I'm just kind of out of words for the time being. How can that be, you say? A ScandihOOvian female who has nothing to gossip about?

Well, I've kinda decided not to write about Jane and all her antics anymore. You're probably sick of hearing about her anyway, right? I mean, the fact that she spent a good portion of her time groping Dick's crotch the night we all went to dinner together at Bennigans - the night before they left for their Vegas trip has nothing to do with me. So if she wants to prove to everyone around that she's a pig, let her. Yeah, going to dinner with someone who would do that in public leaves a bit to be desired, and we probably won't be doing that anymore. It just proves she has no respect for herself, let alone poor Dick.

I've kinda reached a point where I don't feel sorry for Dick anymore either. Don't get me wrong, I still think he's a wonderful person - he's so kind and a true friend. But to put up with the kind of behavior that she exhibits makes we wonder about him too. It's the opinion of several in our group that either he puts up with it because she would make his life so miserable if he clamped down on her behavior or he secretly likes having a wife that is so "risque!"

Two years ago in Sturgis she walked around with her boobs hanging out - completely - just pulled her t-shirt down and let her size 40DD all hang out. She's named them Mikey and Stevie. Wonder if she tried to get away with that in Vegas?

And, oh yes, more XXX porn pictures came in Ole's email this morning. She's definitely back. A female who gets a thrill out of looking at other female's bare crotches exposing ALL of the inner-most parts has got to be really sick. Bob's been getting the pictures on a daily basis from her also. I wonder what she's trying to do.

In conversation on Monday night with Bob's daughter-in-law, who was also down at the Watering Hole for half price burgers I learned more about how disliked Jane is in the community. DIL's grandparents go to our church and used to sit about third or fourth row back from the front. You know how it is in these little country churches; everyone seems to have their own pew, sits there every Sunday, and by golly, if a stranger comes to church and sits in YOUR pew and you have to sit somewhere else, it's traumatic. Anyway, grandparents ended up moving completely to the other side of the church because they couldn't stand to watch Jane fondle the back of Dick's head and his ears and rub his back during church. I guess all actions have their place, but possibly not in church, and especially in the front pew where Dick and Jane always sit.

Anyway, not having had her around for a week has been very peaceful. And I've decided that I'm not going to let her upset me anymore. She's only proving to the world what an ass she truly is.

I've been bouncing around reading various blogs this morning and it seems the general concensus of us "Northerners" is that winter needs to be over now. We've had enough. Winter doesn't usually get me down, but boy this year I've developed a bad case of cabin fever. Our "normal" winter, if there is such a thing, usually has a cold snap in January where temps get way below zero and stay there for a week or 10 days or even two weeks. Then they go back up to a range somewhere between zero and the high 20s for the remainder of the winter. But this year that hasn't happened - they've been bouncing around from WAY below zero for a few days then up and down for a few days at a time. This makes it seem that it's been subzero for most of the winter. We're supposed to have 20 below again tonight and then in the 20s and 30s for the weekend. Enough already. STOP. It's March - the snow is supposed to start to melt. Get started. Enough bitching about that too, okay?

I have one more room to spring houseclean - the computer room, and that's going to be a job and a half. I don't know if your computer room is like mine, but there's so much important stuff stashed in here - you know - all those things you absolutely have to hang onto that have no value whatsoever. So I've decided I'm going to get really cruel and tough and pitch a lot of stuff. Of course you know what will happen then, don't you? That's when I'll find that I really need it. Maybe I'll just stuff it all in a box and pack it into the storeroom we have in the basement.

When I finish in the computer room I get to start tearing wallpaper off the walls in the master bedroom. Ugh - what a terrible job. But Ole and Lovely Daughter have all committed to helping me so maybe it won't be too terrible. We could make a party out of it and bring out a bit of Ole's homemade wine. And some cheese and crackers. Maybe we wouldn't get too much ripping done, but it would be a lot more fun, don't you think?

Anyway, I'm kind of out of subjects to write about anymore. So I'm open to suggestions from any of you. Okay? What do you like to hear about?

On Being a Penny Pincher

2008-03-04T11:00:00.003-06:00

Anybody out there interested in saving a few hundred dollars a year on their phone bill? Well, have I got a deal for you!! (Can’t you just see me standing up on my soapbox outside a tent at the carnival yelling my sales pitch at the top of my lungs?) So come on in and see what I’ve got!!

A few weeks ago when I was having one of my sleepless nights I flipped the TV on about 3 a.m. and came across one of those “Paid Programming” things – those ads that seem to go on and on during the night that 99% of the stations carry even on Dish Network. One of them caught my attention and I stopped to watch it for a minute. It was for something called Magic Jack. Now what could this be – some new kind of Jack Daniels? A new variety of Jack in the Pulpit to plant in my garden come spring? A new Jack in the box toy? After a minute I determined that it was a little box, about the size of a cigarette lighter that plugs into any USB port on your computer. Plug your phone cord into the other end and you can make all the long distance and local phone calls you want for free. Well, not exactly for free; Magic Jack costs $40, which includes a year of service. The fee after that first year is $20 a YEAR – not a month – a YEAR!! I did the math – quickly – and since my LOCAL phone service costs me $32 a month (that’s no long distance) I thought this would be a no brainer.

But being the cautious person that I am I decided to talk to my personal computer guru, Big Brother, about it first. Before I got a chance to call him about it the next day the phone rang and it was Big Brother. And guess how he was calling me? On a Magic Jack. He had also seen the ad (sleepless nights must be genetic or something), decided to try it and had just received it that day. It worked beautifully.

Well, that sealed it. I went online and ordered mine that same day. It arrived in the mail yesterday and was a cinch to install. I called him last night just to test it out and – Ta Dah – worked great.

So when we travel this will be a real boon as long as I have high speed internet service or an air card in my laptop. If you’re interested, go check it out at http://www.magicjack.com/site/index-22a2.html.

Isn’t technology amazing?

Now just as a teaser - Dick & Jane and Ted & Alice must have arrived home from Las Vegas last night. Ole checked his email about 10:30 p.m. and there was an email from Jane - XXX- rated!! Also, I need to tell you about dinner at Bennigans the night before they left. I neglected to fill you in on a few items when I wrote about it previously. Stay tuned for further details!!

Dragging out the Old Brownie Box Camera

2008-02-28T10:05:00.011-06:00

My mother was a camera bug. She told me that one of her older brothers gave her a Brownie box camera for her birthay when she was 16 and she proceeded to document everything from there on. Amazingly her pictures turned out quite good considering what she had to work with.

Below is what I take pictures with - an Olympus SP-560UZ with an 18x optical zoom lense and dual image stabilizers. But I'm not so sure my pictures are really any better quality than hers. I don't profess to be a "photographer" by any means, but I do have fun and have in the past taken some awards at the county fair - just out of pure luck I'm sure.

So I decided to share some pictures with you - nothing great - just some snaps captured on the run.

A truckload of dogs getting ready to go for their ride - believe me - that truck doesn't leave the property without them.

Just a country road in the middle of winter. See the drift coming up that we have to drive through? Doesn't look like it from here, but it was about 3 feet deep.

A somewhat bleak winter sunset.

One of my wren houses - needless to say there's no wrens living in it now. And the sign below says "Out Biking" - Not hardly!!

This was taken from my front yard just experimenting with the zoom - that's Lovely Daughter's house with one of her Watch Cats in the window. He's watching the birds.

Just a shot of Ole working in his shop. He's restoring a 1934 Dodge for a customer.

One of the little guys I've been keeping fed this winter. I curse them in the summer when they eat my flowers, but can't stand to see anything go hungry in the winter.

I find this one really interesting not because of the makeup of the photo, but because I think the goldfinches know something we don't. Goldfinches that manage to stay here throughout the winter are usually a very muddy brown and don't turn their bright yellow until about the time the trees start to leaf out. For some strange reason I've had a ton of finches all winter and they are all starting to turn their bright yellow now. Maybe they know something we don't? I sure hope they're right because I'm developing quite a case of cabin fever this year for some reason.

And now for some truly brave but not very smart souls. I saw this clip on TV this morning and had to share it. I LOVE the big guys in their tutus.

http://www.truveo.com/Ice-Swimming-Season-Opens-in-Russia/id/2814666696

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Happy Winter!

As the World Turns (On and On)

2008-02-27T10:58:00.003-06:00

First t'ings first - der's another entry over at the Smelly Lutefisk factory. I no longer post on Diaryland, so if you're going over there to look for it, it's not there - ha, ha! If you want to read it, or haven't kept the info from last time, please email me at LenaSwenson@gmail.com and I'll give you the secret location!!

My, my, my (waves white dish towel like a fan to cool off) things have been busy at the Ole and Lena household. Saturday afternoon we went to the local Home and Garden Show sponsored by the local builder's association. It's a great place to get ideas for remodeling and such. Ole says it's a great place to get ideas on how to spend his money! But MY money's in HIS pocket so I just tell him I'm spending MY money (snicker). It always takes a long time to get through a show like that and see everything because Ole has this gift of gab, you see. Because of the business that he was in for 30 years he knows EVERYBODY and stops to chat for hours on end. It's always an ego booster for him because everyone he runs into from the industry tells him how much he is missed. It's good for him to be able to "pop his buttons" every once in awhile.

We ran into friends (2 couples) so we decided to all meet for dinner that night. We arranged to meet them out at the Golden Corral - a new to our area restaurant. The food was delicious, but we'll probably never go there again. I guess some of their expertise is how to pack folks in like sardines. You could hardly move in that restaurant, and the way we were seated we felt like we were sitting on top of the next table infringing on their conversation!! Someone should tell the Golden Corral that packing folks in like that doesn't leave much room for the belt expansion that you need when you try to get your money's worth at a buffet.

The next morning (Sunday) our church was serving their annual ham dinner (mmm - it's so good). I sold tickets and Ole helped in the kitchen slicing ham. We were there early enough to help with some of the preparation and stayed to help clean up - so we were both ready to check our eyelids for leaks when we got home. Mine didn't leak for over two hours!! So Sunday night was a good night to stay home - guess what we had for supper - ham sandwiches!!

Monday night, of course, was burger night at the Local Watering Hole. It was just Bob and Ole and I. Carol was picking up a friend (May) at the airport, and Jane was far too busy at the City Office to come over (whew - a peaceful night). Dick & Jane, along with Ted & Alice are leaving for Las Vegas tonight. They'll be gone until next Monday - HURRAH! (I'm so nasty.)

Last night we were invited to a going away supper for May. Remember - I've told you about May before. She is from Turkey, where her parents arranged her marriage when she was 15 to a doctor that was 20+ years older than her. She's been visiting her daughter and grand daughter out in NYC for the last several months and has decided to move out there. We'll miss her a lot - she's such a joy. So anyway, last night we all got together at Bennigans to wish her the best. And of course Dick and Jane were there and Jane was in her usual Big Mouth form. I'm not even going to go into details because they just don't matter anymore - but she was doing her usual loud-voiced arguing with everyone about everything. She's so embarrassing. And as usual she chewed with her mouth open and talked with her mouth full - enough to make one gag. This time food even fell out of her mouth at one point!! My new policy when I'm around Jane is to just keep my mouth shut, be quiet and not say much of anything. I'm not going to give her anymore ammunition that she can twist and use against me anymore.

Well, today's my day to work on income tax preparation - isn't that a "downer" then? Our appointment is on Friday afternoon so I suppose I better get my ducks in a row!!

More gossip tomorrow - okay?

Email me, okay?

2008-02-22T12:01:00.002-06:00

I've completed a private entry at another site. If you're interested in reading please email me and I'll tell you where to find it. You can email me directly at lenaswenson@gmail.com.

Love you all,

Lena

Rubber Legs and Hot Dish

2008-02-20T10:34:00.002-06:00

Good Gawd Almighty - it's just to damn cold to go outside anymore. We set a record last night and ran that old thermometer down to 31 degrees below zero!! Fortunately when it gets that cold it's too cold to snow.

But let me tell you about yesterday: The Ya Ya Sisters got together yesterday afternoon about 4 o'clock. You remember I told you about the five girls who went to school together from first grade on? Well, yesterday was our day to get together and laugh and have fun, which we did. We left the restaurant about 6:30 and headed for home. I had about 25 feet to run from the door to my car and I thought I was going to have frostbite on my face. The wind was blowing so hard and the temps were way below zero. I heard on the radio on the way home that the wind chill was equivalent to 47 degrees below zero. As I got out on the highway to drive my seven miles home I began to wonder what I was doing there because the snow was blowing across the highway creating whiteout conditions so you kind of had to drive by feel - not by sight. I was so happy to see the lights of our little town when I finally got that far because then I knew I only had a half mile to get home.

Then about 9 o'clock the wind went down and the temps started to drop like a rock. I know - I know - why do we live here you ask? At this point I really can't answer that without my nose growing long.

I had a long day yesterday. My church serving group had to serve for a funeral yesterday. Visitation started at 9 o'clock so we had to have coffee and cookies ready for that and for the family. The funeral was at 11 o'clock and we were told to be ready to serve 250 people. The ladies of our group had to furnish the sandwiches and cake, and the "hotdish" was ordered in. But setting up for and serving 250 made me feel like I had rubber legs when it was all over.

Now I don't know if those of you from other areas of the country other than the Upper Midwest are knowledgeable about what a close connection Lutheran churches and hotdishes have at church gatherings. Hotdishes are the glue that keeps the Lutheran church together. The definition of hotdish is "Any of a variety of casserole dishes popular in the Midwest, especially in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and northern regions of Iowa. It consists of a starch and a protein mixed together with a binding ingredient (most often canned soup or a sauce) and a topping. Typical ingredients are macaroni, ground beef and corn with canned soup added for flavor and as a sauce, and seasoned with salt, pepper and/or ketchup." You may question ketchup as a seasoning, but it's a well known fact that Norwegian Lutheran's spice cabinet only contains salt, pepper and ketcup!! Another popular hotdish is made with plain noodles, canned tuna and peas, with canned soup - usually cream of mushroom - for binding. Even Spam and cream of mushroom is a popular combo. (After all, the Spam factory is in Minnesota, you know.) Cream of mushroom soup is used so frequently in hotdish that it is often referred to in recipes as "the Lutheran Binder," referring to hotdish's position as a staple of Lutheran-church cookbooks. Hotdish even made its way into mystery novels. If you haven't read Hotdish to Die For, in which the weapon of choice is hotdish, you've missed a good laugh.

So what kind of hotdish did we serve yesterday? Macaroni, hamburger, peas, corn, tomato sauce and ketchup for seasoning!! Tasty stuff. Then of course there's the sandwiches: open-faced buns spread with egg salad or tuna salad or cheese whiz with an olive in the middle or dead spread. What??? Dead spread?? It's served so often at funerals because it's so simple to make - ground ham mixed with chopped pickles, a tiny bit of onion (wouldn't want to over season you know) and a bit of pickle juice.

By the time we were done there were only a dozen sandwiches left, a half pan of bars and a few spoonfuls of hotdish. And oh yes, can't forget the coffee. We made four 100-cup pots of coffee and had about 20 cups left when we were done. Now that's a good bunch of Norwegians there. I drafted Ole to become one of the ladies of the serving circle. He came to the church at 8:30 and loaded all the coffee pots and put them to perk and he didn't even gripe. Those 100-cup pots loaded full of water are pretty darn heavy you know.

On a more serious note, this was an especially sad funeral. She was a young woman of only 31 years who had Type I diabetes. That's diabetes that is contracted as a child, a very difficult situation to treat. She had a baby 6 months ago that had to be delivered two months early and weighed 15 oz. when he was born. The mother had developed kidney problems during pregnancy and after the birth they continued to fail. She was on dialysis and was waiting for a transplant when she went to sleep a few nights ago and didn't wake up. The little baby had just been brought home about Christmas time after finally gaining enough weight. The husband/father is a young man of 32 that my daughter went to school with from kindergarten on. Funerals are always sad, mostly for selfish reasons, but this was especially sad because she was so young and had so much life left to live.

Also, in my last post I referred to some family issues that were eating up all my energy physically and emotionally. Thanks to all of you who have written me private emails showing care and concern. It's so nice to know that you're all out there for me. Unfortunately nothing has changed in that situation due to a total lack of communication. I'm not sure where I should go from here. If I decide to write about it, it will be in a private post and I'll let you know where if you're interested. And that's all I'm going to say about that at the moment.

On to another subject . . . .

I really had to laugh at Ole this morning. This is Going to the Gym Morning so of course the doggers were all excited about going for a ride in the truck. I worry about them when it's this cold, but Ole says he always parks in the sun, and the dogs give off so much heat that when he opens the door and gets in the truck after his workout you can't even see your breath. I was going to say that they are a cheap source of heat (chuckle) but when you consider all the fuel that is shoveled into them (dog food and milkbones) I'm not sure that propane or fuel oil isn't cheaper!! But anyway - Ole had so many things on his mind this morning. He had his lists and had gathered up all his paperwork because he had a number of stops to make after the gym. He was also really excited this morning because he has an appointment at the VA for new hearing aids this afternoon (hallalujah - I won't have to yell anymore). Also, Carol (of Bob and Carol) had invited him to stop for his bucket of cookies this morning. Carol LOVES to bake and makes the best sugar cookies you could imagine. And Ole, who is the infamous Cookie Monster (someday I'll tell you how he got THAT name) trades her homemade wine for sugar cookies. Carol LOVES his wine. So Ole had all these things on his mind, followed the dogs out of the house, loaded them in the truck and took off. About an hour later I got a phone call - "Is there a gym bag sitting on the chair by the back door?" Yup - there was Ole's gym bag on the chair! So he drove all the way home (12 miles), picked up his gym bag and drove the 12 miles back to the gym. I guess I'll have to put another thing on MY list of things on How to Take Care of Ole. If I don't see to it that he's got his fire pager and his cell phone hooked to his belt when he leaves the house he will forget them. Now I guess I'll have to hang his gym bag on his shoulder before he goes out of the house.

Oh, well, it's nice to know he needs me.

Where's Petunia?

2008-02-14T10:35:00.005-06:00

Ole and I don't usually exchange Valentines gifts - never have. It's just not something we started so many years ago. There's always a warm wish, a hug and a smooch or two, but the gift giving just never developed. And I'm just fine with that. I don't need to have a gift to know that he loves me because he's so thoughtful in so many other ways.

But every once in a while he surprises me - like he did this Valentine's Day. He presented me with a package this morning - not wrapped in paper of any kind, but placed in a plastic bag from a local drug store. As he handed it to me he told me it was going to make me cry, but that when he found it he couldn't leave it in the store. It had to come home with him because he knew I needed it.

He was right. I pulled it out of the sack and the tears started immediately. It was a book - and it was entitled "Where's Petunia?"

Those of you who have read me for awhile will remember that I had a kitty named Petunia that traveled with us in the RV. I raised her and her two brothers from kittenhood. She was appropriately named Petunia because she and her brothers were born in a tub of potting soil in a flower nursery that's a couple miles down the road from me. I lost her two years ago at the age of 9 in Sturgis because someone (Jane) was standing with the screen door of our RV open even after I reminded her to keep the door closed, and Petunia slipped through the door and out into the night never to be seen again. We stayed several days after the bike rally was over looking for her and hoping she would show up but she didn't.

Petunia in my kitchen window

It was horribly hot in Sturgis that year. Daytime temperatures were ranging in the 107 to 110 range. I'm sure she was terrified from all the noise of the bikes, and completely disoriented being in a strange place that was full of campers and tents. My greatest fear is that she hid in someone's open compartment on their motorhome, got shut in and suffocated from the heat. I will never know. And that, my friends, is the worst part of the whole thing - not knowing.

The book is a wonderful, beautiful memorial to my Petunia. It's written by a local woman who is also an artist and is deep into flower gardening so the pages are full of her water color illustrations of her gardens and her two cats, Art and Petunia. There is a web site listed on the back page so I intend to contact her and tell her what a beautiful, wonderful book she has written. Her Petunia even looks like my Petunia did.

I will cherish this book forever. Not only because of Petunia, but because it came from someone who loves me very much.

On another note I'm kind of bummed out today. I don't know how much I'll be writing or reading for awhile - I've got some family issues that have been laying in wait in the background that I need to deal with. Somehow I need to put some closure to these issues and I haven't been able to do that. I was hurt very deeply by this person and the wound has never healed. Some of these issues have finally come to a head and I have to make some decisions which may take all of my energy and concentration for a time.

I love you all and please have a Happy Valentine's Day.

Catch a Pickled Herring

2008-02-13T09:09:00.005-06:00

Well, Folks, it's looking like Cupid is going to have a tough time traveling in our neck of the woods tomorrow. We've got a winter storm forecast for tonight and tomorrow and it's supposed to drop 4 - 8 inches of snow with wind. Could be a nasty one from what the weatherman is saying. So poor Cupid could get frostbite just wearing that diaper.

And "tusen taak" (ScandihOOvian for a thousand thanks) to Golfwidow for the guest entry that she provided me. She even did research on lutefisk before she posted her entry. She may not be Norwegian/Swedish but at least now she's educated!!

Another delicacy that I haven't written about is Pickled Herring - ScandihOOvian Soul Food. If you haven't ever eaten it you've missed dying and going to heaven. It comes in three flavors - pickled herring in wine sauce, pickled herring in cream sauce, and just plain pickled herring.

Remember I've written about all the fishing that my father did, especially ice fishing in the winter. He would bring all the Northerns home and they would become pickled fish. They were pretty good, but not as good as true pickled herring. Herring are small fish that swim in huge schools off the east coast of Canada and off the coast of Norway.

To make pickled herring (fish) you cut them into small pieces, layer them in a bucket with onions, lots of pickling spices, sugar and vinegar. They are truly pickled in about two weeks, but lots of ScandihOOvians are so anxious they eat them after two or three hours!! Pickled herring isn't nearly as disgusting as lutefisk with all that lye!!

Speaking of lutefisk, I was going through my mother's old Swedish recipe books the other day and I managed to find this classic recipe for making lutefisk:

Start with 1 codfish and 1 slightly used dragon ship.

Carefully remove one strake from the dragon ship.

Filet the cod and salt it. Place the cod on the strake.

Fill a pot with a solution of water and lye.

Place the strake and the cod in the pot overnight.

Drain the cod and the strake.

Throw away the cod and eat the strake.

Now, talking about pickling - the ScandihOOvians have been known to pickle their innards too. They use such things as Aquavit and Glogg. Aquavit is a beverage distilled either from potatoes or grain and has various things added for flavor such as caraway or anise. So you see the Russians weren't the first ones to put potatoes to another use other than eating.

Now Glogg - that's another story. Remember that the ScandihOOvian countries are dark in the winter. When we lived in Iceland the sun would come up around 11:30 a.m. and be gone again before 2:00 p.m. Those poor people had to have something to keep them from going stir crazy so they brought out the party animal in themselves and consumed things like glogg.

Here's another recipe from one of my mother's old Swedish cookbooks - this time for Glogg:

8 ounces water
1 cup raisins
3 cinnamon sticks
5 whole cloves
12 cardamom seeds
2 dry orange peels
Boil ingredients for 10 minutes in saucepan, then add:
1 gallon port wine
One 750-ml. bottle brandy
16 ounces rum
1/2 cup sugar
Bring to boil and let simmer 1 minute, then turn off burner and ignite. Allow the mixture to burn for about 15 seconds. Serve hot.

Now that would certainly light up the night, huh? Oh, Uff da and Feeda!!

Remember - Uff da is when you step OVER it - Feeda is when you step IN it!!

Well, with all of that I'm going to sign off now and leave you with the creme de' la creme of all Swedenland - the Swedish Chef:

Yorn desh born,

der ritt de gitt der gue,

Orn desh, dee born desh,

de umnbork! bork! bork!

Phlegmifying Good Fish

2008-02-09T09:30:00.000-06:00

Guest post by Golf Widow of the Ministry of Silly Walks:

Hello. I am guest posting for Lena today. Accordingly, I selected lutefisk as my topic.

The more I found out, the more I found myself saying, "She said I could write about anything I wanted. Why did I choose this? Why? Why? For the love of all that's good and decent, WHY???"

Probably because I have always envisioned lutefisk as looking something like this:

But I was wrong.

It looks, according to Wikipedia, like this:

See, I don't think that looks bad. It looks a little like cod. I'm suspicious of the smushy stuff at the bottom of the plate, which Wikipedia claims is mashed peas (and I claim, again, "WHY????").

But the lutefisk itself? It looks okay.

My problem is that its reputation precedes itself.

You see, I listen to "A Prairie Home Companion".

Garrison Keillor had me at "Nero, my dog, has fleas, Nero, my dog ..."

Because of Garrison Keillor, I found out about the Ketchup Advisory Board, including the fact that, according to them, I spell "ketchup" wrong - the Board-endorsed spelling is "catsup."

And Garrison Keillor does not like the lutefisk. No sir.

He says, "Eating a little [lutefisk is] like vomiting a little, just as bad as a lot."

He says, "Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people. It is reminiscent of the afterbirth of a dog or the world’s largest chunk of phlegm."

Oh, dear heavens. That nice piece of codlike fish in the picture? Is it that deceptive? Holy carp. Or mackerel. Or, I do not know what. Holy fish.

I thought it might be in my best interest to check in with another source. I was tempted to turn to Anthony Bourdain for guidance. However, although I remain madly and passionately in crush with Tony, he is a smoker, and I have noticed that my personal taste buds became more refined, more sensitive, after I quit. Which is not to malign my darling Tony, only to say that I think it's probably easier to eat a cobra heart if you can't fully taste it.

Rather, I opted for Jeffrey Steingarten, whose opinion I hold in high regard. Not only is he not one to sugarcoat the truth, but he is courageous. He, like I, will try anything at least once, and he and I have similar likes and dislikes, foodwise.

He is extremely curmudgeonly, but I like Jeffrey Steingarten, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Here is what he told an interviewer in 1999 about lutefisk:

"Lutefisk is the Norwegians' attempt at conquering the world. When they discovered that Viking raids didn't give world supremacy, they invented a meal so terrifying, so cruel, that they could scare people to become one's subordinates."

That does not sound promising. Nor does the fact that Jeffrey Steingarten, the author of a book called "The Man Who Ate Everything," also said, "I gladly eat worms and insects, but I draw the line on lutefisk."

Now, considering I draw the line at worms and am terrified of insects, I do not think I am cut out for lutefisk. Whatsoever.

I think I'll go to the deli and see if they have any SMOKED whitefish. Chef Bourdain might be right after all - smoking gets a bad rap for its effect on humans, but it cures seafood.

Someone needs to tell that to the Scandinavians before they phlegmify all the good fish.

Clobbering Ole

2008-02-06T11:18:00.000-06:00

I think I’m going to clobber Ole upside the head with his coffee mug for scaring the gebeesus out of me last night.

I was sleeping very soundly and at exactly 3:25 a.m. Ole sat straight up in bed and yelled “BOO,” then flopped back down in bed and immediately continued snoring. Needless to say that sent an adrenaline rush through my system that wouldn’t allow me to start snoring again at all!! So there I lay, rubbing the belly of Senior Citizen Simon, who never gets excited about anything, and listening to him purr just as loud as Ole was snoring.

When I finally did fall asleep again about the time the sun came up I had all these crazy mixed up dreams. Ole and I were visiting his mother when all his relatives from the back woods of Kentucky showed up. There were tons of them and they took over the entire house. Ole left because he couldn’t stand all the backwoods folks and their corncob pipes, but he left ME there to deal with them. They kept telling me that I smelled and that I should go take a shower but I could never get into a bathroom because all these people were all over occupying all the bathrooms. And I was SO MAD at Ole for leaving me there.

Now can anyone out there decipher THAT dream? I sure hope it’s not a prediction of things to come cause I sure don’t want to deal with his backwoods relatives from Kentucky. Actually I don’t think he even has any relatives in Kentucky. But there must be something important about it because I can remember it – even this far into the day.

Yup – I think I have to clobber him with his coffee mug when he gets home.

On another note – I know I’ve been shy on entries here – not doing my part to keep you folks entertained and all that. But I think I’ve hit a dearth (neener neener) of things to talk/write about. Either that or my brain has become pickled with bleach and Pinesol.

All that cleaning and putting back together of my living room and dining room after all the ceiling work infected me with a bug so I’ve been working on the entire house. Might as well get my spring cleaning done in the winter and be ahead of myself in the spring for once. But it’s taking me forever because I’m going through every closet and drawer and making more space everywhere. I think I’m going to have to use Ole’s truck to haul everything to the Salvation Army when I’m done.

That is if I can keep Ole out of the piles I’m piling up. I gave up having rummage sales years ago. I’d get everything arranged on tables out in the garage the night before and Ole would come home from work and go through everything. He’d take 50% of it back in the house because he just knew he might find a need for it in the future. Then years down the road when he thought he could make use of the item he couldn’t find it anyway so he’d go out and buy a new one!! Now doesn’t that just make a lot of sense to you?

Uff da – he’s such a pack rat. We’ve lived in this house since 1975 – and at this point because of his pack rattedness I would hate to have to move out. It would take at least a dozen big semi-type moving vans.

Yup – I’m going to clobber him upside the head with his coffee mug when he gets home!!

The Soap Opera, the second chapter

2008-02-04T10:21:00.000-06:00

I think I mentioned previously that we were having a gathering for the Super Bowl game. We didn’t have a BIG gathering (12), but the folks who were there were lots of fun. And of course there was more food than you care to think about plus Ole grilled burgers and brauts outside. I think everyone went home quite well fed. I used my Norwegian enabling personality trying to convince folks to eat more, but I still had lots of leftovers. I think we’ll be eating chili for a week!!

I didn’t watch much of the game as I spent most of my time gabbing with the other gals. I’m not a football fan anyway so it really didn’t matter. The only ones in attendance from “The Circle” were Bob and Carol. Dick and Jane had another commitment, and Ted and Alice aren’t football fans plus had family issues they had to deal with. I’m reasonably sure even if Dick and Jane hadn’t had other commitments they wouldn’t have come judging by the way Jane’s been acting around me. But then why does that surprise me? I’m currently in her Invisible Group. She pretends I’m not there and looks right through me. But that’s okay – she can play her childish games. I’ve tossed her the ball several times since our little too-doo over the fire department so the ball’s in her court now. If she doesn’t want to throw it back it’s her problem. And I tossed that ball out strictly for Dick’s sake – because I was/am afraid that she’s going to put so much pressure on him not to associate with us anymore. When Dick and I had our little conversation he assured me that wouldn’t happen – but we’ll have to see. Dick always visits with us after church on Sundays and yesterday he looked several times over at the table we were sitting at but that was as far as it went. I will feel very badly if we lose his friendship.

There was karaoke at the Watering Hole last Friday night. It’s amazing how much fun our group can have when Jane’s caustic personality isn’t hanging over everyone. Dick and Jane were apparently home babysitting their granddaughter as their daughter (Jane II) and son-in-law (Mac) came in with some friends later in the evening. Jane II made no connection with any of us whatsoever – not even so much as hello. But Mac always comes over and says hello and visits a bit. Mac isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I must give him credit for being very personable. So Ole invited Mac and Jane II out to our Super Bowl party on Sunday.

I truly didn’t expect either one of them to show up, but late in the evening, shortly after almost everyone else had left Mac came driving up alone. We invited him in for a burger and some chili and he happily snarfed them up. In addition to that he proceeded to spill his guts to both Ole and me. As I said previously, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and has made some bad decisions in the past and I’m sure will make more in the future. I think he’s a young man who grew up without any guidance within a very dysfunctional family. So of course Dick and Jane don’t like him. Jane has always been extremely vocal about that fact, and Dick is becoming more so as time goes on. The kids have been married about a year and a half now, but shortly after they were married Jane spouted the proclamation that she was going to do everything she could to break them up. She wanted/wants her daughter and granddaughter living at home with her so that she can make sure that the little one is getting “proper care.”

Well, judging from what Mac told us last night I think Jane is well on her way to success. Jane is very open about the fact that she doesn’t like Mac – right to his face. He told me last night – and this is a verbatim quote – “My mother-in-law thinks I’m a slug. She doesn’t like me and she doesn’t want me around her or around Jane II and Baby.” He refuses to stay at Dick and Jane’s for the weekends when Jane II comes home. He stays in town with his own mother.

Ole and I really got an information overload last night. Mac was here for almost four hours. It was like he needed someone to talk to and we happened to be in front of him. I truly felt sorry for him. He said the last time he and Jane had a conversation/argument he couldn’t stay to finish it because he had to get to work. I have no idea HOW he left the house, whether it was in anger or whatever, slamming doors, I don’t know. But he said that Jane called him TWO DAYS later to finish the conversation and prefaced it by screaming into the phone “How dare you walk out on me when we’re having a conversation like that.” And he said that wasn’t the first time something like that had happened.

He also told us that Jane II is getting more like Jane all the time. After she gets off the phone with her mother she starts yelling and screaming at him on subjects that seem to come out of the blue. Gee, I wonder where she’s getting her ammunition.

He would like to move his little family away from here – far away to help cut the apron strings but Jane II refuses to live anywhere but close to her mother. Anybody see where this is going?

And the conversation went on – until Mac was “empty.” Seemed like he needed to clean out his insides. Ole and I just sat there and listened. Believe me there was lots I would have liked to say, but I’m not going to stoop to Jane’s level. Besides I truly think that anything I would have had to tell him he probably already knew.
Tonight is half-price burger night at the Watering Hole – I wonder if Jane will even show up or has she lost her guts? So the soap opera goes on.

Bitchology

2008-01-30T17:47:00.000-06:00

I got this from Jane today. Do you think she's trying to make a point? Otherwise it's quite a coincidence!!

BITCHOLOGY
When I stand up for myself and my beliefs, they call me a bitch. When I stand up for those I love, they call me a bitch.When I speak my mind, think my own thoughts or do things my own way, they call me a bitch. Being a bitch means I won't compromise what's in my heart. It means I live my life MY way. It means I won't allow anyone to step on me. When I refuse to tolerate injustice and speak a gainst it, I am defined as a bitch. The same thing happens when I take time for myself instead of being everyone's maid, or when I act a little selfish. It means I have the courage and strength to allow myself to be who I truly am and won't become anyone else's idea of what they think I "should" be.
I am outspoken, opinionated and determined. I want what I want and there is nothing wrong with that! So try to stomp on me, try to douse my inner flame, try to squash every ounce of beauty I hold within me. You won't succeed. And if that makes me a bitch , so be it. I embrace the title and am proud to bear it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I know SHE didn't write it, she's not that talented.

We're headed for the Watering Hole in a few minutes. I hope Dick and Jane are there because I've decided on a new direction in my life - tormenting Jane. Or do you think that would be stooping to her level? I won't do any tormenting until I hear from all of you in Blogosphere!!

Love you all,

Lena

The Cliff Hanger

2008-01-27T07:43:00.000-06:00

As I told you previously, Dick stopped by my house on Friday morning. He was here about an hour and we covered a lot of ground.

I prefaced the entire conversation stating that I wasn’t doing this expecting him to choose sides. After all, Jane is his wife. I just wanted him to know where I’m coming from in this whole Jane issue, and why.

I told him this entire issue with Jane goes back a ways and has been building for quite some time. I have reached a point where I can barely tolerate being in her presence. It started about a year and a half ago when Sven left Lovely Daughter down in Sturgis. Just left her – no money, no transportation, nothing. He had been acting like a total ass to her for many weeks prior to that event, and was worse at Sturgis than he had been at home. Ole and I had finally had enough of his childish actions and discussed what to do about it several times. We decided that because Sven seemed to be more able to confide in me I would speak to him. So one evening I took him aside and asked him if he really loved my daughter and then he exploded, packed up and left. And that’s all I said to him. Sorry – I digress – that’s not the story here.

Anyway – I explained to Dick how Jane had stuck her nose into that event very deeply about my relationship with Lovely Daughter. She made many negative accusations and read me the riot act more than once about those issues. She was busy talking to Lovely Daughter throughout that entire week, and told me that she had several conversations with Sven also under the guise of “trying to fix things.” In reality it’s my opinion that all she did was stir things up worse than what they were in the first place. Lovely Daughter didn’t speak to me for several months after that, but she spoke to Jane frequently from what Jane told me during that time. The ironic thing is that I wasn’t doing ANY of the things that Jane accused me of during that time but I was too mortified by everything to stand up for myself. NOW, guess who is the one that’s very deeply involved in HER daughter’s life, and has actually made the statement more than once that she’s trying to break them up. She wants her daughter and granddaughter living at home with her so she can “see that her granddaughter is well taken care of.” Her statement – not mine.

Anyway, as I said before, Lovely Daughter wouldn’t speak to me for several months following that episode. But when she finally did that’s when Jane started bashing her on a regular basis, trying to ruin her reputation. Looking back I feel that Jane thought she had lost control of Lovely Daughter so she was going to bad mouth her. I told Dick that I didn’t know what Lovely Daughter had ever done to Jane to cause her to do that. It’s always been my thought that you were supposed to support your friends and stand up for them. Apparently Jane doesn’t feel that way.

I told Dick that I felt Jane was a very caustic person and sighted examples where I had witnessed her make Alice come to tears in a public place by making nasty statements about her right to her face. Alice is very overweight and has a very poor sense of self-esteem and Jane plays strongly on these issues at times depending on her frame of mind. Again, aren’t you supposed to be supportive of your friends instead of running them down?

I said that I felt Jane opens her mouth and let’s whatever she’s thinking at that time come falling out with a total lack of concern for anybody else’s feelings. I informed him that Jane had once told me that she didn’t CARE if nobody liked her because of what she said. Dick did come to her defense at that time stating that one of the things he’s always liked about her was that she said what was on her mind – you never had to second guess her because you always knew where she was coming from. In response I told him that I felt you could make your point but could be diplomatic about whatever the issue is/was. You don’t have to run roughshod over everyone with total disregard for his or her feelings, and he agreed.

I stated that I felt Jane has some very deep-seated control issues, and when someone stands up to her and tells HER like it is she doesn’t know how to handle it and responds by overreacting to the situation. She needs to be the center of attention at all times and will go to almost any length to do so. For instance, when I developed all the arm issues I had a year ago. Believe me, I didn’t WANT them, and I didn’t speak about them unless someone asked me about them. According to Jane I was psychosomatic, just trying to draw attention to myself and expressed her opinion to many people. After Sven left Lovely Daughter, the doc treated her for depression. When Jane found that out she told everyone and followed that by stating that anyone who took those kinds of meds was just trying to draw attention to themselves and make people feel sorry for them. I happen to know that Dick, at one point, was treated for depression, and that currently their son is taking anti-depressants. Can you imagine trying to live with someone like Jane with that kind of philosophy? Jane is probably the reason they were/are treated for depression.

Then I went into her unethical behavior. For instance giving copies of the questions that were going to be asked of the prospective new city councilman to Alice so that she would be well prepared and could make a better impression than the other person that was running. How she gossips about the confidences that people tell her – for instance all the affairs that a mutual friend has had, and how Jane named names of the women who participated. How she talks viciously about all her supposed friends behind their backs. I spoke about her childish behavior the night she came to one of our bonfires, sat in a chair and wouldn’t talk to anybody because she was pouting about something. I talked about how she exploded at Bob in front of everybody the night of the city council meeting because she thought he had been having a burger with us over at the Watering Hole. What business is it of hers anyway if we choose to have supper together? And the list goes on.

I also told Dick that people are scared of her because she is so caustic. I told him that I’ve had several people tell me not to get on her bad side because she will ruin you. I made him understand that she’s got quite a reputation in the community and it’s not a good one. People that Dick works with have also expressed negative opinions about her.

Anyway – you get the idea. Dick interjected a comment on occasion, stating that he understood where I was coming from. I told him that I felt like I had been backed into a corner and at this point I had to come out swinging in self-defense. She can attack me personally all she wants and I can take care of myself. But DON’T start in on my family because I won’t tolerate that. If you remember, the last issue she started to rag on was Ole and the fire department. She could have made that point in a much nicer manner, but that didn’t happen.

Dick didn’t have a lot to say, but he did tell me that I’m not the first person to come to him with these issues. A number of people have approached him about Jane’s behavior in the past. He said that at times he thinks she’s going psycho, losing her mind, and then again she’ll go for periods of time when she behaves just fine. He said he’s lived with this all his life and has tried to handle it; successfully at times and at times it backfires big time on him. He did elaborate on some things that I won’t go into here, but you get the idea. He knows what the situation is, but he didn’t realize how badly I had been her target to this point. He indicated that his door was always open for conversation and not to let this issue build up to my exploding point anymore. And then he gave me a big hug. By this time I was in tears, and Dick shed a few too. He’s such a kind, kind person.

I reinforced the fact that I wasn’t stating these things to make him choose sides. Also, I didn’t expect him to change anything – that would be an impossibility. I only wanted him to know where I was coming from so if there are explosions in the future, he’ll know why.

I said I would do my best to keep myself under control when I’m around her, but I made no guarantees. The only thing I WON’T do is stoop to her level and have it out with her in a public place. It will be done in a more private setting. Yes, I can go to Dick every time I have an issue – but isn’t that like dealing with an alcoholic? People rarely confront THEM about their behavior – they always go to the spouse and complain as though the spouse can do something about it. Everyone tip toes around the alcoholic and his behavior because they’re scare of his reaction. So he just keeps doing the same thing regardless of how many folks he hurts. Do you see a parallel here?

I expressed to Dick that my biggest concern was that if I stand up to Jane when she’s in one of her snits she will not allow Dick to associate with us anymore. That would break my heart. He assured me that that won’t happen. Apparently she’s tried to break up his friendship with several other people previously, so he’s aware of that situation. Then he gave me another hug before he left and assured me that the three of us would be friends regardless of Jane.

I felt so much better after all that.

Oh yeah – I didn’t tell this to Dick because I felt he’d been hit hard enough between the eyes that day – but her table manners are atrocious. Ole pointed out to me last Monday night after burgers at the Watering Hole – she takes a BIG bite of burger and then proceeds to talk with food in her mouth. It really gets your gag reflex going. We went out to dinner with Bob and Carol last Friday night (wouldn’t Jane have a hissy if she found that out), and Bob pointed out the eating/chewing issue too. He said that’s why he always makes an effort to sit as far away from Jane as possible. Not only doesn’t he want to listen to her voice, he doesn’t want to listen to her EAT!!

There you have it folks – was it the cliffhanger you anticipated?

I HAVE THE MOST WONDERFUL NEWS!!

2008-01-25T10:21:00.000-06:00

Beau is MUCH MUCH better. And thanks to all of you who have sent emails wondering what the latest status is. It's so heart warming to know that there are so many folks concerned about something that is so important to our family.

When Dr. Green came back into the exam room after taking and reading Beau's X-rays she had a big smile on her face, so we knew things were better. There is just a shadow of fluid still in his body cavity, but the majority of it is gone.

She wants him back for another x-ray in two weeks, and we are to continue with the antibiotics. I'm sure there will be follow-up x-rays for a long period of time just to keep tabs on things. She said he may possibly be on antibiotics for three to six months to get this completely cleared up and assured that it doesn't come back again.

Also, he's picked up a pound and a half so you can't see his ribs and backbone anymore. Daisy on the other hand, weighed in almost 10 lbs. heavier than she did last time she was in. She's been excessively benefiting from all the treats that Beau gets to get him to gain weight. You know you can't feed one without treating the other equally!!

Beau actually wasn't supposed to have his x-rays until this morning (Friday), but Daisy took a turn for the worse with her "bodily functions" so we ended up bringing her in yesterday. She was back to vomiting up everything she eats and having bloody diarrhea.

After a thorough exam and blood work Dr. Green's conclusion was that Daisy has been under a lot of stress during Beau's illness and has possibly developed a case of colitis, just like people. So she's on small amounts of prescription food several times a day along with antibiotics. We're just a pill-pushing household, here. There's so many pill bottles sitting around we've had to designate specific areas for each consumer so things don't get mixed up.

Doesn't that just make your day? It certainly makes mine.

Now I have to tweak your curiosity a bit.

Remember me standing up to Jane and talking back to her? Then the fact that the next time I saw her at the Watering Hole she wouldn't look at me or talk to me? Did I tell you that I wrote Dick an email and asked if I could talk to him privately at some point and he responded with yes?

Well - this morning after Ole had left for the gym there was a knock on the door. It was Dick. I knew what he was there for, invited him in and gave him a cup of coffee. I'll have to write about the rest next time after I've gathered my thoughts better.

It's raining texture on my head

2008-01-24T07:14:00.000-06:00

Business first: Does anyone know how to contact Golf Widow? She was kind enough to send me a message about my post The Latest on Beau. She discovered someone named Daniel had copied my post word for word (see it here: http://daniel67smith.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E94FCB7E142C2D25!146.entry) and I wanted to write and thank her. But after searching through her web site I can find no link that allows me to contact her directly.

Not that there's anything really important in my entry, but sheesh, the guy must not have a life of his own at all if he's got to copy entries like that in order to have something to post. I read through a number of his entries and they ALL look like they've been copied from somewhere else. What a nut case!!

THE CEILINGS ARE DONE!! I think I wrote previously that three rooms in my house (all on the south side) had ceiling damage from a hail and rainstorm that took place last September. The hail damaged the roof and it leaked and I had sheet rock hanging down in my dining room, cracks in the sheet rock in both the computer room and the guest room. The drywall guy started on Monday and finished yesterday - hallelujah! I thought it would take weeks - fortunately it didn't because I think it would have driven me nuts - or at least nuttier than I already am. It's not fun having half your house encased in plastic and all shoved into the corners of the rooms. AACCKK!

And I expected the repairs to cause an awful mess - you know - sheet rock dust flying all over. He had to scrape the texture off the ceilings and that flew all over, but the rest wasn't bad. He had a special vacuum that he used as he scraped and sanded that sucked everything up - it had three filters so it was pretty clean. I SO VIVIDLY remember a year ago when Ole did some repair work on the walls in one of our bathrooms - it involved taping and mudding and sanding and even though he used a vacuum at the same time - the vacuum didn't have all those filters and I had that damn sheet rock dust ALL OVER the house. What a mess.

The texturing needs to dry for a couple of days and then Ole can paint on Saturday. You notice I said OLE, not Lena!! I do a good job of supervising and playing "gopher." You know - go fer this and go fer that. We have a vaulted ceiling in the living room/dining room - 15 feet on the high side - and I don't do real well climbing ladders. The first step up and I could swear I'm on the top of Mount Everest right there in my own living room!

You wanna hear more on Jane? If you're tired of that subject, just skip this paragraph. Remember our big toodo where I finally stood up to her and told her that her flapping lips had caught up with her? Well, not exactly in those words, I was a bit nicer - but not much. Anyway, last Monday night - half price burger night at the Watering Hole - she came prancing in at 7:30. She had spent the last two hours imbibing at a bar in town on her way home from work. So she was a bit on the wasted side. Prior to her arrival everyone had been yakking and laughing and just having a generally good time. She waltzed in and the whole atmosphere changed. It was like there was a pink elephant in the middle of the room and no one wanted to address the issue. She happened to sit across the table from me - and never during the entire time I was there did she - could she look at me let alone say a word to me. She foamed at the mouth to everyone else so it was quite obvious she was either punishing me (yeah, right) or too embarrassed to look at me. Oh well, her loss, not mine!!

Nothing else of interest today - at least not yet as it's still pretty early. My life over the last few days has consisted of watching ceiling texture fall to the carpet. Not everyone can say THAT!!

Walking On Water

2008-01-21T14:39:00.000-06:00

First of all I need to tell you that Daisy is getting better. We speculated at one point that her tummy troubles were caused by stress from Beau being so sick. Her world just wasn't right, and after a time the wrongness of it all caused her to react. Well, some of that might be true, but I think we found the cause of Daisy's issues this morning. After having been up with her three times during the night, Lars let her out once more early this morning. When she came back up on the deck she was carrying a frozen half-chewed up bunny rabbit. And knowing that Daisy doesn't chew her food very well, it's very possible that fur and bunny bones have done a number on her insides. She's probably been working on this frozen bunny for several days and has been paying the price all along. Her "bodily functions" are almost back to normal this morning, so we've avoided another vet bill for the time being.

When Lovely Daughter dropped Daisy off this morning for Doggy Day Care, she told us she gagged and nearly lost her breakfast when she saw the half eaten bunny on the deck. She begged her Dad to please go dispose of the rabbit before she got home tonight. And of course Ole did just that - not wanting Daisy to be munching and crunching on it anymore.

So - have I grossed you out enough for one day? Sorry.

Anyway, what I was really planning on writing about to day was fun stuff. My father was BIG into fishing, summer and winter, but especially in the winter. At least one day every weekend he would spend out on the ice in his fish house with his spear and bring home some big walleyes and northerns for my mom to clean and fry up for supper. It didn't matter to him how cold the temperatures were, he and a buddy or two would gather up their gear and head out. If there wasn't a lot of snow on the lake they were able to drive right out to the fish house, otherwise the trip entailed loading their gear on a sled and walking from the edge of the lake out.

When you drive by a lake in the winter here in the Nort'land, it's not uncommon to see entire villages of ice houses situated in groups out on the ice. When you fish from inside of a fish house it's called dark house fishing. Otherwise you fish out in the open, called angling, by chopping a hole in the ice and dropping a line down. It's a lot colder doing it that way - the protection of a little house is mighty fine when the wind is blowing across the lake picking up the snow crystals and sanding your face or freezing your eyeballs.

Some of the fish houses are really elaborate. Not only do they have heat, but some of the fancier ones have bunk beds built in, TVs, arm chairs beside the hole in the ice; they are built for spending the weekend or several days at a time. My father's wasn't that fancy. He went to the local piano company and bought a used piano crate, put a substantial floor in it with a 3x3 hole in the floor and a door in the side. It served the purpose. Then he installed a little propane heater, put in a couple of small stools and a shelf to hold his lunch box and coffee thermos. He was in his glory.

I remember times that I would go fishing with him. He'd open up the door and the inside walls would be covered with frost from being vacant for the week. He would hurry and light the propane heater, and then start chopping a hole in the ice. Remember, this hole was 3 x 3 and sometimes the ice was several feet thick. Needless to say, by the time he got the hole chopped he had shed his big heavy parka and was down to his flannel shirt and striped bib overalls. (Striped bib overalls were my Father's trademark.)

It was really erie sitting in this dark little house. He had painted the walls inside black to make it even darker appearing so that it was easier to see down into the lake. It was almost like going to the movies but you had to look down to see the screen instead of up and in front of you. On good days you could see the bottom very clearly, remnants of junk laying on the bottom of the lake, smidgens of the plant life that had gone dormant for the winter and on certain days a lot of fish activity.

My Dad had a number of handmade wooden decoys that he used. I remember one in particular - it was red and white - didn't look like a real fish at all, but the real fish sure seemed to like it and were lured in out of curiosity. He could make that decoy swim in circles or straight lines and then let it stand still several feet off the bottom of the lake and sure enough. some curious fish would come swimming in to check out the situation. Then, swish, into the water my Dad's spear would go and sometimes he'd pull it up with a fish on the end and sometimes not. But he always enjoyed himself either way.

My Dad died in the summer of 1975, and of course in months following my Mother gradually got rid of his things. I often wonder what she did with all his wooden fishing decoys as I would have loved to have had that red and white one that I remember so vividly.

If the weather was reasonably warm he would let me bring a girlfriend along, and we would spend the day ice skating. That is of course if there wasn't a lot of snow on the ice. Sometimes we'd bring a shovel and clear off a big rink and skate until our legs and ankles wouldn't work anymore. We had to be careful to stay far enough away from the fish houses though, because the noise the skates made on the ice would scare the fish.

Then there was always the problem of where to go to the bathroom if you were a girl and out in the boondocks all day. After all, men have it made you know - the whole world is THEIR toilet. I remember one day my girlfriend and I - her name was Mary Ann - had to go so bad I think our eyeballs had turned yellow. We had our skates on, skated to the edge of the lake, which was about a half mile, climbed up on shore and looked for a big bush. But of course the bush didn't have any leaves on it and you could see right through it. By that time we didn't care - we just backed our bare butts up to the bush, frost bite or not, and watered that bush in real good. When I checked the next spring - it was the one that was growing REAL good (snicker).

You also had to watch out for cracks in the ice when you were skating. Sometimes there were pressure ridges that created cracks that were big enough to swallow small animals, and could break your leg if you got caught in one. The scariest thing though was when the ice would crack. You could hear the crack start at the edge of the lake and ripple all the way across, sometimes coming right under where you were standing.

When I started dating Ole he was driving a 1949 Ford, dark blue - hot car. Of course this was a rear wheel drive car. I'm sure a lot of you haven't a clue as to how stuck you can get in snow or even just on ice in a rear-wheel drive car. One of Ole's things was to drive his car out on the lake if there was no snow on it, pedal to the metal, then slam on the brakes and cramp the steering wheel. Boy, could you do doughnuts then. Of course there was always the danger of coming across some thin ice - then you better hope you either get across it really fast or be prepared to jump and get wet. Fortunately that never happened to Ole. He was kind of a wild one in his younger days, that Ole.

Ole is also a certified ice diver (brrrr). I thought he was absolutely nuts when he told me he was going for this certification and refused to go watch him do it. Lovely daughter went along and watched, and she was old enough to take pictures, so the event is documented. He used to go at least once a year - but in his later years has come to his senses and decided it's no longer a necessity. He didn't even wear a dry suit when he was doing this. He wore a very thick wet suit and poured warm water down the neck. He said the only place he got cold was his face. One time when he was ice diving he brought up a pair of jaws from a horse that still had teeth in them. He wanted to put them on the shelf that held his collection of underwater "things" but I refused to let him. The story was that back in the 1920s they used to haul timber on a bid sledge pulled by horses from one side of the lake to the other. I guess they tried to haul too late in the spring and the sledge and horses went down. I don't know what happened to the driver. Poor horses.

Well, this has gotten really long again - sorry - I guess I must be making up for lost time for that week I didn't post anything.

Anyway, here's a little montage I put together. Some of the pictures are mine and some are not. Enjoy.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Pictures of the Wicked Witch of the Nort'land

2008-01-19T23:03:00.000-06:00

Several people have written wondering what Jane looks like. So here's a glimpse. See if my "word pictures" have done her justice!!

Kitchen Logic has been fortunate/unfortunate enough to see Jane in real time, although I didn't introduce them the night Kitchen Logic was visiting Ole and me at the Watering Hole. But KL is pretty astute at judging a book by its cover and formed some pretty accurate opinions.

So anyway - Heeeere's Jane - in all her glory doing what she does best - flapping her lips - opening her mouth and inserting something in it!!

At least it's something going in and not a bunch of bullshit coming out!!

Dick says, "MY WIFE IS PSYCHO! HELP!"

2008-01-19T12:00:00.000-06:00

FYI: It’s 10:21 a.m. and the current temperature is 20.2 degrees BELOW zero!! That will put a little frost on your moustache!!

I know, I know – I need 20 lashes with a chunk of lutefisk – I haven’t updated for a whole week. I don’t know where the time goes. I’ve been a bit preoccupied with some things, dealing with a few stresses, etc. So get yourself a cup of coffee and get comfy because this is going to be a long entry. I’ve got lots to tell you.

First of all, thanks to all of you who have emailed me wondering about Beau. I think all of your good thoughts and doggie prayers have helped because he’s a lot more on the bright eyed and bushy tailed side now than he was a week ago. He’s back to having that old sparkle in his eye and back to teasing Daisy by stealing her babies (stuffed toys). He’s not out of the woods yet by a long shot but I truly feel we’re making some progress. He goes for another x-ray next Friday (23rd) to see if the fluid around his lungs has lessened, and then we’ll go from there. Once again, keep your fingers crossed and keep him in your Doggie Prayers.

Pets are so sensitive to what’s going on in their surrounding world. Daisy knows that Beau hasn’t been well. She’s been like a mother hen to him, constantly herding him and somehow seeing to his benefit. He’s been getting a lot of special attention of course, and although we all try to keep things equal and give her lots of extra attention too, I’m sure she senses what’s going on. Daisy is kind of a neurotic dog, and things stress her out very easily. She’s also always had a very sensitive tummy, but still has the tendency to gobble up her food and not always chew it the way she should. I think part of that comes from her unhappy puppyhood where she had to fight for every morsel that she got. Anyway, (this is going to be very descriptive so if YOU have a weak stomach you maybe should skip this paragraph, okay?) yesterday when Lars brought the doggers over for Doggy Day Care Daisy barely got 6 feet inside the door, stopped and proceeded to lose last night’s supper in my back hallway. None of it was digested; it was all like it had gone down initially. So I got that cleaned up and Ole and Lars and the doggers took off headed for the gym. The doggers have always waited patiently guarding their truck while Ole’s working out, and then they go to McDonald’s for cheeseburgers for lunch. He buys each dogger their own cheeseburger. Only this time when Lars and Ole got back to the truck after their workout Daisy had had a very runny accident inside the truck, all over the seat. This is just not like her, and she was absolutely mortified, but of course no one scolded her because she couldn’t help it. They did their errands in town and on the way home let the doggers out to run on one of the country roads where she had several more “sittings” which were bloody. This is not good. So Ole called me and I called the vet who advised me to take her off of all food for 24 hours to rest her insides, and if she was still having trouble to bring her into the emergency animal clinic.

So here we have one dog – Beau – who’s supposed to eat as much as we can get him to eat, and another – Daisy – who loves to eat but isn’t supposed to for 24 hours. So we decided to separate them for the night. Daisy went home with Lovely Daughter and Lars and we kept Beau here. We always keep food available for him, and I heard him get up several times during the night and go crunch some down. When I talked to Lovely Daughter this morning Daisy had made it through the night with no accidents – whew! I don’t know if the checkbook can handle another sick dog. So today we’ll start feeding her small amounts of softened food per advice from the vet, and see what happens.

Okay – so there’s an update on Dogger Land at the Ole and Lena Estate.

Now to Jane – I’m sure you’re all hanging on the edge of your chair for this one (snicker).

I’ll wait while you all go refill your coffee cups. * * * * * * * * * * * Okay. Glad you’re back.

Last Monday night (half price burger night at the Watering Hole) Jane was busy flapping her lips again with total disregard for anyone else. Ole and Bob and Dick had already left the Watering Hole to go to their fire department training meeting which started at 7:00 p.m. Jane didn’t come in until 7:30 p.m. because she’s supposed to keep the city office open until that time. So by the time she arrived there were only three or four of us sitting around the table. Ted and Alice had arrived late also, just after the guys had gone to their fire meeting. So Ted asked where the guys were and I answered, “To their fire training session.” And Jane pipes up with, “I don’t know how Ole EVER got accepted onto the fire department in the first place. He’s such a security risk to the rest of the crew with his hearing loss.” I asked her what she meant by that and she proceeded to expound on the fact that Ole would never hear the beeper that goes off when their buddy runs out of air in the tank that they carry into a fire. So Ole’s buddy would be on his own and wouldn’t get any help because Ole wouldn’t know the air tank was empty. So whoever is Ole’s buddy better know up front that they’re really on their own because Ole is such a safety hazard and shouldn’t be on the fire department at all.

I repeated a synopsis of this conversation to Ole when he got home that night and asked him about the beeper/horn that sounds on the air tanks. He said it’s SO LOUD you can hear it a quarter of a mile away, and no, he doesn’t have any trouble hearing it. He thought about it awhile and then said maybe he would consider resigning because he wouldn’t want to be a safety risk and cause someone else any harm. He really was kind of incensed by her comments, and so was I. And considering it was Dick who recruited Ole in the first place. Dick is assistant fire chief. Because most of the guys on the team are still working there’s a shortage of guys available during the day. They really needed some that would be around during the daytime hours to go on any runs that might come up. Ole fit that bill – he’s here during the day, very responsible about attending training sessions, etc. But apparently Jane doesn’t think that’s enough.

Jane has pushed me so far with her constant interference, annoying comments and opinions, manipulations and just being a general all around MEAN busybody that I just have no tolerance anymore for anything she says. So the more I thought about her little speech on Monday night, the angrier I got. Ole really enjoys the guys on the fire department, enjoys the training sessions, and he said it left him with a good feeling to do something for the community. So I really didn’t want to see him resign. But like he said, if something WOULD happen, you can imagine that Jane would be all over it, enlarging and enhancing the issue and doing whatever she could to make herself look in the know.

Are you still with me? I told you this was going to be long - - - -

So the next morning I emailed Jane and told her that because of her remarks the night before Ole was considering turning in his pager and resigning from the fire department. Her response was pretty much “Oh, well, that’s his decision. All I said was I didn’t understand how he got accepted in the first place.” I wrote back to her and told her that in addition to that she had expounded on the safety issues and that Ole shouldn’t be on the fire department.

She sent me one more quip back stating that she wasn’t going to do THIS over email. So I got really snotty (paybacks are a bitch, aren’t they?) and told her that she didn’t have to do it over email, that I’d gladly discuss it in person, because possibly her ability to blurt anything out without any regard for other people's feelings has caught up with her. That apparently infuriated her because I never heard another word.

That was Tuesday morning. Moving on to Tuesday night:

Tuesday night was the city council meeting where the new councilman was going to be sworn in. Prior to the council meeting Bob grabbed a burger at the Watering Hole because Carol was working. Bob called me later to fill me in on the happenings of the evening. When he walked into the City Office Jane was there, along with Dick, Mayor Charlie, Randy, the fire chief, the city treasurer, several of the councilmen and a number of people who were going to be attending the meeting. Bob is not only a city councilman, but is also a member of the board of directors for the fire department. Bob said Jane jumped all over him right in front of all these people about being over at the Watering Hole having supper with Ole and I and gossiping about her and calling her a bitch!! She accused Bob of taking sides against her, etc., etc., etc., You can just hear it, can’t you? Well, guess what – Bob hadn’t a CLUE what she was talking about, nor were Ole and I at the Watering Hole, nor had he listened to any gossip about her nor had anyone called her a bitch!! Bob said she just went on and on in front of all these people about how terrible I was – probably because I had actually stood up to her on something and called a spade a spade. She’s not used to anyone standing up to her because she’s run roughshod over everyone for so long that everyone is scared of her. I guess she ragged on Bob’s case until Mayor Charlie finally interrupted her to get the meeting going. Bob said that Dick just sat there like a whipped puppy. He suspected that Jane and Dick had words about the issue before they came down to the village meeting.

Bob still couldn’t figure out what it was all about so called me when he got home from the meeting and I filled him in on our email correspondence.

Moving on to Wednesday night:

Dick stopped over at Bob and Carol’s house to visit a bit, Carol suspected it was to apologize to Bob for Jane’s behavior the night before. I had just a short conversation with Carol last night and she told me that Dick was just beside himself when he stopped over. He said his wife has gone absolutely psycho and he doesn’t know what to do about it. She’s just off the wall and the only thing he feels he can do is stay out of her way and not get into any of her messes. What an awful life for that nice man.

Drama anyone? Jane can’t tolerate peace and quiet. If there’s not something going on she’ll get right in the middle and conjure up something.
And the beat goes on – and on – and on - - -

Jane Didn't Get Her Way!! Bwahahaha!

2008-01-12T10:49:00.001-06:00

I haven't written anything fun for so long I'm beginning to wonder if I even have a sense of humor anymore. Being sick with the flu since after Christmas, all the issues with Beau, and of course Jane, have kind of sapped my energy. But I think I'm beginning to come out of the black hole I've been in. And I don't feel like I'm going to lose a lung anymore when I cough.

Let's see - to update everyone on the Jane front:

The interviews were held on Wednesday night and much to Jane's surprise both Vice Mayor Bob and Mayor Charlie refused to use the questions that Jane had put together and given to Alice so she could be well prepared. This apparently threw Alice for quite a loop and she didn't do very well on the interview. Bob told me she took forever to answer questions and talked in circles, so didn't impress either one of them. When Alice's interview was done she came over to the Watering Hole where everyone was waiting and made the statement that the interview was much more difficult than a job interview. I wasn't there at the time, but Lovely Daughter told me that Alice was really crabby and very nervous after her "ordeal."

Then came Bill's turn to interview. Bob told me later than Bill was cool as a cucumber, gave each question a bit of thought and answered them with great answers. In other words he was very successful.

Even though Jane was not supposed to be in on the interview process, she was to be there strictly on a secretarial basis taking notes, she managed to get a couple of her own questions in to both candidates. The first question she asked was whether or not either of the candidates would discuss City business in a public place? Bwahahaha! Bob and I had a good laugh over that one!! Jane is SOOOO guilty of that - she discusses EVERYTHING about the City in the Watering Hole - who's late on their water bills, how much in arrears they are, who's not up to date on their taxes, who's had their city services turned off because they haven't paid, etc. Maybe Jane should take a look in the mirror!! Isn't it funny that people who are guilty of such things just can't see themselves?

I've said this before: Jane has made some horrible accusations of me over the past year and a half - things that I am totally not guilty of - but SHE is!! Multiple times over!!

So anyway, looks like Bill will be the new man on the city council, but SHHHHH - don't tell anyone. It's to be announced at the council meeting next Tuesday. One more time that Jane didn't get her way. Both Vice Mayor Bob and Mayor Charlie changed her venue and she lost her footing.

One more thing about Jane: She's already planning Dick's 50th birthday party which will be the end of June. This is all good and well - because it's not a surprise birthday party. She's invited a huge group over to the Taj Magarage in their backyard for a big shindig. Bring your own meat to put on the grille, a dish to pass and whatever you want to drink. No problem. The surprise part of the whole thing, and her gift to Dick is that she's planning a Bachelor Party for him. At 9 o'clock a fun bus will pull up in front of their house and all the guys will pile on and be taken to a strip club for the remainder of the evening. One that has a pretty rotten reputation in the area because there's always a lot of problems there. But here's the kicker - at least in my opinion for whatever that's worth. Hiring the fun bus costs a chunk of money - a BIG chunk because you hire the bus for the entire evening. She wants all who attend the birthday party to contribute to the cost for the fun bus. A comment I heard from a friend almost immediately was, "I thought this was HER gift to Dick. Why should I help pay for her present to him?" I think this person has a good point. She stated in the invitation that the bachelor party was her gift to her hubby - it's almost like being charged to go to his birthday party.

Maybe I'm all wet, I don't know. Maybe I find her so disgusting that nothing she does sits well with me.

The latest on Beau: Dr. Green, our main vet has consulted with Dr. Dill, and they have decided to put off another ultra sound for the time being. Beau seems to be responding to the antibiotic, although extremely slowly, so they're going to wait two weeks and then evaluate again at that time. His breathing seems to be a bit better, and a couple of nights ago he rolled onto his back and wanted his tummy scratched. Dr. Green says that's a very good sign because normally, under these conditions, he would be too uncomfortable laying on his back. He's also started sleeping on his side instead of staying up right on his stomach. Another good sign. He doesn't do it all the time, but it's becoming more frequent. So we keep hoping for the best. That's all we can do right now.

The Comings & Goings of Ole's Buddies

2008-01-09T11:10:00.000-06:00

Go read the update waaaay down on the bottom ~

Here's coming:

And here's going:

Isn't that a hoot? The white truck is well known around town and the countryside for this very appearance. Nobody knows Ole, but they sure know the white truck with the two shepards riding around in it. And you can imagine that there's really not much room for another "person" to share that front seat.

When Ole bought this truck he said the two doggers made the selection. He was looking at one with carpeted floor and upholstered seats and lots of bells and whistles. Black upholstered seats. Not a good mix with two hair factories that leave all their blond hair around. So he decided on this one with vinyl seats and rubber floor mats. Not real cushy, but simple to clean. He just opens both doors and uses the air hose to blow all the hair out. Ta-da! It's clean!! Except for all the nose prints on the windows of course.

I have nothing to report (yet) on the Jane situation, although I know that she was working down at City Hall last night. About 7:15 my phone rang and the caller ID identified the call as coming from City Hall. I'm guessing it was her calling to bitch me out. I didn't answer. I want to deal with her face to face because it's too easy for her to hide behind a telephone. I've got my ammunition ready, now I'm just waiting. The big interview process is tonight, so I'm supposing that Vice Mayor Bob and Mayor Charlie were together last night down at City Hall preparing and this whole issue was addressed. I will call Bob when he gets home from work this afternoon and follow up on the situation.

I do have good news to report on Beau. Ole took him to the vet's this morning for his x-rays and they showed that there is less fluid around his lungs. Not significantly less, but less none the same. So they kept him and are going to drain more fluid this afternoon and inject a saline solution and drain that. Hopefully the antibiotics will clear this up and it won't come back. That's the kicker - not coming back. If the foreign material is still there - it will come back. If the foreign material has dissolved, then we'll be lucky and he should remain clear.

So at least we've taken two steps forward and none backwards this time.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NOT such good news on Beau:

The vet called about noon. She was not able to take anymore fluid out of Beau's chest cavity because of the way his lungs sit in his chest. Because the fluid seems to be compartmentalized she would have to make several "pokes" and was afraid she would puncture his lung and deflate it. She was going to call another surgeon and see if he thought he could get the fluid out while Beau is having an ultrasound, which makes a clearer picture than an X-ray. It's getting hard to keep hopes up.

JANE!!!!!

2008-01-07T23:22:00.000-06:00

I have a confession to make:

I came home from the Watering Hole about two hours ago (it’s half price burger night) and I was so upset that I proceeded to imbibe – not in one drink, not in two, but in three drinks, (and there may be more to come) and it hasn’t settled my attitude yet. Fortunately I don’t drink very often, but when I do it’s not a mixed drink, it’s on the rocks – so after three I’m slightly – no - more than slightly in the bag and still angry, which is not a good combination.

Guess who is at the root of my anger tonight – JANE!! I haven’t written much about Jane lately, but tonight her ethics and morals really torqued me, so please bear with my ramblings. Maybe I have TOO MANY ethics and morals, as they caused me to leave a very good paying job about eight years ago. But this time the lack of ethics and morals on Jane’s part is really causing me to blow my stack because she’s treating a very good friend of mine very unfairly.

A bit of background:

Ole and I are good friends with another couple that I haven’t written about previously. We’ll call them Bill and Lila. This is the second marriage for both of them and I think they’ve finally found true love in each other. They are the sweetest people, so devoted to each other and so sincerely nice – to everyone. They take a very active interest in church and in the community and are a big plus in both respects.

Now I’m not sure why this issue is bothering me so much because Ole and I don’t live within the village limits, but Bill and Lila do, and have a vested interest in village politics. There’s some real interesting dirt going on in the village politics that needs to be straightened out. A seat on the village council has become available due to a council member moving away. So to fulfill the vacancy and the remainder of the term this will be an appointed position until the next election. Now Bill has decided that he would like to become involved in village politics and submitted his letter of intent to the City Clerk, who just happens to be JANE.

Jane doesn’t like Bill for personal reasons, so went about coercing Alice, her best friend, into submitting a letter of intent for the council position. Now I need to clarify this; Jane is Alice’s best friend according to Alice, but, according to Jane, Alice is not Jane’s best friend. Did you get that? Alice worships the ground Jane walks on and tries to emulate her (total jackass), but the only reason Jane has anything to do with Alice is because she can control her down to the inth degree. Did you get all that?

Now – the interview of the prospective council members will be on Wednesday night, and there are specific questions that the interviewees will be asked. Tonight, as we were sitting around the table eating our burgers it came out that Jane had given Alice a copy of the questions to be asked so that Alice can be completely prepared with elaborate and proper answers. This insures that Alice will become the new appointed council member and Jane can control Alice’s votes and get her to vote the way Jane wants.

Was Bill given a copy of the questions? Not on your life.

Is this an unfair advantage? You bet.

Ole and I currently don’t live within the village limits, but I grew up here and have what I consider a vested interest in the happenings. I would very much like to see Bill get the seat on the council because he could/would get these issues straightened out. Alice will not, because Jane doesn’t want them straightened out.

So maybe I have truly overstepped my bounds tonight but here’s what I did: When I got home I called Bill and informed him that he would be answering a series of questions at his interview, and that Alice already had a copy and would be fully prepared. Just wanted to give him a heads up.

THEN I called Bob (of Bob and Carol friends), as Bob is Vice Mayor and informed him that Jane had given Alice a copy of the questions. He was quite surprised and very interested. He said he would take it up with the Mayor as he felt this was quite unfair and unethical. He said he would see to it that something was done about it – whether it’s in reference to Jane and her unethical behavior or something else that remains to be seen.

I’m at a point now where I don’t care whether Jane finds out I’m the one that spilled the beans or not. I’m ready and waiting for her with both barrels. Just let me get a shot off. I have good aim and will hit her right between the eyes.

Stayed tuned for further episodes of the soap opera.

(Hope all these ramblings made sense – if not – it’s the fault of the alcohol. I’ve about had all I can take of Jane anymore.)

More on Beau

2008-01-05T09:24:00.000-06:00

I think the "kreeping krud" is finally loosening it's grip on me. It better after spending nearly a week in bed and a heavy dose of antibiotics. The cough is beginning to loosen and I can finally breathe through my nose. Breathing is always a good thing, don't you think?

So between feeling lousy and worrying about Beau, I haven't been keeping up on my diary reading or commenting. Sorry. And of course that puts me way behind on everything else around here.

The Christmas tree is coming down today - I can't wait to get it out of here. And then we get to start piling everything in my living room/dining room into one end of the room. The guy that's going to fix our ceilings was out on Friday to give us an estimate and is ready to start. Don't know if I ever told you, but we had roof damage from a hail storm last September that caused water damage on the ceilings in three of our rooms. I just dread the mess that fixing all this is going to make, and all the extra cleanup work because you know that sheetrock dust and taping and texturing doesn't stay in one room even if you block off the room you're working in. It sifts throughout the house - yeck. Oh well, I guess when it's all over I'll do a REALLY good spring house cleaning.

So I've got that ugly situation to look forward to.

And then there's Beau. We got all the lab results back late Thursday afternoon. Not good. The vet gave me the name of the bacteria that he's infected with. It's about a yard long so I can't remember it let alone spell it. But it doesn't matter anyway. The most ideal situation would be to take him down to the University of Minnesota, have a CT scan done and then exploratory surgery to see if they can find the source of the infection. Price tag for all that starts at $5,000 and goes up from there with appropriate follow-up treatment. Needless to say there have been a lot of tears around our households since that dollar amount came forth. At this point we're going with he other option - he's on heavy doses of penicillin three times a day right now. Next Tuesday he goes in for another x-ray to determine whether the fluid level in his chest has changed (improved or increased) since the last x-ray and fluid withdrawal. They will try to withdraw more fluid - as much as possible. From there we'll keep him on the penicillin and just watch him. He may have to have several more x-rays and fluid withdrawals, but I guess we'll just take it a step at a time. That's all we can do at this point.

Lovely Daughter and Ole had a consultation with the vet on Friday morning. She told them that this method of treatment has a low success rate, but there have been cases where it has worked. She said it's fortunate that we caught this in its early stages so he has a better chance of recovery.

Well, guys, that's about it from this end. Sorry for all the gloom and doom. Keep your fingers crossed for Beau. Losing him would leave a huge hole in our lives.

The latest on Beau

2008-01-02T10:30:00.000-06:00

I've received several emails wondering what the latest news on Beau is. Thank you all for your concern, and I'm sorry I haven't updated sooner, but I've come down with a nasty case of the "kreeping krud" which has left me with little or no energy to do anything other than sleep. Wonderful way to start the New Year, huh?

Anyway - Beau spent Monday at one of the vet's offices in town - the only vet who does ultrasound on animals in a 200 mile radius. Dr. Dill determined that Beau has approximately 1.5 liters of fluid built up on the outside of his lungs. He was able to drain off about a half a liter so that gave Beau some relief as far as his breathing goes. He said the fluid seems to be compartmentalized, so another attempt will have to be made to drain more unless the antibiotics are able to clear it up. Beau is on two very powerful antibiotics three times a day. Dr. Dill didn't like the look of the fluid that was drained so he sent it to the lab and we should have the results by Thursday or Friday. He has ALMOST ruled out cancer, but is still suspicious of some shadows that he saw so will pursue that through lab work also. He has a tendency to go with the inhaled plant material theory. He said it also could have come from something that pierced his chest, i.e. a pine needle, that migrated and this is the result of his body trying to get rid of the object, whatever it may be. Also, if he had inhaled the material, because the lung tissue is so fragile and thin, it would/could have pierced the lung tissue and again, migrated to the body cavity outside the lungs. If they can find it, it will have to be removed, or it may not even be there anymore. He's still kind of at a loss for anything definite. Beau had a BIG shot in the butt on Monday before he left, along with all the antibiotics, and goes back for another BIG shot in the butt today.

He seems to be much perkier and is having less trouble breathing, so apparently the antibiotics and penicillin shots are doing something beneficial. But he still sleeps a lot and doesn't' have his usual stamina so we have a ways to go yet. I won't even go into how "hot" Ole's checkbook has gotten; he says it doesn't matter - Beau is more than worth every penny. The vet and all the techs that have worked with him tell us that he has such a wonderful temperament and is so well mannered. Guess that goes to show what lots of love and appropriate discipline does.

Last Friday night we decided to have a group of friends in to play cards, games, etc. There were six couples here, but we ended up just sitting around and yakking. Everyone brought leftover Christmas goodies (good way to get rid of some of it) so we all did our share of munching too. I think everyone was kind of in a Christmas let-down mode, so it was a quiet and early evening.

The next morning I woke up with a full-blown head cold that has since migrated to my chest and doesn't seem to be letting up. I feel like I'm about ready to lose a lung every time I cough, and my sinuses are so blocked I can hardly breathe. I really hate swallowing any kind of pill, but I finally gave in and dug around in my medicine cabinet to see if I had any "good drugs" available, and sure enough, I had a z-pac available. I managed to swallow that huge honker down so we'll see what the next 24 hours brings. At least today I don't feel like I have to sleep all day, I can be somewhat conscious.

So this kind of put a cramp in our New Year's Eve plans - not that we're big partiers on New Year's Eve anyway. Lovely Daughter and Lars had to work their full shift that day so it was late when they got off work. We decided to meet them at 7 o'clock at a great Mongolian Stir Fry place we have in town. So we stuffed ourselves and then stopped at Dick & Jane's annual bash. Ole and I left about 10:30, just as it was starting to get pretty rowdy. We thought that was a good time to go home. Lovely Daughter and Lars stayed later - Dick had purchased a new Wii, so that was the hot item of the night.

I spent most of New Year's Day doing nothing except trying to make some headway into recovery - from the cold, you silly guys - NOT from a hangover. I didn't have one single drink on New Year's Eve - I didn't think it would mix well with all the cold medicine I had been taking. So there!! Finally good judgement in my old age (snicker). Anyway, Lovely Daughter and Lars came over and Lars cooked us a wonderful chicken supper. Then it was downstairs to watch the No. 4 Harry Potter movie - The Goblet of Fire. I've watched them all a couple of times before and every time I watch them I get something more out of them.

I hope you guys all had a great New Years - with all kinds of good things to look forward to in the coming months. Again, I'm sorry I haven't been on the ball much around here. I've been reading blogs a bit, but not commenting too much, just trying to use my energy where it's most useful.

Thanks again for everyone's concern about Beau. I'll leave you with this parting thought - something Ole saw on a sign in the vet's office:

"Try to be the person that your dog thinks you are." Isn't that great?