Update

Good morning from rainy St. Paul!

I’m writing this in Notepad while I wait for my WordPress update to install. It’s hard to believe that I haven’t posted since the death of Queen Elizabeth..

Since then, an NFL season has come and gone, another wine trip with my friends is in the books, my gallbladder removed, caught COVID, brought home a new puppy, and tried to get my act together.

The gallbladder removal and COVID came after Thanksgiving, one right after the other. In fact, I picked up COVID during my second emergency room visit. My husband and I sat for ten hours with people who were in various forms of respiratory illness. It was peak COVID-flu-RSV season around Thanksgiving.

I was waiting ten hours in the ER because the hospital was completely full, and they were waiting for a bed to become available. On my first visit, the hospital and emergency room were full, too. I was sent home after two days because they couldn’t fit me into the surgery schedule.

The morning after being sent home, I was in such misery that I was back in the ER. They decided that I was to be kept until they could get me into surgery.

The four incisions to remove my gallbladder became an issue when I started coughing hard, and then started feeling like crap. The positive COVID test sent me for loop, and to a call to my surgical nurse who got me the info I needed to get Paxlovid and how to deal with the coughing.

When my husband started feeling ill, I pulled out my notes from the nurse got him on the Paxlovid bandwagon, too. And thus all December plans went out the window.

Rachel picked up COVID from me when she visited after my surgery, and before I knew I was contagious. She spent part of her Christmas vacation in quarrantine at college, because she had no one to bring her home. I finally tested negative and picked her up a week late, but at least she was home with her beloved dogs to help her recover.

My husband had the infamous PaxLovid COVID rebound and wasn’t negative until Christmas Eve. Christmas was quiet and low key. Not many presents because who could shop? But it was good to be together.

Next time I’ll write about the puppy, who is as adorable and mischievous as they get.

Thoughts on Queen Elizabeth

Even at my ripe old age, there only ever was Queen Elizabeth. A Queen was not a side-piece to a King, a Queen could be in charge. Here are random bullets of my thoughts and memories on Queen Elizabeth

  • In school when boys would taunt me that girls can’t do anything, I’d let them know that Queens are girls, and they can rule large parts of the world. Then they’d switch to girls can’t play sports to taunt me. That was before I learned about the Babe Didrikson and Billie Jean King.
  • The Queen was a working mom. She had children AND a big job. She traveled, she got dressed up, hung out with her family, lived in castles, and she had dogs. (So many dogs!! I was jealous that her children had all the dogs.) She had lots of help with all of those things, as is befitting a queen. But I knew she was a career woman and mom, and looked like a nice mom, too.
  • Queen Elizabeth was the Head of my church, when I converted from Catholicism at age 29. It felt good to know a strong woman was in charge, not a long line of single old men.
  • The older Elizabeth got, the more she started to resemble my mom’s side of the family. That’s when I learned, she came from a long line of Germans, like my mom’s family. When the Queen laughed, she reminded me of my much loved grandmother, who had the same type of laugh. My mother, at almost 92, also bears a resemblance to the Queen. The German is strong in all of them.
  • During the COVID crisis, the Queen gave a speech to the Commonwealth actually game me much hope. Unlike the minimizing of the crisis by my country’s orange leader, the Queen went on record: These are hard times, but better days were ahead. I believed her, as she spoke from experience. I listened to that speech several times in the week after it was given, because I needed those words of encouragement.
  • The daughters of a friend thought Queen Elizabeth was immortal because she lived so long. I think I did too.

As an admirer from the U.S., I am grateful for her example of grace and leadership.

Victory Monday!!

The NFL season has begun. The Vikings were at home for Week 1, vs. our arch rivals the Green Bay Packers.

As you can tell from the title of this post, the Vikings won. Decisively, 23-7.

I’m a season ticket holder — up in the nose bleed section by an end zone. A lot of the visiting teams fans wind up in this area, so it’s always an interest blend of reactions. Vikings-Packer games are no exception. The “Go Pack! Go!” chant started before the coin toss to start the game. As the game progressed and the Vikings had a decent lead, when the Packer chant would start, Vikings fans would start shouting “Go Back Home!”. It was pretty rowdy up in my corner of Football Land.

I am very stiff and sore this morning, too. Football watching in a stadium is an aerobic activity. Jumping up and down, waving your arms, singing. It takes its toll on the untrained body. Especially a body that can’t hydrate because she’s still wearing her N95 mask to games. I may have been the only one in the stadium wearing a mask, but I didn’t care. The smoke from the fireworks is enough to trigger an asthma attack not to mention that COVID is still a thing; my lungs were as well guarded as Kirk Cousins (the Vikings quarterback).

Housework will be put off for today (victory for me!), and I’ll spend the day looking through the pictures I took during the game, watching interviews, and reading. It’s a lovely day here in Minnesota in many ways, so I am going to savor it.

Rebuilding My Life – Part Two

Tomorrow, I’ll see the School Patrol lines walk by my house on the way to the elementary school at the end of the block. It is the first day of school, in the St. Paul school district, which waits until the first day after Labor Day to begin classes. The kids walking by my house will have new supplies, some new clothes and some anticipation about the year that is to start.

Because I was a participant in the school year cycle for so many years, I think of it as the beginning of the year. A fresh start. This is the beginning of my first full school year cycle of retirement. I’ve been on one long summer-spring-winter vacation since last December, trying to figure out what this new thing is.

As I may have mentioned before, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I got anything done at home while I was in the work grind. It’s a wonder the house is still standing, and that my yard isn’t completely overrun with weeds. In these last nine months, I’ve done a lot to declutter and shape up the inside of my house, and trying to make up for the neglect of my postage stamp yard. Things are better. By this time next year, I’ll have a good handle on everything (knock wood that I remain in good health — but that’s a topic for another day)

I’m feeling reflective as the last day of “Minnesota Summer” is here, summarizing my accomplishments, noting where I need improvement. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that I have moved back into my work mindset: endless to-do lists of things that must be done now. As one of my friends reminds me, I need to slow down.

I decided to rebuild my schedule. I had theme days when I first retired: appointment day, reading day, creative day, work day. That was OK for a while, but it only worked until May, when outdoor life takes over and everything is weather-dependent.

I’ve build a skeleton structure for each weekday around what I would like to do. If something else needs to be done during the structural part of my day, I’ll just go with the flow and start again later, or the next day.

For comparison’s sake, this is my original schedule in December 2021. I rewrote that again in February 2022, and it was even more fragmented. It was like I was trying to re-create the crazy of my work life. I hated the crazy, the chaotic. But after so many years of it, it just was second nature.

I think it’s going to take more time for me to change those old habits and mind set.

I really do want to slow down, savor my time, and yet get the things done that I want to get done: reading, volunteer tech work, scrapbooking and other craftiness, self-care.

Blue-Green to Teal

In 2019, if you asked me what my favorite colors are, I would have told you they were cobalt blue, Vikings/KSU Purple, and kelly green. They are all strong colors in the blue or neutral spectrum. What I didn’t know is that there was actually a fourth color, a color from my box of 2nd grade Crayolas that alternately fascinated or frustrated me. A color that snuck up on me when we last changed the color on our deck.

Crayola called it blue-green. The rest of the world knows it as teal.

As a kid, I would stare obsessively at this crayon in my box. I enjoyed the richness of the blue-green color of the crayon. But when I applied it to paper, it just looked gross. An empty promise of the actual crayon color. And I’d put it away. When I graduated to the 64 count box of Crayolas, I had the same problem with cornflower blue. So much promise in the color of the crayon, but using it was a disappointment.

I had a very short-lived fascination with turquoise as a middle schooler. Turquoise is not teal, as you will learn to understand by reading this article on 10 Differences. My favorite color at that time was any blue, and actually blue colors have stayed as a favorite since then. I was 30 before I realized what I really loved was cobalt blue, and the way I looked in it.

But back to teal. Sort of.

Our deck has been stained brown, at my husband’s insistence. That was a fiasco, because there is nothing hotter than a brown deck. After three years of getting hot flashes just stepping onto the deck, I demanded a color change, and that I got to pick it. We had light green, black, and oak deck furniture, red stripe and light green stripe cushions, and a green striped awning. That was the palette I had to work with.

As I stood at Menards, looking over a bunch of deck color samples (and avoiding my husband’s suggestions), I saw a light green-blue color, that I thought would work. We brought home the brochure, and I confirmed that was the color I wanted for the deck. My husband was skeptical. He finally gave in when I told him 1) if it didn’t work, we could pick another color the next year, and 2) it was a hell of a better choice than the brown I let him use the last three years. Back to the store we went for 2 gallons of what was called Marina Green, a very light green with a blue tint to it.

Marina Green looked great! And it matched the light green chairs and light green striped cushions exactly. It made the black, red, and oak pieces pop, too. The Skeptic was astounded by the transformation.

Now, really, back to teal.

I had started wearing shirt colors that were described as “pine green” or “deep green”, trying to expand my wardrobe palette from my mostly blue and black. I had purple, too, during football season. I finally figured out I could wear greens as long as there was no yellow in it at all. I played more with “pine green” shades and tones, and discovered this bluish green color combination was actually called teal, an even mix of blue and green. I became a big fan, and experimented with clothing that had that same base blue-green, but with more black or more white in it. I looked fabulous in teal.

I eventually realized that the deck was a light teal. And the blue-green crayon that I loved to look at, but not color with was teal (at least until you applied it to paper, then it took on a grey tone. Yuck.)

I had another color to add to my favorites. They are now, in order: cobalt blue, teal, Viking/KSU Purple, and kelly green. A whole cool (literally and figuratively) spectrum to play with.

Rebuilding My Life

Ever since I was a grade schooler, there were certain things I always wanted to do or be:

  • a writer
  • a teacher
  • a radio personality
  • a reader

I made movies in my head about me doing all these things and having a fabulous life. A life not completely without stress or drama, but a life that felt generally warm, cozy, and happy.

I can say that I have checked off the items in my list, however the movie of my life wouldn’t be described as warm, cozy, and happy. Especially upon reaching adulthood, there were ever increasing levels of stress, pushing against boundaries and getting kicked for it, with tiny victories. It would be described as basic survival, with a small handful of glimmers of hope.

I kept moving through it all, hoping some day to find the warm, cozy, and happy life I longed for.

40+ years later, I retired. And life got a whole lot better.

It took me about two months to get over the feeling like I was supposed to be working myself to death, like I had been. An older and much wiser friend told me to slow down and stop trying to kill myself. It was harsh, but needed words. I did manage to roll things back. After the spring planting season, I was finally in a place that felt comfortable.

I’ve now gotten back to doing the things I wanted to do, without squeezing it in between all the things I was required to do. I read a book for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, frequently more. I’ve done volunteer work at my church that uses my creative skills in writing and teaching. I’d like to do a podcast or video series at some point (no topic for now, just letting the idea simmer).

My life is not without stress. My former employer tried to pull me back as a contractor, and I decided it wasn’t worth the tax on my soul. I didn’t need the money or the stress. My mental health was more important.

My husband’s memory continues to deteriorate, and my adult kids still need me from time to time. But I have those extra 50 hours a week, to deal with things, and still take care of myself. I feel like I’ve rebuilt my life, and I have the space to actually live it now. It feels very good.

Home Maintenance

With my husband’s decline into dementia, I was not prepared for all the home maintenance balls he had dropped along the way.

A couple of weeks ago our power went off. Our typical response to an outage is to wait 30 minutes for the storm to pass, and then fire up the generator. The generator was my husband’s pride and joy, along with the snowblower. When I suggested starting the generator, he informed me that it hadn’t worked for over 2 years, and probably needed servicing. He is a procrastinator, but not usually with his favorite toys.

I read a couple articles about routine home maintenance items; some of the articles included checklists. From those articles, I created my own home maintenance checklist based on what I know about the house. I sorted it by month, so I wouldn’t freak out by the length of the list. I’ve also asked some of the single women homeowners I know what they do and when. I have it all in my OneNote notebook called “Home Maintenance”, where I can reference it, and add to it.

As I wrote yesterday, my allergies are a mess. I called the heating people, and ordered three furnace air filters to be delivered in 1-3 days. They showed up on my steps 4 hours later. Last night after supper, we installed the new filter. The old filter was the dirtiest thing I’ve ever seen and hadn’t been changed since last fall when we had the ducts cleaned. I made a note to change the filter every 6 months.

I also vacuumed out the window A/C upstairs. It was in better shape, but still needed some attention. I added a note in my list to clean the window A/C in August, and to clean it when it is installed in May. I was on a roll. And this morning, my throat is no longer sore and my lungs are clearer. A win for me and my allergies.

I still haven’t had the generator serviced (I’m a procrastinator too), but my to-do list today includes a call to the small machine shop to make an appointment. I will also make an appointment to get the snowblower tuned up. It’s two months before we could have snow. Might as well prepare now.

August Head Games

The month of August is hard on my respiratory system. This is the time of year where the pollen I am most allergic to, ragweed, is floating on the wind. The State Fair starts on the 25th and the pre-Fair horse shows are happening every weekend before, adding hay mold to the atmosphere. Bringing the occasional rose bunch into the house is more than my regular allergy meds can handle. With all of this, I become a swollen, headachy, snotty, wheezy, sore-throated mess.

In the days before COVID, I use to wonder if I had caught a head cold. I eventually figured out the difference: the duration of symptoms and their response to an extra helping of Allegra. If the worst symptoms lasted more than 9 days and was mitigated by another dose of Allegra, it was my allergies.

Now I play a new August game: Is is Allergies, a Cold, or COVID?

In 2020, I could rule out a cold pretty quickly as I was never in contact with anyone who had a cold. Because I was never around anyone outside my family and we all stayed home. But the transmission of COVID was still somewhat of a mystery, and there was still debate about if it was transmitted through contact or through the air. Maybe I had COVID, and got it because I had recently stopped washing and wiping down everything that came into the house from the outside. The thermometer was my friend. On bad days, I’d take my temp a couple times a day, and it always registered normal. Allergies it is.

In 2021, I could rule out COVID because I had been vaccinated. Back then, it was thought that the vaccines PREVENTED you from COVID, like say the smallpox vaccine. My close friends and family had been vaccinated, and we only gathered outside and socially distanced. No one had had a cold in over a year, so I felt safe to call my August hell an allergy attack.

This year, it’s all back on the table. We know the vaccine only mitigates the worst of COVID. People started getting colds again in January. I have been out and eating at restaurants for special occasions. I’ve been lazy. When I started to feel rough, I looked at the calendar and started to wonder what was going on.

I can almost rule out a cold (knock wood), because it should have been worse by now. I just ruled out COVID last night, after a Bachelorette party at the end of July where one participant didn’t understand the quarantine and masking rules was talking to me for an hour straight. She said she was following CDC guidelines. In a conversation later in the week, it turns out she wasn’t following them correctly. She phoned a nurse and got straightened out quickly.

I still feel like mild crap, so I am assuming it is allergies. I went to a wedding this weekend and masked for most of it, but there was a meal. I’ll test myself again in 6 days just to make sure. I’m very thankful to have the home testing kits and the skills to use them properly.

So for now, I will double-dose the Allegra, mask outside and with people, and stay attached to my inhaler. And keep knocking on wood.

Reading Reality

Something annoying and slightly disturbing has resurfaced in my reading. It started back in 8th grade when we had a class assignment to read “On the Beach”, the classic post-nuclear apocalyptic novel. It’s a great story, a little scary to read in a world that was still fighting the Cold War and other demons in 1973. As I read the book I felt like I was RIGHT THERE in Australia, trying to stay alive until the fallout killed everyone.

It was hard to shake the feeling of impending doom generated by the book. I felt it in my daily life, seeming almost disconnected from the real world. Numbly going to classes, or doing chores at home. That it was deep winter didn’t improve the atmosphere for me at all.

It took another assigned reading book, “The Martian Chronicles” to bring me out of the funk. Granted, “The Martian Chronicles” isn’t a book of laughter and cheer, but it was clearly science fiction. We were only three years after traipsing around the moon. Mars was literally a long way off. “On the Beach”, on the other hand, was a reminder the nuclear apocalypse could happen any time, maybe even RIGHT NOW.

After that, I was clearly reading science fiction, or anything Kurt Vonnegut’s mind could put to paper. I felt safe with those genres, and also with historical fiction. Because either the story lines weren’t going to happen, or had happened long ago and people had survived. (Looking at you, Kurt and your Dresden bomb shelter)

As an adult, I stuck with those genres plus non-fiction books. Or I didn’t read books at all. I read very little fiction or memoir of people who were still living their lives in real time.

Then this year, I decided to jump back into reading fiction.

There were a few “fluff” novels that were recommended to me that I read, and enjoyed. But I noticed my behavior would start to reflect what was going on with the characters. As someone who guards her mental health and tries to keep an even keel, it was mildly disturbing. A couple more fun “fluff” novels brought me back to reality. I figured it was just Mercury in retrograde or some such nonsense going on.

Then I started reading “Broken” by Jenny Lawson. It’s a good book. However it is full of episodes of mental illness and memory loss and obsession and the struggle to recover. ALL THE SHIT THAT IS GOING ON WITH MY FAMILY RIGHT NOW.

It’s almost too much for me. Actually, it is too much for me. I’m not in a good mental place right now. But having been here too many times, I know I can make it out the other side.

So, I will finish the book because it does have light bulb moments. And in the process, guard my mental health and behavior in the world. Spend more time with the dogs and outside. Because I am the anchor of this family, and without an anchor we go adrift. And I will swear off reading anything too real ever again.

Vacation

Two weeks ago, a bunch of us Moms packed some clothes, and way too much food and drink into a couple cars. We were heading for Tofte, Minnesota, to spend some quality time with each other and Lake Superior.

My car load made a stop at a new-to-us winery in Harris, MN to check it out. We had a pleasant wine tasting and lunch on the back deck while a pizza oven gave off delicious aromas nearby. North Folk Winery has earned a second visit.

It was a pleasant drive to Duluth, were we found out the Wisconsin contingent was just 10 minutes ahead of us. We made plans to meet at Super One in Two Harbors. Then the sky started amazing rounds of sun showers that followed us to Tofte. The skies were bright blue with clouds, the sun shining, and we were getting a downpour. It was both the most ridiculous thing, and the most awesome thing to experience.

Later in the early evening while we were having supper, there was a very long lasting rainbow on display over the Lake Superior. It would fade a bit, then come back strong. I think it was 30 minutes before it finally disappeared from sight.

This rainbow was so large, I needed 3 photographs to capture most of it.

We did see some sights the next day in Grand Marias. The lowlight of the day was an absolutely horrible wine tasting at a winery near Lutsen. We had been here three years before, and it was OK. But the wines and ciders we tasted (which between all of us, was the entire menu), were truly awful. We won’t be heading back there again.

We had a hangout day while waiting for the rest of the crew to drive up from The Cities. They made their own trip to Grand Marias and over by the Canadian border. When we all were together, there was a lot of eating, talking, drinking, and singing happening. It was so nice just to BE for a while.

Parts of vacation were no vacation for me — our internet and phone service had gone out in my part of the city three days before I left. I was trying to manage long-distance, getting some action out of CenturyLink while keeping the family calm-ish at home. That was not fun at all. I’d rant to my friends, pound on CenturyLink via texts and Twitter, and attempt to get some attention through their god-awful non-customer service phone tree. I did try to keep a lid on the ranting, and I usually had a drink slid in front of me by a friend to relax me. Coincidentally, our internet and phone service came back 15 minutes after I arrived home from the trip. Yes, I got a refund.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is an integral part of our trips to Lake Superior (https://youtu.be/PH0K6ojmGZA). We sing the song. We “look for the boat”. We insist it’s the ghosts of the sailors doing things when the lake is acting up. If you’re a Minnesotan of a certain age, like me, you actually remember the storm that took out the Edmund Fitzgerald. The storm cause havoc as it roared like a hurricane through the Twin Cities. It only got worse as it headed north for Lake Superior. Those poor sailors never had a chance.

The night before we left, there was a large thunderstorm complex coming through Thunder Bay, Ontario. We watched the evening light become an eerie purple, green, and yellow. Later, lightning flashed through the skies. When the storm finally came across the lake to us, there were torrential downpours for two hours.

The next morning, the lake was in an uproar, with choppy waters, and large breaking waves, somewhat shrouded in fog and lake mist. It was breath-taking. A crew of us walked down to the lake to take pictures before finishing our packing and heading home.