The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

We had a rough night with Bert. He woke up about 3 and didn't settle for a long time after that. Regis thinks it's my fault because I gave him water to drink when I got up with him once. That's your major denial, I believe. He's not in pain and he's still active and eating but he is getting closer to circling the drain. Bert, not Regis. We had a typical stormy spring day today. The first PE class played under sunny skies but an hour later when it was time for the second class to go out, the sky is rumbling like a bowling alley and there's big ass lightening. I like the thunder, more so since Bert has gone deaf. He used to have horrific apoplectic fits and practically tear the house apart when it stormed. One year we got a prescrition for Trazadone which the vet said would likely put him into a deep sleep. It barely slowed him down and we came home a couple times to a room that looked like it had been pillaged. So, HoH (hard of hearing) is better. It's a good...

I'm too tired to post much tonight. We went to Canby yesterday and spent the day with my sweet Mom. We cooked on the grill and then went to the Leo Kottke concert in Marshall...the tickets were a Christmas present. We loved leo, as usual, and the theater in Marshall is beautiful. We were up until midnight which is unusual for us, and awake early this morning. We sat on the deck and watched George chase squirrels and robins out of the yard, then left for home about 10:30. As soon as we got home, I changed into garden shoes and went out to work in the yard. I cleaned a truck load of leaves and dead plants out then Regis helped me load it into the truck and take it to the compost pile. I'm about half done. It looks like most things survived...maybe the cheddar pinks are going to be spindly and ugly so they might get crossed off the list. I don't like plants you have to baby. I have to take the Round-Up to the artemisia because it's spreading everywhere. At least it won...

Dr. Urban called us back about Bert. Yes, it could be canine cognitive dysfunction, it could be seizure activity that looks different than it has in the past, it could be sensitivity to storms, it could be the diuretic that he takes twice a day. Hard to tell. She didn't recommend any expensive medical diagnostics this time but said we should watch his appetite and activity level which have been fine. This is the dog with the 24 inch vertical jump and the voracious appetite. The last two nights, Bert has slept most of the night and we've come home to dry puppy pads. Maybe he heard me on the phone... We went out to Whiskey River for a burger and a beer tonight. We ran into Jim and Deb Hughes, old neightbors of mine. We had a good time talking smart and playing the cardboard cocaine (pull-tabs). No big wins but a lot of laughs. That's all to report tonight.

Today was eventful. First of all, I don't want to start a rumor (I almost said an untrue rumor but I was stopped by the Department of Redundancy Department ) but I heard today that Scott Anderson of the below mentioned entry might be coming to the Treaty Site History Center. Not too weird since I read the book Canoeing with the Cree for the book club. Still a little ironic. I just checked the web for Scott Anderson and found this: he died sometime after his trip and the writing of the book. Check this out here . The big event was our fire. Last night we cooked on the grill. Regis dumped the tray full of ash into our garbage dumpster, not realizing that one of the hot coals escaped into the tray. After dinner, he rolled it down to the street for garbage pick-up day and when I went down to put one last bag in this morning, I opened the lid and WHOOSH...smoke and stench of burning garbage. There were no flames but obviously things had been smoldering...the bags were melty and yellowe...

Today was almost as bad as a Friday. I had a blistering meeting at the high school that made me come home and chop vegetables for the grill like a mad woman. We had shrimp, red potatoes, red onions, mushrooms, cabbage, and pineapple skewers (with a brown sugar and butter glaze). It was very good and helped to dispel the stress. Oh my God, Johnny Depp 's on Inside the Actor's Studio. I have to go. Later: We've missed the last two book club meetings because (hate to admit) that we didn't get the books read. The last one was a bear...something about frogs. The next one is called Canoeing with the Cree and it's very good. Eric Sevareid, when he was 17 years old, and a friend who's 20, take a canoe from Fort Snelling, down the Minnesota River to the Red River and up to Hudson Bay. Amazing that they could do it in the days before bug repellant, Gore- Tex, and nylon. It's a very good book about a great adventure. Another book to recommend would be Distant Fires b...

Happy Birthday, Betty! We celebrated Betty's birthday with a cook-out at Kathy and Harvey's on Saturday. The menu was all appetizers, most cooked on the Weber grill: rye bread with cream cheese spreads, crab cakes with mango salsa, chicken wings that had been marinated in some delicious cumin, cayenne, celery seed stuff, asparagus with balsamic vinegar, scallops wrapped in bacon, portabella mushrooms, cheddarwurst, bruschetta with pesto sauce and provolone, pineapple and banana kabobs. Kathy served a chocolate drizzled cream pie for dessert. It was all delicious and we kind of ate our way through the day. There are more pictures on my mac website . There are more food pictures...for some reasons I like to take pictures of food lately. (See St. Patrick's Day website!) The food is always so good and it's fun to look back and remember. It was so windy in the middle of the afternoon that we sat in the garage, but about dusk, the wind went down and we pulled our chairs out o...

This is a Friday night at 7:15 kind of blog entry. I'm too tired to move. I made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner which is cheesy (ha) I know, but I couldn't even muster the gumption to find the phone number for a pizza place. I'm on my way to bed with the sun still out and I know that's pathetic. If we had a tv in the bedroom, I would lie there and try to watch something. Dancing With the Stars, for example, would be about my level of intellectual functioning tonight. I might look at a catalog but reading a book with actual meaningful English sentences sounds like too much work. I surfed the web a little and put three pair of sunglasses totaling a hundred dollars (WTF?) in a shopping cart somewhere. In my defense, they filter 100% of the UV rays. Better wait until tomorrow to make that decision. This is how people move toward retirement...one miserable Friday night after another and finally you are convinced that working, as much as you like the money and being abl...

I'm sitting on the couch in my robe at 7:15 and the sun is coming straight in a west window, illuminating the water spots and dog nose prints on the glass. How can a guy relax with that kind of stuff going on? At least in the winter when it's nearly dark as you walk in the door after work, you don't have to contend with reminders of your slovenly ways. We went to the HyVee after work to buy groceries. Kathy and Harvey are having a party Saturday to celebrate Betty's birthday and Regis' new job. We're going to sit on the deck and grill appetizers and desserts. I'm making grilled crab cakes with mango salsa, asparagus with balsamic vinegar, bruschetta, and grilled slices of sweet potato. The dessert menu is just chunks of fresh pineapple and banana on skewers, maybe with a chocolate ganache. Lots of finger foods. Regis and I stopped at the Mongolian Grill in Mankato after our shopping trip. You choose a bowl, pile in fresh vegetables and meat, noodles, and spi...

Regis says he is as predictable in his job movement as Bert is at getting through a fence. Tom says we can count on Regis to give us a reason for a party at least once a month. Ha. Yesterday Regis was offered a job at the Midwest Call Center in Mankato. It's one of Glen Taylor's companies. He says it's a nice building with a pyramid thing on the top and an atrium in the center of the work area. Very nice touch. He took his drug test today and as soon as they get the results, he can start. Benefits, the main reason for the switch, start June 1st. This job has everything we hoped for...day hours, weekends off, benefits, and a reasonable distance from home. He has another four weeks of training...he'll be like a customer service wiz. I think we foiled Bert with a four-foot fence. To our knowledge he hasn't even tried to scale this one. So far, so good. If we find him in the living room now it will be because he's learned to unlock the back door (which is difficult...

Last night when we went to the Bothy concert, we pushed chairs up against the fence and piled boxes on the chairs. It looked like the Berlin Wall in our living room. When we came home...guess what...Bert is sleeping on the couch. Today when we left for work, we had pieces of cardboard between the fence and the chairs. That kept him in but it was a little tough getting over it to get out the front door to go to work. Regis stopped at PetCo after work and got the heavier duty and taller fence for more determined dogs. We'll see how long it takes him to scale that. As a last resort, Regis suggested attaching bowling pins to his back legs with bungee cords. That might work. A friend of mine at work suggested invisible fence in the doorways, the stuff that gives a mild shock. That would never work; Bert would think the temporary pain was well worth the comfort of sleeping on the couch.

Don't be fooled by that innocent look. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that Bert, in his dotage, has caused us plenty of angst. He has some health issues; some of his medication gives him a powerful thirst and some of his medication gives him the need to pee at inappropriate times and in inappropriate places. (Remember the Christmas tree skirt story?) We thought we had the problem solved. We went to Pet Expo and bought a portable pet fence that is three feet high and can be stretched to about ten feet long. When we leave the house, we run it between the living room and kitchen and we shut the other doors so he's contained. We bought puppy training pads and he learned to pee on those. On our way back from Mankato today we were saying how nice it is to have found a solution to this problem and it's so good to not be mad at Bert all the time for peeing and how the dogs seem to have adjusted just fine. We pull in the drive-way and.....STOP....there he is look...

Regis has this weird penchant for clocks, thermometers, and electronic gadgets. His latest purchase is a Radio Shack clock/weather forecaster. It's round and functions like a clock but the bottom half is like a mood ring. If it's coudy, it turns pink. If it's sunny, it turns red. Hey, it's a nightlight, too. Sometimes in the middle of the night, one of his electronic gadgets will start up...I've heard the theme song from the Lone Ranger, chickens crowing, and various beeps. One goes off every day about 4 o'clock but it's in a drawer and I can't find it. I'm not big on digital clocks...I like those old-fashioned clocks that have a face. I finished reading Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde. I liked it a lot. It's about a young man who watches the neighbor lady's five-year old sometimes and one day she doesn't come back. There's a bit of a mystery surrounding her disappearance but most of the book is about the relationsh...

We've had a couple of busy days. Peter turns 20 tomorrow and thought he would be too busy to see us then so we took him out to dinner last night. He chose TimberLodge which was a mistake. The service was marginal, the food was less than stellar, and they screwed up the check even though our waiter had a grand total of two, count 'em, two tables. Lame. Peter was funny and social, even talkative. Such a nice change from his sullen and monosyllabic teen years. He told us all about his trip to Mexico...whale watching, tequilla, four-wheelers, tequilla, parties on the beach, tequilla, and conversating (his word) with a lot of very nice older people. I inquired about what he considered older and he said forty or fifty. At least he didn't say thirty. Ouch. Well, I guess it wasn't a couple of busy days...it was one busy day. Today we watched Ella but that's fun and not work at all. She took a little nap on the couch then ate a vegan waffle and a hot dog for dinner. We laugh...

We had a day of almost spring-like weather yesterday where it was warm enough to sit in a lawn chair if you were on the south side of the house and protected from the wind. I won't even talk about that 80 degree anamoly from a few weeks ago. Today it's back to 30 degrees, wind chill, and icy precipitation. It's tiresome. I'll tell you another thing. Having four days off to prance around in polite society makes it hard to go back to a building full of EBD kids. We had to give some inane state tests today which didn't help...it's Dilbert of the education world. I have eleven test-related boxes on a table in my office. Two of them were mailed empty. Empty boxes were sent in the mail. See? It's the pointy haired guy at work. It took me five full hours to sort and check in all the crap in the nine not-empty boxes and will probably take at least another five to pass out the tests, collect them, and prepare them for return shipping. I'd put a picture of Dilbert...

My friend Kathy called me this morning and suggested that I get started sorting for the garage sale I might have in May. I thought this involved a leisurely poke through a few drawers in the bedroom and didn't see it as an imposition. I didn't protest and even drove out to school to pick up some Office Max boxes I bought last year in a fit of pique when I threatened to quit my job. But when Kathy showed up at 10:00, she had a different plan in mind. She wanted to start in the basement. I don't let very many people into my basement, it being the home of a multitude of dead bug carcasses and major dust bunnies. Kathy and Harvey had the unfortunate experience of spending some time down there last August when they were here for dinner during a tornado so I thought it quite brave of her to suggest we start there. In about four hours, we filled five huge contractor bags with stuff for the dump and three of the same kind of bag with stuff for the thrift store. It was an embarassin...

We had a lovely Easter Sunday. All the kids were here for dinner and they stayed into the evening. There was a lot of laughing and a lot of eating so I guess that means we had a fine time. Tiffany was worried that Ella wouldn't remember her...but she did. Ella is fascinated by Peter and always looks from head to toe like she can't believe how tall he is. There are more pictures here on Ella's page and on my mac site. It was a little chilly in the afternoon but Ella and I went for a walk. I realized after I set her down, that sidewalks were kind of a new concept; she just made a bee-line out across the grass. I'd chase her down, get her going in a different direction, and away she'd go. Finally we got to the sidewalk and she held onto my finger as we walked. She carried on some kind of little conversation and pointed at things from time to time. It was very sweet. I woke up with Regis this morning to help him get out of the house for work at 6. I made him a ham sand...

We bought a new ceiling fan for the bedroom last weekend and spent a good share of today installing it. I probably shouldn't say we because it was mostly Regis. I held the screwdriver and the fan blades and did that sort of thing. Gopher jobs. I like the fan. Looks better than the one with skateboard stickers. I told Regis I woke up in the night worried that it would fall on us...this was before it was installed. He made sure to put a couple extra screws in it to make sure it wouldn't fall out of the ceiling. We also cleaned the fish tank. We bought new guppies Thursday night and Ella likes to watch them so we wanted the glass to be clean when she comes tomorrow. We have lots of new fish lately, cheap and prolific fish because it seems like the more we spend the shorter the life span. That's one of our older fish in the picture. He's a rosy barb but he's pretty pale now because he's old. I like the guppies and sword tails because they come in gypsy colors. I...

We are suffering a conundrum. We have already seen the shotgun blasts to the lawn that signify our moles have awakened. Regis and I are not fussy lawn-keepers: We let the grass get long because we think it produces more oxygen, we don't mow in criss-cross patterns, and we rarely use chemicals because we aren't bothered by dandelions or other noxious weeds. We all have to live somewhere. But the moles are causing a problem. If you read my previous post (Saturday, March 10), you know that I'm not fond of the idea of killing them by any means chemical or mechanical because I read Mole Music ...and we all have to live somewhere. The lawn gets so spongey from their little tunnels, though, that we're almost afraid to walk on it. Did you know a mole weighs 3-5 ounces but they can tunnel 200 feet in a day? We might only have one or two moles, but the little bastards are terrorists. Here's a letter we're going to leave on the lawn this weekend for the moles: Dear Mound M...

I managed, by reading some of The Good Good Pig in the middle of the night, to sleep until 6:30 this morning. I've decided to make this a relaxed holiday so I'm not scrubbing the kitchen floor or any of that malarky. In some parts of the world people manage to serve an Easter dinner in a house with a dirt floor so I don't think I have to go nuts. We're going to get Tiffany later and she likes to stop at the OK Corrall for dinner. They make those skinny onion rings (haystacks they call them) with a remoulade sauce. Here's Emerill's recipe: 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice 3/4 cup vegetable oil 1/2 cup chopped onion 1/2 cup chopped green onions 1/4 cup chopped celery 2 tablespoons chopped garlic 2 tablespoons prepared horseradish 3 tablespoons Creole whole-grain mustard 3 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard 3 tablespoons ketchup 3 tablespoons chopped parsley leves 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper Combine all ingredient...

It's the last day of the work week for both of us. It's a good thing it's the end because it's been a hell of a long one. Regis started working from 6-2:30 and just that change of schedule has beaten us up. Then add the bitter cold weather and the wind that kept Bert awake a few nights and you have raw nerves and lack of sleep. One thing I realize that my regular blog entries have done is make me more aware of the bizarre stories that occur during a normal day. Like this morning, I'm having coffee at Waldo's and this about 50ish man comes in. He's balding with a soul patch and glasses, but the really weird thing is this guy has on a racoon coat. Not a new and stylish one, but one that looks like it came of your grandma's closet. And seriously, with a mink collar. This guy thought he was a stud as he posed and strutted in that moth-eaten coat. He got out of a nice car and was obviously not a derelict or a guy who shops at the thrift store. What is up with...

Here's the lawn chair we were using last week when the temperature was 80 degrees. This morning it was snowing and 22 degrees with a windchill that made it feel like two degrees below zero. Your exposed skin would freeze in ten minutes making walking from the parking lot to your office a dangerous venture. It makes you weary. The last two nights I've gone to bed before 8:30 and slept all night. Last night it sounded like the damn roof was going to lift off the house. Bert is deaf as a post but he senses big wind so he was agitated all night and got up and down off the bed, scratched at the door to get in, then out, and generally drove us crazy. I made potato krub for dinner. Krub is a Norwegian potato dumpling that turns kind of gray and doughy-looking when it's cooked in water that turns into wallpaper paste. Regis likes it, although he had no experience with it as a child which leads him to ask questions like, "What are you going to have with it?". "Butter...

I wonder if that sentence (title of this post) is punctuated correctly. But really, who cares? the weather here has only gotten worse. The daffodils were rescued yesterday and today, the pansies had to come inside. We don't have the snow they're having up north (like St. Cloud and Alexandria for you non-Minnesotans) but it's about 25 degrees and windy as hell. I came home and poured a glass of wine. I spent five hours today working on state test crap. We'll probably test fifteen kids and I had to unpack ten boxes. The stuff is numerical but not packed that way so I had to find fifteen-digit numbers on the packing list to make sure it was there and secure. This is probably HoMElanD security in charge of packing, if you know what I mean. Five hours of matching numbers, checking numbers, making lists of kids. I told the district test coordinator I am going to bill the state of Minnesota for my rehab. She said she isn't a drinker and I told her that BS like this is why ...

Man, it was a stress-filled day. Not like anything in particular was wrong...just weird and tight feeling. Maybe it's the weather. We had a tiny peek at the sun today but it's gone now and the clouds are back. I went out and rescued a bunch of daffodils when I heard it's going to be 22 tomorrow. They're hardy but heavy rain and snow is hard on them. I saw three baby animals today. Deb Johnson and her family are raising a dog to be a leader dog for the blind. He's a seven-week old golden retriever baby and so damn cute you can hardly stand it. Then when I went into North Intermediate this afternoon, there were two baby lambs in the office. Regis tells me they belong to the family of animals called bovidae (small ruminants) that includes cows, sheep, and goats. Oh my, such wooly little heads and pretty little faces. I would love to raise sheep and goats but they would all have to die of old age because I could never send them to the place...you know where. I saw an ad...

It hasn't stopped raining for three days. Hard-driving and freezing cold rain. It pounds against the windows at night and during the day it's a steady cold mist with periods of heavy rain that comes sideways. Most unpleasant three days. Yesterday we took Ella to Mankato. We thought she would enjoy the pet store and the bookstore but she was more interested in other little kids than books or pets. She found anyone between infant size and about ten-years old fascinating and she would wiggle down and toddle after them. She's a good sport and even let us do some shopping at Men-R-Nerds. We're watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which seems like a better movie than the last time I saw it more than ten years ago. We're going back to one movie at a time now that April's here. What a relief. It will be a fairly slow week. No night-time activities and Friday off. I'll go get Tiffany for the weekend.