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

Regis took a liking to foam hand soap a couple months ago so I started buying it but discovered that it wasn't cheap, you had to buy it in small containers rather than refillable giant ones, and it didn't last long. He monkeyed around trying to fill the foam soap bottle with regular soap thinking that the little place at the top of the squirter is what made the foam. Maybe. But that didn't work so he goggled it, and lo and behold, he found the recipe! Fill your foam soap container about 3/4 full of water then fill the rest with hand soap. Voila. Foam hand soap at a much lower cost and without the bottles constantly going into the landfills. Tiffany and I made the first grocery run with our new eco friendly shopping bag system today. Now we have about five big canvas shopping bags, a bunch of small produce bags, and three nice string bags. We don't have to come home from the store with eighty-five plastic bags. Some of those kids that bag groceries put one thing in ea...

We're planning a little party to celebrate Regis' ten years as a Minnesotan. I think I wrote about that not too long ago. He requested appetizers on the grill and so far the menu is: Pizza bread on grill Shish kabobs: shrimp, chicken, & steak Sausage stuffed mushrooms Cheese stuffed mushrooms Crab cakes and mango salsa Grilled dessert pizza with pears Basil gimlets Hamms beer (what else for a Minnesota party?) It probably seems like a lot but I had help with the menu and everyone has favorites. The basil gimlets are because I have huge shrubs of basil and I'm not fond of pesto. It looks like pond scum to me. Tiffany and I are going to the grocery store for the party provisions and for regular food which I tend to forget about as school starts. Like I forget about opening mail, taking out the trash, and doing dishes. I need somebody to take care of me the first week of school. If Regis slept more than three hours a night he could do it, but not this way. I'm going to...

Regis was mowing the grass and I was trimming the tomato plants that ate Chicago when he stopped and asked me what I wanted to do for dinner. I said I wanted to hang around Paul's grill. So we wandered over for a beer and some fresh salsa. Paul makes several kinds...black olive and garlic, habanero and peach, but roasted corn and tomato is our favorite. (He sells it at the farmer's market on Tuesday and Saturday.) Mike was there talking smart about his former parish Catholic priest from Colorado who was recently caught jogging naked and that added a light touch to the evening. I think this topic came up because of the senator who was arrested for tapping his foot in the airport bathroom stall, apparently a universal sign for sex. Eeeeuuuww.) Then Paul served us homemade brats with dried tomatoes and peppers and some wonderful mustard. We finished the meal with a tiny glass of Dickel whiskey. Where can you go to get a meal like that? I was dressed in the hideous clothes I wear t...

As normal as we get, that is. The wedding hoopla is over but I still have crates of paper plates, baskets, and miscellaneous wedding detritus (non-living particulate organic material as opposed to dissolved organic material, Larry...sounded like a chemistry thing) in the living room. The word detritus popped into my head just now. I had to google it to check the definition, and I'm sure I didn't use it exactly correctly, but where in the hell does stuff like that come from? I had a big gig at the high school today, informing the faculty of the changes in special education law since 1965. I was very nervous because they can be a wicked audience (they've made people cry) but it went fine. The after-effect is that my joints pain me like crazy. Almost as bad as the time I did my final project for my degree and had to ask the bar tender to put my beer in a lighter glass as opposed to the giant mug. I have to do it two more times tomorrow but those elementary teachers are pussies...

The wedding day was beautiful...gorgeous, sunny, almost fall-like weather. We had a wonderful time and have lots of pictures and video to prove it. Tiffany and Peter were both here for the weekend and it was so nice to have them around. Regis and Amber and the parents of the groom. Of course, I can't wear anything that looks like a polyester mother-of-the-groom frock...I have to come in this robe that's called Luna Luna. It has a big moon face on the back and probably scared away small children. It was fun to wear. Regis and Regis in their wedding attire. Regis' robe was borrowed from the local Lutheran church. It had a note on it that said it was hand-made in 1910 for a Swedish Lutheran minister in Minneapolis. I'm not sure the secretary knew what she was lending out! The ceremony was sweet and short. Bob live-streamed it so the folks from out-of-state could see it. There's a link to the video at the bottom of this post. Someone must have told Ella to say cheese. S...

In case you missed this at the bottom of the last posting, Bob is streaming the wedding and you can view it here at 4 o'clock this afternoon: http://www.amberandregis.com/

We had a party last night for Regis and Amber, their out-of-town guests, and the wedding party. After a week of rain, we were lucky to have sunny skies yesterday. I was insane, of course, and cranky because people weren't doing what I wanted them to as fast as I thought they should, but it all worked out in the end. The food was good, the evening was beautiful, and we had a good time. This picture is of Amber and her mom, Peggy, her cousin Corrissa, and her brother's girlfriend Katie. Peggy's a hoot and kept us entertained with her version of "Deawy bewoved..." from The Princess Bride. Kathy and Harvey offered their patio and garage for the party. We hung party lights and balloons, had candles and confetti...it was festive! Our favorite local establishment, Patrick's, catered herb roasted chicken and au gratin potatoes. The groom and his father, Regis times two, share a cigar and some smart talk. Bob, the technical wizard of the family, is streaming the weddin...

Here's a new thing called a scrapblog. It's like a scrapbook but it's online and you build it with a template. It's easy but time consuming. Regis and I are working on this one for Reg and Amber's get-acquainted party tomorrow night. We ran into technical difficulties...a scanner that quit, a scanner we hadn't used before, and three different computers. You can see it bigger by clicking here. Reg and Amber's Scrapblog

I feel about as gray as the weather. I've been having trouble sleeping lately. I have no trouble going to sleep but I wake up at 1 and can't sleep again until it's almost time to get up. At least that's how it seems. I took tylenol pm last night and slept like the dead. Oh, it felt good. I wonder if it's better to take that every night or to get something from the doctor. I can't go too many nights with that crappy sleep...I start to feel like I've been slipped a mickey. I don't think it rained much today if at all but it's sure wet outside. The neighbors have a big fairy ring of toadstools in their yard. They used to believe they appeared when fairies danced at night. I like that story. There is some other stuff about fungi but that doesn't make as good a story. I filled all the birdfeeders today as the birds don't seem to have much to do but hang at the feeders and eat. There's a big fat squirrel who has learned to leap into the platfor...

A person in our district office who will remain nameless (Google, you know) directed my attention to this youtube video . I could hear him laughing heartily in the background as I watched it.

We've had more rain, more sleepless nights because of thunder, more humidity. I'm starting to feel like moss is growing on my north side. Enough already. (If you look back, it wasn't very many posts ago that I was complaining off the desert-like atmosphere around here.) I'm taking most of the next three days off for the young Regis' wedding on Saturday. It's not like there's that much for us to do but it's really stimulating with all that going on so it will be nice to have some time to relax in between events. Tiffany and Peter will both be here for the weekend so I had better stock the pantry. I've decided that I have to stop reading about the news of the bridge collapse and the flooding in Southeastern Minnesota. I had a staff meeting at work today and I said it felt like we were coming back after the tornado. I like to read the stories about the people...the man who died trying to save his wife, the couple who rode the roof of their house 1,000 f...

We had the kids all here for dinner Sunday night. We cooked steak on the grill and Regis did a wonderful job of managing all the different requests. We had steak, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and slabs of French bread with Hope butter. See? Not many butter brands get mentioned with the menu. Kramer, a bit befuddled by all the hoopla. He can't be out when Ella is here because he gets too excited and jumps all over her. I made apple pie for dessert, which the Fritsch men put chocolate ice cream on. Blasphemy.

Yesterday Peter and I went to the HyVee in Mankato. There was a man giving out samples of butter from the Hope Creamery in Hope, MN. My God, if you think you've tasted butter, you have to try this. Being quite a connoisseur of butter, I feel qualified to say this is the best butter I have ever tasted. And don't waste it on people who can't tell the difference between butter and margerine, or God forbid, those fake butters. Regis joined his sons and some of their friends for young Regis' bachelor party yesterday. They started out with a tour of the Schell's Brewery in New Ulm, then to Bloomington for go-kart races, then to Hooter's for dinner. They dropped Regis off at home about ten and the younger Fritsch men went on to Mankato for more frivolity. John (on the left) got the short bus for nothing and just had to make it street legal. He moved the strobe light from the top to the inside and got an extremely loud muffler. You can hear it coming long before you se...

Betty said she walked to the clinic today so she left her keys at home in the refrigerator in the garage, under the buns. She was afraid she would forget where she'd left them by the time she got home so she spelled out b-u-n-s in small stones on the asphalt outside the garage door. She explained all this to the doctor who thought it was a fine idea. When she got home, the b-u-n-s reminded her where the keys were. We laughed and laughed. For anybody reading this who shops at the Food Coop in St. Peter, here's a food tip. We tried the Prairie Pride wieners with wild rice, cheddar, and jalapenos tonight. They were delicious. Just delicious. Free-range wieners, too.

I've griped about the weather so much this summer that I suppose I should say when the weather is acceptable. It's gorgeous today...77 degrees, arid, calm, sunny. Can't beat that. We're going to cook on the grill again tonight. Nothing fancy, just chicken wings, wild rice brats, with mushrooms and new onions. I bought a loaf of herb foccacia bread that we like buttered and grilled, too. Tiffany's going to Minneapolis tonight to celebrate her friend Teresa's 23rd birthday. Here they are going to one of the proms. I cropped the boys out because they're ancient history. They have plans to go to clubs to dance and to a few bars...one that Tiffany said she'd rather set fire to than walk into. Ha. Funny girl. She met someone last night who asked her if she'd like to be a manager at Hollister in the mall. She gave the girl her phone number. Oh, it's a very funny story but I think you had to be there to hear it. It's too long to write but in the end ...

I went to work early this morning in the rain. We haven't had rain for so long, I've had rain hallucinations during the night...I wake up and think I hear rain so I listen hard to decide what it is. It's always the AC or the dog or Regis snoring. Never rain. But this morning we had a great driving rain for more than an hour. I opened my window to listen to it and heard this weird barking dog. It kept barking, barking, barking. I finally stood up to see this anguished dog and it wasn't a dog at all but a wild turkey. I think there were babies in the woods she was calling because I heard little peeps, too. I worried that they would get wet, but what would I do, open the door and let them into the school? Thirty years ago tomorrow Elvis died. I've never been an Elvis fan...not when he was alive and even less so since he's dead. I lived in Mt.Vernon, Iowa and Jane and I were going to go to Memphis for the funeral. Not because we cared a fig about Elvis, sorry to say...

Some days I just feel like a nap, but today I need one. The weather has been brutal with not only high temps, but high humidity, a dew point through the roof, and still putrid air that hangs over the valley like smog. A good day to sit in a dark bar drinking cold beer and listening to Tammy Wynette on the juke box. I should be careful what I write here; some of you will think I'm actually capable of doing that. I took things out of the freezer to cook on the grill so now I suppose I'm committed. There's that damn dog barking again. Where's my pearl-handled Luger? Does this feel a little disjointed? My friend Jill is gathering evidence to support my application for a Section 8 discharge. (Remember Klinger on MASH?) She can just print this post, I guess.

Billy Collins The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast but I can still hear him muffled under the music, barking, barking, barking, and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog. When the record finally ends he is still barking, sitting there in the oboe section barking, his eyes fixed on the conductor who is entreating him with his baton while the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo, that endless coda that first established Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Ella came over today because her daddy is rewiring the kitchen and she's scared of the guy who's helping him. We had a nice time until about 11:30 when we both needed a nap. I wasn't sure how she'd do in the big bed with me but we took our shoes off, found a couple books and the blankie, and headed for the bedroom. She started to whimper a little because she thought I was going to leave her there alone but when I curled up on the bed, too, she went right to sleep and we didn't emerge from our den until almost 1:30. Regis said she was studying the art of napping from the zen master. It's raining here now with big rolling thunder and a crack of occasional lightening. It looks on the radar like it might pass quickly but it's nice to get even a little rain. It sounds like the demo derby had to call it quits early. What a shame.

We walked down the street to the Nicollet County Fair last night. We made our way directly to the food court, claimed a table and started sampling. Ella liked the fries with lots of ketchup. My favorite part of the fair is the petting zoo. You can buy a handful of kibble to feed the goats and donkeys but I think by evening, they were full as they didn't show much interest. Tiffany walked aloong with us and participated enthusiastically in the food trials. She thought the cheese curds were the best. Goats, donkeys, llamas. Ella liked to pick up handfuls of poop-laden straw. Thank God for Handi-wipes. The unwashed masses. The motley crew. (Hey, wait a minute...we were there.) This ain't all of 'em either because the demo derby was going on right behind us and all the mullets were in there. Ella overcome with joy, danced around the tent pole. See that tummy? Lots of fries, an icey, some chips, and a carmel apple. The girl likes fair food! Oh, I forgot the lemonade. She learned...

Jill would be too shy to share her latest country song creation, so I'm going to do it for her: Mama's in the graveyard, daddy's in the pen. We're just a-listenin' to the tractor pull again. The dust is a-flyin' and it plugs up our noses, And the flowers, they're-a dyin', even the roses. Hey, let's have a hog roast fund raiser and send that girl to Nashville!

Damn it's hot here. If I wanted to live in the desert, I'd move to Arizona. My plants are going to call the county pretty soon because I haven't watered them in two weeks and they're looking peaked. That's peak-ed, not peaked as in pointy cap. We sat outside for a while tonight to watch the birds bathe and listen to the tractor pull. Oh, the pleasures of a small town. The dust got a little thick because they just seal-coated the street. I went to the school board meeting tonight with the new dietitian (which I have been spelling dietician) to talk about the district wellness policy. We had a well-polished routine with a three-dimensional PowerPoint. Not really...just a couple of cheesy hand-outs. My BS alarm started going off right before they got to the AYP part of the agenda so we had to leave. Whew. It was a close one. That shit is hard to get off. Ed Lee asked us to write a 400-word guest editorial for next week's Herald. You may want to reserve your copy to...

I wrote a check for the parking ticket I got at the college in Mankato (nobody could google that...) last week. My gripe is that on the back of the ticket, there were some very threatening statements about being "autoclamped" if you don't pay promptly. No explanation of what exactly that means so you how do you decide if you want to risk it? It sounds like a made-up word. The least they could do is provide a definition. I found the parking regulations online and it's a 30-page book. Holy shit. My other gripe is that I got a text message from Alltel thanking me for using their service. It said: Thank U for using our new services. We appreciate ur business. I replied: Bad spelling. Is that accepted now in the world of text messages? Like Kwik Mart and Pik & Pak are accepted in the world of convenience stores? I found a website that will translate your real English sentences into text. See if you can figure this out: I dnt gt dis sp ting W txt msgs . S dis ...

Ironically, we have other friends celebrating an anniversary today. Not Stephen Hawking either, Larry! They must have borrowed those little tissue paper bells from Jill and Larry. THE REAL STORY The next picture is Jill and Larry's wedding photo taken 37 years ago. Deb used Photoshop to paste their faces onto the picture of Floyd and Myrtle. I thought I better confess before I was accused of journalistic malfeasance and my reputation was maligned by all the major media. Oh the shame. The lesson is this: Be careful what you believe because it's easy to lie on the internet. I took three huge bags of clothes down the curb today. The Epileptic Foundation comes around a few times a year and collects them. Great way to get rid of stuff since you don't even have to drive it to the Thrift store yourself. Tiffany couldn't remember the name of the group and called it "the decapitated people". That's almost as funny as the time she thought Cambria was in Kasota and ...

Our friends, Jill and Larry Potts, are celebrating their 37th wedding anniversary tomorrow. They look pretty good for that many years of farting bliss. Jill says they met over a copy machine at the U. They had copy machines back in those days?

What a great goat face. I'm feeling much better today. I had to go to an administrative retreat this morning to report on a couple of projects I've been working on and I was a little worried about the morphine hangover. I stopped at school to make some copies. As soon as I turned the car off, I remembered that because of the sludge problem, I should let it run for a few minutes. I put it in neutral and let it run while I gathered up my stuff, shut it off and went into the building. After a while, I went back to the office to make some copies and saw my car sitting across the parking lot in a grove of pine trees. Apparently, I had neglected to put it in gear and it backed itself up right to the edge of the woods. I had inches to spare. This is not knowledge that my husband needs to have right now today so if you happen to run into him, this is not for conversation. Another little piece of irony that I forgot to mention a few days ago is that when my car was in for repair, Arvin ...

I've been under the weather with a malady that will remain nameless. I'll just say that it's involved days of discomfort, a visit to the doctor, then the ER this morning, morphine, Tylenol with codeine, and some other unpleasant elements. It appears to be coming to an end. I came home from the ER this morning and slept until 2:00 this afternoon. Best sleep that I've had for days but it's made the rest of the day seem odd and out of time. Tiffany has been delightful the last few days. She started reading Harry Potter, got hooked right away, and has finished the first two already. She started book #3 and went to Mankato to buy #4 tonight. I've never seen her so excited about a book. We made the trip to the Alltel store yesterday to get new phones. Peter's battery was broken, Tiffany didn't have a phone, and I needed a replacement phone. The wait was two hours. What???? We put our name on a list and left for a while. The man who eventually helped us through...

These are pictures of my friend Jill's new grandbaby, Hannah. What a smile! The bottom picture is of her with her Grandpa. Ella calls him Larry Poppop.

I did a google search for Bolshevik images and this is what I found. It will make it easier for anyone with that particular phobia (Joanne) to identify them. I think the guy in the pensive pose, bottom row, second from the right, works at the video store. I've been reading about the collapse of the bridge over the Mississippi River. It's too much to comprehend. So many sad and horrible stories.

That's a fear of atomic bombs. What the hell. That hardly seems like it should be considered a phobia...it seems like a fear most reasonable people would have. Like the woman I knew once who said she was allergic to carbon monoxide. I'm out of fresh and original ideas lately, hence the phobia entries. Tomorrow is the last day of the four-day conference. I think I am all out of enthusiastic responses to new school reforms. I'm tired of cold meat sandwiches and bad coffee. And today I got a parking ticket because it was so damn hot I wasn't going to walk too far. The Vikings are practicing at MSU so you can get plenty of parking places for three bucks. In retrospect, that would have been cheaper but I hate to feed the NFL coffers. Tiffany was happy today...even went out for dinner with us and laughed and teased and had a good time. She said she had lunch with a friend and told her she thought she'd come home and be nice to her mom. She sure can create a whole bunch of...