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

There is some dynamite music coming up at the Bothy Folk Club in the next few weeks. If you've never been there, it's a great venue for live music: You can get a front row seat if you get there early. You can buy a beer and a box of popcorn in the Eagle's Club bar and carry it back to your seat. You can go early and buy a burger basket and carry it back to your seat. Tickets are about 15 bucks each. When was the last time you went to a concert for that kind of money? You can buy a raffle ticket and win a free ticket to the next concert. You can win a box of chocolates. The tradition is that you open it and pass it around. You don't have to drive to Minneapolis or park in a ramp. The concerts start at 7:30 and you're always home before 11:00. We've seen some great music here over the last few years. The Carrie Hassler concert is sponsored by the Minnesota Blue Grass and Old Time Association. They co-sponsor a concert every year and we've always been thrilled...

I went to see Dr. Ruth today about my sleeping problems. I drove past the LeSueur exit and had to go up to the Henderson turn-off to get going the right way. Not a good sign. Ruth started talking about changes in sleeping habits as we get older and I almost started to cry. I was afraid she was going to start talking about not watching television in bed and shit like that. But Ruth is a realist and said it's not good to miss exits on highways because you're tired so we talked about Ambien. I don't care if it's the stuff that makes you get in your car in the middle of the night in your pajamas and drive around town drinking wine from a bottle. I am desperate to sleep. I asked about trazodone and she said she loves it...a lot of her nursing home patients use it. Hey, have I been insulted? So, I came home with a RX for trazodone and the caution to stay away from wine while I'm taking it. Good advice. Tomorrow I will be rested and happy and able to walk and talk at the s...

Regis and I have taken turns waking up at 1:30 this week. Last night was his turn. I woke up at 3 and that isn't good but it's better than 1:30. I'm going to see Dr. Ruth this morning. Bob says she'll just mix me up a movie star cocktail but I don't think so. She's conservative about pills and has a way of getting to the bottom of the issue. I've tried all the home remedies: warm milk, melatonin, no wine, wine, and so on. I don't watch tv in bed and only read for a half hour or so. Sleep should not be this hard to come by and I can see why people start taking pills to sleep. You get desperate. Our Girl Scout cookies were delivered yesterday. You see what you pay for those babies (a lot)and estimate the time it takes to eat a whole box (not much) and it doesn't seem right. It's a good thing they aren't for sale all year because we'd catch on and stop eating them. When the Wizard of Oz was on once a year, everybody watched it that night. No...

I've had too much in my head lately. So much in my head that stuff comes in faster than I can sort and file it and stuff goes out faster than I can monitor it. I looked at a co-worker the other day and said, "I got an email from you today. I didn't read it. Wait a minute. I did. We're meeting for lunch on Friday." What the hell. It's like there's a lag in my processing center. Or I find myself talking about something I am putting together in my head as I speak. Or something will blast through my mind at some point in the day and I recall an email, a memo, a something related to it...and then I have to go on a hunt to find whatever that is. Usually I am successful which I guess is a tribute to the brain in general, not mine in particular. Scary. Regis and I both had bad days at work (must be going around) so we went down to the bar, watched some Mexican tv with Tom and Jim Davis, and had a bite to eat. All in all, a satisfying evening. Mexican tv has someth...

It's a balmy 16 degrees this morning, it's almost March, and we're in the doldrums of winter. It's ugly outside: the snow is dirty, the sidewalks are icy, and the back yard looks like a dog poop bomb went off. You can't pick that stuff up in weather like this. I hear the Pope warned against celebrating St. Patrick's Day on the 17th because it's during Holy Week. Regis read the real rules of the Catholic Church and they say it should be moved to the closest Saturday after Lent but that would be April 1st and who wants to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in April? So I guess they got a dispensation to have it on the 15th. It isn't the beer they object to but the corned beef. Couldn't the Pope just declare that corned beef is a fish for that day? This is a capybara. The capybara is a is a semi-aquatic rodent of South America. It weighs about a hundred pounds and is about 2 feet tall at the shoulder. Capybaras are gentle and will usually allow humans to ...

It was such a nice weekend, I hate to see it end. We took Ella with us to Menards this morning. I had forgotten how hard it is to shop with a two-year old. She was good but she is no longer happy to sit passively in the cart. She wants to get down and walk...and pick up everything she passes. She never fussed when we put things back but we had quite a collection of stuff we didn't want...a watering can, a kneeling pad, a screw driver, a roll of duct tape. Regis said she is a retailer's nightmare. Or maybe not if we had bought any of that stuff. We tried to watch the Oscars tonight but we don't have tv. We assumed, in the age of the internet, that someone would have it streamed. Regis figured out how to hook the computer to the tv but that was as much luck as we had. There were a few sites that said they had it but it was coming from China or something. Probably some guy in China with his movie camera aimed at the tv. I guess I'll read about it in the paper like I usuall...

Isn't this pretty? I used round cake pans instead of the rectangular pan and I think it was the right choice. Half of food is the look. We used Italian sausage, sweet peppers, caramelized onions, and mushrooms. And of course mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese. There isn't a lot of cheese on the top...just the parmesan and some olive oil drizzled over it...and I think it's so you can see the filling. If you read the recipe, you might have noticed that there was 1/2 cup of corn meal in the dough. I thought that was interesting but I think it's what made the dough light and crisp. Even in the center with all those vegetables, it didn't get soggy. We watched the movie Ed Wood after dinner. I ordered it because Johnny Depp is in it and Tim Burton directed it...and I wanted to give them a chance to redeem themselves after Sweeney Todd. I'm sure that's important to them. Ed Wood, Jr. was a movie director, acclaimed to be the worst director of all time. He did ...

We made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner last night...thick slabs of bread with white cheddar, provolone, and sharp cheddar. Then we watched Gosford Park . I liked it and gave it a 4/5 but Regis wanted to drive right down to the mailbox to get it out of the house. It's about a murder at a British hunting estate so people wander around dark hallways wearing dreadful furs with the feet attached, kind of muttering under their breath in thick British accents. They light each other's cigarettes and have breakfast brought to them in bed by a valet or a lady's maid. The murder was very refined (just a little knife stuck in when you weren't looking...no blood) and there were no chase scenes. I love British movies which seem to be often like this unless it's a British movie about transvestites like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in which case there is more flamboyance and more action. Regis likes movies like The Bourne Identity . That's too stimulating for me with a...

I feel like I was so cranky from the cold and wind the first part of the week, that I left out some details of our exciting lives... Regis is coming home to work on March 3rd although he says he will believe it when he sees it. The phone is hooked up, the office is cleaned up, and the desk is ready. Out of the cone of silence. I decided tonight that I had to have a Chicago-style pizza pan. Of course, Target didn't have what I had in my head so I had to settle for a rectangular unit which doesn't seem right. Rectangular pizza? Shades of Jeno's and little wiener slices. We went to Dino's in North Mankato for dinner. If you're local and haven't done that yet, you should. The food is delicious and the ambience is very nice. They serve New York style pizza, pasta, sandwiches, and some different appetizers. We had bruschetta tonight that wasn't like it's usually served. We've had blue cheese kettle chips there before that were so good you wanted to lic...

I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of a jet plane with all engines ready for take-off on the front yard. When I sat up and pulled the curtain aside to peer outside, it wasn't a jet after all, but one of these snow machines brushing snow off my neighbor's driveway that happens to be about 8 inches from my bedroom window. This is not my real neighbor doing this: Bill and Jean are gone for the winter so they contract with someone to remove their snow and cut their grass. Is this guy crazy? IS THIS GUY CRAZY??? There wasn't enough snow to brush yesterday much less in the middle of the night. A person who is not getting regular sleep does not need this kind of experience...the loud noise, the snow being blown against the siding of the house, the bright lights because you know this thing has headlights like the Gulag. Sleeping has been like this lately...this is a great old Donald Duck cartoon and only takes about five minutes so get a cup of coffee and relax for a minute.

That stands for paid time off. Regis works for the rich guy in Mankato who owns the basketball team. The one who has more money than God but gives employees a ten dollar check for Christmas WITH TAXES TAKEN OUT. Buy yourself a nice Big Mac meal. Anyway, the new policy is that you can call in the morning of the day you decide you want to, say, play golf, and just say, "Take it out of my sick time." So I think that's what Regis will do tomorrow. It's going to be 40 below with the wind chill. Good morning for golf. I managed to get the baby gift over to Katherine Nova Callahan before she went off to school. I wanted to take a loaf of bread and do you know how hard it is to coordinate those three things? Baby gift, card, loaf of bread. I almost didn't wrap the books because it was too much. But I did and she's cuter than a bug and she got the books before she could read them herself. (Nova is a Hopi word that means chaser of butterflies. Erin said if Mike got to...

I have a reputation for being one of the worst movie selectors of all time. Regis said he was going to get me a button that said, "Do not rent movies to this woman!" I think it's due to my trusting nature. If it gets rave reviews on the box, I think, hey, it must be pretty good. Thus we have suffered through some awful trash. Tonight while working on our Netflix queue, I decided to search for a list of the worst movies. I found Roger Ebert's most hated movies list which is a hoot. He's really funny when it comes to blasting bad movies. About one he said it should be cut up and made into ukulele picks for the poor. He listed my favorite bad movie The Village and his review is so funny it's way more entertaining than the movie. I love his last paragraphs: It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the be...

There's no school today as we celebrate President's Day with sales at Kohls and Herbergers. What that has to do with presidents is a mystery but it's a good day to stay home...it's 2 below and the wind gusted to 40 mph during the night. Amanda wrote on her blog about surviving February and that's exactly what it feels like. We've gotten spoiled with these wimpy winters the last few years and this is hard on us. I think we've lost the right to brag about our hardiness because there sure has been a lot of whining going on about the weather this year. The worst part of the weather change is that Saturday and Sunday morning, it felt like that damp spring weather. The weather forecast on the Trib homepage showed high 20s all week and then all of a sudden the wind comes up and it's 2 degrees again. All those little sunny faces and double digit temps and now the thermometer with ice hanging from the end of it. Brutal visuals. My feet are so tired of wool socks...

Yesterday I felt like I was getting a cold or the flu or something all day. I took two naps in the afternoon and didn't do a thing until dinner time. We ordered sandwiches delivered so even that wasn't much. This morning we got up early and made our weekly trip to HyVee for groceries. I think we're on the seventh week of menus and organized lists so it's working out well. Some nights I don't feel like making what I had planned but it's still better than not having a clue what to cook. Regis has been helpful with all parts of it...shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. We were home by 8 and started with our daily kitchen work. We wanted to try bagels so we got started with that, then baked potatoes for twice-baked potatoes, got the ribs ready for the roaster, and made whole wheat baguettes. Tiffany and Peter were here for dinner and we had a nice meal together. I sent Tiffany home with lots of left-overs, a computer monitor, cookies, and two jugs of St. Peter water....

Peter came home this morning for a long weekend. He was driving his own car and was very proud to squire us around to a few errands and then out to eat for breakfast. Funny when kids come home, one of the things they want to do is eat at a favorite place. His is Massad's in Mankato. Tiffany likes to hit all the fast food joints. Tiffany is coming home tomorrow for the day so I'll have both kids under my roof again. We're having ribs and twice baked potatoes. There was a lot of discussion about the menu! Kramer had a bath this morning. Well, actually a shower. Regis bought a contraption that screws onto the shower head so it's easier to bathe him. We bought some of the perfumed shampoo from the groomer so he smells nice, too. He sure was happy to see Peter. He went right to his toy basket and got the ball Peter always throws for him. I have a three-day weekend and I don't know why, but one extra day makes it seem like a real vacation. I feel like I don't have to ...

Check out pictures of the baby goats! http://goatcentral.blogspot.com/

I think I'll blame my lack of gumption at home on being busy at work. I get a lot done there but come home and fold up like a card table. I shouldn't admit this but I've let the cleaning go lately. Those of you who know me, know I am capable. Of letting it go, that is. Like I used to tell my kids: You can write your name in the dust, just don't write the year. Valentine's Day today so I put on every piece of shiny, sparkly, red bling that I own. It was more of a fashion statement than it was real fashion. It's too cold to care about fashion anyway. See the post on the fur-lined Elmer Fudd hat. I made mushroom and scallop risotto for dinner last night. For a one-pot meal, it was complicated. I had to get everything ready because there is no sitting down to sip wine between acts and it took 90 minutes. It was very good but labor-intensive. The cookies in the picture are not the cookies I made this year. They are the cookies I made last year but if you don't re...

I spent the last two days at a retreat with special ed folks from southern Minnesota, learning about the new state regulations about special education. Some if has changed since we met in August...new laws, new interpretations by lawyers, new something or other. You wonder why anybody would make a career of this. It was fun because we had a glass of wine and laughed when the business was done and then went out for a nice dinner. But my brain hurts tonight. Today on my way home, I noticed that the snow is melting on the fields. It was only 15 degrees today but the sun was high enough in the sky (I guess) to start melting snow. There's a sign of spring! Paul Douglas said Sunday was the most dangerous weather day we've had in twenty years with wind chills in the negative forty range. We deserve a sign of spring after that. Another sign of spring...the baby goats are starting to be born in Washington. Check out T Minus Nothing at Goat Central .

Our weather station says the wind chill is 40 below this morning and we're starting to feel despair. I heard GK on the radio yesterday say that some Minnesotans go to warm climates during the winter but he thinks its better to suffer despair quietly in your own home than to go somewhere and hope things will be better when you come back. Something like that. I liked the part about despair. Below zero wind chills are what make us appreciate spring and summer so much. We're carb loading again today with pancakes for breakfast and pasta for dinner because a guy can't survive in weather like this on salads. You could take the trash can down to the curb, slip on the ice, and that would be it. At least with pancakes in your belly you might survive long enough for the next car to come down the street and see you there like a popsicle in the snow bank. Tom's making pasta sauce and meatballs. After I announced that I hate those little frozen meatballs, he said he had planned to t...

I think the Greeks called it hubris, the fatal flaw of pride. I complained about the temperature yesterday and it promptly plummeted to 3 degrees today with a wind chill of 21 below. Well, maybe it's not a classic case of hubris but it's close. No, the more I think about it, it isn't hubris at all. Maybe irony. If I change it, I have to think of a new title for the post and I don't want to do that. Weekends are just not long enough. We had friends over for Reuben sandwiches and beer last night. We aren't much for late nights so they were gone by 8:30 and we were in bed by 9:30. We went to the HyVee this morning with the intention of going before the snow and wind started. We would have gone to the Coop instead but I wanted scallops and they don't always have them. We got in the door and I was putting away the canned things when the wind started. I was glad to be home. We fiddled away the afternoon...Regis shopping for a Valentine's Day flat-screen monitor an...

Things by Fleur Adcock, from Selected Poems . © Oxford University Press, 1986. There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public. There are worse things than these miniature betrayals, committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things than not being able to sleep for thinking about them. It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse. What a great poem if you wake up at 5 surrounded by the worse things. Regis and I made a bracelet last night and it's really pretty. I tried to get him to take a picture of it but he was engrossed in something else by that time so it will have to wait. It's a Valentine's Day bracelet with lots of red and pink buttons, some of my Grandma's buttons, and silver hearts. I made the button trinkets and he attached them to the bracelet with tiny pliers. Peter bought a car. At least he did if the insurance isn't too painful. His Grandma took him to the lo...

Yesterday started out badly. I spilled soup in my school bag, all over my calendar, papers from the Department of Education, papers from a meeting Monday afternoon, and my to-do notebook. Then I rubbed my itchy eye so hard that I must have broken a blood vessel because now it's all red and runny like some grotesque eye infection. My hair looked awful...it's too long and I don't think I dried it long enough so it hung in gray strands like old sea-hag hair. (I am on the road to recovery. I have an appointment with an eye doctor at 10:30 and an appointment with Patrick for a haircut at 4:00.) I watched most of One Punk Under God last night. It's a story about Jim and Tammy Faye Baker's only son Jay. He's a pierced and tattooed punk minister of a church called Revolution and a very thoughtful, intelligent man. He believes that religion should have an open door to all people and preaches sermons with titles such as “Nobody Likes a Selfish Bastard,” “Jesus: A Friend t...

Bob has a new hobby and Ella has a supply of balloon animals. I told him I think we can get him a gig at the elementary school. Little kids love balloon animals. His website had a picture of the bags of balloons. I bet we'll be seeing these for a long time. We had about two inches of snow followed by an hour or so of sleet. Unpleasant. The snow was sort of like late March snow...heavy and wet. More later...

I found a lot of projects in the kitchen today. I'm going to start with the last one first because the blogger is being uncooperative. These are candied orange peels. I decided to take the rest of the Christmas oranges up to Tom's for fresh screw drivers and didn't want to waste those nice peels. They have to be boiled twice to get rid of the bitterness, then boiled again in a simple sugar solution for 45 minutes. After they've cooled and dried a little, you drag them through melted chocolate. It's messy and you have to lick your fingers a lot. I also got rid of a few orange peels because I got tired of the whole mess. They're delicious if you like the combined taste of orange and dark chocolate. I made stromboli for dinner today. It's an Italian sandwich with pepperoni, hard salami, ham, and cheese. I used a calzone recipe for the dough. Here it is assembled with the onion, green pepper, and garlic. I used provolone, mozzarella, and parmesan. Regis said the...