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

We had a great time at Tom and Betty's house last night, as always. There were some classic and unforgettable lines and more than a few laughs. They have such a comfortable house for gatherings and they're such good hosts and good friends. It was a busy day at the ranch. We went for a long bike ride this morning and since I was the commander on this jaunt, I chose to go down Front Street to 99 and try the path under the bridge. Turns out it isn't really a bike path at all, at least not one that goes anywhere. It makes a big loop on the south side of the road and you come right back out by the frisbee golf course. It's like a maintenance road or something. I felt like I'd been ripped off. Tiffany came down from the metro about 12 so we had two kids here for lunch. Regis cooked burgers and ribs on the new grill and we had some sweet corn from Anderson's truck farm. Tiff went home about 3, Peter went to work, and I took a twenty minute nap on the porch. I made a de...

Regis and I bought a new grill. We have loved our Weber kettle and have used it faithfully for three years but it's gotten too small as we've learned to cooked vegetables and other things. We bought another charcoal grill but it's rectangular and has about three times the cook space. It's called a Super Pro Charcoal Grill/Smoker. We spent most of the day assembling it and seasoning it so we could try it out tonight. It's a little different technique than the other grill but the pork chops were great. I think there is a design flaw in this grill. See where the wheels are? In order to make the wheels function, you have to grab it by the shelf on the other end. I would have put the wheels on the end with the shelf and put another handle on the end where the wheels are now. Ta da ! Regis took Kramer to the vet this morning. I was really worried about him because he was acting so weird, like he had a brain tumor or something. He wouldn't open his eyes much, especia...

Speaking of Hillary: Slate' s blogger and legal writer Dahlia Lithwick. "The fact that she ran circles around the men tonight reminded me why the glass ceiling with the 18 million cracks in it really is poised to shatter. I can’t recall a woman rocking a convention like that, ever."

It's been very dry here for weeks. When the neighbors mow their grass, dust follows them like a shadow. This morning it sprinkled a few drops as I left for work so I took my umbrella. About 11:30 as I was leaving for a meeting, it poured. It was a damn deluge. The intersections were flooded and cars looked like they were surfing. I ran into the PO and was soaked in spite of the umbrella. Regis says it amounted to about 2 inches. We cooked turkey legs (brined...the key) on the grill tonight. We had to sit in the garage because the rain was threatening again. The damn flies are an abomination this time of year. I waved the swatter through the air every few minutes but they were not deterred. It was a delicious meal...turkey legs and stuffed mushrooms and pino grigio. We don't have television (we're devolving) so we haven't watched any of the convention. I listened to a little bit tonight on msnbc and my mom taped the DFL women last night for me. She called tonight to say ...

I was just reading in the Trib about The Miracle of Birth Center at the Minnesota State Fair. I checked out the pictures and I love the baby animals but they make the whole process look easier and cleaner than I think it is. Of course, who would want to see the real thing on the internet? The caption under one of the photos said the mama pig was tired of pregnancy or birth, or maybe both. Speaking of miracles, Charlie does a good review of some of the fair foods, and some of the folks who go there to eat it. My favorite is the chocolate covered pig lickers. That's chocolate bacon, in case you haven't heard. Regis and I are looking forward to a weekend doing nothing. We have no plans, no lists, and will probably have no gumption by then. Our lawn needs cutting, but as you know our standards are quite far below those of the community when it comes to that so we may let it produce a little more oxygen before we take any drastic measures. My compulsive neighbor is on an alternati...

I spent most of yesterday afternoon sitting in a lawn chair in a semi-comatose state. I stared at the anomometer on the top of the house and watched the birds in the garden. After all summer, they've decided they will eat the safflower seeds in the feeder after all. I can't seem to make blogger stop with the italics this morning so bear with it. It doesn't mean anything. We're worried about our dog, Kramer. He has bad eyes which he has had since birth; he has cataracts in both eyes now and sees very little. He had surgery to remove one cataract when he was two but we haven't invested in any more expensive eye surgery for him. His left eye we noticed last night, is weepy and kind of sunken. He seems not quite himself. We lost Bert a year ago, Paul and Julie's dog Molly died a few weeks ago, and now Kramer isn't well. Bad year for neighborhood dogs. Regis and I went for a bike ride this morning. I have an old Schwinn (almost 25 years old) and Regis has ...

Once in the cities, I saw a large sign that said PUPPETEERS UNION LOCAL SOMETHING OR OTHER. I announced to the people in the car that I was surprised there were enough puppeteers in the Twin Cities to have a union, then realized it said PIPEFITTERS UNION. That's another thing entirely.

In case you’ve wondered, I’m not in the Olympics because: I’m not fond of the fabrics in those outfits. It seems like they all end in –ex: goretex and spandex, for example. Sportswear in general is not high on my fashion list. I have an aversion to stripes, even the ones that go down the leg. Ugly. Zippers. Especially big plastic ones. Ugly. Little embroidered emblems on the pocket. Advertising sports teams on the front of your chest. No thanks. I’m not good at math as my friends and my mother have pointed out in this venue. I think those tiny decimals would be meaningless to me. Who cares about the .735? Hey, I think I won! I’m easily distracted. In the 400 m freestyle I would be apt to roll over and admire the sun coming in an upper window and forget that I should be swimming to the end of the lane. Race? Oh yeah. I forgot. I don’t like crowds or noise and there seems to be an over-abundance of both at the Olympics. I only like to attend big events nobody else is interested in att...

When I was in elementary school, I was terrified to the point of nightmares about being nuclear bombed. It was the 60s so I suppose there was the threat but I never asked anybody about the reality of my fears, I just suffered privately. Here are the things that made me afraid: A music teacher who came into class every day and pulled down the map, pointed at the Soviet Union and said they were going to blow us off the map . Then he would release the map and it would make that noise as it went up. You know the one I mean. I saw my dad putting plastic on the windows. It was an old house and he probably did it for insulation but I never asked. I was sure it was to keep fall-out out of our house. I saw my dad carry a box of canned vegetables to the basement one time. I knew that this was because of an impending nuclear attack at which time, we would go to the basement as if it were a bomb shelter. Duck and cover. I don't remember practicing this at school but I knew about it. Did we tal...

The stuffed mushrooms were delicious and so were the brats. We ordered Cooks Illustrated magazine and Regis found a recipe in the last one for brats cooked over caramelized onions. We used turkey brats instead and they were delicious. The onions were brown and tender and sweet and the brats were moist rather than dried out as usual. Here's the recipe: Grilled Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms Since the garlic isn't really cooked, the mushrooms have a strong garlic flavor. Grill the mushrooms stem sides down first, so that when they're turned they'll be in the right position to be filled. 2/3 cup chopped plum tomato (I used a tomato from Tom's garden...squeeze some of the juice out.) 1/4 cup (1 ounce) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh or 1/8 teaspoon dried rosemary 1/8 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper 1 garlic clove, crushed 2 (5-inch) portobello mushroom caps 1 tablespoons fresh lemon j...

I went to Joe and Meghan's wedding this weekend by myself because I was on my way to the reunion of my old high school friends. I slipped into a pew with some friends from school. A couple that we know from the Bothy in Mankato, but hadn't seen since April, turned and waved. I couldn't stay at the reception very long so Joanne told me later they had come to talk to her because they were concerned that Regis had passed... as they say. (I like that expression: as if you passed through a veil to the other side.) She filled them in on the real story but Regis was surprised to hear that there are rumors of his demise. He'll have to tell Bill next time he sees him that the rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated. It was very sweet of them to be so concerned. Contrary to being dead, Regis is feeling much better since his surgery and looking very healthy. He still has some lingering fluid but the doctor says not to worry...that will disappear with time and exercise. H...

It was a busy weekend and I never had time to sit down and post a note. Saturday I went to Joanne's son's wedding and reception, then to a reunion of high school girlfriends. When things go by as fast as this weekend did, I hardly remember enough to write anything sensible about any of it. I'm back on track now so I'll be droning on about my mundane activities. Actually it's easier to write about the boring stuff of life than it is to describe something big. Regis bought a couple sweatshirts at some discount company online. He says it's going to be a cold winter and what he means is the thermostat will be set low with heating fuel being so expensive. I don't mind that so much. It's easier to warm up than is to stay cool. We're in the market for a king size electric blanket. I'm stumped. I don't have anything else to tell tonight.

My EGD went fine. The doctor said things looked about the same as last time and he would call me when the pathology report comes back. Things almost went awry. I was answering questions for the nurse and she kept mentioning the name of a doctor I don't know. I said who's Dr. So-and-So. She said my doctor was up all night doing emergency surgery so he had sent Dr. So-and-S0 to do the EGD . Whoa, Nelly. I must have gotten a stricken look because she wanted to know if that was alright. Not being a whiner, I said of course. But about an hour later she poppped in to tell me that my doctor was here after all, she had talked to him about me, and he would do my procedure. (Uh oh.) All in all, it was better than the last one I had. They must have either given me more versed or given it to me sooner because I don't remember the garden hose at all. And that nurse anesthetist I talked to the other day? He did take the day off...and he did not, as I asked, make note: NERVOUS PATIENT. ...

Regis is boxing up some shoes he sold on ebay. He bought them on ebay, wore them for two years, and made his money back plus some. Go figure. He makes up great stories to go with the stuff he sells and I think it helps. He sold an accordian for a friend of ours a couple years ago and the story almost made you weep. We had a day off together today. I think it was the second one all summer that didn't involve a doctor or a hospital. We went to Drummers in Mankato and bought some herbs that we'll try to maintain over the winter. I'm not too hopeful with our pitiful supply of sunshine from November to April but we'll give it a shot. Maybe we should find someone who has indoor crops and grow lights to help us out. Yeah, and spend the next ten years in the pen. We sat in the yard for a while this afternoon and it felt like fall. Young Regis came over and enjoyed the Cabella's lawn chair and a beer while I puttered with the herbs and Regis made jokes. I have an EGD tomorro...

I was standing over the stove earlier, with a couple pots going, and I was hotter than hell. I had forgotten that we shut the AC off last night. Holy crap. That's a mistake you don't want to make in August. It was a labor intensive meal for we got out of it: two itty bitty servings of low-fat beef stroganoff. Uff da. I got the new David Sedaris book from the library today. It's just what I'm in the mood to read after that dark memoir. Just checked the weather and it looks all the rain is going east and west of us. We just get the gray skies and oppressive humidity.

I thought about pulling weeds today because they had seriously taken over everything. They were taller than most of the plants and were encroaching on the sidewalk. It was so humid that I tried to weasel out of it but Regis convinced me that it would be profitable to get it done. So out I went about 11, toting my garden hopper and my gloves. At 3:30 I came in feeling like I had been trudging through the jungle carrying a backpack full of bowling balls. I was filthy and tired and more than a little cranky. But I had four bags full of debris and I had mowed most of the front yard to boot. A good job done. We have this tiny battery operated lawn mower. It has a deck about 12 inches wide (I might be exaggerating) and you can easily carry on a conversation while it runs. I love it because it starts with the push of a button. Of course, your lawn looks like crap because you can't have all this and get a nice sharp cut, too. Turns out, we don't care. We don't edge, we don't fe...

I've always bought roasted peppers in a jar even though I knew there was a different way to do it. I'm making three-bean chili tomorrow and needed the peppers roasted so while Regis cooked chicken, we put four peppers on the grill and roasted them. So easy and so good smelling. The whole house smelled like delicious peppers. The skins come right off when you put them in a paper bag for a while then rinse them under cold water. Most of the pepper should be charred for this to work. Tomorrow was supposed to be my yard work day but it looks like rain, Miles. There is a big line of storms right across the border in the Dakotas. Dang if I have to put the lawn mowing off one more day. We picked one red tomato and a handful of yellow pear (heritage) tomatoes off our giant vines today. I'm too irresponsible a gardener to grow vegetables so we're lucky these are hardy and self-maintaining. I swear the plants are five feet tall. They probably would bear more fruit if I trimmed th...

I opened up my blog and looked at the baby ultrasound...all of a sudden, there it was. The little head, the dancing leg, and the tiny waving hand. I guess you just have to look at those in the right way...like those optical illusions. I came home between meetings and to give Kramer a ride home from his haircut appointment. I don't think he'd find the way on his own. I asked if he behaved and they said there were no notes, so apparently he did. He's been known to not behave. One time he grabbed some little white fluffy thing by the cheek and would not let go. It was mortifying. The new Rolling Stone came today. There's an article about Robert Downey, Jr. that I'm anxious to read but I'll wait until tonight. I hope it isn't one of those drug riddled exposes that he initiated. I read an article in the Trib yesterday about some guy who apparently was drug addled (drug addled and drug riddled) for decades and now he's come out with a book to finance the colle...

This is the ultrasound of the new and forthcoming Wessel-Fritsch baby. I don't see anything there but they tell us that the technician wielding the wand did. Maybe the X's mark the spot. Like buried treasure. Baby is due the end of February.

I love that Regis and his boys get such a kick out of the fair. We always go to the animal barns where there are lots of things to be amazed by which will remain nameless here. Jill and Retired Larry, you know whereof I speak. I think you've taken pictures of the same things. There was quite a gaggle of us: Bob and Emily and Ella, Regis and Amber, Regis and Teresa, and Rich. We ran into someone who recognized us from my blog. What a hoot, Sandy! We always travel the same route. Everyone parks at our house, we wander down and stop at the Jaycees beer tent, walk through the one building where they have everything from Mary Kay to the Jesus Church to Democrats, then to food row. Last night most of us ate at Doc E's BBQ. After that we go to the animal barns. I was very disappointed that they didn't have the petting zoo this year. Ella still liked the roosters, the goats, and the sheep. This year we walked through the games of chance which seemed bigger and fancier back in the o...

I don't like to write about things on my blog that are too personal and I think it mostly consists of information, observations, and weird rants. I've been thinking about something, though, and don't know how to completely avoid it here...or if I should. Anybody who knows me, knows that I've struggled with my weight all my life. Right there: I don't like to talk about it but realistically, it should not be a surprise to anyone. So there it is, in print. I've tried a billion diets and I'm pretty good at losing weight, I just can't maintain it for more than 24 hours. When Regis started going to the Mayo Clinic in April, I saw lots of people, not much older than me, who were starting to break down and had to use walkers and scooters and I decided I didn't want that to happen to me. It was time to either find peace with being overweight or time to do something finally to resolve it. I made an appointment with Dr. Ruth (not the sex doctor) and talked to h...

We sat outside for a while after work but between the lawn mowers and the tractor pull, it was unpleasant so we came in and sat on the relatively quiet porch. Regis seems to be feeling a little better each day. He took the dog for a walk tonight and the dog loved it. Ha! Another update this weekend. I have yard work to do uff da. The weeds have taken over the garden and the grass is almost knee-high. Well, not quite.

This is Bill the Cat from the Bloom County, Outland, and Opus cartoon strips. If you aren't familiar, you should check it out online. The next paragraph is plagiarized from Wikipedia. I don't know if the links work or not. If they don't, go there yourself. Ha! Bill the Cat is a large orange tabby. Originally introduced as a parody of the comic character Garfield , and saying little beyond his trademark responses, "Ack" and "Pbthhh", he has become something of a blank slate around which various plots have revolved. Numerous strips indicated that his persistent near- catatonic state was the result of drug use or brain damage resulting from once being legally dead and then revived after too long of a period. He's been a cult leader (" Bhagwan Bill"), televangelist ("Fundamentally Oral Bill"), perennial Presidential candidate (for the National Radical Meadow Party ), heavy metal rock star ("Wild Bill Catt"), and, in t...

I was at an all day meeting. My dad used to say that if you had a 90 minute meeting, it was probably 30 minutes of wasted time. After 6 hours with my ass on a chair designed for a fourth grader, I don't really care who drives the school van. No offense to the person who called the meeting, of course. Regis is still working in the home office and it's 5:15 so I poured myself a glass of wine and made a bowl of popcorn. It's like happy hour at my kitchen table. I see at the top of the blog page, there is a planned outage at 4 o'clock PDT. This is a math problem so I'm going to pretend I didn't see it. I signed out for a while and sat in the yard. It's beautiful outside but Regis started talking about mowing the lawn so I thought we should come in. I don't know why that bothers him today. We have weeds galore, sticks from the trees, and all kinds of other crap going on so why should long grass matter? I had dreams this morning that I remembered. They were a...

I can't get enough sleep lately. I wonder if I got shorted over the last week and I'm trying to catch up. Or I got bitten by the tsetse fly. (Note: If you are a middle school student, this is not scientific information.) The weather is not conducive to wakefulness either. It's hot and humid again today with tornado warnings periodically. I hate that. What happened to the breezes and the sunny skies? The county fair is this weekend and we like to walk down for the fair fare (corn dogs and onion rings) and to see the animals. If it's this warm and humid, I'll pass on that. On a whim, I checked google and the Nicollet County Fair has a website! John Gorka's right: everybody's got a website. They have the standard county fair grandstand attractions: tractor pull, demo derby, harness racing but no music. I have no other observations today. No movie or book reviews. No recipes. No clever repartee. It must be the dog days of summer because nobody is writing much ...

I don't know what I was thinking. I had a mind to make homemade pasta and I picked today to do it. I thought Peter would be here and Regis would be hungry enough to eat. I was wrong. I spent two hours in the kitchen and we hardly ate anything. Regis nearly nodded off in his plate so I tucked him into bed at 6 o'clock. I decided to add the Youtube video from which I learned to make pasta. I think the dude's name is Mike. I had a sticky note on the front of my Imperia cookbook that said 2 and 1/4 cups flour and 3 eggs but I couldn't remember where it came from. This is for my reference but if you want to make pasta, this is the best. It's nothing like the stuff that comes in a box. The weather report for Miles: 82°F RealFeel® 81°F Winds: East 10mph Humidity: 78% Dew Point: 74° F These numbers add up to yuck. It's the kind of weather that makes a person sweat like crazy even inside the house where the AC is...

I snatched this cute picture of Ella from Bob's site. She was here to visit last night and to make sure her Popop was feeling better. I've been doing the big sleep this weekend: going to bed early, sleeping late (6:00), taking naps, and being generally slothful the rest of the time. I spent a few hours cleaning and organizing yesterday morning and I was needful of a nap when that was over, let me tell you. I sleep more than Regis does. He feels pretty good but not as good as the first couple days. He's been taking it easy but has some discomfort in the area where they did all the cutting. I guess that's to be expected. My garden has seen a lot of bird activity this morning: orioles. cardinals, finches, chickadees, doves. I don't know if they know something we don't know, but they're all at the trough. They seem to like the seeds on flowers, or maybe it's bugs. I also suspect they like the ride they get when they land on one of the tall stems and it bends...

It's been a pretty quiet day on this ranch. We bought groceries this morning and Regis felt good enough to walk around the HyVee but felt less well the rest of the day than he did yesterday. His plumbing feels good. He said he can feel his pills go straight down the chute rather than waiting to swirl down the drain. He spent most of the afternoon in the lawn chair recharging his batteries. Regis took a percocet after lunch and I went immediately to sleep. Is it supposed to work that way? I made beef and barley soup for dinner but Bob and Emily offered to come over with Chinese. I'm not sure how much of that he can eat but it will be nice to have a visit. It's Tiffany's homecoming day today...23 years ago she came from Korea. I remember it like it was yesterday. She arrived the afternoon of August 2 and was awake all night. This is her the next day, very sleepy. I couldn't take my eyes off her so I was awake all night, too. What a miracle she has been. Back to my sou...

Regis and I are in our usual Friday night positions...lawn chairs in the front yard. We got home about 1:30 and the very first thing we did after petting the dog was to crawl into our own bed and take a nap. I think we could have slept all night but Young Regis and Amber stopped to say hello and we're glad they did. We had a comfortable trip home. We stopped at Culver's in Owatonna...doctor's orders to take a walk halfway home. We stopped at Cabella's too, but we weren't in the mood to buy ammunition today so it was a short stop. A line of bad storms moved through Minnesota yesterday morning and we saw the damage all the way home...lots of trees and branches down. We were in a room in the hospital and the nurse came in and closed the curtains. We laughed and asked her what good that would do in a bad storm. I remember glass and shingles embedded in the kitchen walls. A curtain won't stop that but it probably made me less nervous. I stayed with my cousin Steve, h...