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

Well, the old ticker is going to turn over to zero tomorrow. It's finally....drum roll....my last day. My family and friends and regular readers are probably breathing a huge sigh of relief. Oh, thank God. Rolling their eyes. Finally this period of dramatic and emotional self-flagellation can end. That's flagellation, not flatulence. Now, that's funny. I tell you, retiring is hard on a guy. Hard on the liver and the head and the heart. Lots of parties. Lots of hugs and cards and congratulations. It's like I graduated from something. Huge sigh of relief. My desk is clean. The list is there with everything crossed off. My office is empty save for a couple coffee cups and a plant. Friday, I drag my office chair and a small box of stuff into my River Rock office. I won't take as much because I don't plan to be there for 36 years, but then again, you never know. I have longevity in my genes. So, see you on the other side. Hope I have shared enough but not too...

Regis has a reputation for dreaming interesting stories. My dreams are amorphous blobs and his are complete plots containing characters with names. Last night, he dreamed that he came home to find spots of blood on the floor. Even though they couldn't find my body, they convicted him of murder. He was sentenced to hard labor on a wagon train, the captain of which was Chuck Norris. These were not your ordinary Conestoga wagons but they had bright advertising on the sides for things like Hormel meats, Delta Airways, Kelloggs, Quaker Oats, and Swiss Army. Try to google an image like that. All along the trail he found things that I had left, like a back deposit slip or a note but he never did find me. Analyze that. I keep telling him if he would just write this weird stuff down, some day it could morph into a book or a movie.

When I started the ticker on my iGoogle homepage, it was in the triple digits. Now, it's down to two days and nine hours. It's been a busy week. Yesterday, Ella and I took the afternoon and went shopping at the consignment shop. Regis and I had been by there Saturday and I decided I loved a dress in the window. It looks kind of like this: I called it a rumba dress but I found the picture on google when  I used flamenco dress to search. It's quite the number. Of course, I will have to dowdy it up a little with some kind of jacket because I don't do bare arms. The dress only cost me twenty bucks and I figure you can indulge yourself when you're spending that kind of dough. Ella says it needs red high heels. We had lunch at a special place and then came back here to play. Ella got a dress at the shop, too, so we trimmed the hem, fitted it with paper clips, and she looked lovely. I wish we had taken some pictures but we didn't. Next time. Today will be busy...

Packing up my office at school. Peter and I went out Sunday and loaded them up...not very many! That's my dad's jelly bean machine. A few more things to go... Cousin Deb sent a beautiful 4th of July card that she made. It has a picture of her dad and three of his brothers in their military uniforms. I found a great frame for it. The 4th of July table. Ah, I love holidays. We found this funky little table at the thrift store on Saturday. We wanted something for a computer so we could listen to Pandora radio outside. Turns out we don't need it for that but Regis can use it by his chair. I found this great little mug and a long black skirt for three dollars. My kind of shopping. 4th of July in the kitchen. Stuffed peppers that took your breath away. Nice to have Peter here for dinner. Regis...great grill master.

We started the evening at Tom and Betty's house where we cooked little pieces of steak, chicken, and shrimp on this little unit. What a nice time sitting around the table, everybody cooking and munching and drinking wine. Betty is going to Texas for a month to stay with her sister so this was a party to say travel safely and see you soon. We'll take care of Tom in her absence. Then we headed off to the Coffee Hag to see the Erickson's music. Bethany is the front manager at River Rock and there were lots of coffee shop folks there. A good time. No flies on us. We march down the street to the Wine Cafe to hear this band, recommended by Rick at the Halloween joint. I loved them! In my next life, I will play the accordion! As much as we enjoyed this band, we don't like to be 15 miles from home late on a Saturday night so Regis lured me back to town to hear the Durty Nellys at Patrick's where I danced the night away with a young woman from Brazil named Josie. ...

I worked hard this morning, although the tendency is to put things in the mail instead of going to real meetings. I had lunch with an old friend sitting right on Minnesota Avenue. I shopped for baby gifts and birthday gifts and thank you gifts and things that I have not been able to get my head around for months. A good sign, I think. Four days to go. Regis and I went to put gas in my car. He checked his records and two years ago, on July 2nd, gas was about $2.50 a gallon. Dang. Today it cost 60 dollars to fill it up. Dang. We stopped to buy beer and a cheap bottle of wine. I like cheap wine, really. It looks like it's clouding up again. I'm afraid to look. The sunshine today was so nice. Vickie is coming to sit on the patio and drink wine and eat smoked sausage and peppers on the grill. A grand way to end the week. The damn state government is talking about shutting down on July 1st which will mess with so many people. I can't believe we pay them to play th...

I made it through the afternoon of spreadsheets and it actually made a lot more sense than the tutorial. A person nit-picking their household budget to that degree was more than I could comprehend but using it to enter recipes and figure the cost of goods made sense. And it's not so much math as it is something else. I almost lost my mind once or twice but I figure this must be good for plumping up the old brain cells and fending off dementia. I'm going to exercise this morning so I'm up at 4 a.m. drinking coffee and waiting for the Pulse to open. I love sleeping with the window open and hearing the birds start up around this time. Hey, we're expecting a high 70 degree day and sunshine! What is that big yellow ball in the sky? Make it a story worthy weekend!

I haven’t written since Monday morning. It’s been a busy week again. Things are winding down and for that, I am grateful. I have my last training session at River Rock this afternoon and I swear, there are sparks coming off my head from all the new things I have learned. Yesterday afternoon, I had to do a tutorial on Excel because one of my responsibilities is some tracking of costs and such. If you know me at all, you know that numbers do not lie on the page for me like words and letters do. They drift up off the paper and float around in the air like dust mites. So, part of what cracked me up about this tutorial is that the spreadsheet example was of someone’s household budget. They added up the cost of every dollar they spent. Ha! Really? I made it about ¾ of the way through the first one before I had to have a glass of wine. I managed to finish it and it even kind of made sense but when I got in the middle of the second one and they were talking about real or absolute something...

We had a wonderful Patriarch's Day barbecue. I ran out of time and had to shorten the menu a tad. We had checken legs with a southwest marinade, chicken thighs with a barbecue rub, turkey sliders with chipotle aioli, beef sliders, fruit salad, beans, and smores. The weather was nice and we sat on the patio from beginning to end. Here's a link to the pictures. Patriarch's Day Photos And here is my favorite: We all donned aprons...even the men and children. It was a hoot. Tom and Betty were there for the whole party but left before this opportunity. Bet they're sorry they missed it! I was tired by the end of it, having made 85 trips in and out of the house for this and that...and then taking this and that back into the house. A good time was had by all and that's the point of it. A wonderful day.

Ed and Gayle picked us up last night about 5 o'clock. We meant to go out for dinner but we only made it for drinks. I guess we did have an appetizer or two at Patrick's. It was a hoot of an evening that ended in a downpour about 11 o'clock. Ed had to run down the street to get the car to tote us home. We met some neighbors, Renee and Wayne, and of course, invited them for a barbecue.   I wore these leggings with my denim skirt. They are wild, eh? I have grown to love wild tights and leggings because...well, life is too short to not appreciate the weird stuff. I have a wardrobe of tights and leggings: leopard print, python, sunflowers, fishnets, and lots of colors. What the hell. I took the meat for tomorrow out of the freezer and that could be the extent of what I do today. I worked hard this week and deserve to have a day of rest. I'm taking Regis out for a special dinner tonight. We're not sure where we're going because we like the servers better at one...

We are really good at fun. Really good. Most weeks, by about Wednesday, we are plotting what we will do on the weekend for fun. We are not planning to clean the garage or take the yard waste to the compost site or to rip the carpet out of the living room although all of those things should be done. They will have to happen (and this is my new and favorite phrase) organically. And they will not be happening this weekend. In the summer when many people do these kinds of things, we think instead it is better to take road trips to restaurants and bars in the area we have heard about but never visited. We think instead it is better to sit on the patio and watch the birds. Instead it is better to sit in the porch and listen to music. In the winter when the above activities are off the list of things we enjoy, we still don't seem to make those chores happen because we are busy sitting in front of our faux fireplace, watching the birds through the living room window, and finding li...

I stayed in bed until 3:30 but I was awake for a while. I sleep well but not for very long. I would give anything some days to sleep late. I remember how good it felt. I love the early mornings, though. To be awake before light is a special pleasure. Especially now when it gets light as I sit here with my coffee before going to exercise. So nice to watch the eastern sky turn pink. My eyes seem back to normal and my jaw feels better. I survived the trauma of the day but it was good to finally sit down with a glass of wine at the end of it and visit with Regis. He had a very funny youtube video to show me. It's an oral reading (by Samuel L. Jackson) of a picture book made for adults about trying to get a little kid to sleep. I laughed out loud because if you have ever done it, you remember clearly how frustrating it is. The language is not kid-friendly and even if you are a grown-up but are sensitive to cussing, it's not for you. I, of course, am not sensitive to cussing, mos...

Just a note. I changed my mind and decided on the glasses with the blue inside the frame. Regis told me I would look like Harry Carey in the others.

I felt a rough spot on one of my back teeth for a couple weeks and since I am coming to the end of my dental insurance (even though it's crappy insurance) I thought I better get it checked. Sure, I am so naive that I think they can just file the rough spot and I will be good to go. Not so. An hour later, I have a temporary crown and a numb face. I had the nurse look up when my last dental work was and it was 1996. She said I should be very happy about that and I guess I am but it makes me a nervous patient. She offered me laughing gas and I had a terrible time deciding. I had to tell her the story of my first endoscopy which involved me almost choking to death because they convinced me to do it without sedation. In the end, I declined the laughing gas even though she said it's like having a few drinks without the hangover. Ha! I made it through without crying. Regis did not have to take time off from his job to hold my hand. I survived. My next appointment is June 30th,...

Dancing is one of those things I never did until just the last year. I was too self-conscious to get up in front of people and move around. Now, I love dancing even though I don't think I have acquired any sense or rhythm as my affection has grown. Friday night we had dinner at Cedars Grille then went to the Redmen to listen to the Lost Walleyes which are really three members of City Mouse, a band from my youth. I listened to City Mouse when they played at the Comfy in Mankato. It's a bar that's been gone for so long, most people don't even remember it. The men wouldn't dance, but Nikki, Vickie, and I danced a lot. Just us three in front of the band. Ah, hell. It was fun. Actually I do better when nobody tries to dance with me. I am not very coordinated and it's hard to move with someone else. I attribute this to the fact that I was tall in high school and when we danced in PE (Honest to God, we did.) and the ratio of boys to girls was uneven, I had to be th...

What a great time it was!

Regis is famous for his strange and detailed dreams. The other night he had a dream about me. I had been behaving in a way that aroused suspicion. He decided to find out what I was up to so he followed me down Third Street but lost me when we got close to downtown. When he saw me again, on Nassau Street, I was riding one of these. I was embarrassed to tell him that part of my new job included delivering cookies on this cycle so I kept it a secret. Good grief. I wonder what in the world spawned that dream. It is a cool bike, though. We went out for dinner at the Cedars Grille last night with some friends. Scott had prime rib and announced suddenly, "Hey, there's a ghost on my meat!" It's a little blob of sour cream with pepper flake eyes but it sure looks like a ghost. Somebody said it's a Konsbruck Hotel ghost. Ha! We went over to the Redmen after dinner for some dancing to the Lost Walleyes. It was a fun evening. I have a cooler packed for the Ambas...

I started my training at River Rock this week. It's been a whirlwind of balancing both jobs, wrapping up my district job, getting my head around the new job details, and managing the usual stuff at home. It's not easy to get an old head to learn all these new things. Monday I learned a lot of stuff about banking. Anybody who knows me, knows that numbers are not my thing. I can easily add three simple numbers twice and get a different answer each time. Numbers are random to me so the calculator, while it is a great tool, doesn't help if the numbers don't make sense to you. La dee da. This is something I will have to grapple with as we go along. I learned to do dishes the River Rock way. It's a zen like job for me now. Faced with a huge pile of dishes, you just do them methodically one by one until they are done. It's the hospitality support part of my job. I met some of the regular customers who seem to feel like this place is part of their lives, not just ...

I woke up at 4 and shut the alarm off so I could go back to sleep, which of course damn it, I could not do. So here I sit on the couch at 5 a.m. trying to find the gumption, and not being very successful, to go exercise. A morning begun so abruptly is not good. I think I'll drink coffee for fifteen minutes and then go. Regis found a book for me so I have a new book on my kindle but I wish I had asked him for the moth podcasts instead. They are my absolute favorites. True stories told live online without notes. Yesterday I started one told by a woman who is comparing the Evangelical religion of her youth to Mary Kay sales. It was a riot. Many times, they are funny. Like the one about the guy who gets his pants stolen by a goanna in Australia. Many times they are poignant and make me gasp like the one about the man who was a successful comedian by night and a dad with a dying daughter by day. I can't exercise in the morning tomorrow because I am going in to River Rock at 6 ...

I did a walk-through with Alli. It was fun to see the whole operation from basement all the way through the kitchen and barista area. So much to learn. I told Alli I had no idea espresso was so complex. When you're on the other side of the counter, all you hear is "whoosh!" and your drink is ready. I knew there were a lot of motions, but I'm anxious to see more of that. Then we did the deposit. I felt like a complete moron...I had to take notes. I didn't want to tell her that numbers float up off the paper and drift around my head...but they do. I got it all straight for three days so maybe there is hope. I wore an apron to do dishes but I picked one of theirs so I didn't get my new one dirty. Oh, good grief. I can hear it now. Today, I'll take one of the less-fancy ones. I learned a lot about how important it is to them to buy eco-friendly products, to use local as much as possible, to use seasonal produce, and to be creative. It's admirable. ...

Ironic that we modeled all these great cooking aprons, then went to Patrick's for dinner. Ah, well. I went to work out this morning after almost a week off...slothful, I am. I am drinking a cup of coffee and then have to get to my new job by 7:30! I'm so excited. I haven't had a new job in more than 30 years. Ha! Old dog... Storms today so I will be lingering by the cooler in the basement a lot. I'll have to explain about my fear of storms. I'll write when I get home!