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

When Regis and I returned from our family trip to Canby a few weeks ago, we went down to Patrick's for a cheeseburger. I was trying to put together in my mind, my thoughts about the wonderful people we had spent the weekend with, but especially the women. I looked down at my leopard shoes, a gift from my mom, and thought of the ruby slippers. There is no place like home! Then I started putting together pictures of all those women. Here is my first attempt. I know there are more and they will be added in the future but I had to get this out into the ether today. I feel fortunate to be a part of a long line, stretching in both directions, of strong women. Strong in body, strong in heart, strong in connections. Women who came before me, back to Andrina, Josie, and Elsie, to my mom and all my aunties and cousins, and now to my daughter and daughters-in-law, nieces, great nieces and grand-daughters. Women who know how to laugh, Vi in her colander hat, Aunt Jean dress...

I spent a few hours sitting in this window in Mankato yesterday morning. Regis had an appointment so he dropped me off at Tandem Bagels and I had a delicious toasted bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee. It was like being at a parade because groups of children from the day care on the corner walked by several times, hanging onto a long rope or in a giant stroller. They always looked up and waved. So cute. I read, I visited with people, I played a couple of iPad games, I wrote a couple emails, I sat and did nothing. We had errands to do around town later and look who I ran into in Walgreen's. Tiger Woods! (Actually it's a cardboard cut-out of Tiger Woods but looked very realistic and I don't think I looked too ridiculous posing with him.)  Regis has a couple weddings coming up in the next month. We always enjoy them as he seems to get the non-traditional, unconventional kind of weddings. He has done a couple of more traditional weddings, he is quite ad...

I found this in a middle of the night on an internet ramble. I thought it was apropos of my mental and physical healing these past months. Mary says this is a metaphor for life...the adversity we experience makes us stronger. My house and garden purge is also a metaphor for life. Sweep off those dusty old mental shelves and get rid of the ghosts. Fill in the empty spaces with something nicer. I spent about three hours in the garden yesterday, working on the area under the apple tree. I wouldn't say I got done but I made a lot of progress. All of the tall weeds and volunteer trees are gone. I need to dig out some of the lilies that need more sun. I don't have many sunny spots so I'll have to squeeze them in somewhere and move the hosta into the shade. It's a constant process. As I worked in the garden, I tried to be mindful (thinking of nothing but me and the weeds) but I did notice that about 3 out of 4 drivers who went past were on their cell phones. Holy shit, ...

I have been working and sorting and organizing everywhere in my house and yard. This was my Wednesday project last week. I was bent over in the garden for hours, trimming back the overgrown and mostly dead juniper ground cover. This is not a professional brick laying job but it will keep the plants off the sidewalk and the dirt in the garden. I have one area to do yet, under the apple tree. There are some sunny plants that need to be moved and some shady plants that can take their places. It's satisfying to work in the garden. Sort of zen like. I don't think about anything else but the cool shade and the beautiful plants. Yesterday, sitting on the patio swing, I went through a box of pictures. I tossed decades old Christmas photos. Everyone looked pretty gross in the 80's so it wasn't hard. I have a very small pile to keep, a small pile for Tiffany and Peter to look through, and a whole bunch went in the trash. I also have about six boxes on th...

This week, my friend Cindy lost her mom. Emily, our daughter-in-law, lost her father. Today is the birthday of my youngest brother Steve who died in January. On July 17th, Jill and I both remembered...her mom died that day and my dad died that day in different years. My nephew Caleb and his wife Kelsey are waiting for their baby girl to come into the world. A few weeks ago, Joanne and I went to visit Finnegan James, the new baby boy of Kris and Jen. Lots of comings and goings in life. Ella and Alex like to think their grandpa is in heaven, cavorting around like a young man. Who knows. Maybe he is. Well, it's noon and I'm still sitting here in my pajamas drinking coffee. I was somewhat productive, though, as I spent about an hour looking back through (and gathering) pictures of the women in my family. It occurred to me at the reunion this past weekend, that I have a long line of strong women who came before me and many who are coming after me. I'll do a better job of o...

I pedal as fast as I can most days. I never sleep during the day anymore and I am busy all the time. I am intent on cleaning out cupboards and drawers and closets and have a giant pile in the living room that is going away soon. Some things get set down and then I peruse them for a day or two, wondering if I will miss that item. Currently, the bread machine is on the chopping block. Today, Ella and Alex came to spend the day because their Grandpa Wessel passed away and their Mama had to go to help with arrangements. We had a fine time. Alex and PopPop went to the barber, both kids went to the dog park, we had a tea party on the floor, played in the pool, and ate popsicles. Whew. I continue to do things that have been put off for 9 months. I had an eye exam the other day and will have cataract surgery scheduled sometime in August. I have a follow-up oncology appointment the end of August...the whole deal...mammogram, blood work, research nurse, oncologist. A whole day's worth. ...

Trying to figure out... I put the slide show in last night, then tried to figure out where to start writing once I added the html. That's what the first line means. We had a grand time. Beautiful weather, lots of laughing and stories, lots of connecting in new ways, fun to see the four kids play so well together, enjoyed the new people in the family (Carlos, April, Brookline, and Nathan). Good food, good cold beer, fun lawn games. Some tears at the end. Trying to put myself back together today after the weekend of revelry. Going to exercise in a while, eating healthier today, and picking up the house. Who makes this mess while we're gone?

I started sorting in my house this week. Yesterday, I filled box after box with things I haven't used in years. I can't usually do it in one fell swoop because a few things, I have to look at for a while to decide if it really is time for it to go. It's a messy process, too, because I'm random and jump from cupboard to cupboard as I think of things. This is my Grandma Elsie's meat grinder. I couldn't even guess how old it is...but old. The original directions are still there. I have used it once in all the years I've had it...when Regis and I made his mom's recipe for perogies, a Polish meat pie. We made the mistake of doubling the recipe. It requires a lot of cooking, grinding, boiling, and frying. My God. It almost killed me. I think it was a 12-hour project. I posted a picture of it on Facebook and my friend, Pam, said she would love to have it. I have always known this about myself. I fill my cupboards and closets with stuff I just ke...

We made stuffed peppers on the grill last night. Poblanos, Annaheims, and banana peppers stuffed with Italian sausage, sauteed red peppers and onions, and provolone cheese. If the zombies were at the door, this would be my last meal. That's grilled romaine on the NE corner of the plate. It's our new favorite salad of the summer. Yesterday was a quiet one around our hacienda. Regis took Gus to the dog park a couple times for short periods. He comes home and jumps right into his pool and spends ten minutes just lapping at the water. We took a drive to Mankato to pick up a RX and then spent a lot of time on the patio. Kemmie and Joanne came over to visit for a while. It's the nice thing about sitting right in the front yard. I'm not feeling too ambitious today. I might try and get the 4th of July holiday stuff put away but I'm making no promises. Halloween is my goal. I never mix two holidays...on purpose. I have been known to inadvertently miss a Christmas orna...

The milestones at the end of cancer treatment are multiplying so fast I can hardly keep track, although of course, I will try. Wearing necklaces again. I haven't worn a necklace since my biopsy in November. It took too much energy and there was always the danger of it banging against an incision or the port. Menu making and cooking Wavy hair! Rode my bike a couple times Back to exercise...dogged it since April...no energy. Sandals with heels Answering the phone most days Down to one small bandage...no port, no drain. Only two incisions and four tiny tattoos as reminders. Thinking about getting a pedicure No oncology appointments for two months! Getting a few things done...framed my found pink paper, unpacked some dishes I had stashed away last fall, and started organizing and returning things people brought me...books, plastic containers, scarves, and hats. Down to one cancer med: Ameridex. No nausea drugs, no pain killers, no antibiotic salve. And the list is growin...

Regis and I are going to be the KMSU programmers for the day so I am up early (4 am) which is way too early even to be on the radio. I feel like I have sand in my eyes. Ella and Alex were here yesterday afternoon. We took Ella to gymnastics and as he goofed around, Alex asked me how babies get out of the mom's tummy. He wasn't satisfied with the "special way" story and demanded that I tell him or he would go jump on the trampoline. I said that sounded like a dilemma for mom and dad. They get the tough questions...I just get to read stories and pass out popsicles. Alex and Elliot are both stumped by the fact that their Nana can't help them with video games and identification of Star Wars characters in fruit snacks. I saw Star Wars, but almost 35 years ago, and I couldn't tell Darth Vader from Yoda on a good day much less in a small purple lump of sugar. Alex wanted me to turn on a movie and I had to say, no we couldn't do that because I don...

I get a kick out of looking at the stats for my blog. My all time most popular post was this one, the party what started out as jumpin' around . I have no idea in all the world why that would be. More than five hundred people have read it...maybe because I have a couple of Gary Larson cartoons in it. The second most popular is one where I wrote about a Rick Springfield concert in Rochester and mullets with a bit of a derogatory tone. No disrespect to the people who love him but it's my blog and I get to write my opinions. You want to write about how much you love Rick Springfield, get your own blog. Haha! Regis has a thing on his computer I call Pauline. It's probably an app. It's like Siri. I have no idea how this works but he talks to her and sometimes gets very frustrated with her and says things that irritate her. She says she needs to talk to his mother. I love this story about Al Pacino and Siri . Yes, I can see this happening. According to a new report, th...

I love to assign meaning to things. Butterflies, birds, pieces of paper I find on the boulevard. So this morning while the thunder rumbled and the lightning flashed, I shopped on Etsy for a few things. The St. Therese medal is from France circa 1920. (Notice it is on sale.) I'm hoping it's small enough to attach to my silver bracelet. On the back, it says in French, I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth. I wish it said I want to spend my heaven having fun on earth but I suppose those would not be the words of a saint. The angel wing is from a woman in Oregon who supplied me with my triple moon goddess and my spiral heart. I love her tiny sterling charms. The other night, I tossed a shirt onto a pile of clothes on top of my jewelry chest and the whole mess went to the floor. I looked at it in wonder. This is how I am so I don't know why I was surprised but in the words of my friend, Karen, I don't remember making such a goddam mess. Yesterda...

I've been a borderline insomniac for years...since I started what Archie Bunker called the change. I was used to waking up at 2 or 3 am and not going back to sleep. This was a bitch when I had to go to school. By 9 o'clock I felt like I had put in a full day. This week I have been sleeping like this bear. I go to sleep at 9 pm and wake up at 8 am, stumbling around like I am still half asleep. I was always one to pop my eyes open and jump out of bed. Now  I lie there blinking and stretching. I still have a wakeful period in the middle of the night, usually 3-4 but I go back to a deep sleep. Now, wasn't that interesting? If you only want timely and informative breaking news, you have to go somewhere else. This blog is called "spellbound..." by my own self. I am nothing if not reflective. Regis woke me up at 8 this morning to tell me that Jan was coming up the sidewalk to clean for us. I lumbered out of bed toward the coffee pot. Then Reggie came in with his...

One of the things I love about blog writing is that it's fun to read back to days in the past. This morning I was looking for a picture I knew I had taken in June. I couldn't find it by searching so I just went through the posts. I found the post for June 4   which I titled "getting my shit in one seabag" and concluded it was not happening. I had about two weeks worth of treatments to go and I was passing through the doldrums. It made me realize how far I've come in a month. I asked Regis yesterday if he could appreciate how much better I feel each day. He said he could. Ahh...life can be so good. I worked in my garden yesterday afternoon. In the past four years, I have pretty much let everything grow. Phlox, false sunflowers, artemsia, and sedum. I have been ruthless in getting rid of things that aren't thriving in the shade. I had two bags of mulch that I spread under the hosta and it looks beautiful. I found some great yard art hidden beneath the overgr...

My doctors at Mayo are doing what they can to heal my body and now I am working to heal my mind and my emotions. I had a profound experience today. About two weeks ago I started seeing a therapist with whom I connected right away. She had a ginko leaf framed in her office and I love ginko leaves. I thought it was a sign. This week, I started exercising and meditating again. Both help me feel calm. The weather was so beautiful today that I packed up my exercise bag and the book for Karen and walked downtown to the PO, not listening to my iPod or looking at my phone but being silent and trying to pay attention to each flower and each bird's song. After my gentle exercise session, I started the walk home. As I walked down Broadway, I looked on the boulevard and there in the grass, lay this piece of pink paper. I see lots of junk when I walk so usually don't pay attention. Old phone bills are not that interesting. But this looked unaltered by the rain and winds we've ha...

Don't be alarmed. There are not real snowflakes in July. I was waiting for an appointment yesterday morning and picked up a book on the table in front of me. It was called The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty . The pictures were amazing and after trying to quickly copy this quote by Albert Einstein, I scanned the bar code with my phone and ordered it on Amazon. I was so proud of my technical suaveness but when I told Regis he said, "Welcome to the 21st century." Haha. Finding the book there was another sign that I was in the place I needed to be. We were doing our usual patio sit late yesterday afternoon in the heat and bug infested front yard. We enjoy it anyway. We miss the sun so much in the winter so we made a pledge to go out for a while each day. I was sitting on the swing and Gus was in the grass behind me, chewing on something. He likes to pick up sticks and chew them to shreds under the tree so I wasn't concerned. Until I turned aroun...

 I love starting my morning with a cup of this delicious coffee. Bob gave it to his dad for Father's Day and I love it. It's part of a subscription coffee thing and I tried to buy more but they deal in small lots so the answer was nada. Too bad. We've had a splendid long weekend with lots of patio time. Even when it's very hot, we've had a nice breeze. The bugs get bad as the evening goes on but we aren't much for staying up after dark anyway. The plant on the right is a bay laurel. It would grow to ten feet tall if we lived in a milder climate. I'll have to bring it indoors in the fall. I'd like to bring in a small pot of herbs because the love the flavors. We have so little sunlight in the winter that it's kind of a lost cause but I might try it anyway. Got side-tracked by grow lights. Gus loves to chase his tennis ball on the patio. If we fill up the little pink pool, he will play in there got a long time, getting the ba...

So much has gone by in the past few days that I have had no time to archive my observations and now I can't remember most of them. Parade. Party at Bob's. Joanne came for steaks on the grill. Fell asleep before the fireworks. Worked in the garden. Sat on the patio. Went out for dinner to celebrate Regis's birthday. Terrible night's sleep. That's about it in a nutshell. Here's a slideshow of the photos: So, moving on from there. Sleeping last night was a bitch until about 5 o'clock this morning. Then I slept deeply until 9:30. Maybe I am becoming nocturnal. I've started the awful habit of playing games on my iPad which can be fun but is mostly irritating. I'm about at the point where I just want to delete them all. They are addicting and time-sucking and money grubbing although I refuse to pay for more lives or more trinkets or whatever it is they sell. Regis is celebrating his 61st birthday this weekend. He didn't want to have a big p...

Regis took this picture in 2009 but it's one of my favorites. If you're not from here, this is on Minnesota Avenue looking north toward the Nicollet County court house. I think the American Legion fellows put them up for every patriotic holiday. Beautiful. Tomorrow is the big parade. I was tempted to skip it this year because last year, the temperature was in the pizza oven range. Some dumb asses brought their big, black dogs which is another story (rant) which I will skip for the moment. I have a long list of cranky comments about parades but I suppose that's to be expected when you put that many humans in such close contact. Mostly, I love them and this one is great. I usually shed a tear or two when the bands go past. So, I have convinced myself to attend because I'd be sad later if I missed it. Regis and the neighbors have figured out a solution to the mosquitoes. It's a Cutter product and it is supposed to be pet and human friendly. Oh, sure. I'...

Happy 83rd birthday (yesterday) to my fabulous Mom. We sent a package with some of life's essentials...chocolate, some poo pah colorful thing with no real purpose, and a wind sock for the 4th of July. The next picture is Mom as a little kid. We went to the grocery store early in the morning yesterday, armed with our own bags and our meticulous list. I was the cart pusher and the picker. Regis was the coupon king and the scratcher-offer of the list. We made good time and avoided the crowds who come out on the first of the month and on Mondays to get the senior discount. Oh, my freaking word, you should have seen the pop stacked up at the HyVee. Pallets and mountains of it. Every kind: sugar free, caffeine free, double caffeine, sugar free and caffeine free. This must be the biggest pop drinking holiday of the year. It was amazing and a bit scary. I was afraid of getting run over by the pop forklift as I made my way to the dairy section. I missed my siesta yeste...