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

Yesterday morning was so lovely that even though I gathered up my grocery bags, my list, and my intentions to shop...I never made it. I went for a walk on the Gustavus campus instead, then went up by the hospital to look at the wild flowers, and then to Whiskey River for breakfast and bird viewing. The flower beds at Gustavus are lovely. The cannas there are blooming already and are such vibrant colors. They look like tropical birds. By following a couple of Facebook photo sharing sites, I have gotten interested in editing. The picture below is the original, probably not set up very well, but the next two are edited versions. This is my view of the valley as I walked near the hospital. The minute I opened the car door, I could smell the prairie grass, the warm sun, and that earthy smell you get in the heat of summer. I was awake too early this morning. As we get older, different things disturb our sleep. For Regis, it is light. If I turn on my iPad t...

So many things to celebrate this weekend! Elliot spent a few days here this week and we had a lot of fun. He got to play with his cousin, Alex several times, we spent time with my old friends, and on Saturday, we celebrated Patriarch's Day. We call it Patriarch's Day because we have men in our circle who might be the father, but who are important in our lives. We honor them all. April had to work so Peter and Zoey came to the party. Peter had taken Zoey to Art Splash in Mankato and waited in line for an hour in the hot sun so she could get her face painted like Hello Kitty. Awwww...so sweet. We had a small problem in the kitchen when the pork juice cooked over and created a large greasy cloud of smoke. Regis took a beer and a cigar and headed for the patio. Smart man. Tom and Betty to the rescue...they got the pork shifted to another pan, and cleaned up most of the mess.  After dark last night, Regis and I went outside and saw this spectacular sight. We d...

Here I am with five of my high school friends. One still lives in Canby, one lives in Omaha, two live in the Twin Cities area, and I am in St. Peter. We try to get together every summer, usually at someone's home. I don't have enough room to host the even at my house, but I invited them to town and said I would create the agenda. Since we are all retired, it's a pretty loose agenda. Here we are on the patio at Lone Star where we started with lunch. Left to right: Kathy, Rita, Teresa, Cindy, Peggy, Brenda. After lunch, we headed to Chankaska Creek Vineyards for some gabbing, some wine, and some cheese. We had a wonderful time. Regis was driving the transit so he picked the girls up at the hotel and toted them out to the winery. They took the transit back to town about 6. Here we are inside at the winery. Much laughing, many stories, good friends. We always share family photos and updates on classmates we know about or have seen in the past year. We...

I follow a couple of Facebook pages on nature in Minnesota. Many of the photographers are able to capture pictures of tine things very close up. I'm learning how to do that without buying an expensive lens for our camera. The top insect is a crane fly and the bottom is a Monarch caterpillar. I also learned how to make the © symbol, as many of the real photographers do. I'm not sure if just saying something is copyright protected means it is necessarily so, but it was fun to learn. I really don't care if someone snatches my pictures anyway. We have been trying to enjoy the patio but as always this time of year, the bugs are waging a major campaign against us. We cooked on the grill the other night for the first time in a month. I think we're going to cook some brats made with  Yuengling   beer tonight. I'm using the Challah bread recipe to make buns. I hope that isn't a sacrilege.  Dan, the city forester, came to cut down our red maple the ...

Since I retired, I have had some difficulty deciding how to spend my time. I find something I think I love and then, it starts to feel like work and I don't enjoy it so much. I started at River Rock the day after I retired. That was great fun for a while but after a while, it became overwhelming. There was too much to do, too much to learn, too many responsibilities. I left when I was diagnosed with cancer and never went back. I volunteer at the historical society and I enjoy that a lot but the pressures of promoting their events is starting to wear on me. I woke up at 3 am, worried that I had forgotten something and sure enough I had. Sigh. I work at Lone Star and always enjoy once I am there but the idea of having to go somewhere and miss things I would like to do gets old. I told Mary one day I might be getting close to too old to work that hard. Sigh. Maybe I am just lazy. I've been very productive in the past few months, even at that. New door installed, new drive...

‎ 6/‎14/‎2015 My day today reminds me of the old song: Over the River and Through the Woods .   My neighbor called and wanted to know if I would like to go to church.  I eagerly said, "Yes".   You see I had not been anywhere for a week and I like to think I am a people person. I walked over to Linda's home and she had her car parked on her lawn.  We took a little-used road going through the woods; it was drivable but just barely.  It was what I would call a low-maintenance road.  We went north, east, south and finally west to get to my church.   We had coffee after church and were home by 11:00 a.m. You might ask why I could not drive myself and go to church on a city road. A crew of men is working on the road in front of my home.  They are replacing water pipes, sewer pipes and storm sewers.  They are also going to redo the road with new curb and gutters. They would have moved my car, but it would have ...

I think I am putting my creative energy into Facebook which is a ridiculous place to put it, I agree. It seems like things go on swimmingly and then Regis spends two weeks in the hospital or I get shingles. What the hell. Every time I think I would like some calm normalcy, I remind myself that this is normal. This is how life is. That handsome fellow in the photo is a dragonfly I found clinging to my screen one day. I follow a Facebook page devoted to dragonflies and someone there identified it as an immature something or other. Can't remember now. I review my blog stats. I like to do that every once in a while, just so I remember how much blah blah blah I have been putting out since I started this in October, 2006. 2,286 posts Almost 200,000 page views (I don't count my own anymore.) 20,00 page views from the Ukraine (Among other far flung places.) another post is the most popular of all time ( You can find it here . It's no masterpiece.) One of my persona...