feng shui

So, last night, I rearranged my living room.

It doesn't look terribly coordinated or spacially correct. And I realize it's not aesthetically pleasing. But I was able to take my unused kitchen table and turn it into a desk where I can have my computer and my genealogy stuff and have a nice view of the TV and all the windows.

headlined!

Our sister paper totally just got on Leno's headlines! (The one about STDs and the nurse named Ho. Poor woman. I saw that one right away.)

successful Saturday

When I went to the historical society today, I didn't expect to come away with much -- I went up unorganized and unsure what I even wanted to find.

But I came away with a few gems. One of them is an article from a newspaper about my step-great-great-great-great-grandmother. It's a pretty fun story, so I'll include some of it.

"The deceased was a remarkable woman: as mother, wife and in her profession. She seemed to be selected as a special instrument by providence to help suffering humanity. She was born in the village Gnadenheim, Russia, in 1826, February 17, as the first child in the third marriage of a very poor shoemaker living in a little adobe house at the end of the village. From her earliest childhood the extreme poverty of her father gave her a training in self denial and in trusting God as her friend and guide.

"Her mother died early leaving three younger brothers in the care of the half grown girl and giving her directions which served her as a guidance for the following seventy years of hard work and many sad experiences.Her father's undaunted mind never permitted any hindrances to discourage him in the pursuit and realizations of his plans. And when the desire developed in his breast to study medicine he found away to leave his wife and children in Russia and to travel to Prussia to take a course in a medical college of Danzig.

"After that his life was devoted to his chosen profession, and being unable to procure nurses for his patients in most critical conditions, he would often take his daughter Justina who was only a mere child of 10 years of age and leave her in care of the dying.Often she has told us how her father sent her at te age of 11 with perfect strangers 20 miles away from home with directions and medicines to the deathbed of the father or mother of a large family, telling her to trust in the Lord and to do her best.

"She was married the first time August 21, 1845, with Isaac Bargen and began conjugal life with nothing but a willing hand to work and the hope that the Father of all would take care of her and her husband. The first few years they resided in a dugout with a sod roof and oiled wrapping paper for window panes.

"Financially conditions changed when her father, Dr. D. Loewen, died, some 40 years ago and her skill as obstetrician became known and appreciated in a large territory of 60 villages. Day and night her services were in demand after that and there was no day on which she did not come in contact with some suffering sister. And how tenderly she could work for them those can testify who have come to her in their grief.

"In 1878 the whole family came from Russia to Mountain Lake and here she continued in her professional work till the number of those children whom she received at their arrival into this world went up to over 11,000. The last child she assisted into life was her own grand child, on September 19, 1904."

This is a lot like the view out my window! Leaves are a very cheery thing -- especially maple leaves. Maples are the standard trees in my life. I am quite thankful for the row of them that runs in front of my apartment.

It's been quite gorgeous out of late.

I have not posted a photo of my new car, namely because I do not have it. I do not have it namely because I can't decide what kind I want. All cars break.

Listening to people interview for jobs is quite discouraging. These people come in with qualifications and passions and eloquency.

Watched part of "Saved" that was on TV today. There's still just something about that movie that I crave. The characters (some) just aren't afraid to question. The filmmakers weren't afraid to point out what seems inconsistent with Christianity. Granted, their reasons for doing so may not have been consistent with my reasons for appreciating such.

I cleaned my apartment pretty thoroughly last weekend. It still has that clean, orderly feel to it five days later. Refreshing.

Last night I had several dreams. This is not unusual. What was unusual was that there was a theme: men.

One of them I met at the library. He was very nice. What either of us was doing at the library still isn't quite clear.

confuzzlement

Monty Python's 'Flying Circus' is on PBS ... in German with English subtitles. Curious.

Before that, I caught the tail end of 'All the President's Men.' It's a movie about the Watergate scandal that Washington Post reporters uncovered in the '70s. I've probably watched it almost a half-dozen times and still don't have the whole story straight. All reporters watch this movie.

Today was a bridal shower for a friend -- the kind of friend you like very much but haven't really ever spent one-on-one time with. You only hang out in groups. You met through mutual friends and just haven't ever come to the point where you just call each other up. We're also half-fourth cousins once removed.

The shower was very beautiful and it was a gorgeous afternoon for it, though a bit breezy. It was one of those moments you feel would be recorded if your life was a documentary -- a coming-of-age moment where you feel again how you're no longer a little girl. You're still all daughters to all the mothers also at the party, but you're daughters nearing having daughters of your own.

Milestone would be just the right word for it -- an event by which you mark the passage of time.

Then Megan and I came home and argued about what to do for the evening. We knew a film and mozarella sticks would be involved, but there were still those nit-picky details.

Well

All is well when watching Andrew Foyle on TV...

Just kidding. Sort of.
At work we all have our lists of celebrity crushes. Mine is still a bit short, having only Julian Ovenden on it. Most lists are allowed three.

Anyway.

It appears we won't be moving to the lovely house. We are having trouble getting out of our lousy leases.

The weather is not lousy. Monday at work we took a group "walk" in the afternoon; granted, we walked to Caribou and spent half the 20 minutes there. Sunday afternoon, the whole family was out back on my parents' little mostly-done deck in the sunshine. However many thousand square feet, but we're all in the same 20... What else is new.

My sister and I have agreed to schedule our Chicago train trip for July. We might go see 'Wicked'!

Sunday during church, I got up and left after the opening songs. It was not due to the slow, foreign, high-pitched songs or poor sound, which apparently my family attributed my departure to.

Instead, it was because of the background noise. Background noise can often frustrate me more than warranted. A baby cries, someone turns a page, someone jingles some keys; and I've already forgotten we're singing. At school, any whispering or such makes me so tense I nearly explode. Such was the case last night at tour guide class. I'm recognizing as I get older that this aversion is a little unusual.

I know my little cousin has been diagnosed with a sensory disorder related to autism; I also know one of my siblings has the same noise thing I do, though possibly more severe.

So, in the coming weeks, I'm hoping to learn a little more about sensory integration dysfunction, particularly how the occupational therapy used to treat it may or may not be able to help me. Though it's nowhere near severe, I'd say it's enough to make me avoid certain social situations, and that's just not necessary.

moving?

Maybe! To a house!
Just renting, though.
My sister and I went and took a tour of it on a whim last night. Since the house is also for sale, I wasn't sure it'd even be a viable option.

Pros:

• No smoke seeping through walls
• Our noise only around us
• Two-car garage, plus option of a pole shed
• Four bedrooms; kitchen, dining room, living room with hardwood floors; some sort of sunroom
• Really awesome gigantic deck out back
• Firepit
• Fireplace
• Property backs up to a creek
• Property is just outside of town, about 1/5 mile from our parents
• Property is also nearby the end of a major walking/biking trail that connects to town
• I could get newspaper subscriptions because we'd have a dropbox on the road

Cons:

• Space is not as 'divided' as we intended to find -- i.e. no possibility of unofficial subletting, sharing pretty much everything
• Only one bathroom, really; a second is in the scary basement
• Basement gets a little water sometimes, but, we would probably never go down there
• No dishwasher, but we also don't have dishwashers right now
• Really ... bold paint colors. But, we are allowed to repaint. One of the three of us is a licensed contractor with a painting business.

withdrawal

No. Really. Medical withdrawal. 70 percent sure.

Why withdrawal sucks:

• You get dizzy
• You get cranky because you're dizzy
• You get cranky because you can't stop the dizziness
• You get cranky about being cranky
• You're also sleepy
• You're cranky about biology
• The world keeps going even though you're tired
• The alternative to withdrawal is not withdrawing.
• 'The cure is worse than the disease.'

I had decided for a number of reasons to stop using my anti-depressant. One of the reasons being that the reasons I was depressed in the first place were more or less gone. I stopped taking a full week before I started feeling like crap. There's still a chance I'm actually just sick. But basically I'm darn irritable and not happy about it. And it feels like someone is blowing a fan through my brain waves to ward them off.

Also, I don't want to be forever using this stuff. It's maddening that what I am naturally is this. If I choose to add chemicals, I can be something else. But it's not natural.

out driving

One of my goals for the spring is to take lots of pictures. This is my first spring back in this area, and it seems it's only now that I've lived elsewhere (similar as it is) that I see the beauty of this region. Especially the history.

Part of seeing that beauty is getting to it. Like I did in Iowa, I enjoy driving. It's just too bad it wears on a car, eats gas, harms the environment, etc. But the last two Saturdays I've been able to take short trips.

Above and below are scenes from an old church I'd heard existed about 10 miles away. Saw last week that it's on the cover of a book we have at the office. A dear friend is getting married there this summer -- hope I'm invited.

A few notes about the region:

• As soon as you head east from here, you head into one of the hilliest regions of the state -- reminiscent of the river bluffs along the Mississippi.
• A fun thing about driving here -- even though I've lived here most of my life -- is that the roads are not predictable, not even close to the straight Iowa grid systems. It's a bit like the goofiness of Sioux City... but not so aggravating. Highway X goes south out of town ... for a mile. Then it goes straight east. For instance this church photographed. I knew it was out east toward a small village, but I wasn't sure which road off Highway X went to that village. It took four whimsical turns off the road I chose to very luckily arrive there.
• Because this area is somewhat more populated, you get the fun historical spots of Iowa, only more of them and not so far apart, and they're a few years older.
• Yay for hills, and trees, and a state park nearby.
• Yay for old barn and abandoned houses that haven't been torn down.
• Yay for creeks and bridges and villages.
• Yay for Car Talk, which is on the radio at a good driving hour.
• Boo for roads without shoulders, so that you can't pull over and take a photo very easily.
• Boo for poor transportation funding statewide, which means the roads are full of bumps and potholes.
• Yay for all the historic churches and schoolhouses still standing.
• Boo for a cloudy, cold April so far, even though we need the rain.
  

heartbroken

As the credits rolled, I was heartbroken -- it was not 1920, this was not rural Minnesota, I was not a pioneer with a thick accent, and there was no wheat to harvest. And the story was over.

Whoever wrote to go see "Sweet Land" -- you were right. It was gorgeous. I loved it as a Minnesotan, as the descendant of German and Norwegian immigrants, as a novice genealogist, as an admirer of the prairie and fields, as a lover of fiddle music.

It's probably not for everyone, though. It is not as Janette Oke as it sounds like it could be.

God only knows

Lately, I'm not sure quite what to think about God.

Well, there are many thoughts. They are not, however, communally coherent.

• God is not a feeling. God is a fact. My attitude toward him does not alter his existence.
• I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I believe the statements of the Apostles' Creed, etc. But do I love God? This sounds incredibly sacreligious, but, do I love Abraham Lincoln for doing what he did about slavery? Do I love George Washington and miscellaneous veterans for fighting for my freedom? I am thankful for them and grateful to them, would be in awe of them if I ever met them, respect them. Yes, what God has done for me is on a whole other playing field. But I categorize the crucifixion with that kind of fact -- in 1861, the Civil War started. In the early decades of A.D., Jesus died on the cross. Does this make any sense? I know I should love God.
• I do not love church as, again, I know I should. I do not love people, the human race, as a whole, as I should.
• The contemporary Christian church culture disturbs others, as well -- I was talking with a good friend this weekend and was surprised to learn she dislikes her megachurch, but it's the only one with a twenty-somethings group.
• I do not suffer. I avoid suffering. Suffering breaks me down. I do not suffer well.

the surprise party

My grandma has a birthday every St. Patrick's Day. This year, her kids decided to throw her a surprise party. This was the picture on the cake -- Grandma as a baby with her mom and brother. This is known as the picture -- as in the one everyone wants.

As Grandma lives in Madison, the party and the travels thereto ate up the vast majority of the weekend. I rode in the minivan with my parents and sibs five hours each way -- sadly, the van ride probably being the most pleasant part. It's very stressful to be cheerful in festive in a roomful of people you've never seen before.

Riding in the car on the trip through Wisconsin really was enjoyable -- I don't get to ride in a car all that much. If you've got to travel on I-90, Western Wisconsin is the stretch to see, what with the hills and bluffs and wooded areas. I wanted to take pictures all the time. I was, in fact, inspired to start a photo project this spring. Two, actually -- one is area cemeteries, and one is just plain the area.

And on the ride, I listened to the new Norah Jones CD. She has such a pretty voice.

'Twas the night before St. Patrick's Day

...when all through the house, not a dish or sock was clean, not even a blouse.

'Blouse' is on the do-not-use word list.

Tonight we shall eat our corned beef and cabbage. It is an organized effort whereby each member of the family must be consulted about a time they can come to partake. My mother, who assembles the meal each year, is not even remotely Irish. The rest of us probably are a smidgen. We were more Irish before I found my genealogical blunder in January.

I like corned beef. I also like the Reubens that result from its leftovers. My brother was so excited he volunteered to purchase the sauerkraut. (Now, is a Reuben German or Irish? Sauerkraut certainly does not seem to be Irish.)

Yesterday we were going so stir-crazy at work that we -- the editorial assistant and I -- decided to give the 'new' (two months) lady a tour of downtown. This consisted of making a bee-line for the assistant's favorite coffeeshop and quickly marching past everything else with a half-baked explanation. Tomorrow, one of them later said, we will need to make three coffee runs (asst. usually does one, yesterday two). It seems unusually dead with the reporter gone -- there are six cubicles, and she was in the middle row, and the other person in the middle is the sports guy who's never in 'til mid afternoon. So we're always standing up now, hollering over the walls to each other, bored and unmotivated. This will come up to bite us quite soon as we start trying to cover the extra beats.

Clouds again today.

brr!

It had gotten so warm that I turned my heat off. Now it is not so warm anymore. I had to turn the heat back on this morning for the one hour I'll be here.

I'm reading "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. Only a few pages in, but she writes beautifully -- offhand, I remember her in passing referring to people with "sad hips" at a funeral.

Brrrr.

The office is now one person emptier. It will be an adjustment. Hiring a new person is a big job, almost like interviewing for what child you are going to adopt to keep the other kids company. And if the kids don't like your choice ... well, things will be a little more difficult.

The Pontiac is still cursed.

oh, DST

This whole spring-forward thing isn't working out for me. Some days I wake up at what was 6:30, now 7:30, meaning that night I fall asleep at what was 9:30, now 10:30. Then the next morning I'll sleep 'til what was 8:30, now 9:30, and 9:30 kind of throws the day off. And I don't appreciate eating supper in daylight.

Spring is generally a stressful time for me. I'm not so much a fan until the end of it.

My sister got her hair cut because this weekend we're going to visit relatives. Now I don't want my hair to look silly and unstylish like it does... hmm.

I'm trying to decide whether to buy a couch this morning.

The Curse of the Pontiac

If you know me very well, you have heard a vehicular saga or two spawn from my life story. And if you doubted whether I was truly vehicularly cursed, well...

Here's one for the books.

Saturday morning was a time I've been looking forward to for a few weeks now -- I had signed up to take a class at the state historical society, one of my favorite places on God's green earth. At 7:30, a time I don't see most days due to my cushy reporter's hours, I'm springing out of bed and gathering my library ID and my copying card and my census binders into my backpack. I tossed the haphazard nonperishable food items left in the apartment into a plastic grocery sack for lunch and headed for the gas station to fill up.

It was a pleasant morning, with the thick blanket of snow rapidly melting and the sun up shining cheerfully in the sky. I was thinking about how much I loved Saturday mornings as I switched interstates.

A few miles down the road from there I found myself behind someone who clearly was not in a hurry. I went to signal left.

I pushed down to turn left.

Then I pulled up a little to turn the signal off. But as I pulled up, I noticed I could pull the turn signal rod in absolutely any direction I chose -- up, down, left, right, in circles -- but none of them were going to cause the turn signal to cease blinking on the left side. It instead now hung rather limply, almost dangling from the steering wheel column.

25 miles from home. 25 miles from the library. I had left early enough to leave plenty of time for library research before the class, so I turned around and drove the half hour back to my parents' to borrow another car -- with the left turn signal going that whole time, mind you.

When I returned back to my parents' that evening, my dad showed me the steel-cast part from inside the steering column that had simply decided to crack into several pieces. Though he can weld most of it back together, whether he can reassemble it properly with the connected mechanisms and fit it all back inside the steering column is still a matter of question.

Meanwhile, this tiny cracked piece -- since when does steel crack? -- has nearly caused my dad to take a sick-day from work and has created tumult in the family driving arrangements.

(Tumult's a great word. We're constantly making good and bad word lists at work lately...)

For three days now I have been trying to log in to my blogger account...

Not that there's anything really to be said!

Today we are having a snowstorm. Legally it's not a blizzard and I can't say what it's like, conditionwise. In the city it's hard to gauge. It did snow in a respectable heaviness for part of the afternoon. From the newsroom, we were privy to all the rumors going around -- that "they" were going to close the interstate, that they already had from Owatonna to Albert Lea (which they had not), that the county had pulled its plows off the road because it couldn't keep up, that MnDOT was about to follow suit, that you couldn't find the road in outlying areas... I managed to get some snow in my clogs and get extremely bored at work (as 1/3 of the newsroom could not make it in and no one was at their places of employment to be interviewed anyhow), but that was about the extent of the inconvenience to my life to date. I went home early and had a pleasant chat with my mailman whilst he made his distributions at the apartment complex's mail center.

Though it is not generally accepted, I do believe that conversation about the weather has some merit. (Have I said as much before?) It is something we have in common; it is something true; it is something that does have significant effect on our lives. For instance, my conversation with the mailman began with, "Nice day for you to be out, eh?" and he made a comment to the effect that he had started early but would likely not be done even by normal finishing time. And he continued that he lives about 35 miles away, and, though they may be the more shallow details, we now know each other a little better.

What else is new? Hmm. A reporter quit. My grandmother's surprise party is in two weeks. There is an newsroom disturbance regarding the aesthetics of the word "armada." (I say that it is nearly bastardized because it sounds part like "arm" -- armpit, army, German harshness -- and part like a passing Spanish breeze. It needs to commit to one or the other. The school board reporter disagrees and intends to someday name an all-salad restaurant after the term.) Next week I am looking forward to another genealogy class. I might be training to be a local museum tour guide in April. I gave up chocolate for lent, but not very devotedly, and so so far I think I've had some about every day, so I may just quit. My intentions were not altogether holy anyhow.

I've found yet another Brit com to my liking -- "A Fine Romance" with Judi Dench and her real-life husband; there aren't any more "Foyle's War"s at the library that I haven't seen, much to my disappointment; my sister and I resolved to go see "Sweet Land" at the theater, only to find we had waited too long and now it's gone; and I've killed a few trees printing out my favorite front page design ideas.

Does anyone still read this crap? Don't leave your name, but just leave a 'yes' comment. (Since you are, clearly, reading this.)

March is coming in like a lion, but with the color of the the lamb. ;)

me

An important part of my life has been absent for far too long: Frito bars.

Michelle made them often for our RA meetings. We consumed them by the pound. They are the perfect girl bonding food -- frito, chocolate, peanut butter, sugar. They make me feel all warm inside just thinking about them. Last night I realized I had Fritos, chocolate chips and peanut butter in my house -- everything necessary.

Another thing I was missing today: Iowa. Tied to the previous? I did get a letter from a roommate today, too...

While this place is not urban, per se, it is urban, relatively. I miss driving past the corn to get anywhere. I miss driving that does not involve stoplights. I miss knowing when to plug your nose relative to the passing of a pig truck. I miss my good red pen from the Beacon, and Pizza Ranch, and nice Hy-Vees (Minnesota Hy-Vees are kind of ghetto), and driving, and making fun of other newspapers, and the Loess Hills, and the high-quality Chinese food of small Dutch towns, and Tropical Sno, and my roommate's stepstool, and the Puddlejumper, and the Tolsmas' swiffers, and criticizing JVDW's freshman poli sci students' essays, wrapping Beacons in garbage bags to avoid rain, and very much roommate story time.

(Do I want to move back to Iowa, though? No. No, this is the right place.)

I felt a strong need to read aloud today. It has not yet been fulfilled.

Tonight I re-watched "Cold Mountain." Nicole Kidman is so eerily lovely. They make me want to quilt and make pot roast. Ooh, boiled potatoes sound kind of good right now. Boiled baby potatoes with butter.

return from the edge of florida

It was 10 below zero when we got up to go to the airport last Sunday morning. The temperature rose about 80 degrees by the time we landed in Florida.

It wasn't the warmest of weeks to be there, especially the first few, but at least it was warmer than it is here!

Wednesday was ladies' beach day, unfortunately our first one. Above you see a view from that beach. The water was chilly and no one was swimming, but the beach was nice and warm and I burned my scalp quite nicely.

The beach we went to was on Sanibel Island, facing the gulf. It took far too long to get there and cost too much, we felt. Once we finally reached the beach, though, we agreed it was worth the effort. It was a large, sandy beach far from any buildings or streets with an unadulterated view. It's also known as a great shell-collecting beach, and we could see why. You can stand in the shallow water and feel shells run over your feet as the waves come in.

I went with my whole big family for ... five days, I suppose. We flew down and rented a fantastic vacation house, a million times better than a hotel. Most people (including one or two of us) would say we are really boring vacationers and that we waste a lot of the time -- we did very little while we were there, relatively. The point, however, was to be somewhere warm and to take it easy. That we accomplished fairly well.

Sunday: We traveled, basically.

Monday: We began learning about the road system in Fort Myers and paid a visit to the Edison museum. It was an overpriced letdown. Highly disorganized and dislabeled and disappointing. It has potential but needs work.

Tuesday: The ladies went to a mall and played "What Not to Wear," sort of. We exchanged names and had twenty minutes to pick out a complete outfit for someone else. Made shopping a little more interesting, considering none of us intended to purchase anything, really. When we got 'home,' we blew up the pool toys and jumped in our nice warm pool.

Wednesday: Sanibel beach day.

Thursday: The ladies attempt a second beach day at Fort Myers Beach. Traffic is bad and parking is worse -- we pay someone $7 to park in their lot for the day, only to find there are beach restrictions and noise hampering our experience. We stay a couple of hours and go home to our pool.

Friday: We sleep in a little, only to learn we have a check out time, and that it is in 15 minutes. The ladies throw everything in suitcases while the men are golfing, then sit next to the suitcases in the driveway (yet happy in the sunshine) until the men return.

On all of these days, those of the male persuasion played one or two rounds of golf.

Vacations can be interesting in groups, of course, for the group dynamics. I always learn more about myself and my family. Mostly I still like all of us. :) This trip was largely a peaceful success, considering the unplanned nature and it being our first time with my brother-in-law along. I don't know that he had the best time just because he's a more active person than the rest of us, but it certainly could have (and has) been much, much worse.

I'm relaxed. Enjoyed not working! (Though I do enjoy my job.) This was my first real, paid vacation EVER. It was amazing. I can't believe someone paid me to be gone.