Tag Archives: Kate

Family, Holidays

So Ordinary. So Unique.

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Lughnasa                                   Waxing Artemis Moon

Kate’s birthday has drawn to a close.  We spent part of the afternoon continuing to assemble her long-arm quilter.  This machine is big, a full 10 feet in length, large enough for a queen size quilt.  We have the base set up and need now to put on the rollers and mount the quilting sewing machine.  That’s the last step and she’ll be off to the races.

In some ways birthdays are so ordinary.  Every one has them.  They commemorate a day, a particular spot in the earth’s orbit, when birth occurs.  Births are common; we’ve each been through at least one, the women among us sometimes many more than one.   People are common; there are billions of us.  Billions.

At the macro level birthdays are ordinary.  But in the particular, in the idiosyncratic, in the once ever in all of history side to it, birthdays are downright unique, very special, celebrating the beginning of a life, a life that will never be lived again, will never be lived by anyone else.  So special.

Take Kate, for instance.  There is no other person on all the earth, in all of history like her.  She’s a combination of genes, a lived history, a spark, a singularity.  She has a rare compassion, a keen mind, manual dexterity, dogged persistence, creativity and a talent for relationship.  I’ve been lucky that my own journey joined hers.

Here’s to another 20 journeys around our Sol, maybe 25, for Kate and me.

Aging, Family, Holidays, Retirement

Happy Birthday. Giggle, giggle.

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Lughnasa                                Waxing Artemis Moon

A red letter day here at chez Olson/Ellis.  Kate’s 66th.  She’s upstairs right now signing up for social security.

We went out for breakfast this morning to Pappy’s, a place that already has a place in my heart.  It reminds me so much of Indiana, a part of it that I didn’t know I missed.  As a gift, I gave her a photo album of her ascent to grandmahood starting with a pregnant Jen and running up to the present.   She liked it.

Being married to Kate these 20 years we’ve shared many birthdays and each one finds me more in love with her than the last.

We had a waitress at Pappy’s that had a Fargo accent and ended each encounter with a girlish giggle. More coffee?  No?  Giggle, giggle.  Here’s the check, pay me when you’re ready.  Giggle, giggle.  Creeped me out.  Like having too much sugar in your coffee.  Hee, hee, hee.

Family
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Lughnasa                                  Waxing Artemis Moon

Spoke too soon about the illness.  It returned today with fatigue and coughing.  Still, I’m in a much better place than I was a week ago.  Upward arc.

Our house has become a good sized creative enterprise.  Kate now has a bi-level sewing operation with the Bernina upstairs along with cutting table and ironing board.  The long-arm will be downstairs with her stash.  This latter term has a different meaning to the quilter than it does to, say, your average latter day hippie.  Quilters stockpile cloth, small pieces, bolts, large chunks, left over fragments in all colors, shapes and prints.  Follows the you just never know principle.

We have flower gardens, vegetable gardens, an orchard and bees.  I have space to study and write, communicate with the outside world.  We both enjoy the kitchen, whether cooking meals or putting food by.  We have a commitment to supporting each others growth. The next phase of our life will be fun and fulfilling.

Aging, Family, Health, Retirement

Eatin’ At Pappy’s

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Lughnasa                                       Waxing Artemis Moon

After the early work, breakfast at Pappy’s Cafe, a new fine dining experience in Andover.  I’m using the Apple Valley criteria for a fine dining restaurant, silver and real plates, but, no cloth napkins.  Close anyhow.  Pappy’s reminds me of those little places you pull into while on the road.  You know, the one in the middle of a now largely empty business district in a town with only a main street and two blocks worth of business space.

The food is good, hearty downhome fare.  We went to Pappy’s first a Friday or so ago for the the all you can eat fish fry.  Just like Wisconsin without the beer and schnapps.

The only disheartening part about Pappy’s is the general clientele.  It’s like he put out a sign that read, BMI 30+?  All you can eat!  I looked at the folks there bulging, slow to get up, slow getting down, busy at shoveling in pancakes or all you can eat fried fish and all I could see was a visit to the ER with chest pain, ruined backs and bum knees, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.

(William Howard Taft would have loved Pappy’s.)

The stomach on this body is not what it used to be, not at all, and I understand the struggle to control spread.  It’s tough.  Still, when I see several kids who are large, I begin to wonder about our culture overall.  In fact, I asked Kate if she saw kids with high blood pressure?  Yes.  Due to weight?  Often.  Do you take blood pressure when you see kids?  Yes, from age 3 on.  It used to be the guideline was age 12, now we try to find it when we can still control it with diet.  OMG.

We also talked about this peri-retirement experience we’ve had while Kate recovers from her hip surgery.

She likes it.  “I can spend more time with you, we can just go somewhere.  I can plan projects, get more done.  I don’t feel like I have to get myself ready for work.  I didn’t have to do charts this morning for example.”

Family, Garden, permaculture

Extra Work Raises Grade

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Lughnasa                                 Waxing Artemis Moon

Up early and out in the garden.  This is the way I like it, working in the garden before and during sunrise, a coolness, some damp lingering from the night, stillness carrying only the softest of sounds, the earth friable and eager, weeds willing to come up and the garden’s purpose easy to discern.

Kate worked on in the orchard, going back over intensive weeding of a week ago and pulling up sprouts and rhizomes, making the place just that more inhospitable for the weedy plants.  With a second load of mulch we’ll have this place looking ship-shape heading into fall.

A few grasses have begun to turn brown and there’s a slight hint of autumn in the morning air, a certain clarity and crispness.

After inspecting the garden again yesterday, I’m moving my grade from a B- to a B+.  Why?  I did three plantings of beets, greens, carrots and beans.  Now the second planting has come to maturity after many other plants finished their summer and gave up their yield.  We have a good crop of young beets, a lot of juicy carrots, plenty of greens and enough beans for a couple more freezer bags at least.  This planting weekly or so for a while, creates a series of gardens, all in the same place.  We even have a number of Cherokee Purple tomato plants which I did not plant.  They are volunteers from last year’s tomatoes.

Add to these the onions, garlic, greens, beans, beets and various fruits already harvested we have a good gardening year, not a great one, but a good one.

Plus those potatoes are still in the ground, the raspberries have begun to fruit and the fennel and leeks look good.  All in all, not bad.  I said at the beginning of the growing season that I saw this as a consolidation year, a year when we make sure we can care for what we have.  A week ago I would have said we hadn’t even met that mark, but now I believe we have.  Caring for the orchard, the vegetable garden and the new plantings from last year in there, managing the bees and getting ready for the honey harvest, plus pruning out and restoration in the perennial flower beds.

This advance is mostly thanks to Kate’s back surgery and her hip surgery.  She can now care for the garden, too, as she has in the past and it requires the both of us, what we have now.  Getting back to normal speed.

Asia, Commentary on the news, Family, Politics, Sport

Congratulations, Mary Ellis

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Lughnasa                                            Waning Grandchildren Moon

A big shout out to sister Mary.  She got her degree!  Dr. Mary Ellis.marygetsdegree670 How about that hat.  She owns all that regalia now.  This was in Singapore last week.

Heard an interesting theory today on Favre’s ankle angst.  Allison’s husband thinks Favre has plans to come back after the first game of the season.  Why?  It’s against New Orleans.  New Orleans is the home team for the Mississippi fan boy.  Who knows?  I do know this.  Favre’s played football for many, many years.  At this point he knows his body very well and he knows/has known the impact of the ankle surgery.  In addition this is a guy who makes split second decisions on the field, about football.  He’s not indecisive.  My guess at this point is that his wife is leaning on him to quit.  He has enough money, a pick-up truck, a dog and a farm.  What more does a country boy need?

Spoke with a docent who taught political science at U of Wisconsin in Eau Claire.  Neither one of us have a clue what’s going on in this election, either at the state or federal levels.  These are peculiar times in American politics, unlike any I have seen.  Right wing nutjobs in ascendancy within the Republican party.  An African-American President.  A recession that will not die and unemployment that will fall away.  Environmental catastrophes and congress can’t even consider a bill on climate change.  Health care legislation at the Federal level challenged at the state level.  Arizona comes out as a state of anti-immigrant bigots.  A California judge overturns prop 8 in California prohibiting gay marriage, a decision that will almost certainly send this lightning rod issue all the way to the Robert’s Supreme Court.  I know I missed a few things.  Who ever said politics were dull?

Kate spent the day with her sister Anne going to quilt shops in the southwestern burbs.  She got home about 7:00 and went almost straight to bed.  Exhausting.

Tomorrow more gardening and maybe bees.  Probably bees.  We’re getting set to order extracting equipment.  That means I gotta keep these lil buggers alive and producing for years to come.  Artemis Hives.

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Garden

Camp Fire Girls

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Lughnasa                                     Waning Grandchildren Moon

Last night over edamame and potstickers I discussed gardening with a fellow docent who had just seen Ran.  We agreed it had been a peculiar gardening season with plants blooming two weeks to a month early.  We also agreed no one could care for our gardens like we do and produced examples to prove it.  Hers:  a $10 an hour weeder who took up Astilbe instead of the stinging nettles.  Mine:  ok, I didn’t have one since only Kate and I weed here.  August finds our gardening spirit on the wane, too, and we both look forward to the blessed onset of snow.  She plants no white in her garden because winter provides it.  Don’t have many occasions to discuss gardening with somebody else obsessed by it.  Fun.

Kate has really done a knockout job on the orchard.  We’ll have it in tip-top third growing season form before the end of August with mulched paths, new plants for the guilds and mulch on the mounds around the trees.

Finally back to resistance work and it feels good.  I need to get stronger, both for personal stability reasons and for ability to do the gardening tasks I want to do.  Bee keeping requires strength with full honey supers at 50 pounds and honey laden hive boxes heavier than that.

Got a tour together for the Camp Fire girls tomorrow.  We’re going to look at how artists have represented women and women artists:  Woman of La Mouth (20,000 years old), Lady Teshat (the mummy), a japanese dancers garment from the Noh theatre called a choken, a Japanese woodblock print showing beautiful women, the Lakota fancy dress, the MAEP’s gallery with women artists and finally, if we have time, the clay and wood gallery, all by women artists.  Should be fun, too.

Cinema and Television, Family, Politics

Leafy Streets, Expensive Cars

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Summer                                      Waning Grandchildren Moon

Kate and I drove 20+ miles to the Edina part of Hopkins, directly across from Blake school’s driveway.  This is the home of former State Senator Steve Kelley, also a former candidate for governor.  This was a Sierra Club fund-raiser.  We listened to speeches, talked to friends, ducked out and then drove past her old home on Highwood Drive in Edina.  This part of Edina has lots of mature trees, leafy and atmospheric, homes with long driveways and expensive cars, landscaping that looks natural, yet manicured.  Her old home had received a new story, slightly curving windows and wooden garage doors.  It was strange to think of her living there, it seems so far from our life here in Andover.

We enjoyed being out together on a fine summer evening.  Cirrus clouds curled and twisted into mare’s tails as the sun set over South Dakota.  We crossed the Mississippi on highway 610 and we were back in the northern ‘burbs.

When I asked Kate why you would send a kid to Blake instead of Breck, she said, “Legacy, maybe.”  I thought, demographics and met geography.  She added, “Some people get their undies in a bunch if you send your kid to the wrong private school.”  It’s hard to be upper class.  So many rules.

Since I have Netflix and it doesn’t cost more to get anything, I watched the first Twilight movie.  The guy looks like a schlub to me, shows you what I know it comes to pretty boys.  The girl, Kristen Stewart, has charm, but is unconventional in her attractiveness.  The plot line weaves teen angst into a bit of supernatural and the favorite theme about vampires since Anne Rice:  the misunderstood, empathic vampire.  True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, Twilight and even the Gates have the vampire who wants to fit in and be friends with their food.  I’m sure ‘ol Vlad is spinning on his home turf inside the coffin.

The movie as a whole is weak, but since my standards for supernatural fare have a lot of flex, I watched it to the end.  Not worth it.

Art and Culture, Asia, Family

He Lives

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Summer                                              Waxing Grandchildren Moon

By God.  I’m beginning to feel human, here in my own skin, awake.  No, not enlightenment, in fact, I don’t even think I want enlightenment, but recovered.  Feels pretty damn good thank you.

Had no takers on the Kachina spotlight.  I’m not a carnival barker for art.  When I go to a museum, I like to wander, reflect, not get pulled into a conversation by a stranger.  The tour, that’s something else.  People choose to go along, to have a companion who guides their experience.  I like that.

The Anishinabe to Zapotec tour though had 10 including two docents.  We had a lively and interesting conversation about the Kachina, the house screen, the Valdivian owl, and Chalchiuhtlicue.  We finished with the Lakota ceremonial dress and the Whiteman.

After the A to Z Roy Wolf brought two friends and Judy, his wife, to see the Matteo Ricci map.  We had a good conversation about it.  They all had Jesuit connections.

Back home tuckered out from 2+ hours on my feet.  Long nap and out to eat with my sweetie.  We sat next to a table of 40-50 somethings who were out on a date.  The table talk included a lot about the scumbags they’d left and the things they didn’t do:  no dancing, no dining out in public and not anything normal like hanging out at the mall.  Wish I’d had a tape recorder or a note pad.

Now I’m back with a few free days ahead, only a China tour coming up next week, a tour type I enjoy with a group, a Chinese language study class, I’ve done before.  Bee day looks like Sunday.

Kate gave Ray, the kid who mows our yard, a packet of comb honey and promised him a jar when we extract.  He smiled.

Aging, Family, GeekWorld, Health, Politics

Leviathan

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Summer                             Waxing Grandchildren Moon

I decided to take a month off from Latin tutorials.  Not from Latin, just the every week preparation of a new chapter.  I need to cement my learnings about verb conjugations, pronouns and certain uses of the ablatives and genitive.  Also, I need a break from expectations.

Kate’s up seeing her Physiatrist, a regular check up on pain meds.  She considers Beewin her medical home since her health issues focus on spine deterioration and arthritis, both of which have pain management and physical fitness as key treatment components.

Over the last two weeks I’ve had an ear infection and pink eye.  Good thing this 63 old kid has an in-house pediatrician.  I got expert care for these afflictions of the rug rat set.  Makes me feel young again, but not in a good way.

Have you caught any of the Washington Post’s report on the US counter-terrorist establishment?  It’s a fascinating example of how a genuine problem can breed responses that I’m sure make sense to each person who created each entity.  The whole, probably largely invisible in the–I know it’s way overused, but I’m gonna use it anyway–silos of various bureaucracies, is a Hobbesian Leviathan.  Hard to know whether to be amused, frightened, outraged or complacent.