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winnar…and continued

winnar…and continued

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i won nanowrimo and almost won kablpomo. good enough!
my kitties get along well enough. good enough!
then onto the real deal.
continued from the anxiety-setting bwca trip my parents sprang on me last minute… [link no worky due to great blog migration of 2012]
i was going to the bwca. i was so excited for it. most of us had never been in a canoe, so on a saturday before we left, everyone convened at east side lake in austin (which was no great lake, let me tell you) to try out canoeing. we paired up and got in the boats, then paddled around for a bit. it was a perfect day, so everyone caught on fairly quickly.
the night before we left, we gathered in the cafeteria of Queens where we packed. two people shared a voyageur’s pack lined with large black plastic bags. into the pack went everything of yours, including sleeping bag and pillow, so each pack had two pillows, two sleeping bags, and two sets of clothes. i shared a pack with mandy i-can’t-remember-her-name. then all we had to do was sleep.
i don’t remember much about the next morning. there was a trailer, and lot of driving. we drove from austin to two harbors, i believe, where we spent the night at one of the chaperone’s friend’s large, large house. we went to church because we were good catholics. i tried hanging out with people i didn’t necessarily like because a dude i was into was there, but left, disgusted, after he made a pass at one of the girls. i spent the night sleeping on a window seat, looking out the window at trees and dark.
the next morning was glum. the whole trip was glum. i’m not sure how many days we spent in the bwca, but i would bet that it rained 9/10 of the time. one of the required items on the shopping list was a rainsuit that you wore, obviously, when it rained. my parents, being of limited means, purchased the least expensive one, hoping maybe the sun would shine the entire time?
the rainsuit lasted me maybe two days. after the first day, i gave up and just wore the coat until that started tearing, then just dealt with the wet. (years later, when i would go on another canoe trip down the missouri with my dad et. al., i made sure to get a heavy duty rainsuit that would stand up to rigorous use. i still have it.)
there were portages. hoisting a canoe over your head and walking it up and down a bumpy dirt path for half a mile. there were shortcuts to the portages, through marshy wetlands and a short waterfall where we got out of the canoe and lowered it down to the river below.
there was weather. a lot of it. one day was so foggy that a compass and map were absolute musts. the trees and lake appearing out of a mist were creepy enough, then to think that we were miles from anything on top of it? another day, or the same day, the wind was up and the water was choppy beyond belief. our time at east side lake had not prepared us for this, and in my head i can still hear my mantra of “vertical to the waves, vertical to the waves”.
at some point, somewhere along the line, someone began singing “cat’s in the cradle” by ugly kid joe, and then “man on the moon” by REM and to this day, whenever i hear those songs, i think of the bwca.
our group camped on an island, safe from bears. another group camped at a spot where a large outcropping of round rock welcomed visitors.  i never saw where the third group camped.
some people went fishing. some people paddled around the lake. i think i brought a camera, but i don’t remember if i took any pictures. if i did, i didn’t have the film developed. and then we all went cliff jumping.
on one of the few sunny afternoons, somehow we all got the word to paddle out to a sheer cliff maybe 30′ in the air. i chose not to partake, but others did, climbing up the side of the island up to the top and jumping off. mandy and i sat in our canoe, on the lookout for any bwca rangers because there were definitely more than 10 of us in one spot. ellie jumped and we all held our breath because she was underwater for longer than the others.
but more than anything, i was homesick. the rain certainly didn’t help, but my overwhelming thoughts were that i wished i could be home and why did i come. i envied beth, whose dad was along on the trip.
but then all too soon, it was over. the rain cleared for our final day and the sun shone brightly down on us as we were packing up. we got in to austin, and my mom was there to pick me up, with devastating news.
we were moving to new london.
this trip was the last time i saw many of these people. after that, a few went different ways, some to the public school, some to rochester, some (me) completely out of the area altogether. and that was it, the culminating point of the great Queens’ 8th grade class of ’93. here’s to you and the bwca. “It’s been sure nice talkin’ to you”

my home sweet home!

my home sweet home!

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prof. harold hill had it easy. gary indiana was the town that knew him when.
but it’s hard for me when people ask me where i grew up or what my hometown is. i usually answer, “i graduated from high school in new london.” or “my parents live in new london.” that usually takes some confusion out of things, but if i get a further query, then i explain how i grew up in austin and in 9th grade we moved to new london.
but new london isn’t exactly my home town. i only really lived there for four years. i’ve lived in the st cloud area for 10 years, and lived in austin for 14 years, but new london is the answer i give. maybe it’s because my parents still live there.
when i was in winona, my parental units and i went to church and talked to some guy afterward about the architecture or the place, and my dad mentioned that he and i (not my mom) were natives of austin. what?? i don’t really see myself as a native of austin, but it’s probably true. i think it’s easier for my siblings to detach themselves from austin because they were young when we moved. liz was in 5th grade, jane in 2nd, and charlie in first. they can say they grew up in new london. i really can’t.
so i just continue to say i graduated from new london-spicer and things normally go smoothly from there.
i should really ask my mom what she would say when she was asked that question; she had a similar situation.

whenever

whenever

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whenever i hear the hospital chopper fly over my house to deliver someone in critical condition to the hospital, i think of when my uncle squire used to look up whenever he heard the chopper while working outside. one time, the timing was right that he thinks he saw the chopper that was carrying steve (my cousin ann’s late husband) to rochester after their car got mutilated by a semi. steve died, and ann now has a metal rod in her spine.
whenever i make a hamburger in a pan, i think of my dad making “riviera specials” when i was little: fried hamburgers topped with mayo, ketchup and mustard, and eaten without a bun. once i smelled him making a hamburger when i was supposed to be asleep, so i went downstairs in my nightgown, as quietly as i could. my mom was on the phone, so dad beckoned me into the kitchen, where i watched him finish the burger and toppings, and we shared the burger together. i was upstairs and back in bed before mom got off the phone.
whenever i butter a piece of bread, i think of my uncle squire always making sure that the butter went out to all the edges of the bread.
whenever my sister liz is having tough times, i think of the time at jane’s post-baptism get-together when liz was going to touch the kerosene heater (i had run into it twice when i was younger, once against my side, and once on my hand). my mom caught her in time and slapped her hand and yelled HOT at her to make sure she didn’t do it again. liz looked bewildered, but i burst into tears.
whenever i make no-cook pudding, i think of my aunt colettie and how her cupboard was full of no-cook puddings. she would put the milk and pudding dust into a jar and have me shake it until it was thick enough. then it would set in bowls or glasses, and i would break the skin of the pudding with my spoon and peel it off to eat before rest of the pudding.

Contentment defined

Contentment defined

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I drive home every night from work after 8 p.m. through residential areas, and many houses are lit up with lights – blinking, white, colored, shaped into deer – you name it, it’s out there. And every night as I drive home, I wish I could just force myself out of the house after dark and drive around to look at the lights.
When we lived in Austin, often during the month of December, my dad would take me or me and one, two, or all of my siblings on a drive through town to look at the lights that people had put up. My mom wouldn’t necessarily come with; sometimes she would be there, other times it would be just my dad and a couple of his kids.
One particular time I remember going to Rochester to look at lights. For some reason, Rochester seemed a lot farther away than it actually was – it was only 30 miles from Austin, on a freeway no less, but it always seemed like two hours to get there.
My aunts Colettie and Kathleen were with, and Liz might have been with also. We first drove downtown, where all the deciduous trees had white twinkle lights strewn through their branches, something I had never seen before. Lights were made for pines, right? Apparently someone was thinking outside the box…or triangular branches, as it were. Even today when I see lights on smallish maples and other leafy trees, I think of that first time I saw them downtown in Rochester.
Then we drove through the “rich” neighborhoods, pausing at each house as the lights reflected in our eyes. Cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac, we drove in circles looking at all the lights the owners had put out for others’ enjoyment. 20-foot pines with colored lights up to the top, each window and eve lined in small lights, green and red lights winding up pillars that held up porch roofs. I couldn’t get enough.
But the best was yet to come. After we had exhausted ourselves looking at lights, and Lizzie was snoozing in the back seat, my dad pulled over in one of Rochester’s parks and pulled out a thermos filled with hot cocoa. I held my styrofoam cup in my hands and watched the Christmas lights in the distance across the lake, distorted by the steam from my cocoa. It really was the perfect evening trip. Contentment defined.

all-knowing

all-knowing

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When I was four years old, my family moved to Houston for the winter months because it would be a shorter commute for my mom to her work (which was two hours from our house). From what I remember, the apartment we rented was an upper level, two-bedroom place. The kitchen was small with an adjacent dining area that looked out over the street. The living room was also small and I think we just had our couch and TV brought over from Austin.
There are things I specifically remember about living in Houston. I watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time in that apartment. I tried to slide down a wooden pole at the park and got a huge sliver that ran diagonally across my hand. I made a snowman and called him Frosty (sans hat, but oh well). I cut the electrical cord to a lamp that sat next to my bed and nearly shorted out the house, then blamed it on the invisible man (my real imaginary friend, China, had long since been dead, gone in a tragic car accident).
And I remember being particularly concerned about whether or not Santa would find me that Christmas. For the holidays we were going to be staying at the finished apartment that resided in half of my aunt Kathleen and uncle George’s garage.
How would Santa find me? We weren’t in our regular house, and we weren’t at our temporary home. We were in some apartment in the middle of nowhere. How on earth would Santa know where I was? I was stymied.
Well, mom, being the wise woman she is, told me that Santa would surely find the way to where I was. I’m sure I asked a million times if she was sure, and how could she be sure, and was she sure?
Needless to say, Santa found his way to where I was. I remember falling asleep that night after leaving out milk and cookies, and still wondering if Rudolph might get lost on his way here, and then waking up late night/early morning and seeing a dollhouse sitting on the floor with a light shining through it, making it luminously pink. He had come! He found me! I was happy, and I went back to sleep and pretended I hadn’t seen it when morning came.
(On another note, it also snowed a bucketload Christmas eve, and the bed my parents slept in was right next to a sliding glass patio door, which for some reason didn’t shut flush with the wall, so when my mom woke up, there was a foot of snow next to her side of the bed. Fun stuff indeed.)

quickly

quickly

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i’m really tired and on my way to bed, but i thought i’d post something quick before i head to never never land.
as the sky dumped another four inches on top of the 6 inches we got saturday, i got in a really christmas-y spirit today. it was a nice change from last year when i was anticipating my grad graduation (was that a year ago already?), chewing my fingernails with worry about finding a job, and wallowing in rejection after rejection from companies who just didn’t seem to want to hire me. not to mention cursing the neighbors upstairs every night and wondering when i was going to get out of the hell-hole i lived in.
i am relaxed this year, finally, and i am ready for christmas.

save your pennies

save your pennies

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I’m a scanner.
I’m one of those people who scan the ground for loose change and when I find it, I pick it up pronto. Most people don’t bother with change on the ground. Not me. I don’t care if the penny’s tails up or if the nickel has seen better days, that is money sitting on the ground.
Believe me, it’s not my frugal ways that prompt me to notice grubby Abes and FDRs among the concrete and asphalt. I am not frugal by any means. I do think it has something to do with my aunt Colette.
My aunt Colette split her time between living in Rochester, where she held a job at one of the high schools as head librarian, and Austin, where her family lived. Having no husband or children, I can see why she would want to come to Austin on the weekends to spend time with her loved ones.
But on one of those rare and highly anticipated weekends where I would go visit her in Rochester, that was something worth looking forward to.
We would walk downtown and visit the fountains and shop at the galleria and eat the best, cheesiest, greasiest pizza I remember ever eating at a little Italian place called Bilatti’s. Then the night would end by her telling stories by lamplight in her tall bed that smelled like rose lotion.
But aside from that, I remember she always picked up a penny, nickel, dime, and on lucky occasions, a quarter from the sidewalk, parking lot, grassy hillside, wherever. She was a scanner.
And her scanning was rewarding. When you walked in her house via her laundry/basement, she had a mug rack hanging from the wall, and on each hook hung a red mug with a pristine white inside. And each mug was full of coins she had picked off the ground – always divided by coin. There were no pennies in the nickel mug, no dimes in the quarter mug. She must have had 10 mugs full of coins and a few left to fill. One mug was reserved for bills she found – mostly tattered ones and an occasional five. This was fascinating to me to see all this money she had found.
So I made a pact with myself the first time I saw those mugs – I would start picking up money I found on the ground. I don’t save them to sort by coin into mug, but they do go into the change jar where they will eventually go to the bank and fund some fun activity I otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. One time, I found a twenty on the ground at the MOA and another time there was a twenty staring at me from an ATM money well.
But twenties or pennies, I pick them all up. And if I’m really lucky, the penny will be heads up.

d-day

d-day

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i went to the store today to find a card for my dad. it’s not easy finding a generic father’s day card for a father who’s not so generic. all they had were extremely sappy cards or cards that exonerated frugality, fishing, lounging, beer and tv. bleah. what the hey? no cards for crossword kings? grammar gurus? book buffs? history hawks? word wizards?
so i’ll have to make my own card.

good weekend

good weekend

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memorial day weekend is one that i truly miss from my youth. in my mind, it was one of the most perfect weekends of the year, with the underlying current of excitement of the end of the school year, possibly a trip out west coming up quickly, and the inevitably perfect day for memorial day.
for some reason, the day is always sunny and 75 in my mind. we would meet at the cemetery early in the morning with my dad’s side of the family, where kathleen had set out on her trunk flowers she had picked up from a gardening store the day before. the cemetery is one of the prettier ones i’ve seen, with sweeping willow trees and large oaks lining the drive. the sun dappled through the leaves while we visited relatives’ graves (relatives i had never met, and relied solely on memories and stories to form them in my mind).
afterward we went to todd park, where we had a picnic at the twirly slide and spent the afternoon running around on the park equipment and wading in the ice-cold spring-fed river that ran through the park.
this past weekend my grandma and i drove the 6 hours out to mandan for my cousin lori’s grad party. it’s always a lot of driving, and the weekend always seems cut short because of the drive. but it was a good time, and the weather cooperated pretty well, considering it was supposed to be kind of icky out. i got a nice sunburn, so that was fun. sam was as annoying as ever, but i got to see lori and karl and jane and charlie, and it’s always nice to hang with my sibs.
for pics: http://www.katew.com/lori
happy bday to me! ugh…28.

patron saints

patron saints

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while growing up, it was inevitable that friday nights would be spent with an aunt, uncle or cousin. it was like 21-year-olds’ partying and boozing needs on fridays, except for the kiddies. so i packed my bags and went to whichever relative was the relative du jour.
for about 5-6 years of my life, that was my uncle squire. he doted on my sibs and me so much, and looking back i can’t see how he did it so well since he had so little money. he would buy us anything we asked for. he would always make a grumbledy grumble about how much something cost as he dug out his greenbacks, but we knew deep down that he liked doing it (and he did).
so it came no surprise to me that when he died, he kind of became my patron saint of money (if there can be such a thing). a patron saint of financial well-being is more like it.
this became blatantly apparent to me when nate and i went to visit his mom in the hospital last year shortly before she died. i had just been laid off about a month before and we were strapped for cash. on the drive there, not knowing what to expect from the day, from his family, and even from him, i prayed (yes, me, i do actually pray sometimes) fiercely to squire for help. i didn’t know what kind of help, just help, and i knew he would give it to me.
after staying in the hospital for the day (and not encountering anything abnormal), nate and i decided to go back home. we needed to get some food somewhere, so i decided to stop at the hospital ATM to get some cash in case we ended up at some greasy spoon that didn’t accept credit cards (of which squire would have most certainly approved).
so i walked up to the ATM, inserted my card, and just happened to look down before finishing the transaction.
there in the cash dispenser well was a $20 bill. my immediate thought: squire.
i looked around furtively to see if someone was rushing back to the ATM to get their cash, then cancelled my transaction, pocketed the $20, and nate and i went to find a place to eat.
coincidence? i don’t think so. squire had definitely pulled through.