Technological Challenges

 

Image courtesy of spiceworks.com

Don't you love technology?  Around here it is a love-hate relationship.  

For example, Captain's smart phone crapped out on him yesterday and he had to get a new one.  This created great angst for him because he doesn't like to spend money in any way, shape, or form. First he thought he could just go to Walmart and buy a cheap smart phone and take it to our cell phone carrier to have it activated.

Walmart soon disabused him of this notion...observe my shocked face.

Since he was right across the street from the actual Verizon store, he zipped over there to just buy a dang phone.  

However...

He started out with "I need a new phone, and I want a cheap one."  The seriously uninterested representative working the floor was most unhelpful and simply replied, "We don't have any sales or deals going on right now, so I can't help you."

So home came my crabby husband to cite the whole sad story to me, and got absolutely no sympathy.  

Fast forward to evening when I get a call from Captain who is sitting in the line at CHS Kasson to dump a semi load of soybeans.  He said there was going to be a 90-minute wait before he could dump the beans so could I come and get him and take him to the Verizon store down the street.  

Sure.

It was easy to find him in the line of trucks given that his Freightliner is a deep red and everybody else was driving white or blue trucks.  He hopped from the semi into my van and we sped off to Verizon.  

There was a very nice young man working the floor who only raised his eyebrows when I just said "He needs a phone that's cheap but I'm overriding that and asking for a mid range phone instead."  After much discussion on the pros and cons of various phones plus accessories, we walked out with a new phone for Captain.  Thank goodness because he was getting withdrawal symptoms from not having his phone!

Now, fast forward to this morning when Captain comes tearing into my office where I was doing homework before my day job shift started.

"We have a problem!  I can't charge my phone!"  

Let me back up.  This new Samsung device uses a USB-C to USB-C charging cord which--of course--required the purchase of a special adapter for wall charging.  

Okay, so this morning he can't get the USB-C cord to plug into his phone.  I tell him it isn't rocket science and it can't be that hard.  

Except I am not able to plug the charger cord into the phone either as the visible slot is wider and shorter than the plug in.  

Honestly, I would have loved to help him figure it out and did try through the use of YouTube videos and customer review websites, but that day job thing reared its ugly head and I had to abandon him for the paying gig. 

He stomped off to his office to--what's a nicer word than pout?--contemplate his next steps.  

However, sometimes all the stars line up right for us earthlings, and pretty soon he came skipping into my office with a smile on his face because he found the charging port.  

It was hidden behind a flippy thing on the OtterBox phone case!!  

I laughed and laughed at how complicated we both made something so simple.  

It's like "childproof caps" on medicine bottles that only children can open.  I am quite certain had Cubby been here, she would have solved the issue in seconds for us.  

So, with all of the glitches solved, I must ask...Can You Hear Me Now?!

Calf Country - New and Improved

 

All the babies under a nice roof

I haven't had the opportunity to be "in charge" of Calf Country since Captain finished the shed remodel until after Captain had hernia repair surgery last week.  He's doing well but has that lifting restriction thing going on.  

So I get to be in charge.

Now, instead of individual huts outside with the calves tethered by nylon collars snapped to 6-foot chains, each calf has a 4x4 foot individual pen with a straw bedding that doesn't get wet from rain or cold and wet from snow.

This is also nice for the person in charge because it eliminates standing out in the open which might include blizzards, torrential rain, or gale force winds.  Now we are all nice and cozy under the shed roof.  

It is also nice because the milk house is attached to the south end of the calf shed so there is no more carrying pails of milk from the barn to the huts; it's all right there in one handy-dandy spot.  

So, right now we have nine calves on milk.  For me, I feed them in three groups of three.  That's easy math for this number-challenged girl.  I've been doing this for 9 days now, and it's been going quite well.  

Until this morning.

Today, every one of those little stinkers decided that head butting the pail of milk as I tried to set it inside the pen for them to drink was a good idea.  Turns out I got my "shower" before I got back to the house.  Plus a couple of bruises where the pail came up and hit my arm.  

But they all got fed.  Even the stupid--yes, I said stupid--Brown Swiss calf that simply can NOT figure out how to drink out of a pail unless someone puts their hand into the pail of milk so the calf can suck on their fingers.  

I have a hard time with this because I am short and bending over the pen panel for as long as it takes the calf to drink all the milk gives me a backache.  When I finally get straightened up, I tend to walk like a penguin for a few steps before everything in my spine lines back up again.  

Most of the time, I have a couple of "helpers" when Charlie and Lucy decide to tag along.  

Charlie having breakfast

Lucy just wants to play fetch with her ball

While I'm feeding milk, Captain is able to drive the skid loader to feed the bigger steers.  To save him the aggravation of climbing in and out of the skid loader multiple times, I carry the pail of pellets to dump in the bucket and also run the on/off switch for the bulk bin that has the corn.  This, by the way, is also handily situation on the south end of the calf shed.  

Once Captain and I have both finished up our separate tasks, I carry grain to the newly weaned calves and Captain walks along with me.  

Depending on how early we got started on chores, we might have time to check out what's ripe in the garden before I start work.  

See, I have new hours now because I have a new job.  You all know I've been in school for the last couple of years chasing my Health Information Technology degree.  I'm in my last semester with a graduation date in December.  Being so close to having the degree allowed me to apply for a specialist position in the Health Information Management department--that's the department that deals with all things medical record-related both incoming and outgoing.  I got hired in the section that deals with incoming records.

It's been a nice change of pace after the hustle and bustle of being an administrative assistant, although I do miss the people I worked with in that role.  I have two weeks of training left before they turn me loose on the world, and I truly think  this is what I'll be doing for the remainder of my career at Mayo Clinic.  It will be nice to be settled into it soon.  

Thanks for coming along to Calf Country with me!

Blessings, my friends!

Family Reunion

 

Back row:  Steve Haack, Joe Brehmer, Brian Brehmer, Carol Scott, Karen Chatterton, Tom Whipple
Front row:  Mary Wilson, Pauline Williams, Jude Brogan, Dick Prokasky, Donna Busse, Ginger Maliszewski

Over the weekend, we hosted the Prokasky family reunion at the New Haven Township Hall.  This has not happened since October of 1988!

What an amazing afternoon!  My mom didn't talk about her relatives a whole lot that I can remember, so meeting all of this extended family was such a treat for me.  

So, for background, this is my mother's paternal family.  Her dad, Emil Prokasky, was the oldest of 10 children born to Martin and Gertrude (Vogel) Prokasky.  There were 6 boys and 4 girls; one girl died as an infant.  

From those 10 children, there were 19 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren, 41 great-great-grandchildren, and 4 great-great-great grandchildren (to date).  Wowza!!  All because two people fell in love, right?

I heard stories about how my mom, her sister, and their cousin doted on one of the younger cousins and sang "How Much Was That Doggy In The Window" to her.  

Image courtesy of Google Arts & Culture

I learned that two of my mom's uncles owned and operated Fisherman's Inn for a time.  

Image courtesy of Post Bulletin

I learned that one of my mom's aunt's and her husband's nicknames were Bert (Bertha) and Doodle (Julius).  Bert, for obvious reasons.  Doodle because he used to bounce the nieces and nephews on his leg singing "Doodledy doodledy doo."  Bert and Doodle; I love it!

I learned that my mom's aunt and uncle ran a bar in Pine Island called the CarcaJou which was in an old railroad car situated where the current grocery store sits.  They also owned and operated an eatery called The Hamburger Stand on Main Street in Pine Island (also know as the Popcorn Stand) that was famous for its onion rings which mom's cousin eventually ran.

I learned that there is a fellow crochet enthusiast in the group, and Captain had a great talk with another farmer who was there.  

One topic of conversation over the course of the afternoon was how people used to "go visiting" on Sunday afternoons, usually to a family member's house but sometimes to a neighbor's house.  How have we all gotten too busy for the face-to-face, personal connection?  

Is it social media that has made it easy to think, Oh, they all know what's going on in my world because I put it on Facebook.  

WRONG!  Well, yes, they know--but there is no interaction...no finding out what's going on in THEIR world...no clicks of hey, I know the same person you know!

Nothing, absolutely nothing, replaces that connection to and solid relationship with our families.  I know that we are all busy and life is crazy, but at the end of the day family is all we have.  

I am so glad that we had a Prokasky reunion, and there are already plans to do it again next year.  I...can't...WAIT!

Parental Validation

 

Image courtesy of Pinterest

You've all read (or should have by now) my stories of parenting wherein Captain and I diverge on philosophies.  Captain is of the "everything is a crisis" school of thought while I am of the "choose your battles" camp.  Captain tended to yell about everything.  I only yelled occasionally.  

But when I did...you can fill in the blank here.  

You know that old saying, "her bark is worse than her bite"?  Yeah, my description is more like "you won't hear the bark until she has chewed your face off."  

Stay with me here because I'm not trying to build myself up as a World Class Beeyatch.  I'm trying to illustrate that a child's healthy respect of an adult has to have just a tiny drop of fear in it.  

The reason I bring this up is because I got the sincerest validation of my parenting choices recently.  Have any of you ever had one of those "Lord, I did something right as a parent" moments when your adult children are talking?  Usually it's because your young adult son took time to help a stranger load something heavy into her car at Fleet Farm or whatever.  You get what I mean.  A warm fuzzy moment.  I've had those, and it's an amazing feeling.  

Recently, however, I had one of a different flavor, but it was just as satisfying. 

I'm going to paraphrase and take some artistic license with the details to protect the innocent here, but the crux of it is that we were recently at a gathering that included many of Bigger's classmates.  They are all in the early 30s now and parents themselves.  

I'm not certain how the conversation got started; probably one classmate started talking about stupid stuff they'd done as teenagers and whether or not they (1) got caught and (2) got in trouble.  One classmate asked the group which of their friends' mom they were most afraid of. 

I had three fingers pointed right at me.  

Huhn?  

The follow-up question, obviously, was "Why" and the unanimous answer was, "Because she didn't flip out about everything, but when she did, she followed through on a consequence."  

It stands out as one of the proudest moments of my life.  Again, I don't want to be known as the Class A Beeyatch, but being known as fair but fierce is okay in my book.  

On the same note, I saw a Facebook reel this morning which actually prompted this post.  It was a male comedian talking about parenting and yelling.  He said you can't just yell at your kids all the time because they will eventually tune that particular frequency out and, in his words, all they hear is a Yamaha dirt bike in the distance.  For my fellow Gen Xers, that means you'd sound like Charlie Brown's teacher.  

Anyway, he said that as a parent, you have to have two discipline voices.  One is the generic yell akin to a Yamaha dirt bike.  But then you have to have what I call the Come To Jesus voice.  My kids--and apparently their friends--know this voice of mine.  

I have a big voice, so my standard discipline voice generally covers a radius of a half mile.  Everybody in the neighborhood knows my kids are in trouble.  That's the voice to use when someone didn't finish their chores.  

The Come To Jesus voice is a full two octaves lower than that, is soft, and it's deadly.  And usually has fewer words.  This voice is what comes out when the child pulled out the old nugget about being old enough to do what he/she wants (i.e. stay out to the wee hours drinking and then not get up in the morning to do the expected chores).  This conversation will then move into Come To Jesus territory and end with  me saying in that two-octave-lower voice "If you are living under our roof and we are paying the bills, you do what I want you to do."  And here's the kicker.  The voice drops another half octave and ends with "Are we clear?"

I didn't pull out the Come To Jesus voice often, but those times when I did are still talked about.  And I'm okay with that.  

I have had two outstanding Face The Consequences situations as a parent; one with each kid.  I consider them to be the pinnacle of my parenting career.  And neither one actually involved the Come To Jesus voice, now that I think about it.  Hmmmm.

But, we must have done something right because between the two of us, Captain and I raised two children who became functioning, contributing members of society with respectable lives of their own.  That's what parenting is supposed to be, in my mind.  

Call me a Big Old Meanie, but if I run into any of my kids' classmates and get a bear hug and a story about how I terrorized them...that's a red letter day in my book.  

Call me crazy.  

Cart Ahead of the Horse

Image courtesy of WordPress

 

Remember a year or two, or maybe three, ago when I got all hopped up about genealogy and family trees?  I was so excited at that time when I found a family tree builder website with associated search engines to trace public records, etc., that I just started throwing people on my family tree all willy nilly until suddenly I had almost 3000 people!

That was so overwhelming when I created a family book with all those people in PDF form that I saved it and walked away for awhile because my brain was exploding.  This is actually typical behavior for me and my ADHD brain....jump in, get overwhelmed, abandon.  Like my husband when he starts assembling something without reading the directions first.  

I really do want to get this genealogy research organized, not only for my own benefit and information but for the cousins I am discovering along the way.  Therefore, I went to the ever reliable YouTube and searched "genealogy tips" so I could learn from subject matter experts.  Side note...that search will also make your brain explode because there are thousands of videos!  

I finally found one Amy Johnson who dumbed it all down enough to my level, and through her wisdom I realized that I put the whole grove of family trees into one Tree of Life that was entirely too unwieldy to be of any practical use.  I needed to break the great big tree down into smaller saplings.  I'm here to tell you, it is a helluva lot easier and faster to add people to your family tree builder than it is to remove them!  

Image courtesy of WordPress

I started with the Prokasky sapling because I have recently re-connected with some Prokasky cousins and have planned a Prokasky family reunion.  I think the last one was just after Captain and I got married, so that's 35-ish years ago.  

I got all of the Prokasky relatives removed from the Brehmer (and everybody else) tree onto their own tree and ended up with 137 entries.  I'm missing a lot but for now, that's manageable, and I was able to create a very nice genealogy print out of those people that I can now share with my cousins at the reunion.  

I am now working on removing all of the Benike relations (my dad's mom's family) from the Brehmer tree and will re-create a Benike tree.  This will also include  the surnames of Schwanke, Laabs, Rabine, and Schacht for starters.  So. Many. People!!

Image courtesy of Pinterest

I have started reaching out to people I think may have documents or records that will add to my research, so if I show up on your doorstep someday...don't be surprised!

It's A Small World

 

Image taken from FindAGrave.com

I literally had my mind blown last night.  It was a ride on Ozzie's Crazy Train!

As you know, I take care of placing flags on the veterans' graves at St. Michaels Cemetery in rural New Haven township.  I always take Cubby to help me place the flags, but I usually just pick them up myself on my way to or from Pine Island.  

I was going by last night and stopped to gather them up, and at one particular headstone I happened to actually read the name...Howard Bernard Shay...and I stopped dead in my tracks.  

I knew that name, and not just from placing and removing a Memorial Day flag at his stone every year.  

I had seen that name in the family tree I am building online for my mom's dad's family, the Prokasky clan.  I was sure that was the name that I had entered into the tree.  Why had I not made this connection before?!  I told myself I must be wrong.

Nope.  When I pulled up the family tree app on my phone (isn't technology great?), I sure enough found Howard Bernard Shay right there on the Prokasky tree, the first husband to my mother's cousin, Gretta Mae.  Holy small world, batman!

Since some close friends of ours live right down the road from St. Michaels Cemetery, I stopped by to visit them for a bit.  I was telling them about this, and Keith proceeded to tell me that Howard Bernard Shay was a BFD in downtown Pine Island back in the day and that there was even a building on main street named the Shay Building.  

Are you freaking kidding me?!  How stupendously awesome is that??

This...THIS...is why I so much enjoy the genealogy research that I've started doing.  It's also why I kick myself for not asking questions and connecting with family long before now.  

Image taken from 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Six_degrees_of_
separation_diagram.png

For those of us old enough (and we're back to the Generation Gap, eh?) to remember Kevin Bacon's theory of six degrees of separation, doesn't it give you the shivers just a little bit to realize how closely we are all entwined?  

That leads me to the other thought I want to leave with you that I was reminded of, not only by my headstone discovery, but more by my visit with Keith and AJ.  

Hug your kids.  Tell your parents you love them.  Appreciate the people who love you.  Because we are all bound together and need to support and care for each other every single day.  Because it might be the last time you see someone.

God bless you, my family-by-heart!

Generation Gap

Image courtesy of steemit.com

Has anyone else been following any of the social media reels and/or videos about the generation wars?  First off, why do we need to be fighting amongst ourselves; but that's a topic for another day.

What appears to be happening is that some members of Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) are antagonizing members of Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980).  In particular, a Gen Z girl posted a reel saying that Gen X was "the worst generation."  

This triggered a multitude of Gen X social media influencers (John Kotrides, The Real Slim Sheri, Graeson McGaha, etc.) to respond with reasons why Gen X people are the way we are.  Raise your hand if any of the following create a wave of nostalgia or a surge of PTSD in your heart:

• Goonies
• Walkman
• Dodgeball
• Bike ramps made of cinder blocks and scrap lumber (with no helmets)
• The Merry Go Round (not the carnival ride)
• Babysitting by age 10
• Buying cigarettes for your parent(s)
• Saturday morning cartoons
• Bugs Bunny
• Scooby Doo
• The Grape Ape
• Johnny Quest
• Speed Buggy
• Popeye
• Red Rover
• Schoolhouse Rock
• Conjunction Junction
• I'm Just a Bill
• See-Saws
• Metal Slides (bonus points for a tornado slide)
• Heads Up 7-Up
• After School Specials

How many of you ever heard at least one of these from your parents:

• Quit crying or I'll give you something to cry about
• Walk it off
• Rub some dirt in it
• I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it
• If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?
• Don't come in until dark

Wow, that was a nice little trip down memory lane, wasn't it?

I am young enough to remember when I thought 40 was old, and now I find myself at age 57 thinking that 40 is young.  Anybody with me?

Image courtesy of cheezburger.com

This came home to me soundly when I started working part-time at our local Fareway Meat & Grocery store.  Like most grocery stores, there are a lot of teenagers employed at Fareway.  I work one evening per week and Saturday mornings.  Particularly on the week nights, I find myself to be the oldest person on the payroll.  So much so that I have been dubbed Mother Fareway by my younger coworkers.  

I cannot count the times when I have said something that another Gen X'er would either laugh with me or cry with me about, but from my Gen Z coworkers I get blank looks.  Let me elucidate:

• Book covers
• Paul Revere
• Manual transmission
• Floppy disks
• Cursive
• Passing notes in class
• Pay phones
• Cigarette Machines
• Road atlas
• Disposable cameras

Image courtesy of redeemedreader.com

Then again, there was one time when I was shocked by someone from the generation before me:

Me:    Your total is $19.88....hey, 1988, that's the year I got married!

Customer:    Then you're just a newlywed

Me:    Okay...we'll be married 36 years in September.

Customer:    My husband and I have been married 65 years, how about that?

Me:    That's amazing!  I hope we last that long.

Customer:  I never thought he'd live this long...

Me:    ...???...

Customer:    Have a nice day!

Me:    What the hell??

To go back to the social media generation war, what I've decided is that the Gen Z influencers are not indicative of their entire generation.  Not all Gen Z's are entitled, lazy, self-centered or whatever negative label chosen to be assigned to them.  

However, I am pretty sure the Gen X influencers are, in fact, indicative of their entire demographic group:  strong work ethic, don't care what others think about them, don't really talk about their feelings, and loyal.

Image courtesy of instagram.com/totally80sroom

Oh yeah, and HAD THE BEST DANG MUSIC E-V-E-R!!

• Under Pressure
• Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
• Don't Stop Believing
• Now I'm a Believer
• Sweet Caroline
• Danger Zone
• Living on a Prayer
• Walk This Way
• I Love Rock-N-Roll
• Mony Mony

Well okay, I've had a good enough trip down memory lane; I need to go take my Geri-Tol now.  And THERE...that's another one that the young whippersnappers at Fareway didn't know!!