Happy Birthday Baby Brother!

Today is Baby Brother’s birthday...HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

My first crystal clear memory of anything is the day we drove to pick Baby Brother up from the adoption agency in his home county.  We hadn’t settled on a name yet for him, and we argued the whole way about it.  I’ve always thought it was pretty special that this would be my first memory, even though this picture doesn’t really tell that story!

There are almost four years between me and Baby Brother.  When we were probably about 8 and 4 years old, mom and dad were building a big new machine shed.  One night while everyone else was in the barn doing chores, me and Baby Brother were poking around the construction site because they had all the rafters stacked up, etc., and it was fun to run around between the piles of lumber.  Until all of a sudden, Baby Brother wasn’t behind me anymore.

I back tracked and discovered that he had fallen into one of the holes that had been dug for the huge telephone-size posts, and there he was at the bottom of this really big hole.  I ran to the barn to get everybody else.  Big Brother would have been about 12 years old at this time.  So they made a human chain with (I think) Dad holding Big Brother’s ankles, and Big Brother holding Mom’s ankles and Mom being lowered into the hole to get Baby Brother.  I really thought he was going to die that day, but they got him pulled out.  He was dirty and scared but not hurt.  I don’t even remember if I got reprimanded for (a) being out there with him in the first place or (b) not keeping a better eye on him.  I just know we were all thankful he was all right.

When Baby Brother was a little older and had experienced the Tooth Fairy a time or two, he found an old cow tooth in the cow lot.  He was sure that he could fool the Tooth Fairy into giving him some “free” money for this cow tooth, and he put it under his pillow that night.  That Tooth Fairy...she’s nobody’s fool, though, and what he found the next morning was a nickle and a pile of oats!  That’ll teach him.

One of my favorite pictures of Baby Brother was on his wedding day with Young Man, who was his ring bearer.  They both just look so dashing and handsome in their finery!

To this day, my phobia about electric fences traces right back to Baby Brother. When we were kids, our cow yard didn't have a metal gate. We had a swinging electric gate. The electricity was in yellow strings that hung down from insulated cross bars. This made it easy to drive tractors through without having to get out, open the gate, drive through, then get out and shut the gate...hoping none of the critters made a fast break for freedom in the meantime.

If you wanted to walk through the gate, you could grip the insulated cross bar, push it open, then let it swing shut behind you. Handy, right? I'm here to testify that if you let your Baby Brother open the gate for you--all the while promising to hold it until you got through--he is going to let go before you are all the way through. The end result here is that one of those electrified yellow strings will end up wrapped around your forearm delivering pulsing electric current while you stand there in shock...pun totally intended!

I might like to give Baby Brother a hard time at family gatherings, but I love him to death and am thankful every day that he is part of my family!

Best wishes to you, Baby Brother, for another year full of love, happiness, and blessings!

Brogan Thanksgiving

I don’t know about anyone else, but trying to coordinate holidays for the inlaws and the outlaws can be overwhelming.  When we were first dating and married, Christmas Eve consisted of four gift openings over the course of 12 hours from Pine Island to Saint Charles to Elgin.  

It got to be way too much, and the year that I was pregnant with Young Man was the worst for some reason.  After that, we told both sides of the family that we were designating the given holiday on the even years for the Brogans and on the odd years for the Brehmers.  This system has worked well for us in the ensuing 25 years.    

Since this is an odd-number year, we had Brogan family Thanksgiving yesterday at captain’s mom’s house.  I don’t know what your family gatherings are like, but in Brogan World it is loud, obnoxious, and there are probably swear words flying around.  And that’s just during the pie making tradition with Princess and her cousins at Gramma’s house.  

The menu has been predetermined for the last ten years with a few twists now and then.  My job has always been deviled eggs.  This year, Captain’s mom decided to start delegating some more duties, so I got mashed potatoes.  Both extremely simple things to do...until you are done boiling the potatoes and discover not only are you out of butter, you don’t have a potato masher!  Luckily those were an easy fix by sending Captain next door to his mom’s house to borrow those things.  

Once we got everything carted next door, it was party time.  This year was Princess’ boyfriend, Rudy’s, first Brogan clan event.  According to Mama Bear, who is now an old hand at the Brogan thing, “You guys can be overwhelming to the new person.”  She’s 100% correct!

While dinner was being put together, there were four different conversations going, and no one could get a sentence completed without being interrupted a half dozen times.  This is especially true of Captain because he is so soft spoken that, first off, no one can hear him anyway, and in addition, we all talk over each other constantly.  It’s a mad house.  

After a prayer of Thanksgiving and a feast of monster proportions, it was game time.  There is always one table of 500 going at a card table in the living room, and the dining room table is where the serious competitions happen.  Not kidding.  Spoons is a full contact sport in Brogan World.  I have seen Mike’s brother come across the table and tackle Princess to gain control of the last remaining spoon, but Princess gave as good as she got.  I don’t even remember who ended up with the spoon, I just remember Captain saying “Don’t wreck the table” because it is earmarked for him when his mom decides to downsize.  Luckily there was no bloodshed...that time.  

Sometimes we nix the contact sports for a nice "sedate" game of Telestrations.  If you have never played it, it’s kind of a cross between the old game Operator and Pictionary.  Each person starts with a word and has to draw their best rendition of said word on a spiral-bound dry erase notebook.  The notebook is then passed to the person to your left who has to look at the picture, decide what it is, flip the page on the notebook and write down what they think it is...pass it on...and so on.  So you alternate between drawing a picture and writing down a guess.  When the notebook gets back to the original person, you go around the table and go through the drawings and the guesses.  It can go in any direction at any point and it’s rare the end result is what the original word was.  For example (from the internet, not the Brogans...but it could happen):

At the end of the day, though, it isn’t about who won what game, it’s about spending quality time with those you love the most and being thankful for the blessings in your life.  

From our house to yours, Happy Thanksgiving!

Parenting

I was no great shakes as a mom, but despite that, my kids turned out pretty damn good.

One parenting thing of mine that my kids always bring up is how I approached getting them to clean their rooms.  Let me just say here that most of the time...I didn’t even care what state their room was in.  I figured their room was their space, and if they liked it looking like a war zone...I just shut the door and ignored it.

Once in a while, however, it became apparent even to me that the disaster needed to be addressed.  I have never had the time, energy, or inclination to stand and watch them clean their rooms, giving them directions on what, when, and how.  That’s Captain’s deal.

Me...I would simply tell them they had a certain amount of time--usually a week--to get it clean.  After that, the room became my territory and I was going to clean it, which they probably wouldn’t like because I would just take whatever was laying around and haul it to the burn pile.  Side note...you only have to do that once before they believe you.  

I did learn after a time or two that “clean your room” wasn’t specific enough and had to modify that to “put your clothes away, make the bed, and sweep the floor.”

 

Princess asked me one time why I set the time frame.  That’s a two-parter.  The first part goes back to the goal setting thing we have all heard or read or seen somewhere.  If you want to accomplish a task you have to be specific and set a timeline.  You can’t just say “go clean your room.”  There is nothing definite there and leaves kids the option of saying “I’ll get to it.”  

The second part is about letting the child have some sense of control.  If I were to say “You are cleaning your room today” and then stand in the doorway harping on them while they do it, that only makes me the bad guy.  By giving them a task but leaving the timeline to them, they have a feeling that they still have some control because they can choose when to do it...or not do it at all, in which case they suffer the consequence of Mom cleaning it and burning stuff.

I often approached other household chores along the same lines.  I tried to avoid giving them a list of chores to do (I wasn’t always successful there) and instead would give them two choices.  Do you want to fold clothes or sweep the kitchen?  Do you want to put dishes away or dust the living room?  Again, it provided them a sense of control, and if I took the chore they didn’t choose it cut the cleaning time in half.

My mom’s big trick for getting us to weed her garden--and she had a HUGE garden--was to hand each of us a paper grocery bag and say that whoever could fill it with weeds first got a prize….candy, or whatever.  The caveat here is that the children need to know the difference between a carrot and a weed before they start!

The first “chore” any child is assigned is to pick up their toys, and it goes from there to more advanced tasks.  Folding towels is a good next step because, really, you can’t screw that up, and it provides a sense of accomplishment.  

I read in a parenting magazine somewhere that when kids are in the toddler/preschooler age and want to “help” with chores...LET THEM!  Are they going to do it perfectly as you or I would?  No, but they think it’s fun and as parents we have the opportunity to guide and teach them.  Then, by the time they are old enough to realize this is work...it’s too late.  Now they are experts at it and have to keep doing it.  HA!

When I was a teenager and my job was to “clean the kitchen,” and I hated it.  I put it off until the L-A-S-T possible minute before Mom and Dad came in from milking...and then only did a half-ass job on it which put me in the doghouse.  So I created a game out of it for myself.  I broke it down into smaller tasks such as empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, and wipe down the counters, etc., and write that down on a piece of paper.  Beside each task, I would write down an estimate of the time it would take me to do each thing.  I timed myself...no lie, I used a stopwatch and everything...and wrote down the actual time and see if I was close to the estimate.  

When I was telling one of my mom’s friends about this, she gave me The Mom Look and told me I’d get it all done faster if I just DID it instead of all the writing down.  True statement, but what a buzz kill!

Whatever we choose as our approach to parenting, all we really want at the end of the day is that our children turn out to be amazing adults.  In my world...mission accomplished!

Living vicariously

We may be one of the few households in America that does not have cable television.  Captain adamantly refuses to pay for TV.  Luckily for us, we have a monster antenna on the roof that brings in a lot of channels.

In particular, we like to watch channel 15-3, which is a public TV station based out of Iowa, I believe.  This is public television’s answer to HGTV, the Travel Network, and the Food Network.  

We are foodies in this house, so we watch Cook’s Country, Lidia’s Italy, and Martha Stewart’s Cooking School.  In fact, because we watch Cook’s Country and subscribe to their magazine, I am a recipe tester for them!  That’s a pretty cool deal.  They send me a recipe to test, then I make it and let them know what worked and what didn’t.  The recipes eventually end up in their magazine which gives me warm fuzzies when I see them.  

We rarely travel interstate...much less international...but Rick Steves’ Europe is an excellent program to see all kinds of fun and exciting places plus get some really interesting historical perspectives and a few budget hints and tips.  So far, we have “been” to Rome, Venice, Turkey, Prague, and Ireland.  All from the comfort of our recliners!

The best day ever is when there is a Bob Ross rerun.  He is just a hoot when he is painting his “happy trees” all over the place.  Who can be in a bad mood when watching that?

Besides being foodies, we are history buffs around here.  That makes Wednesdays pretty special because on channel 15-4, it is History Day...often specifically Minnesota history.  We have watched a couple of extremely interesting (if you are a history buff) shows about the evolution of several Twin Cities neighborhoods as well as specific architecture treasures in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.  Always a new tidbit of trivia gleaned from those shows.  

The DIY shows on Create TV aren’t quite as much fun as House Hunters on HGTV, but we do like This Old House and Katie Brown’s Workshop...or at least I do.  Some of Katie’s stuff is a little frou-frou for me, but it is still fun to see what she comes up with every day.

I always come away after watching any DIY show thinking that I can repurpose any piece of crappy junk into a family heirloom treasure.  If you doubt me, ask my children.  They’ve been through this a multitude of times.  The problem is my desire is often out of proportion to my abilities, and the crux of that problem is the simple fact that patience is not my strong suit.  I don’t have the temperament to futz with something to get it perfect.  I am the original “it’s good enough and if someone doesn’t like it they can lump it” girl.  

I don’t know why I can sit down for hours--literally--and crochet but if I had to, for instance, stencil something on a painted wall...nope, won’t happen.  This goes waaAAaay back to my childhood when my mother had to buy special coloring books with extra thick lines because I just could not--more likely would not--stay inside the lines to make a pretty picture.  Color me a rebel, no pun intended.  

The one trash-to-treasure project I did accomplish was refinishing the antique icebox out of my mom’s storeroom.  I remember this icebox sitting in our basement when I was a kid and I was always fascinated by it.  When mom was cleaning out her storeroom a couple of years ago, she said I could have it when I asked for it.  

I had to consult with my good friend, Skippy, who is a refinishing wizard (and garden guru and culinary expert, by the way).  She not only gave me some helpful hints and tips but patiently listened to my minute-by-minute updates on my progress.  I’m pretty sure the finished product wouldn’t have turned out as good as it did without all of her assistance.  In the end, I have what I consider to be a family heirloom piece with a rich heritage.  My kids will probably chuck it in the burn pile when I am gone, but I will enjoy it until then.  

In the meantime, I will keep watching Create TV on Iowa Public Television to garner more ideas.  Who knows?  Someday maybe a project will fall within the parameters of both my desire and my ability and I will have another heirloom piece for my home.

Split Rock Lighthouse Ceremony

What a whirlwind trip Up North but so very worth it!  We left mid morning on Tuesday, hoping to be checked into our hotel in Silver Bay by 3:00.

We might have made had we not run into a traffic snag near the truck stop by the Koch Refinery involving a semi hauling a tanker of anhydrous that kissed the guardrail and got a boo-boo.  Thanks to that, it took us twice as long to get through the Cities as it normally would, so we had to haul butt once we got on I-35E North.  After that it was clear sailing!

Captain likes talk radio, and on this day, there was a lot of coverage of the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Fitz. One spot in particular caught my attention. Whoever this guy was that was talking or being interviewed, had been on the boat that brought up the ship's bell from the wreckage of the Fitz. He said there were also several family members in attendance. His comment that struck me was that as the bell came out of the water, it rang for no apparent reason. Maybe a message from the crew or God or just an accidental thing but I got goosebumps when he said that.

The other thing we learned, although in Minnesota it was somewhat overshadowed by the Fitzgerald anniversary, is that the United States Marine Corps had its 240th birthday. Oooh-Rah and Semper Fi!

Anyway, due to traffic delay, we made check-in by 3:00 but didn’t get luggage into the room because we had to turn right around and go back south to Split Rock.  Holy masses of people, batman!  We had to park about a half-mile away and hike the trail to the visitor center, where people were milling about.  We got our admission wrist bands, and then lo and behold, we ran into Baby Brother’s best friend from high school who, it turns out, is the maintenance supervisor at Split Rock Lighthouse State Park!  Small world, isn’t it?  We chatted very, very briefly because--obviously--he had bigger issues to take care of, but it was nice to see him for the first time in about 20 years.

We headed out to the lighthouse area and found nearly 1500 people milling about, many taking a tour of the lighthouse until they ceremony started.  I imagine that in the 30 years of doing this ceremony, there have been times when it was brutally cold with snow on the ground, but this night, there was just a pleasantly brisk breeze off the lake and no snow on the ground.

Once they got everyone out of the lighthouse, an a Capella quartet sang The Navy Hymn (“...for all in peril on the sea…”) before the officers read the watch list...or the name of all crew members who perished on the Fitz.  After each name was read, a ship’s bell was rung, and then after every name had been read, they rang the bell a final time for all souls who have been lost on the lakes.  During the reading of the names, not one person in attendance--and there were a handful of rambunctious elementary school boys there--uttered a sound.  It was close to reverent.

Thereafter, they lit the beacon and opened the lighthouse back up to visitors.  We wouldn’t have had a chance to even get close to getting into the lighthouse in the hour that remained for tours, and we have been through it before, so we opted to hike down the trail/steps to the shoreline below the lighthouse for photo ops.  I can’t describe the feeling you get--or, at least, I got--seeing that beacon shining in the dusk.  It was a sense of timelessness, almost.  Whatever it was, I was filled with it.  

From the shoreline, we made the half-mile hike back to where we had parked and headed north into Beaver Bay for some supper.  There really isn’t a whole lot happening in Beaver Bay (population 181), but there is a nice pub-type place we’ve eaten at before.  We weren’t the only Split Rock visitors who ate there...I recognized a few from the ceremony.  After a meal of fish (Captain) and pasta (me), we headed just a bit further north to Silver Bay and the AmericInn Hotel.  

On a side note, we LOVE AmericInn Hotels!  They are reasonably priced, clean, comfortable, and they have a good free continental breakfast.  That’s my plug for this national chain.

Back to the important stuff...at the hotel, we got our luggage into the room (king suite with balcony) and stepped out on the balcony to check out the view...of the parking lot.  Dang, not what I was hoping for!  Oh well.

We changed into swim suits and wandered down to the pool area.  This hotel boasted a water slide 110 feet long.  It was mostly loops and turns, but we tried it out half a dozen times anyway.  After I’d had my fill of the slide, I swam over to the open swim area (4 feet deep) and **NERD ALERT** practiced some of the moves from my old junior high water ballet days.  Yes, I was on a water ballet team in junior high.  Don’t judge.

I can still do an oyster (fold in half toes-to-fingers and sink), a front somersault, and a back somersault.  Memo to me:  don’t do back somersaults in 4-foot water...you will scrape your nose and forehead on the bottom of the pool.  Yeesh! If I had the nose plug worn for water ballet, I could have done a few other things, but smashing my face into concrete sort of dampened my enthusiasm for the whole deal.

Having had our fill of fun times in the water, we headed back to the room for adult beverages and HGTV.  I guess that’s another NERD ALERT, but too bad. Apparently we were exhausted from the travel and excitement because we were asleep before 10 p.m.!

Consequently, we were up at 6 a.m. watching the news before showering and going down for light breakfast and coffee.  We got packed up and checked out to head down to Gooseberry Falls State Park.  We drove through the campground to remember all the sites we’ve camped at over the years, and we ran into Bambi!

I have dozens of pictures of the middle falls--the most famous and photographic of the three falls--but this time I got some good ones of the lower falls.  

Our next stop was in Two Harbors where we knew a boat was loading taconite.  Stopped there for a couple of photo ops (see Facebook post) before moving on to Duluth.  We stopped in Canal Park and had pizza at Old Chicago.  There was nothing else happening in Canal Park, so it was back on the road for us.  

We stopped at Moose Lake State Park on the way home, but the Agate Center/Museum was closed for the season so that was a bust, although we got another state park checked off our bucket list.

We had good weather until just north of the Cities on I-35 when there was a brief, but intense, rain squall.  Interestingly, we had the “you need to turn the wipers on” conversation!  I swear, it’s a guy thing.

It was good to get away, and for such a touching ceremony, but it is always good to get back home to our own bed!

Random Thoughts

If you had to live with Captain for any length of time, you would need your own dictionary for his language, as follows:

Definition	Captain’s pronunciation	Correct pronunciation
Food borne illness	bowl-ah-till-ism	botch-u-lism
Machine to harvest corn	com-BINE	COM-bine
pertaining to mechanics	meck-ah-nickle	Muh-can-ickle
clothing for legs	slacks	pants
plastic grocery bags	satchel	sack
school book carrier	knapsack	backpack
mailer	en-VEL-up	EN-vuh-lope

We have all learned to adjust and recognize these Captain-isms, but the problem is, we are so used to them that sometimes we use them in public, which can be embarrassing.  Or, conversely, we use the right pronunciation and then second-guess and use Captain’s version only to have to go back to the correct pronunciation.

Don’t get me wrong, I use some old-fashioned words or phrases too.  I grew up at a time when those undergarments women wear under dresses or skirts was called a petticoat...so that’s what I still call it rather than a slip.  A slip is when you face plant in the snow after stepping on a patch of ice.

Like Captain, I don’t always refer to clothing for legs as pants.  Sometimes I say britches...and not just when using the phrase “too big for your britches.”  I don’t know why.  

Maybe it’s a from-the-country thing.

I just saw a post on Facebook from Mama Bear that the best thing about being from the country is knowing where “over yonder” is.   It’s usually by “the old Smith place” and the Smith’s are people who haven’t lived in that particular place for 50 years or more.  

Getting directions from someone from the country involves landmarks, not odometer readings.  

To get to the field I’m at, you have to go a ways on the River Road until you get to the old tree that got hit by lightning back in ‘84.  Turn left on the gravel road and cross the bridge at Pumpkin Hollow.  Not too far after that, I’ll be in the field on the left next to Smith’s barn that partly burned down a few years back.

Sure, I can find that.  NOT!  I like MapQuest or my GPS lady where I get exact odometer readings, which direction to turn, and little hints like “If you come to X Road, you have gone 0.2 miles too far.”  I can maybe find my way with those directions.  

Compass points were a struggle for me until I was well out of high school.  I don’t know why...I understood early on that the sun came up in the east and set in the west, so you’d think I would be able to determine north and south from that.  Nope.  Lucky for me, now I not only have GPS on my phone, I have compass indicators in my car that tell me exactly which direction I am going.  I have at least gotten to a point where if I am off track, I usually know which direction to head to get home...whether it be north and west or south and east.  I always figure I will run into a town or major roadway that is familiar enough I can find my way back home.  

If not, we always have a map--or as Captain calls it, an atlas--in the car!

Inner Beauty

If you have ever been a parent or talked to a parent, you have undoubtedly told or heard stories about the fascination children have with boxes that gifts come in that is above and beyond their fascination with the gift itself.

My children had such a box.  I don’t even remember what came inside the box anymore.  During the course of its useful life, that box was a TV set, a race car, a jail cell, a teacher’s desk, and a fort.  It is unbelievable to adults—at least to me—what a little imagination added to simple objects can do.  Smaller boxes are stacked on top of bigger boxes to make buildings or whole towns.  Or they can be nested together in graduated sizes.  The fascination with outer wrappings goes on and on.

And it carries over into adulthood.  Not that adults go around pretending to be driving a Jaguar convertible when they are really sitting inside a cardboard box...but wouldn’t that be funny?  It is the outer wrappings of our bodies that we are obsessed with as adults.  We become so caught up in making a pretty package that it’s hard for anyone else to recognize, much less appreciate, the beautiful gifts inside each of us.

Just as my children have decorated their boxes, I too do artwork on my outer wrapping.  It can take up a significant portion of my morning routine.  Wipe one product on, wipe it off with another product.  Smear one cream on and then wet it and wipe it off with another cream.  Then comes the fun part…the color.  Tan face, blue eyelids, pink cheeks, and red mouth.  The rest of my day is comprised of making sure the pretty package is still nicely wrapped without wrinkles or rips.  This is usually an exercise in futility.

They say looks fade.  That is, if you had “looks” in the first place.  I interpret this to mean you go from stunningly gorgeous to moderately attractive.  This applies to, oh I don’t know, maybe 1% of the population, right?  The rest of us average schmucks start out behind the 8-ball, and then this interpretation becomes going from moderately attractive (if you’re lucky) to something that survived a mudslide of biblical proportions.  

I have discovered at this very late point in my life that I have ZERO fashion or style sense.  For years--decades, really--I have either worn my hair very short and straight or long and permed.  Never, since I was maybe 5 years old, have I worn it long and straight.  Turns out this is my best look, at least according to comments I have gotten since I started letting it grow.  Whoda thunk it?  And when I head out the door thinking to myself my hair is as good as it is going to get today and people will just have to like it or lump it, that’s when I get the “Gosh, your hair looks great today.”  Conversely, when I get done messing with my hair and the curling iron and hair spray and am feeling really good about the results, I get a comment such as “Lord, what happened to your hair?!”

It’s too bad that the simple joy and imagination of children playing with boxes isn’t carried into adulthood as well.  Then the pretty package we spend so much time creating and maintaining wouldn’t be needed.  Each gift contained within ourselves could be plainly seen with the eyes of genuine liking and respect.