In Living Color

Now that we have Mom all moved and settled nicely into her condo in Chippewa Falls, I’m going through all of the stuff that I dragged home from when we were downsizing her house.

Among my treasures is a box with at least 200 rolls of 8-mm film dating back to 1958 or 1959 all the way up through the mid 1970s.  My parents loved to document via film.  Nothing was too mundane for capture with the camera.

Fr’instance, the rolls of film are labeled with such tags as:  fishing at Oronoco, Joey swinging on willow tree, Judy outside, Park Rapids, dynamiting stump.  That might be worth transferring to DVD and watching!

Another one:  Joey’s pinwheel from Grandma Prokasky, raking leaves with Anna, Donna, and Mom, Joey and Daddy picking up pinecones, new baler, Mom’s new car, throwing bales.  A nice little slice of nostalgia.  

Here’s one that says:  Danny’s first birthday; Larry Sawyer’s birthday.  All these years and I didn’t realize that Larry and Dan had birthdays close to each other.

There are reels and reels and reels of Christmas gatherings, family picnics, and the daily minutiae of what kids do.

But the ones I’m really interested in are the ones labeled “Halloween Party [insert year].”  I grew up hearing stories about these Halloween parties.  These were full costume parties, and if the costumes I remember from my mom’s attic are any indication...there was an abundance of imagination involved for all attendees.  And, of course, there were adult beverages flowing freely.  I bet I could blackmail people with this film footage!

Having all the film transferred to DVDs is cost prohibitive, so I have the dilemma of trying to decide what is most important.  My first priority is any of our nuclear family, then extended family, then friends, and then farm-related footage.

The one piece of film that I remember watching over and over and over as a kid is when Dad’s friend, Cactus, came over to help him take down a stave silo.  This process involved using a sledge hammer to knock out strategic blocks in the lower section of the silo (sort of like notching a tree that will be cut down).  

The second step involved hooking one end of a cable or log chain to one of the rings that held the silo together and the other end to a tractor...and let ‘er rip.  

Dad would run the film through the part with the silo coming down (and Cactus running for safety)...and then he’d reverse the projector so that the silo would go back up...and then down again.  He got the biggest kick out of it.

The last part of my dilemma is that some of these rolls are not labeled at all.  I can sorta-kinda figure the dates on them just because the newer rolls are a different style than the older rolls...but I’m still pretty clueless as to what is on there.  

I’m not sure there is anyone else but me who would love to have all this film preserved for the ages.  Well, Young Man would because he is my sentimental fool who likes family history.  

If there is anyone else who would be interested, please let me know.  Would love to share my family’s past with you in living color!!

Images used:

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Million Dollar Dreams

During a conversation the other night, the topic turned to winning the lottery.

Don’t fib...you know you’ve dreamed about what you would do if you won a potload of money in the lottery!  I know I have.

First thing I’d do is pay the mortgages for us and our children so no one had to worry about that the rest of their lives.

After that, I’d install a new furnace and central air in this house.  I’m getting too old to deal with heat and humidity all summer.  I just can’t take it anymore.

I’d set up a trust fund to pay for our grandkids’ college educations.

Then I’d turn my attention to the farm.  There would be acres of new cement poured at the Brogan Ranch.  No more slogging through knee-deep yucky stuff to load steers out on the truck!

The existing barn and silos would come down by a professional crew with the silo pavers repurposed into a front yard patio under the maple and pine trees.

Then I’d pay a feedlot consultant to come in a design a system of pens where cattle could be easily moved around as they grew.  The hutches would be under a dome or other form of cover so there would be no more feeding calves in inclement weather.

And then the piece de resistance:  a new shop for Captain.  Not state of the art, per se, but loaded with everything for his creature comforts.  

A large enough shop area that he can get the combine or any other piece of machinery in it to work on it.  Radiant in-floor heat and top-notch ventilation.  A hydraulic floor hoist.  Surround sound stereo so he can listen to Garage Logic from all four corners.  

And an office.  Maybe more of a man cave/den concept.  Desk, computer, TV, couch, fridge, and bathroom.  He could spend all day (or night) out there and be in pig heaven.

What would I do for fun, you ask?  I’d get the kitchen remodeled to an enviable state.  I’d put a roof over the front deck so I have a veranda complete with porch swing.

I might take a cruise vacation with Diane...one of the best travel buddies around!  Alaska...New England...Nova Scotia.  Who knows?!

Lastly, I’d buy land.  It is the one thing that is an appreciating asset versus a depreciating one.  Not so much land that I would be a real estate tycoon but enough that we could quit paying thousands of dollars in rent every year.  Of course, then I’d have to pay real estate taxes, but that’s okay.  It’s a small price to pay, relatively speaking, to get what I want.  

It’s nice to dream about maybes and somedays.  It can get me through a crappy day to mentally spend millions of dollars on whatever I want.  

For now, I need to make time to balance my checkbook, pay some bills, and then enter data in the farm books before harvest starts in earnest and things get crazy around here!

Images used:
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https://advantagecruises.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/canada-new-england-cruises1.jpg
http://www.ufunk.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rhiannon-Logsdon-dreams-9.jpg

Too Cute, Too Funny, and Two Years Old

Out of the three generations pictured above, guess who turns two years old today?!  I can’t believe that two years has flown by so quickly.

Cubby is starting to show her personality, and we’ll just say she is...independent.

She has decided she needs input on her wardrobe these days.  Given her choice, she’ll spend her days and nights in footie pajamas, which for someone her age is just fine.

On the off chance she agrees to wear regular clothes, sometimes she has to be guided away from a fashion faux pas.  Such as a polka dot onesie and pink camo pants.  

Then again, she might come by that naturally.  Her aunt Molly was much the same around that age and into her preschool years.  Molly, however, could never be talked out of whatever outfit she chose to wear.  

It got to the point that I made her a button to wear to preschool that said “I dressed myself today” just so I wouldn’t get blamed for the purple polka dots with orange and green plaids!

This is the same girl--Molly--who, ten years later, looked at me as I was heading to work and snarked, “You call that an outfit?!”  Folks, I had all the necessary components:  bra, underwear, shirt, pants, and hosiery.  Yes, it was an outfit.

Anyway, back to Cubby.  Her vocabulary is also expanding by leaps and bounds these days.  So much so that we now have to be careful what we say.  I’m pretty sure she said “holy shit” the other day right after I spit it out.  Ooops.

Her newest favorite word is “naughty.”  As a proud grandma, I can’t believe this is because she hears it often.  Most often, she pairs it with Chewy, as in “Chew naughty” when something gets knocked over.  Nice try toots, but I saw you tip that bowl over off the table.  

My kids didn’t have household pets to blame when they were this age.  They either blamed each other (and I couldn’t prove it one way or another), or they put up a united front and blamed the classic whipping boys I Dunno and Not Me.  Did those kids live at your house too?

Cubby’s birthday party is on Sunday.  I already bought her some new clothes--that she hopefully likes enough to wear--but I want to get her something in the coloring arena.

She has learned to hold a pen or pencil, and in the correct form, I might add--gripped tightly between her thumb and index finger.  Such a smart girl!

My first thought was washable markers and a pad of paper. Except she makes on little squiggle per page and then goes to a new page for another little squiggle. Seems like a waste of paper.  

Then my mind went to a fancier draw-and-erase kind of thing, such as the item above available at Target for under $20.

Then...THEN...my mind went back to my childhood and my Etch A Sketch.  I loved the Etch A Sketch!

I made millions of designs on my EAS, but the real guru of the EAS was Big Brother.  He could make complicated geometric designs that filled the entire screen.  Sadly, somebody always came along and shook the screen clear.  I Dunno and Not Me were at it again!

This made me think of other childhood toys that have gone by the wayside for the current generation. Stuff like a real metal Slinky. Light Bright. Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots. The Putt Putt Speedway. Lincoln Logs. Oh, those were the good old days!

So, if any of you have experience with anything in the coloring arena and have suggestions for an age-appropriate gift choice, please let me know!

Images used:
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The Great Pumpkin

Now that we are teetering on the edge of autumn and harvest season for Captain, my harvest season is winding down.

Our garden produced prolifically this year.  In contrast to last year, we had a bumper green bean crop, abundant tomatoes, and many cucumbers.

Because of that, our pantry is now brimming!  I canned 10 quarts of dill pickles, 35 pints of vegetable soup, 12 half-pints of pickle relish, 15 jars of pizza sauce, 16 pints of salsa, 10 quarts of stewed tomatoes, and almost 40 pints of green beans.

Uff da!

I did discover something new this year. It took three or four pickings of green beans (done every other day) to get enough to do a full canner, so I thought I would be smart and store them in the freezer after Captain got them snapped. Seemed to be a stupendous idea...until we ate the first jar. I thought the beans were extremely bitter, although Captain didn't notice it. After some rudimentary research, it turns out that freezing them changes the chemical makeup or something so that the reaction during the pressure canning process makes them bitter. Hmmm...lesson learned for next year. Plus, if you put enough butter and salt on them, they are tolerable.

The only...disappointment...is the giant pumpkin patch that was Molly’s and Captain’s project.  See, when we took Molly with us to the State Fair a few years ago, we cruised through the Horticulture Building to see The Largest [every vegetable in existence], and the giant pumpkins caught her fancy.

So this spring, we bought giant pumpkin seeds and plunked them in the ground.  The trouble is, we didn’t read all the fine print on the extension service website about growing these things.  Apparently there are many tricks to it.

First off, you have to start the seeds indoors in early April to give them a head start.  I guess growing a half-ton vegetable takes plenty of time.  Who knew?

There is also a disconcerting aspect of growing these things that I call pumpkin porn.  I guess that the flowers on the vines are male and female, and in order to get produce, you need to sort of help them out by picking the male flower and rubbing it on the female flower.  Can we just say...eeeuuuww!

After doing the flower-rubbing thing, you have to watch for little pumpkins to appear.  Then you have to trim the vines or the leaves from the vines or some such thing so that all of the nutrients go to just one pumpkin.  

There’s also a delicate balance of sun, shade, and water for these things.  It’s all really a bunch of hoopla for something that really isn’t good for anything but 15 seconds of fame.  

I question the necessity of that pumpkin porn stuff because we didn't do that, but we still got pumpkins

Up to about a week ago, we had one pumpkin the size of a basketball and half a dozen more the size of softballs or just a bit bigger.  

As of yesterday, the biggest pumpkin was the size of a 30-gallon tote, and we had two or three more in the basketball-plus size range, and a plethora of smaller gourd-sized specimens.

Sadly, they are all still short of the size needed to be entered into competition at the State Fair as anything we’ve seen there has been a minimum of 800 pounds, not to mention that the State Fair has come and gone for this year.  

We will have pumpkins for Halloween, however!  We’ve never been big on carving pumpkins in this house, even when the kids were young.  I did, however, find stick-on decorations for pumpkins in the dollar section at Target the other night, and one of them was a pirate face!  How perfect...couldn’t pass that one up at all.

So yesterday as Captain was beginning his harvest season doing a pile of high moisture corn, I did the very last batch of green beans, and I am calling it quits for this year.  It’s funny how the very thing that was so darned exciting in late June/early July has now become a burdensome chore in late September/early October.  

Too much of a good thing maybe?  We’ll go with that.

Images used:
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Dipstick on Duty

Hi all!  Dipstick reporting in as a substitute today for Mrs. Captain.  She is otherwise occupied today so asked me to step in.

I’ve had a birthday since I last talked to you.  I am a whole nine years old now!  Dayzee and Bear (dogs don’t say Mom and Dad) are 12 and 14 so they are too old to be much fun anymore.

We used to spend a lot of time wandering the countryside.  Our territory was about a two-mile radius from home.  You wouldn’t believe how much stuff there is to explore right in your own back yard!  Or maybe you would, since Mrs. Captain talks about that a lot.

Anyway.  There are woods and streams and fields that are home to raccoons, rabbits, pheasants, and other stuff that is fun to chase.  

Still, the funnest thing to chase in my world is still the good old automobile.  Most of the people who drive past the Captains’ house know that they are going to see us escorting them down our section of road, and they take care to steer clear of hitting us.  Most of the time; there have been a few close calls there.

Expect there is this one guy, sometimes two guys.  Our reputation is obviously far-flung because when this guy approaches our driveway, he stops right in the middle of the road and whistles or calls for us.  I guess he knows we like company.  But when we get sort of close to him, he takes off at a very high speed so that we chase him.  Like a game!

Once or twice, he has screeched to a halt (can you screech on gravel?) and waited for us to catch up or even run past him, and then he goes in reverse at a high speed so we have to turn around and get going back the other way.

Another screeching halt while we are bulleting in the opposite direction, and he speeds off the way he was originally going and doesn’t give us a chance to catch him.

I call that cheating.  The Captains must think so too because one time Mrs. Captain came out on the deck and yelled swears at him for...what was the word she used...oh yeah, “antagonizing” her dogs.

Shows you what she knows.  They are OUR humans, we aren’t THEIR dogs!!  Harumph!

I always thought having us was enough pets for the Captains, but...not true.

Do you know what they did?!  Do you???  They went and adopted three cats!  Not only brought these three cats home, but won’t let us play with them.  I think that’s rude.

Sure, maybe they are cute, especially the black one with four white paws.  Mr. Captain calls that one Socks.  Then there is a little orange one that hurt his leg somehow, but that’s better now.  Mr. Captain calls him Scamper.  The third one, also orange, doesn’t like people or dogs.  He just runs away when anyone gets close, so Mr. Captain calls him Ghost.  

Cats are dumb.  They play right out in the open and try and sneak up on each other to pounce.  How do you sneak up on anything when there is no cover to hide behind?  Can’t be much of a game, really.

Cousin Chewy was just here for a visit the other day with his little human.  Cubby, they call the human, but she isn’t a bear, so I don’t get it.  

I heard the Captains tell Cubby that she had to be nice to Chewy and not push him off the chair onto his head on the floor.  I don’t know...I think it might knock some sense into him because he doesn’t strike me as very smart.  

Dayzee, Bear, and I are really glad that fall is coming because those “dog days” of summer were awful hot.  Captain was always worried about us having water in a dish by the house, even though there are plenty of water sources around here:  puddles, cattle water tanks, streams, the kiddie pool for Cubby.  I don’t know what he gets so bent out of shape for.  It’s not like we’re stupid enough to die of thirst or something.  

So that’s what is going on in my world these days.  If you are in the neighborhood, stop in and say hi!

In The Spirit

I have been running dry in the idea department for the blog over the summer.  The daily posts I put up last summer may have fooled you into thinking I was a genius in the writing arena; not true.  

What I posted over the course of last summer was the compilation of 20 years’ worth of effort.  I should have paced myself because I have run out of foibles and failures as well as triumphs and tragedies.  Hence, some of the “reruns” you’ve seen recently.  

I suppose I could just make funny stuff up, but that seems like cheating to me not to mention sort of unfair to my family and friends who would be spotlighted in fiction they may not want to be a part of.  So we’ll stick with truth.

Lucky for me, bowling started again this week which makes me happy on a couple of levels.

First--obviously--I get to see my peeps again after being apart all summer.  Just as important, though, is the conversation topics that happen at bowling.

We run the gamut from the standard money, sex, religion, and politics to more abstract topics like alternative medicine and the supernatural.  

I think the only one of those we didn’t hit on last night was politics because--hey--we’re all sick of politics right now!

The big topic of the night was the presence of spirits.  Not the Amityville Horror type of spirit, though. We were more on the idea of loved ones making their presence known from beyond.  

In Brogan World, we are firm believers in an afterlife that can superimpose itself on the present.  Captain could tell you stories; I won’t because they are his stories. Ask him sometime.  

I think more people interact with spirits than they (a) know or (b) share with others.  It can be a very private thing, I suppose.  

Me?

Oh yeah, I’ve felt things from those who’ve passed, and I’ve flat out heard their voices in my head clear as day on occasion.  Daddy especially can get in my head and tell me something I desperately need to hear at a given time.  Gotta love that.

But the biggest encounter I had was so simple in terms of environment and content that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention.  Or been brought to attention.  Maybe that’s more accurate.

It was years...at least 20 years...ago, and I was on break reading a book in the Peace Plaza in downtown Rochester.  

An elderly gentleman sat down beside me on the bench.  He was well-dressed, even distinguished-looking, but nothing I would describe as spectacular or attention-getting.  

He asked me about the book I was reading.  To this day, I couldn’t tell you which book it was, but we chatted about literature for a few minutes until I simply lost the thread of conversation due to an overwhelming sense of awe in it’s most basic definition:  a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.  There wasn’t an ounce of fear, but there was an abundance of reverence and wonder.

I am talking being flooded in every cell of my body with a sense that those very seconds and minutes were in the presence of someone spectacular.  

Here is where I am going to say something that some of you will embrace and some of you will not.

I knew at that time--as well as all these years later--that I talked to Jesus that day.  It wasn’t how he looked or what he said.  It was how I felt.  Awed, humbled, and treasured.  You have no concept how precious that feeling is.  

I never shared that encounter with more than one or two very close friends in all these years.  Not until last night at bowling during the conversation about spirits.  I’m glad I shared it at bowling because it gave me the courage to share it with you.

You can believe it or not; that’s up to you.  I know down bone-deep that when I get to heaven, Jesus is going to say “It’s nice to see you again.”

Images used:
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Addicted

All of us have bad habits.  Some of us drive too fast.  Some of us leave lights on all over the house.  Some of us, I don’t know, hum under our breath constantly.

The bottom line is, since none of us is being scheduled to hang on a cross any time soon...we are none of us perfect.  

Bad habits are--well--bad enough, but sometimes things are more than a habit.  Sometimes things are an addiction.

Believe you me, there is an enormous difference between, say, a smoking habit and a smoking addiction.  Been there, doing that.  

I started smoking when I was 18.  Some of my friends smoked, and after buying cigarettes during a night out with them, I had some left the next morning.

I distinctly and clearly remember driving to work the next morning and thinking to myself, I’m going to learn to inhale these things if it kills me.

Ironic, right?  Because learning to do that could kill me.

I’ve quit countless times.  As in Every.Dang.Day.  Sometimes I even manage it for days...weeks...months at a time, but only if I have a nicotine patch on.  Seems I just can’t live without the stuff.  

Someone once told me “Just quit cold turkey.  That’s what I did, and it never bothered me.”  Then, my friend, you had a habit, not an addiction.  

See, a doctor once explained to me that the physical addiction/effects of nicotine are over after three days.  After that, it’s all psychological.  Let me tell you, pals of mine, fighting the psych is a helluva a lot harder than fighting the physical.  

I’m pretty sure that there is nobody reading this that is surprised by the news that I’m not a recovering nicoholic but, instead, am a frequently relapsing nicoholic.  Please don’t judge me.

Relapses are never planned in any fight against addiction.  They are triggered.  Addiction counselors will tell you to apply the HALT theory if and when an addiction/craving is triggered.  HALT stands for:  Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  Those are all universal triggers for many addictions.  I could add to the above that it’s more like:  Hungry/Thirsty, Angry/Stressed, Lonely/Bored, Tired/Excited.

I haven’t won the war yet, but I am still fighting the battle.  Some days I win; some days I don’t.  But I figure that every cigarette I don’t smoke is a victory.  

That sounds like a justification/excuse, doesn’t it?  Probably it is, but if I don’t keep that in the front of my mind...I’ll just give up and go back to smoking full-time based on the theory of:  well, I screwed this up, so what’s the point in trying anymore.

I promised myself years ago I would never again smoke every single day.  I’ve kept that promise to myself.  

Now I need to make and keep a promise that I won’t smoke ANY day ever.  I’m working on it.  

My name is Jude, and I am a nicoholic.  

Images used:
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