Nativity

I am happy to report--not that you probably care--that I have a full and varied Christmas playlist on Pandora this year so I am not struggling with that like I did a couple of years ago.  Neither are we recovering from or preparing for surgery this year.  Thank goodness!!

As I was getting ready to do some decorating, I looked at my living room and realized that I would have to completely rethink my decorating because we redid the entertainment center.  The old entertainment center had always been our focal point of decorations where I displayed my multiple Nativity sets.

Why do I have many sets, you ask?  It's a psychological response to the house fire we had that destroyed the treasured Nativity set that Captain gave me the Christmas before we got married.  That set was THE ONE and then it was gone, so I have to have more.  I have a simple Holy Family, a porcelain set, a wax set, and a paper maiche type set that my friend Skippy gave us to replace the one that burned in the fire.

This all made me think of the Nativity set of Mom's from my childhood.  I"m not entirely certain about it's origin but I think Dad bought it for her their first Christmas.  At any rate, it was the set that we put out every year when I was a kid.  We used real straw from the hay barn in our stable.  There was the Holy family, a shepherd with a couple of sheep, the kings and their camel, a cow, and a donkey.  The angel had a hanger on her back that went onto a hook at the peak of the stable so it looked like she was hovering there.

Eventually the camel's hump got broken off, the cow's ear--and then her entire head--got broken off, and the donkey got broke in half so the ass had no ass.  :)  Even with all the wounded and casualties, I don't think Mom ever considered replacing it.  Even when Dad passed away and she decorated by herself, she still put it out.  Even when she stopped decorating at all, she hung onto it.  I know this because we found it when we cleaned out her condo.

The other Nativity set I remember from my youth is the life-size wooden figures that our youth group at the Potsdam Church cut out and painted one weekend when I was in high school.  Those wooden figures were put up along the road in front of the Potsdam Church for a lot of years after my peers and I were long gone.  I always got warm fuzzies when I would drive by and see them.

Back to this year's decorating theme.  I also now am the proud and thrilled owner of an oil painting of the Holy family.  It is a 20x30 painting, so it takes up quite a bit of wall space.  I'm having a hard time finding the right place for it.  Part of the problem is that I try to use existing nails/hooks and none of them were pounded in with this painting in mind.  Gammy will help me figure it out; she is the best at wall decor ever!

The other thing that I do at this time of year that I don't do at most other times of the year is baking.  I will whip out the occasional batch of molasses cookies for Captain, but usually I reserve my baking energy for Christmas. 

Coincidentally, this holiday season I spent a lot of time binge watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix.  Side note:  their talents makes my pride in a rice krispie treat look pathetic. 

But I digress. 

Watching this show apparently gave me delusions of grandeur (how hard can it be, right?) so that I went rogue on the Brogan tried-and-true recipe for mint brownies.  I got this recipe from Gammy when Captain and I got married, and I have made them every year. 

The recipe calls for the brownie batter to be baked in a jelly roll pan and then cooled, then frosted with green mint-flavored frosting, and then covered in a chocolate ganache (I learned that on the GBBS). 

I could certainly jazz that up, right?  Sure!  So my bright idea was that instead of a jelly roll pan, I would use cupcake papers.  Bloody brilliant, as the Brits say. 

My first dilemma is that I have one cupcake tin with only six slots in it.  Putting that in and out of the oven 8 times would make me nuts.  Then I remembered a kitchen hack I saw on Facebook to use canning jar rims as a holder for the cupcake papers.  So I ended up using the jelly roll pan anyway, but for a completely different purpose. 

I used my cookie scoop to fill the cupcake papers so that each one would be uniform size (because Paul Hollywood demands this) which actually went as planned.  When I taste tested one, however, I realized my second dilemma was that I had used twice the amount of granulated sugar as the recipe called for.  Ooops.  At least I hadn't used salt instead of sugar, which I have seen happen on the GBBS. 

Anyhoo, while the brownies were cooling, I mixed up the frosting which is just powdered sugar, a little milk, a splash of mint, and some green food coloring.  My third and fourth dilemmas occurred at this step.  I realized that I was out of green food coloring, so I winged it with blue and yellow, ending up with a sickly blue-green frosting.  Then, just as I was pouring the mint extract into the 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon...I sneezed.  Anyone who knows me knows this to be a violent physical reaction so they will not be surprised that instead of 1/2 teaspoon of mint in the frosting, there is more like 3 teaspoons of mint.  Does Scope mouthwash mean anything to anybody?!  Uff da!  Nonetheless, I had to work with what I had, just as they do on the GBBS, so I went with it.  I piped the minty frosting on each brownie and spread it around with the back of a spoon. 

After that layer had cooled and set up, I melted the chocolate chips and butter for my chocolate ganache, which I then spooned onto each brownie.  That step actually went according to recipe and plan. 

End result:  Paul Hollywood would be horrified and never shake my hand over these, but they are edible.  Plus now I know that the whole concept works if I just follow the directions precisely. 

Whether it's the music, the lights, the decorations, or the holiday treats...or hey, all of the above...that bring you joy, here's wishing you a very Merry Christmas from the Brogans!

Images used:

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https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/entertainment/christmas-memes-459662

http://gortoncenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/a-charlie-brown-christmas.jpg

End of harvest

Captain will be winding down harvest over the next couple of days.  I have to say that this fall has been nothing but one frustration after another here at Chez Brogan.

First off, the neighbor that has helped Captain for the last ten years passed away this summer, so Captain has been missing his friend these last weeks.  A positive side to this is that Young Man and Cubby have been helping so we have had more time with them than we usually do.

Not even halfway into harvest, our old combine had finally had enough and went to the Great Scrapyard in the sky.  A positive note here is that we were able to find a replacement quickly, and Captain says it has been fun using a machine where "hey...everything works!"

Last weekend as Captain was really getting going on corn harvest, our semi, which Captain lovingly calls The Little Pete, also gave up the ghost and died on us.  Another positive note, we were able to arrange with CHS in Kasson to haul the remainder of our crop for us at a lower cost than what buying a different semi would be.

While Captain is off fighting those battles, I am waging my own war on the home front.  Calf Country has been a struggle this fall as we have had a bug move through our babies, and we lost a few before we found an effective protocol to detect and treat the virus before it could really take hold in any more babies.

Part of this protocol is that I walk through their little calf neighborhood every two hours to make sure no one is deathly ill.  Should I happen to find one that is even remotely "off," the rest of the protocol kicks in which involves administration of electrolytes, antibiotic, and an anti-diarrhea medication.  With this action plan, we have decreased morbidity rates to almost nil.  Go us!

Apparently feeling smug about one thing just causes another thing to happen.  Once we got that GI thing under control, we had a couple of babies do this weird thing where their tongues would stick out the side of their mouths while they were trying to suck a bottle...which just plain didn't work.  I remember my mom had that in a batch of her calves back in the day, but I can't remember what it is or how to treat it.  The calves generally outgrow or get over that oddity within a day or two, but it's annoying to deal with it while it's happening.

The other thing--on a much brighter note--that has been new this fall is that Gammy and I have been walking three mornings a week at the high school.  It's a community education offering, and we are amazed that we are the only ones who are taking advantage of it.  I really thought there would be oodles of people walking those hallways!  Not so; it's just me and Gammy.  That's okay, though.  We get nearly 5,000 steps in before 7:15 a.m., plus we solve a lot of world problems while we are at it!

As we get ready to gather with friends and family for Thanksgiving, I need to remind myself to quit being a whiny ass and be grateful for what I have:  my health, a good job, family that is close by and close-knit, and good friends with whom I can share my joys and burdens.

From Chez Brogan to your chez, Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Jekyll & Hyde

All this talk of costumes and dressing up that I've been doing lately made me remember something our kids did.  It involved costumes, props, and scripts.  It was imagination at its best.  Young Man would decide on any given night, "Let's play church." 

Our kids, good like Catholics! 

So they got the VCR cabinet pulled out and partially opened up to make a pulpit.  They would line up the dining room chairs as pews.  Young Man would get my bathrobe to use as priestly vestments.

Poor Molly, she was the congregant who had to listen to Young Man's hellfire and brimstone sermons, and let me tell you, he could get fired up and be a real Judgey McJudgemuffin!  Then it was time for communion, so they broke out the bite-size tortilla rounds.  Molly would be sitting in the front "pew," get up to receive her "wafer" then go back, sit in the second pew for a couple of seconds, and repeat the process until she had processed for communion from all four pews. 

This is where it gets interesting, lest you think my kids were practicing for ordination in the convent and seminary.  After Young Man gave his benediction and dismissed church, he would say, "Okay, let's play saloon!"

I'm not kidding even a little bit. 

Church was transformed into a saloon by replacing the robe with a barkeep apron, opening the VCR cabinet up all the way to make a bar, lining up the dining room chairs as bar stools, and getting empty beer bottles from the recycle bin and filling them up with water to serve.  Young Man was the barkeep and poor Molly...she was the down and out town drunk. 

Our kids, good little Irish souls!

I'm fairly certain that only our kids would go from holy to unholy in the blink of an eye.  It was almost a Jekyll and Hyde thing. 

Which got me thinking about how most of us...okay, maybe it's just us...who have two sides of the same coin in our personality. 

For example, in my case, I tend to be a free spirit, go-with-the-flow kind of person and don't have OCD habits.  Except for hanging clothes on the line.  I know that the clothes will dry no matter where they get hung on the line, but it literally makes me grind my teeth to see Captain put three items on one line, two items on another line, four items on the next line, and one item on the last line. 

Dude, seriously?!?!

The proper way (meaning MY way) to hang clothes is to start at the left end of the first line and work your way all the way to the other end of that line, and then go to the left end of the next line.  Repeat as needed.  It's logical.  I don't know why that is my organizational kryptonite, but it is. 

So the opposite side of that coin is that once the clothes are dried and folded...I don't put them in their drawers.  I usually (a) leave them on the laundry table and take them as I need them or (b) take the pile off the laundry table--because I got told in no uncertain terms that it was not the responsibility of the clothes folder to also deliver the clothes--and carry it up to my bedroom and put the pile on the cedar chest at the edge of the bed and take them from there as I need them.  Go ahead and judge me, I don't care.  I want there to be full disclosure there before I move on the Captain's OCD quirk.

So Captain is in charge of unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher.  His organizational kryptonite is that the plates have to be stacked according to pattern.  We have about six different sets of plates, so this gets to be something of a pain in the butt.  But it's his thing.  Fine. 

However.

The bowls, which should be stacked according to size so that they nest nicely, are shoved in there haphazardly so that they look like the Leaning Tower Of Pizza.  I don't get it, but I've learned not to criticize because I've had that whole pile of clothes thing tossed back at me (and rightfully so). 

But I digress.  Back to our kids going from church to bar.  I think it shows that they know how to work hard and follow the rules, and they also know how to play hard and enjoy life so that it doesn't become a drudgery. 

Our kids...just plain good people!

Images used:
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Halloween Costumes

This time of year when I see all the ads for Halloween costumes, I remember back to my own childhood when we wore those rigid plastic masks with the rubber band across the back, two eye holes, and a mouth hole.  We're lucky we all didn't suffocate.  We had the obligatory black cat, Mickey Mouse, and a devil mask.  We would just rotate them each year, so every three years we were the same thing.

However.

Later on when we were more middle school age, we had the BEST costumes because Mom was crazy brilliant and creative.  If you gave her some chicken wire, paper mache, twine string, and paint...I'm pretty sure she could build the Taj Mahal for you.

Oh my gosh the costumes she made!  One of them was for herself.  It was an outhouse, and she wore it over her shoulders (suspended by twine string) so that when she opened the doors of the outhouse, it looked like someone was sitting in there.  She won first place in the Viola Halloween costume contest that year.

She also made, at various points in time, a slice of cheddar cheese, a witch's hat, a headless horseman, and a set of dice.  Every one of them made out of chicken wire and papier mache and built with twine string to wear over the shoulders.

This is me under the hat at our church Halloween party

This is Baby Brother as the Headless Horseman at the church Halloween party

If she had been in Hollywood or on Broadway, she could have made a fortune as a set designer and/or costume designer because she could not only come up with the brilliant ideas, she could create them also.  She could sew, she could swing a hammer, and she could run a drill.  The only thing she couldn't build with was metal and welding, and she had to go to Big Brother for help there.

One year she came up with the idea for a spook house for our church Halloween party.  She wrote the script because it was going to be a guided tour.  She sewed the costumes and pulled a Scarlett O'Hara thing and made monk's robes for the guides out of our old living room curtains.

She had dry ice, she had props, she supervised the set up of everything.  She had it all timed down to the millisecond because she had sound effects that she had recorded earlier that were triggered by motion.  It was freaking awesome! She made an alligator head out of a pair of salad tongs, some baling wire, and heavy duty plastic garbage bags.

She made a knight's armor out of I don't remember what, but I do remember that the boots were a pair of plain old rubber knee-high barn boots painted silver.

It wasn't just Halloween where her creative talents shined.  She was in charge of our church's Christmas play for several years, and she made most of the costumes for that as well.  Good old chicken wire, etc., and gold paint with some twine string and we had a set of four-foot angel wings.  The crowns for the three kings--cardboard, baling wire, and gold paint.  Mary's head scarf that would never stay on anyone's head no matter how many bobby pins were used--yep, she fixed that by wrapping the fabric several times around a wire hanger bent in a half circle that acted as a headband.  That thing would actually give you a headache if you wore it long enough.  Our shepherd's had beards, canes, and those wool vest things.

I wish I had a fraction of her talent.  The best I can do is throw on one of Captain's flannel shirts and a pair of jeans and say I'm a lumber Jack.  Or would that be a lumber Jill?  Either way, no one that I know is in a class with my mom for making costumes!

Image used:
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Letters Home

I was listening to my Pandora playlist the other day and the song "Letters From Home" by John Michael Montgomery played.  It reminded me that I have a whole stack of letters that my dad wrote home during his time in the Army.  I dug them out and found this one that I'd like to share with you.

April 14, 1956 (Saturday)

Hi,

We have all just come back from breakfast.  It is 6:00.

Well here I am again; now it is 3:00.  We arrived here about midnite last night.  By the time we got our bedding and got assigned to our barracks, it was 2:00, and they got us up at 4:00 this morning.  

We have been pretty busy doing a lot of nothing and don't get much time to write.  We haven't got our uniforms yet.  They are pretty rough on us and most of us don't like this place very well.  We have heard that some of us are going to Colorado about Tuesday or Wednesday for basic in the 8th infantry division.  I guess I'm in that bunch.  It's all right with me.  Everybody wants to go.  I think all that go there will get sent to Germany.  

My address is:
Pvt. Herbert F. Brehmer
Co B and G 4071st SU
Reception Center
Camp Chaffee, AK

Don't write me now as we'll be leaving right away.  The B&G stands for Baker and George Company.

We sure haven't been getting much sleep the last two nites.  There are about 100 guys in our company from all over the states.

We just came back from the PX.  I got Hank Mueller a card and looked around.

Boy there sure is a lot of different kinds of guys here.  Some play poker, some play dice, and some just run around trying to act smart.  

We had a good trip here from Minneapolis.  It took us about 17 hours to get here.  It sure got tiresome riding the bus.  The guy that bunks beside me is from Missouri and can't read or write.  

Well I better close for now.  I think they're going to call us out again.

So long,
Pvt Bigfoot

PS Tell the girls and Cactus that I haven't had much time to write lately.  

How different times were then!  The postage was 6 cents for airmail; nowadays you can't even buy a gumball for 6 cents.  There was no street address or even a zip code, just the name and city/state information.  Wow!

Another reason the song I heard triggered a response is because we have a nephew who is deploying overseas soon.  I realize that most communication these days is electronic, but I really want to send an old fashioned hand-written letter (or two or five or twenty) to him while he is deployed.  Maybe he'll roll his eyes at his out-of-touch aunt, but I don't really care.  He's going to get the letters anyway.  Then someday when his daughter has a blog, she can pull them out and splash them all over cyberspace for everybody to read!

I also have to rat out Big Brother for not writing home while he was stationed in Germany.  We didn't hear from him for so long that Mom contacted the Red Cross to check up on him.  It wasn't 24 hours later, and there was a telegram delivered to our door:

Soldier okay.  Soldier sorry mother worried.  Soldier will write soon.  

Within a week we got a multiple-page written letter from PFC J. G. Brehmer, and I got a vision in my head of his Sargent standing over him in the mess hall just screaming at him to keep writing.  I kind of felt sorry for him but kind of not because I'd been worried too.

Where has the art of letter writing gone?  If I get a handwritten card, note, letter...anything in the mail it gets stuck to our bulletin board where it stays for at least six months.  On the other hand, I shouldn't be Judgey McJudgemuffin because a friend of ours had back surgery recently, and I have meant to get a card in the mail to him--even asked Captain several times to remind me--and I haven't done it yet.

The song also reminded me, again, of what sacrifices our soldiers make and how grateful we need to be to them for their service.  Don't ever let an opportunity slip away to thank a soldier for his or her contribution to our country.  Ever.

Pick up a pen.  Write a note to someone and mail it.  I guarantee you will make their day!!

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Conversations

Of all the conversations I have every day, most of the time I'm doing good to remember (1) who I am, (2) who I am talking to, and (3) what we are talking about.  Then again, some days I am on fire!

Like the other night at my part-time job I was talking to a young male coworker who was lamenting that he just couldn't find "the one" in his life.  I told him all those relationships that didn't work out were preparing him to know what true love was when it happened because you can't know what something is if you don't know what it isn't.  He gave me genius marks for that.

However, a different young man whom I work with wasn't so appreciative of my wisdom.  He was complaining because his parents gave him a curfew even though he was almost 19 years old.  I asked him if he was living in their house?  Yes, ma'am.  Were they giving him any kind of financial support?  Yes, ma'am.  Then, my fine young man, you need to zip it and stop complaining because they are well within their rights to set a curfew. 

Some days my conversations are those where I do more listening than talking.  Like when Cubby said to me in the car last week when something caught her eye out the window.  "Gramma, that is SO cute!  Like me!"  We really need to work on bringing her out of her shell and boosting her self-esteem, don't we?!

Then there are conversations that go sideways in a hurry.  Let me give you some background on this one.

2013:
Me to Captain:  You need to drink more water in the winter to stay hydrated so you don't itch so bad.
Captain:  That doesn't make any difference at all!
2014:
Me to Captain:  You need to drink more water in the winter to stay hydrated so you don't itch so bad.
Captain:  That doesn't make any difference at all!
2015:
Me to Captain:  You need to drink more water in the winter to stay hydrated so you don't itch so bad.
Captain:  That doesn't make any difference at all!

... (years pass in the same way)

2018:
Captain to me:  I was thinking about this, and I think I need to drink more water in the winter so I don't itch so bad.
Me:  Not able to print due to the adult content of the language.

Ladies, would you agree with me that a jury of my peers would never have convicted me if I had resorted to fatal violence?!?!

We have had some odd conversations happen in this house over the years.  One of the more memorable ones was when Molly's high school boyfriend was coming to our house for the first time.  Molly was giving Captain the rules of conduct for the encounter, as follows:

"Dad, you have to remember these three things when he gets here:  Number one, you can't sing.  Number two, you can't fart.  And number three, you have to wear pants."  I am nearly 100% certain nothing even close to this conversation has happened in other households.  We do love to be unique around here!

Is anyone else like me and has entire conversations with themselves?  No?  Okay, that's just me I guess. 

When I think about having conversations, I try to remember what my mama told me way back in the day.  "God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.  Listen more, talk less."  Smart lady, my mama!

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Who We Are

I know I've talked the ag economy crisis to death, but I'm going to do it again because I'm seriously annoyed.

If I see one more Facebook comment or hear one more snide remark to the tune of "farming is just a job, there are more jobs," I am going to stomp somebody stupid.  Because it is NOT just a job.

Farming isn't what we do, it is who we are.

Farmers can't clock out like people with "real" jobs can.  It's a 24/7 commitment.  Because guess what?  When there is a sick animal, farmers get up every hour overnight to give them medicine.  When everyone else is at the Memorial Day picnic, farmers are in the fields.  Farmers live where they work, there is no "leave work at work" for them.  But they will keep doing it against all odds, in the midst of low prices, and in the face of apathy from the rest of the country. 

As someone who grew up on a farm and now has a farm of her own, I can tell you that the farm gets any extra money before we do.  The feed bill is paid before the grocery bill.  The livestock bedding is bought before new clothes are bought.  Every cent that is for the farm is viewed as an investment, while every cent that is spent on family living is viewed as luxury.  It's how we think. 

Why?

Because farming isn't just a job.  It's a way of life.  Farming is a generational profession.  Grandfathers hand it over to fathers who hand it over to sons and daughters.  Sons and daughters gladly take the reins from fathers because they believe that the good things about farming outweigh the hard things about farming.

I am one of those who grew up on a farm.  Was it hard work?  Absolutely!  Funny thing is, I remember more of the fun times than the work.  Like water fights in the barn during a hot summer night milking.  Like long Sunday drives to check on crops and then a stop for ice cream.  Like having root beer floats at night after baling straw all day.

I remember when I was a kid, the biggest treat was getting to go with Dad when he went to run errands in Plainview because it meant that we would get a soda pop or other treat before we went home.

The old saying "you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy" is absolutely true.  Even if farmers move on to a different career, they take that work ethic with them.  They are the first ones on the job and the last ones to leave.  They will likely work more than one job because they have to be busy all the time; they don't know how to be any other way.

I remember the first night after we sold our milk cows and Captain didn't have to do chores.  "Chore time" rolled around, and all he did was pace from one end of the kitchen to the other end.  He didn't know what to do with spare time because he'd never had it before. 

Can farmers do other things?  Definitely, because they have to be a little bit of everything in their operations.  They are mechanics, vets, bookkeepers, truck drivers, plumbers, and electricians. 

More than anything else, however, they are role models for the next generation.  When those sons and daughters see their moms and dads give blood, sweat, and tears to keep their farm solvent it shows what hard work, dedication, faith, and family will get you. 

If a brilliant painter lost the use of his arms for whatever reason, the public would swell with sympathy for him.  If an incomparable composer couldn't make music any more, the world would mourn for him.  Hell, when a damn football player blows out a knee, people cry and feel bad for them.

So why is it so few people seem to care that the men and women who are feeding them are in grave danger of losing not only their livelihood but their very identities?  Someone tell me why?

But don't tell me "it's just a job." 

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Thirty Years of Wedded Bliss

We had originally planned to go to Two Harbors for our 30th anniversary, but several intervening circumstances derailed that idea, so we went with Plan B.  A camper cabin at Whitewater State Park for a night!  Not quite the same but still a celebration in an area that we love and appreciate.  

Monday was just as hot and ugly humid as the weekend had been so by the time we got everything rounded up, organized, packed and loaded, we were both sweaty.  Air conditioned car...here we come.  

After a couple of stops in Rochester to pick up some grocery items that we needed, we headed southeast.  We saw some farmers already combining soybeans on the way down!  It's actually really early for that to be happening.   

We got to the park office and got our cabin key.  These are brand spanking new cabins in the newest addition to the park on the east side of the highway.  That makes five total in Whitewater.  Ours was the first one in the group of four new ones.

We had some steps to go up to the cabin but nothing strenuous.  We unloaded the coolers and other totes as well as the firewood before heading to Altura to find cell service so Captain could call his bother with some last minute feeding instructions for a sick calf.  During that phone call, his brother told him two severe wind storms had moved through our neighborhood but everything looked undamaged.  

Right about then the wind came up, it started to thunder and lightning, and the rain came down sideways in sheets.  Captain hung up with his brother, and we high-tailed it back to the cabin.  

Once we got parked, we dashed for the cabin.  Unfortunately for me, my shoes didn't gain traction on the wet wooden deck, and I proceeded to do my impersonation of a pinball and went careening across the floor before slamming into the door with my shoulder.  This caused my coffee travel mug to become dislodged from my hand and go flying back OUT the door where it almost hit Captain.  He was quite concerned that I had smacked my head, but mostly I just bruised my pride.  And my butt.  

We decided to unpack and just sit still for a bit to recover from all that high drama.  About then we decided we should probably get the little charcoal grill going since the rain had let up to just an annoying drizzle.  

Remember how I said we unloaded the firewood on our first stop at the cabin?  Yeah...that was outside so it was wet.  Captain did find a couple of dry sticks in the middle of the bundle and got a fire going with the use of copious amounts of charcoal starter fluid.  

Right about then, it started raining again.  And it rained, and rained, and rained.  Now it was full dark out, wet, and we had no way to cook supper because the DNR frowns upon charcoal grills inside the cabins.  

We could have filled up on popcorn, chips, and salsa.  Instead we opted to drive into St. Charles and get Subway sandwiches to bring back to the cabin.  When we got up to walk out to the car, I realized that my pinball impersonation had done more damage than I had originally thought.  I could walk, but I looked like a constipated penguin.  I had to take the steps one at a time rather than in alternating fashion.  Yeesh!

When we got to Subway, I realized that even though I remembered to pack the camp chairs this time, I forgot something more important.  My debit card!  Luckily Captain had some cash in his wallet, or we would have had to resort to the popcorn and chips option.  

We got back to the park and into the cabin for supper and to read the newspaper Captain picked up for reading material.  There is NO cell service in the Whitewater Valley, so we couldn't even check Facebook.  I guess maybe that's the point of a vacation...getting away from it all...right?  

Captain decided he needed a shower, so off he went.  I stayed behind to lounge, eat popcorn, and have an adult beverage.  First I had to use the outhouse.  Conveniently there was a path from our cabin to the outhouse 100 feet away.  Captain had left the lantern with me, so I took that and started down the path in the dusk.  

Halfway between the cabin and the outhouse, a large toad decided to leap from point A to point B.  The sudden movement startled me so I hippity-skipped a little bit right into his flight path so he bonked into my shin scaring the living crap out of both of us.  

Now I'm hopping on one foot trying to not step on the poor little guy.  I mean, come on, he's just doing his toad thing and here comes this behemoth of a woman lurching into his travel plans!

With all the hopping, I get a little bit off the path and stepped into a puddle.  Now I have toad poop on my leg and cold water and mud on my foot.  And I still have to pee!  I lurched back onto the path and over to the outhouse.  Never have I been so happy to step into a dark, semi-clean, kind of stinky vault toilet as I was then!

I beat Captain back to the cabin and indulged in a long swallow of adult beverage to calm my nerves.  By now it had quit raining again, so when Captain returned we decided we would try the fire thing again.  

Despite our best efforts with tenting the wood over paper/cardboard and using more lighter fluid than was probably wise, we ran out of lighter fluid and still didn't have a fire.  Dang.  

Having had enough alcohol now that the snark was coming out, I asked if he wanted to try that stupid idea about starting a fire with potato chips.  He said to bring them out and he would try it.  Ten minutes later, I had to admit he was smarter than me because there was a lovely fire going in the fire ring.  Whoda thunk it?!  

We got over an hour of time by the fire and under the stars.  We even danced a little in the moonlight.  Not very well; we are both terrible dancers.  But we tried!

We both decided that sleeping through a rainstorm in a camper cabin was FAR preferable to sleeping in the same conditions in a tent.  With the windows cracked slightly to let in a fresh breeze and the sound of pattering rain, it was great sleeping weather!

The next thing I knew it was 4:30 and Captain was standing looking out the porch screen door, and he announced that it was hailing.  Okay, that's a good reason to go back to sleep!  When I woke up again, it was light out and Captain was making coffee in a light drizzle.  

It was raining too hard to cook bacon and eggs on the camp stove, and popcorn and chips were just a distant memory, so we headed toward the river.  We had a nice "Sunday drive" kind of thing through Altura, Rollingstone, Minnesota City, and into Winona where we found a McDonalds that wasn't busy.  

Fueled up ourselves and then the car before heading back to the cabin.  We drove down through the old campground and were surprised at the number of occupied sites.  

We returned to the cabin and packed everything up, followed the cleaning instructions on the wall, and locked up.  We took the key back to the park office and spent some time looking around the visitor center before hitting the road again.  

We spent some time exploring the picnic and beach area of Whitewater and the base of the steps that go to Chimney Rock and/or Inspiration Point.  We were getting soaked, but at this point we both decided we weren't so sweet we'd melt in the rain, and since we came to explore the park, that's what we were going to do!

We detoured toward Plainview and Carley State Park on the way home then looped back to Rochester to pick up some medicine at Target.  By then we were ready to be home, so off we went.  

Somehow it seems like there is more stuff to unload upon return than to load when heading out.  Why is that??  No matter; we got it all into the house and then collapsed in our chairs.   

It was a whirlwind trip and completely not what we had planned, but we enjoyed our time away anyway because we were together.  Together still after 30 years.  

Go us!!

Images used:
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Awaken the Dragon

One of the things that I wanted to do after going through treatment for breast cancer was to join Making Waves, the dragon boat team for Join The Journey in Rochester, which I did in May.  I have had a lot of fun at the weekly practices all summer and have met some amazing women.

This past weekend, some of us traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, for the 31st annual Dubuque Dragon Boat Festival.  

Saturday morning we were up bright and early so we could be at the festival park by 7:30 for the opening ceremonies.  This festival is normally held in Miller Park along the Mississippi River in Dubuque but due to recent flooding, the venue was moved to A. Y. McDonald Park along the Peosta Channel where the water was a little calmer.  

So let me back up a little bit and give you some history about the Dubuque Dragon Boat Festival.  It started in 1988 and has grown steadily since then.  Each year for the past six years, there have been 30-plus dragon boat teams participating including teams from Canada and Germany!  Breast cancer survivor teams are only part of it. There are youth teams, corporate teams, and community teams as well.  

Each team has a camp site where they set up canopies and tables, chairs, etc., so they can watch the races in comfort.  Each campsite decorates according to the overall theme of the festival.  This year's theme was "Holidays," and our team chose National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day as our holiday.  Let's just say we were really popular with all the free cookies we had!  There are prizes given for the best campsite decorations, best team spirit, and best T-shirt designs voted on by the team captains.  

The boats used in the competition are traditional Taiwan style boats made of wood.  I'm not sure what kind of wood it is, but it's a heavy boat.  It is divided into 18 squares--9 rows of 2--for the paddlers, one square for the stern, one square for the drummer, and a special elevated seat in the head of the dragon for the flag catcher.  

The boats are loaded at a dock and then paddled to the starting line in the middle of the river.  It takes teamwork from the paddlers and finesse from the stern to get jockeyed into the correct position.  Commands like "right side pull water" or "three strokes reverse" are what you hear in the boat.  

Once the boats are in position, the starter yells "Sterns, ready?"  After an affirmative reply, he yells, "Paddlers ready?" At this point, all paddlers lean forward at the waist with their paddles in the water waiting for the air horn that signals "go" to sound.  Once it does, it is basically one paddle stroke per second or a little more to race 250 to 350 yards to the finish line.

At the finish line, there is a buoy for each lane, and each buoy has a flag.  The person sitting in the special seat in the head of the dragon waits until the last possible second and then jumps up, turns around and lies flat on the top of the dragon head with feet anchored around the horns and arms outstretch to grab the flag as the boat passes.  It is the most intense 60-ish seconds I've ever experienced!  

Each race consists of two heats, one on the inside track and one on the outside track.  After the first heat, the teams paddle their boats back to the starting line, repeat the "jockey into position" maneuvers, and complete the second race.  

This year in Dubuque, there were 36 teams competing.  Saturday's races were the time trials, and there were some fairly significant lopsided races.  On the other hand, Sunday's races were bracketed with more evenly-qualified teams competing so winners were sometimes determined by time differences of hundredths of a second.  

Sunday also included the pink flower ceremony which honors breast cancer survivors.  In Dubuque this year, there were only two teams whereas normally there are four to six teams.  However, that did not diminish the impact and emotion of the survivor's ceremony as seen in this video.  

Our team got second place, and it doesn't matter that there were only two teams.  We raced our best and even improved our total time from Saturday to Sunday by almost 10 seconds.  That's HUGE, considering that we were three partials teams paddling together for the first time.  By the time we left on Sunday, I was tired but in a really good, satisfying kind of way.  I made some new friends, learned some new skills, and saw some new country.  I just don't think it gets much better than that.  

Of course, there was more than just paddling over the weekend!!

The two ladies that I traveled and roomed with were awesome.  We left Friday morning to make a sight-seeing day of it.  We headed south on Highway 52 under partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures.  

We stopped in Guttenberg, Iowa, because the motel along the highway had a deer head mounted outside each door, and the antlers for each deer had a plethora of empty beer cans on them.  Some of the deer were wearing hats as well.  A perfect photo op!

Right around the corner where the motel office was located, there was a wooden cow cut-out with random holes in it with a sign that said "Holy Cow!"  Huhn...another perfect photo op.

Then it was on down the road for half a mile to the scenic overlook of the Mississippi River.  We happened to see a barge going upriver!

The rest of the trip into Dubuque was uneventful but we were hungry by the time we rolled into town, so we stopped at a place called The Copper Kettle.  It is a locally owned establishment just kitty corner for the town's old brewery.  Unfortunately, the brewery is in a sad state of disrepair and is being torn down.  The restaurant, however, was full of nostalgia honoring the brewery.  I was fascinated by the ceiling fans that operated on a pulley system.  

The burger I had there was one of the best burgers I have ever had!  I'd put it up against the Juicy Lucy at Newts or the Swanee burger at Coates.  It, obviously, did not surpass my homemade burgers from Brogan beef, but nothing does.  Because the food was so good, and we didn't want to eat at any chain places, I asked the bartender for a recommendation for supper.  She suggested their sister restaurant across the river called the Silver Spoon.  Sign me up.  

From The Copper Kettle, we went to the hotel to check in.  The GPS took us on a scenic route there so we got to see a lot of the unique architecture of the older houses in Dubuque before getting to the hotel.  We got checked in and then decided we wanted to see Galena, Illinois, which was only about 20 minutes east.  

When we had gone about 20 minutes and not even crossed the river yet, we realized something was probably wrong.  We pulled off into a Casey's in Farley, Iowa, and realized that we had been heading west instead of east.  Uff da.  Pretty sure that was my mistake as navigator!  So we got back on the highway headed in the right direction and finally got into Galena about an hour later.  

Oh my goodness the cute little shops they have!  A lot of high-end clothing stores, several restaurants, some coffee houses, two or three candy shops, and so much more!  I found the perfect dish towel for me in one of the kitchen stores.  

Before we could explore everywhere we really wanted to, it was time to get supper and head back to the hotel.  We did stop at the Silver Spoon on the way back to Dubuque, but we all decided it wasn't as good as The Copper Kettle had been.  

Back at the hotel, we had a quick visit from the team captain with Saturday's timeline of where to be and when.  Then it was into our jammies to watch some Friends reruns before lights out.  

Saturday after we were done racing in early afternoon, we decided that we just had to finish up seeing the rest of Galena, so we invited others from the team who wanted to join us.  The nine of us split up for shopping purposes but met up for burgers at Dirty Gurt's Burger Joynt--a very unique establishment with very good food!

This time we made it back to the hotel before full dark and opted for HGTV episodes to fall asleep to.  

After Sunday's races and ceremony, we headed home tired but happy.  We stopped once for gas and a stretch break and one in Harmony for supper at Estelle's.  I made it home by 5:30 or so.  

I am so very glad that I made the decision to join this team.  These ladies are wonderful role models and support people.  The team is about camaraderie and having fun while being active.  If we win a medal, that's just icing on the cake.  

Thanks, ladies, for making me part of the your team!

Images used:

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/c7/0a/5f/c70a5f0a30f9ac94738d7cdf4b7a2cb5--dragon-boat-quotes-dream-team.jpg

http://www.americandragonboat.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/fdrace4.jpg?gid=3

http://www.americandragonboat.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/dubrace.jpg?gid=2

Garden Harvest

Canning season has begun here at the Brogan Ranch!  Captain had planned to make sauerkraut, but the day that the cabbage was ready, he had to leave at 7 a.m. to finish spraying fungicide on the soy beans.  His parting words were, "You'll have to make the sauerkraut.  Just watch the video with Gardener Bob."  And off he went.

I would just like to interject here that, first of all, Captain has tried to make sauerkraut for three or four years in a row with EPIC failures every year.  I'm not sure why he thought this year was going to be "the year" it all worked, but whatever.  Second of all, I hate sauerkraut so the fact that I got stuck making it was sort of comical.

At any rate, I harvested four nice big heads of cabbage and took them to the house.  We had to borrow a 3-gallon stone crock from Gammy that also came with a wooden tamper-downer thing.  I got the cabbage all cleaned up and rinsed off before going to the computer to watch this dude, Gardner Bob.

Fast forward through 25 minutes of pure frustration because there is no such creature as Gardner Bob. 

Turns out it's Gardner Scott.  Captain, that was vital information that you biffed up!  Yeesh.

Anyway, Gardner Scott explained the whole process that, while not exactly rocket science, still required some precision on the ratio of cabbage to canning salt.  Side note--table salt is not adequate here; it must be canning salt.  At any rate, the ratio was five pounds of shredded cabbage to 3 tablespoons of canning salt. 

Now how the heck was I going to determine if I had 4.75 pounds of cabbage, 6.15 pounds of cabbage, or 5 pounds of cabbage.  This seemed very math-esque to me which gave me the heebie-jeebies.  Obviously, a food scale would be the answer here, but we don't happen to have that in our arsenal at the moment. 

I could hold a five pound bag of sugar in one arm and the cabbage in the other arm to see if they weighed the same, but that seemed a little imprecise for what I needed.  Eventually a light bulb went off when I remembered how the elevators determine how much grain is on a semi.  They weight it full and empty to compare. 

Eureka!  I grabbed my dishpan and headed to the bathroom scale to determine the weight of me and the empty dishpan.  After I had shredded a good amount of cabbage into the dishpan, I went and repeated that process.  Nope, still 2 pounds short.  Shred some more cabbage, re-weigh and hit it on the head at exactly 5 pounds.  Was I smart or what?!

Gardner Scott explained that the canning salt would cause the cabbage to release moisture that would mix with the salt and make the brine but it would take some time.  As in 10 to 15 minutes of standing at the table with what amounted to a sawed-off baseball bat, compacting the shredded cabbage in the crock to get it to release enough water to get the brine over the top of the cabbage.  Talk about an upper body workout!

Eventually I was successful in getting enough brine to cover the cabbage.  Now to store it for three to six weeks while it fermented.  Gardner Scott stressed that it had to be in a room where the temperature did not get below 65 degrees (has he ever been to Minnesota in August?!?!) or above 75 degrees (again...same question).

At our house, the only room that fits that requirement is my office.  Oh goodie, I get to share my work space with a pot of stinky slaw for a month and a half.  The things I do for Captain...

As my office is carpeted, I found a tarp to put down first in case the sauerkraut decided to go mutant and explode all over everything in the night.  I weighted it down with a zippered bag of pie weights covered by a gallon-zippered bag with brine in it. 

When Captain came home hours later to ask how it went, I took a few seconds to point out that he got the dude's name wrong in the video and then proceeded to brag about how I'd been so smart on weighing the cabbage. 

Men, I'm going to give you some unsolicited advice here.  If your wife comes to you and says, "I did [insert task].  Wasn't that smart?"  Do not tell her she should have or could have done it a different way unless you want to limp for two days from where she kicked you in the shin.  No; the correct response here would be, "Honey, that's amazing!  Good job!"  Just ask Captain.

For the next several weeks we would check the status of the sauerkraut about every other day.  After three weeks when it had stopped bubbling around the edges (the indication of fermentation), it was ready to can. 

Gardner Scott did not cover this aspect in his video so we went back to the Ball canning book which said to simmer the kraut until it was warmed through and then put the hot kraut into hot jars and water bath for 15 minutes. 

We watch a lot of cooking shows around here, and they all say "If you're looking, it ain't cooking."  This is a rule that Captain just cannot wrap his head around.  If we have stuff in the crockpot, he can't resist taking the lid off and poking at it a half dozen times.  Same with the kraut.  Lid off, stir, complain that it isn't hot yet. 

Dude, leave the damn lid on the pot and let it get hot!

Finally, the kraut was hot enough so I got five pint jars into the canner.   Fifteen minutes later, Captain took them out of the canner for me, and the jars started pinging almost before he had them set on the counter.  Those pings are so darned exciting!!

Since that was such a success, I now have another crock full of sauerkraut sharing my office with me.  Hopefully we will get another four or five pints to share with friends and family. 

Images used:
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Dog Days

Hello all, Dipstick the Dog here!  Mrs. Captain is so busy these days with her job at Hy-Vee and with all the flowers and other gardening that I told her I'd take care of this today.

Things are hopping around here at the Brogan Ranch.  Captain is feeding more baby calves than he has in months.  I heard him tell Mrs. Captain, "This is almost like work!"  What did he think it was...playtime?  And he says I'M dumb?!

I know Mrs. Captain has talked about elder care and her mom.  I'm kind of worried about my mom, Dayzee, too.  She will be 14 years old next month, and she is showing her age.  I didn't think it would ever happen.  Dayzee is the one who taught me how to chase cars...my favorite sport!  But now she can't hear anymore at all, so she doesn't know when there is a car coming down the road until she sees me take off on the chase.

My worry is that she will be taking a nap in the driveway and not hear a truck or tractor start and will get run over.  I probably shouldn't worry because the Captains are very good about looking around everywhere to make certain we are all out of harm's way.

She still has all of her feistiness, though.  She got accidentally shut up in the garage last week, and she was so mad and wanted to get out so bad that she chewed through the garage door opener wire.  You go, Dayzee!

Speaking of harm's way, did any of your dogs have to deal with that awful wind a week or so ago?!  I thought we were all going to blow away.  I was lying under my favorite pine tree in the front yard and all of a sudden the wind separated the flag pole into three pieces and tossed two of them into the tree I was lying under.  Almost scared the fur right off of me!

We--Dayzee, me, and my dad, Bear--like to go with the Captains in the evening after supper to check the garden and then visit with Gammy Captain.  You ought to hear them complaining about the bugs that are out.  Fools, they should wear fur coats like we do! 

I saw a major argument between the Captains at the clothesline the other day.  Captain usually does the laundry and hangs the clothes on the line.  I think this is a nice thing to do to help out Mrs. Captain.  One day, Captain must have been really busy because Mrs. Captain brought a load of laundry out to the line.

I guess she didn't like the way Captain had put the clothes on the line because there were several pieces of clothing on each of the four lines instead of all the clothing on one line at a time like she does it.

Here's my question:  does it really matter?  The clothes are going to dry no matter where they hang on the line, right?  Again...they say I'M the dumb one here.

You should hear their philosophical discussions on the deck every night after coming back from Gammy Captain's house.  You'd think world peace depended upon their opinions.  It's rare that they agree on a viewpoint but they manage to exchange ideas without bloodshed.

Well, it's almost time for me to start the nightly patrol and barkfest.  It's been nice catching up with you all.

Mrs. Captain will be back soon, I"m sure!

Hugs,
Dipstick the Dog

The Little Red Hen

When I had the day off on Monday, Captain and I spent some time in the garden pulling weeds.  We had gotten a nice rain the day before, so the quack grass and lambs quarters came out easily.  Usually this is a job Captain ends up doing by himself as I am working.  He has compared himself to the Little Red Hen who does all the work and then has to share the bounty. 

Don't waste much sympathy on him because I do my share of the work later in the process when it's time to do the canning and preserving.  I don't get off Scot free by any stretch of the imagination!

Individual work ethics aside, our garden is doing very well this year.  We were worried about the green beans as they got spritzed with herbicide when Captain sprayed the soybeans, but it looks like they will recover from the minor damage. 

For some reason that no one is quite sure of, we have seven cabbages planted this year.  Contrary to popular belief (including mine), Captain says he is not intending to try and make sauerkraut again.  Thus, we have gotten a freezer coleslaw recipe from his mom and will try that once. 

Last year we had volunteer spaghetti squash everywhere in the garden.  This year it's a cherry tomato plant that sprouted from last year.  We also planted six or seven new tomato plants so we'll have plenty of those to make juice, chili sauce, and salsa.  I'm going to show a couple of friends how to can tomatoes this summer if our schedules all work out. 

Our little lettuce patch was overtaken by weeds this year.  I think next year we may do that in a container to keep the weeds and grass out of it.  Mike's mom is the one who uses that the most so we'll find a pretty little deck container she can have right outside her door. 

We finished off our row of radishes already.  When it gets more into August we will plant another row as they don't like the heat of mid summer. 

The beets are just starting to be ready.  We have enough for a meal tonight...greens and all.  It was an adventure picking them because our dogs decided to do their business right on top of the row of beets.  Thanks, Dipstick.  I'll remember that the next time you want a num-num. 

I am most excited because the cucumbers are starting to really ripen so I can make pickles pretty soon.  My favorite project of the summer!

Then of course there are the giant pumpkins.  We have counted 14 of them so far...9 on one vine alone.  This is bad growing policy for giant pumpkins, as the literature says to have one pumpkin per vine if you want them to get to be a half ton.  Since we don't truly want one that big, we'll leave the nine on there and get some that are several hundred pounds each instead.  This is Cubby's favorite thing to look at when she's here.  "Gramma, they are HUGE!"

On the flower front, the war I have been waging against the ditch lillies is over and I am victorious.  It was a vicious and bloody campaign, but I prevailed.  Take that, ditch lillies!  I will have to divide some of my hostas this fall as they are getting slightly out of control.  Lucky for me it's almost as hard to kill hostas as it is to kill ditch lillies. 

The mutant whiskey barrel has some volunteer pinks from last year's Old Fashioned seed mix I planted plus two others that I haven't identified yet.  There are also the zinnias I planted out there this year.  I am thinking I will never have to seed that pot again; these will just keep coming back year after year.  Nothing wrong with that. 

My dill patch didn't survive from last year.  I'm thinking it needs to be in a container rather than in amongst the quack grass along the corral.  I'm glad I have friends who have established dill gardens that I can pilfer!  Will trade pickles for dill!!

The hollyhocks (a biennial--grows every two years) two years ago got a rust infestation and only two or three of them survived.  I have a white one and a magenta one.  I have seeds to replenish the flower bed, but I can't plant them until next year as the germination time is 365 days!  Next year's hollyhock crop--which was not affected by rust last year--will be all white and pink. 

I love this time of year when the potential of everything is just beginning.  Ask me again how I feel about it when I've been on my feet canning six nights in a row!


Images used:
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