If you’ve followed my blog for at least a year, you’ve seen me post about the Michael and Betty planters that I “inherited” when my mom moved into a small apartment. Betty was my mother’s sister and Michael was Betty’s husband. When Mom got those planters she named them right away, so they’ve always been Michael and Betty to me. I enjoy giving them different “hair” every year.
2022 Hair-do’s
Allow me to introduce you to the real Michael and Betty:
On their wedding day in New York City
Michael’s given name was Robert/Bob, but he took the name Michael when he entered the Screen Actor’s Guild. He did some acting (he played a guest role on Kojak one time!), but eventually made his mark in NYC by starting his own acting studio. Betty, meanwhile, taught voice lessons.
My sister and I went to NYC in 1982 to visit them and our cousins – a story that could be entitled “Country Mice Visit Their City Mice Relatives.” They lived in a brownstone filled with all sorts of eclectic stuff they’d accumulated over the years, a fascinating place. We went to a restaurant one night and one of Michael’s students joined us – an actress we knew from a soap opera that we were watching. Her character was going to get killed off, so we got the scoop ahead of time. Very heady stuff!
They’ve both passed on now, but I think of them often…especially in the summer. 😉
This post will probably exit Stage Left in the morning.
I interrupt my regularly scheduled blog post for this grand announcement: we are proud grandparents of a bouncing baby boy! He hasn’t actually started bouncing yet, but I’ve had 5 boys and they tend to be very bouncy creatures, so I know the day will come.
So adorable! This fat little buffer weighed in at 9 pounds, 11 ounces.
Rumor has it that boys are made of only three things: snips and snails and puppy dog tails. That seems an odd amalgamation, doesn’t it? I don’t think that can be true, even though the idea has a huge following.
Nope, I think I can weigh in on this issue, having done empirical research on this with my own little study sample of five.
Boys are made of fidgety stuff; They’re jumping beans, They like to play rough
Boys are made of loud things, Of battle cries And sword “shings”
Boys are made of bones and muscles of backyard fights And bedtime tussles
God bless the boys and all their noise Bless their fightings and their smitings Bless their roughness and their toughness. Make them brave and make them strong Let them praise Your name with song God bless the boys!
It’s been so long since I wrote Part 3, that I need to remind you where I was at the end of it. I was in college, starting to divest myself of any sort of faith and coming to an enlightened sense of who God is: namely, whoever I wanted Him or Her to be. This was quite a comfortable place to be, but in God’s mercy, He didn’t leave me there.
In the summer after my second year of college, I met a man, not much older than I was. He was worldly where I was still innocent. He was married and in the process of getting a divorce, while my experience with the opposite sex was limited and fairly chaste. He was a recovering alcoholic – 9 months sober; I didn’t drink much and certainly had never even been drunk. I think it was my innocence and lack of experience that attracted him. He got my number and called me at 10 p.m. and we talked until 5 a.m. After that, we were never far apart. My involvement with him was instrumental in bringing about estrangement with some of my best friends, who thought he was not right for me. They didn’t know him like I did – they didn’t understand!
I learned a lot about Alcoholics Anonymous while dating this man, whom I’ll call “SD.” The more SD talked about his addictive relationship with alcohol, the more I began to see it mirrored in my addictive relationship with food. I’d always been rather compulsive with food and obsessed about my weight and had a distorted body image. It’s only by God’s grace that I didn’t become bulemic. I tried once, but just couldn’t do it. SD encouraged me to check out Overeater’s Anonymous, so I did. I even read the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, written by Bill W. I was a little irritated by his references to faith in Christ (references that I believe were taken out of future editions), but in general, it made some sense to me. I joined an OA group and started working through the steps, one of which entailed acknowledging that we have no control over ourselves and must look to a Higher Power for help, however we define that Higher Power.
Now this may not seem like much of an improvement on my Desiderata god (see Part 3). I was still in the position of being able to define God however I wanted to. However, this time, I was going to a Higher Power from a position of great need. I was truly anguished over my compulsive overeating, even though I was really not overweight. It seemed that it should be very simple to resist the temptation to overeat, but in fact, the more I tried, the worse it got. I began binging food in a way that I had never done before. I started writing prayers of a sort in my journal, beseeching this Higher Power to help me. I learned the Serenity Prayer and turned to it often. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
And yet, the AA model is to label these behaviors as manifestations of a “disease,” rather than as sin. You could no more stop being an alcoholic than you could stop being a diabetic. Accordingly, I looked upon my own eating issues as a disease and sought to live clean and sober, which for us in OA meant getting a sponsor, submitting eating plans to her, and cutting out most foods with white flour and white sugar. Meetings were just like the AA model – you went around the room and introduced yourselves each time: “Hi, I’m Lynn, and I’m a compulsive overeater.” I didn’t like having a sponsor, I didn’t like submitting eating plans to someone, and I didn’t like going to the meetings. But I tried for awhile, thinking it was my only hope.
Meanwhile, my relationship with SD was experiencing its own stresses and strains. A man who’s been married isn’t going to be content with not being involved sexually. I convinced myself that this was a good thing, that I loved him, that I was ready. But I wasn’t ready, and I got pregnant. I gave SD no choice in the matter – I was not going to have a baby. He came with me to the abortion and although we tried to move on like nothing had happened, things were never the same. I wish this weren’t part of my story, but facts are stubborn things. Truth can’t be erased to ease our consciences. I sacrificed a life without a shred of guilt on my conscience at the time, but I was guilty, nonetheless.
We limped along for another year, but while I was fully committed despite our problems, SD was becoming relationally distant and I was in denial. To be fair, we were both in denial – he wanted to believe things would get better, too. He made plans to move to another city to go to college and we decided that if we were serious about trying to make things work between us, I should move there with him. I quit school, quit my job, said my goodbyes, packed up my belongings, and on January 1 of that year left the only home I’d ever known to start this new life. Eight days later, SD broke up with me and my world came crashing down.
I’ll probably delete this cliffhanger of a post in the morning…or not. Stay tuned!
Many years ago, my mother came to join us for Thanksgiving and brought along a DVD that she thought we might enjoy watching. It was a 90-minute documentary about an unknown nature artist – probably a no-go with six kids ages 5-15. We are a polite tribe, though, and didn’t want to disappoint, so we all settled down to watch “Rivers and Tides” about Andy Goldsworthy, prepared to stifle some yawns. And just like that, we were all hooked.
Goldsworthy creates transitory art pieces with things he finds in nature, recognizing that these works of art will be gone with the next tide, or the next rainstorm, or the next strong wind. It was beautiful and fascinating, sometimes even haunting. Sadly, Goldsworthy didn’t acknowledge or give praise to the Creator of all the things he found and transformed, but the works themselves gave God glory. We’ve seen the documentary several times and have tried to share it with others, but so far haven’t snagged anyone else to be part of the AG Fan Club.
A few members of our family have been known to do the “Andy Goldsworthy” thing when we’ve gone camping or been out in the wilderness – some of these pieces admittedly much more droll than AG would have done.
When we were in Grand Marais a couple weeks ago, I kept up the tradition.
We went back to that beach the next morning and to my surprise it was still there. I imagine by now it has been reduced back to its constituent driftwood and pebbles. The passage of time tends to do that with everything that we make sooner or later. It’s humbling.
I’ll probably not even need to delete this in the morning – the passage of time will erode it away.
What you see in that photo is a frustrated mosquito. We were up in the lakes during a time of a Great Mosquito Gathering. They had assembled in large numbers and were primarily interested in my blood. I’m one of those people that mosquitos love. My husband’s theory is that my blood is too sweet and that I need to drink bitter ales and unsweetened coffee in order to have the kind of natural immunity that he seems to possess. I told him I would pay real money if someone could develop a kind of fabric that mosquitos couldn’t pierce. In my experience, they bite through socks, jeans, long-sleeved shirts, anything. The amount of mosquito spray I use seems irrelevant to them. It seemed to be my fate to act as mosquito bait.
Then it rained. I put on the new rain suit that Kris insisted on buying for me for the canoe trip, the suit I told him I probably didn’t need. As soon as I donned it, I realized that this wonderful, marvelous suit was perfect for keeping the mosquitos from biting me. It was made of fabric that their devilish stingers couldn’t pierce. Hallelujah! The rain stopped, but I kept the suit on. In fact, I told my husband I’d probably sleep in it. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t, but as it turned out, I didn’t really need it in the tent. But for the rest of our time in the campground, I wore it constantly, even with the hood up to keep them off my neck.
I don’t think mosquitos were part of the Garden of Eden. It’s hard to imagine God putting Adam and Eve in this perfect paradise and then saying, “Oh, just one thing – watch out for the blood-sucking insects! Ta Ta!” No, I think it’s just as my friend Temple once told me, that mosquitos rode into Eden on Satan’s back.
King David wasn’t referring to mosquitos when he wrote about his foes in the psalms, but some of the verses certainly fit the bill for me and my battle with mosquitos.
LORD, how they have increased who trouble me! Many are they who rise up against me. Psalm 3:1
Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity! For the LORD has heard the voice of my weeping. The LORD has heard my supplication; The LORD will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled, Let them turn back and be ashamed suddenly. Psalm 6:8-10
Yes, what you see in that first photo is not only a frustrated mosquito, but one who is ashamed, who is troubled, and who will turn back. The LORD heard my supplication. Amen!
I’ll probably spray some Repel on this blog post in the morning.
Once again, we’ve been gallivanting off on adventures, this time in the lake-filled part of northern Minnesota that we call the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Some officious people (on some dreadful committee, no doubt) decided that the title wasn’t quite long enough and came to the conclusion that the word “Wilderness” would make it complete. So now it’s BWCAW. When I was young, cool people just called it the “B-Dub.”
My first time in the Boundary Waters was when my Dad took my two sisters and me back in 1974. It was love at first sight for me. I didn’t even mind the portaging. I learned how to steer a canoe using the C-stroke and the J-stroke and felt rather athletic, which wasn’t the norm for me.
When my husband and I were courting, his eyebrows went up in decided approval when he found out that I not only enjoyed paddling a canoe, but also had experience in the BWCA, where he’d spent quite a few summers on canoe trips. My experience paled before his, of course, but qualified me for some respect from him.
When we got engaged, we decided in a gush of enthusiasm that a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters would make a wonderful honeymoon. Who wouldn’t want to spend their honeymoon sleeping in a small tent on the ground? Thankfully, sanity prevailed and we put the canoe trip off until a year later in 1986.
Then we had six children. (That escalated quickly, didn’t it?) What with one thing and another, our paddles didn’t dip into the waters of the B-Dub again until Kris took the four older boys in 2007. I sat that one out with the two youngest of our tribe.
But it didn’t seem right that the two youngest should miss this grand experience, so we went up, the four of us in 2015. By this time, I was nearly 30 years older than the last time I’d gone. I was a little nervous about my ability to paddle, portage and sleep on the ground in a tent. All of it was like riding a bike, although the sleeping on the ground was more like falling off a bike. And frankly, the portaging was made a lot easier because we had two young people to take up my slack. Everyone knew I was the weak link.
That brings us to the present. The two of us just came back from a 3-day sojourn in the Boundary Waters. I was considerably more nervous this time, being the ripe old age of 63 and sadly out of shape. The success of our trip was solely because of my husband’s preparations and planning, and – it must be said – his muscles. We had a couple mishaps and scaled back our plans somewhat, but we both loved being back on the lakes, paddles working together, moving through the water and being completely off the grid. We read our Psalms morning and evening and made a joyful noise unto the Lord.
But we both agreed that the rough camping was getting a little too challenging. And I’m now officially on Biffy Strike. No more outdoor Biffies for me!
Be it ever so humble…there’s no place like home.
Thus, the blog returneth. And perhaps will be deleteth in the morning.
You’ve stayed in AirBnB’s before, right? Or in VRBO’s? Or in hotels? They all have one thing in common: house rules. Do this, don’t do that, and for heaven’s sake, don’t make noise after 10 P.M. In the last year, however, we’ve stayed twice at the most delightfully quirky place with some…er, unique rules and attractions. The address changed between times and the rules did, too. I can tell you about it, but as much as you may want to, you can never stay there. It’s a very exclusive lodging opportunity, available only to the two of us. But when you read the house rules, you’ll wish you were qualified to stay at La Casa L____. It’s a magical place.
Stay #1. Welcome to La Casa L____. We’re so glad to welcome you to our little haven. You’ll find everything you need to know during your stay in this welcome packet. If you have any questions, make sure to write them down, and leave them in the basket next to the desk! We take them out once a week with the rest of our trash. Check-In & Check Out. “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave!” House Rules: The airbed you are using is borrowed, so feel free to eat snacks in bed, spill drinks – whatever! Please remember that we have neighbors in the complex next to us. They make a lot of noise, so don’t hesitate to holler at them if needed. Places to Eat: We keep our freezer stocked with half-filled ice cube trays and freezer-burned fruit. Help yourselves. Our casa is your casa! Things to Do: The mop and vacuum are in the coat closet. We encourage our guests to make full use of them! Enjoy your stay!
Stay #2 Welcome to La Casa L______. We are so glad to welcome you to our little haven. You’ll find everything you need to know during your stay in this welcome packet. If you have questions, just think them very hard as you are falling asleep. La Casa will answer all in time. Check-In and Check Out. Please use the side gate upon entrance and exit. How low can you go? House Rules: The airbed you are using has feelings. Hate speech is not accepted here. Quiet time is anytime Fred and Velma [the cats] are sleeping. It’s safe to assume that this is at all times. Places to Eat: Our breakfast bar, consisting of overripe bananas and their overripe cousins, begins at 4:31 a.m. and ends at 4:32 a.m. Feel free to enjoy within that time.* Our casa is your casa! Things to Do: The list of activities goes on and on. Playing with Fred and Velma, feeding Fred and Velma, scooping Fred and Velma’s litter box…Truly hours of entertainment await. Enjoy your stay! *Any peels left out will be added to your bill.
We are eagerly looking forward to our next stay at La Casa. Don’t you wish you could come along? Those of you who know me can probably guess who one of the proprietors is – I asked her permission before sharing this. 😉
“Our casa is your casa!”
This post is pumped full of air, but if it’s gone flat by morning, I’m tossing it.
So you have a lot of rhubarb. And there’s just two of you. And you don’t need a lot of extra bready carbs like you find in rhubarb bread, rhubarb muffins, rhubarb custard dessert, etc. But rhubarb needs sugar. It must have sugar. What do you do? You make rhubarb syrup!
Big deal, you say. What do you do with rhubarb syrup?
Add some tonic water and voila! A refreshing and byootiful summer afternoon drink. How sweet it is depends on what proportions you use. But that’s between you and your rhubarb. Nobody else needs to know.
You’re welcome.
Add some tonic water to this blog post and delete it in the morning. That’s what I’m going to do.
Owls and fireworks…bet you’re wondering how I’m going to marry those two topics in one neat little essay. Wonder no longer – I’m not. I’m just stuffing two different things into one blog post. We’ll call it “efficient.”
This fierce looking owl has one purpose and one purpose only. It is an owl meant to spread fear and dread into the little rodent hearts of the squirrels that take one bite of our apples and throw them on the ground. And if it provokes some horror in the birds that eat our raspberries, all the better. Be honest: if you were a squirrel, would the sight of this clearly fake owl throw you into a dizzy tizzy? According to the hostess of our B&B lodgings in Idaho, these really work. She had 7 of them spread through her yard. We decided to start with one.
And completely unrelated to the owl issue, let’s talk about fireworks. When our children were younger, we used to go forth to the local park where they shot off the fireworks display in our fair city on Independence Day. It was a festive event to which hordes of mosquitos came to feast on our blood. Then came the fun of getting out of the crowded parking lot. Don’t get me wrong – I love fireworks! The best fireworks experience I ever had was when I was a child and we were in Duluth on the 4th of July. We were on the shore of Lake Superior and the sound of the fireworks echoed back and forth across the bay as they lit up the sky. I wished it could have gone on forever.
As soon as our kids caught on to the idea of buying their own fireworks to set off at home, we were freed from going down to the park. The mosquitos found us anyway, of course.
Eventually, we discovered that if we stood on the corner near our house, we could see the fireworks from there. That’s what we did last night while all of the rest of you were doing it up proper.
I took a few photos of the orange-lit clouds from the sunset and then tried unsuccessfully to capture the fireworks from far away.
When darkness fell and the mosquitos began to bite my ankles, we went back home.
In honor of Independence Day, I’ll leave you with a quote from John Adams about our Constitution:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
When the owls start setting off fireworks, I’ll delete this post.
Lynniebeemuseoday 