Our ducklings are thriving! We were quite nervous for them when Sweet Mama laid her eggs at our front door in the open. When they hatched and she was reticent to take them to the lake, we were nervous again. Fortunately, she made it to the lake on Sunday. She spends the nights there with the babies and her duck family. In the morning, several ducks escort her and the babies back to my front door. At night, they come and escort her and her babies back to the lake. It’s honestly quite heartwarming.
Incredibly, there are still eight lively ducklings! Normally, by this time she would have lost several of them to predators. Sweet Mama is taking no chances with her sweet brood. We give her plenty of space to take care of them. She gets nervous when anyone, even us, comes outside. She’ll fly you off if she thinks you’re getting too close to her babies. Consequently, I refill their water and feed them during their sojourn at the lake. If you had asked me earlier this month if I thought her clutch would be successful, I would have answered you no. She is intent on proving all of us wrong.
What would your life be like without music?
Life without music would be so boring! Music fuels my workouts and my life. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you already knew that since I post a music video to nearly every blog. Now off to take my iron supplement.
We’re home from the Mayor’s surgery. Everything went well. The eighty or so minutes he was in surgery were not super fun. I really didn’t like the helpless feeling that comes with waiting for a loved one to get out of surgery. His finger was quite a mess since it had already started healing. For the next week or so, he’ll have two pins in the bone to facilitate the healing. We’ll see his surgeon in about a week. She said he was dancing and giggling on his way out of the operating room to the post-op area. Needless to say, the nurses appreciated the levity he brought and a happy patient in recovery is better than a cranky one.
She estimates he’s facing a four to six-week recovery. We’re all hoping for a quick recovery, so he can play in the state tournament. Of course, his recovery is predicated on him being a compliant patient. This, of course, is where things will get complicated. He doesn’t want to wear the sling or sit down. At this point, he should be sitting down and relaxing, but he’s fighting us at every turn. Lastly, he’s insistent on having Chic Fil-A tonight for dinner, which may be a bit difficult on his tummy.
The funniest thing I noticed was he wrote himself a reminder on his leg, so he wouldn’t forget he wanted Chic Fil-A. As if, he’d ever forget he wanted food. In the post-op room, he was saying all sorts of funny things. He opted to wear sticky socks at home instead of his shoes. Halfway home he forgot he had worn the socks and was wondering where he left his shoes. At any rate, we’re glad to be home with our funny yet challenging patient.
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
I’d love to visit Stiltsville, a collection of silted houses located off the coast of Miami. Builders started constructing these houses in Biscayne Bay in the 1930s. There were a lot more of them, but hurricanes and fires have left only seven remaining.
I’m a bundle of nerves over here as we’re now twenty-four hours out from the Mayor’s surgery. Of course, some of the shakiness may be low blood sugar due to a lack of food since Saturday. Fortunately, I am starting to feel somewhat human again. My stomach isn’t fantastic, but I no longer feel like I’m going to throw up every time I stand up. Which is a win, so I’ll take it. Thankfully, my neck, shoulder, and back muscles no longer feel like they’re in a vice grip. Nevertheless, I’m staying away from the Mayor so he doesn’t get whatever this is. I took two Covid tests and both were negative.
The urgent care doctor gave me a note excusing me from work today and tomorrow. Knowing that I’m already scheduled for surgery tomorrow, I didn’t want to miss today. Plus, now that I’m not constantly throwing up, there’s no reason I can’t work. I work from home, so I won’t expose anyone else by going to work. The alternative was to lay in bed all day and get sucked into the black hole that is streaming.
Yesterday, I finished Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on Masterpiece Theater. First of all, I love Mantle’s work and am so sad we lost her last year. Secondly, the show is well done. I can’t wait for them to finish the remainder of the trilogy. Thankfully, I also felt well enough to read last night, so I was transported to yesteryear via Alison Weir’s work on Medieval Queens. Her first book in the Queen series takes on the Queens of Conquest starting with William the Conquerer’s Queen Matilda and ending with the ascent of the Playangenets. So far it’s a good read. She does a good job telling the story with some brio.
Eeek!!! This time tomorrow I will be with my oldest in Utah. I’d say I’m excited, but I’m afraid that’s a bit of an understatement. Honestly, I’m over the moon. Our neoprene socks arrived today, so now we’re all set. I picked up the altitude sickness medication and new Epi-pens, so I’m really ready. Okay, maybe I’m more than ready to go. The afternoon at work is going to be way too long. Eeek!
In the interim, I’m just enjoying having the Mayor home for a bit. We had dinner from Sushi Yama last night. We’ve been eating there since they opened when the boys were small. I’ve never had a bad meal there. Well, at least I hadn’t had a bad meal there until last night. I always get chicken teriyaki, which is hard to screw up. Unfortunately, the chicken was so overcooked it was inedible. It looked gross and tasted equally gross. At least I got my money back easily since I had ordered through Grubhub. I love having my groceries and food delivered, these folks are our modern-day milkman.
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
If I could work any job and money didn’t matter, I’d be a stay-at-home mom, a social worker, or a full-time travel blogger. Unfortunately, money will always matter, so I’m tethered to a 9 to 5 gig until I retire.
It’s a hot one out there. The heater turned on here in the Midwest, so today’s run was a good 30 degrees hotter, at least from the “feels like” temperature, than yesterday’s. In spite of the heat, I actually ran further today. Fortunately, it’s still a much cooler run that an outdoor run back home. I’m loving running on the track up at the middle school. It makes it quite simple to keep track of my distance. Plus, there are bathrooms right there, which makes it the perfect place to run after a morning of drinking coffee.
Making progress slowly (emphasis on slowly,) but surely
The Mayor had a great first day of training camp. It sounds like he was a true rink most of the day. He enjoyed both the on ice and off ice portions of training. Today brings more do the same for the Mayor and his teammates. He had tacos for dinner. I’m sure he’s now eating his billet family out of house and home. I can’t imagine how many pounds of meat they had to cook to feed the hockey boys.
I’m heading to Utah next month and am excitedly planning that trip. Jake and I decided to explore the Mighty Five. For the uninitiated the Mighty Five are the national parks found on Southern Utah including Zion, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Canyon Reef and Arches. They’re all pretty remote, so we’ll be happily disappearing from society to explore the wilderness. In addition to the national park, there are several noteworthy national monuments (Grand Staircase Escalante) and state parks (Kodachrome Basin) I’m looking forward to exploring.
The Narrows at Zion
Definitely a distraction technique I use to catch my breath while hiking 😂
I’m hoping that ample preparation now will enhance the trip and remove some stress. To organize the trip more cogently, I’ve started using the Wanderlog travel planning app. This should help Jake and I lay out our trip and hikes in a very coherent manner. This is also make sure I can share with my Hubby/parents exactly where we’re hiking. I’ve also started to make sure we have the right equipment for all of these hikes. A lot of the hikes are pretty straightforward, but some are very long and all are remote.
Bumfuzzled, what a word! Am I right? Webster’s dictionary defines bumfuzzled as being in a state of bewilderment. This great word and prompt from my fellow blogger fits my current state. For the past months, I’ve been trying to make a correction to my vehicle’s title. Per the lienholder, I made an appointment with the DMV. After visiting the seven layers of hell that is the Florida DMV, the DMV told my hubby that only the lienholder could file for a correction. Well, isn’t that special? Consequently, I returned it to my lienholder, who told me that the dealer must update it. Tell me your incompetent without telling me your incompetent perfectly describes my lienholder’s response. Anyway, stay tuned.
Outside of the bullshit mentioned above, I’ve been trying to get ready for our Chicago trip. In fact, I’ve made such a large effort that the suitcase is now out of the closet. The most difficult task, I fear, will be locating our winter jackets. I believe they’re upstairs in the Mayor’s closet, but that belief is probably on par with the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. Naturally, the next task will be to locate my mittens. Unfortunately, I keep getting distracted by work, so my packing is moving forward at a snail’s pace. In fact, I’ll probably enlist the Mayor’s help to locate our winter jackets. After all, I’m relatively sure they’re in the vicinity of his room.
As you can tell, I’ve spent my Wednesday bumfuzzled, distracted, and boggled. Nonetheless, I’ve already got my run done for the day. Each run has gotten progressively easier as I’ve gotten over my cold. Later, I’m going to take a walk on my break to get my mileage up to four. I decided I’m going to walk the same mileage that I run. My goal is to cover at least 3.1 miles per day by some combination of walking/jogging and running. After work, I’m going to finish Day 11 of the yoga challenge. I’ve really enjoyed the yoga challenge thus far. The challenge brings a nice variety to my personal practice. I love getting back into yoga. Today’s bloganuary prompt is what makes you feel successful. Sticking to the goals I’ve set for life, including my fitness goals, is what makes me feel successful.
I’m back and well rested after my annual post SAHOF (state tournament) blogging break. It’s been an uneventful two weeks as I recovered from my finger and foot injury. Thank you Anakin! Every year at this time, probably due to sheer exhaustion, I step back and chill. Hockey season is incredibly emotionally, physically and mentally exhausting. It’s good to take a break.
My orchids are continuing to bloom. I added another orchid this weekend. This one is potted and is currently sitting on our kitchen table. The passion fruit continues to bloom as well, but the flowers have a new mortal enemy. Anakin is obsessed with the flowers and insists on hunting them every chance he gets. Unfortunately, this often results in him eating the flower. Needless to say, I’ve started taking him out up front instead of in back.
Work was an absolute grind as we closed out March. It was absurdly slow, but I still managed to have a good month. This month the volume has already improved as we shedded our seasonal employees on April first. This month brings a lot to look forward to as I’ll be heading on Momcation at the end of the month and Purplestride is at the end of the month.
Speaking of well rested, we spent a beautiful morning relaxing at the beach with the Mayor’s team. It was a beautiful overcast morning, which I thought would help spare my skin. Spoiler alert, it didn’t. I’m absolutely fried in spite of a lack of sun amongst the cloud cover. Despite the sun burn, I’m glad we got a chance to hang at the beach with our hockey family. It’s nice to see everyone outside of a cold ice rink.
So I wrote about struggles last night and choosing kindness. I thought I’d share an example of kindness we witnessed on Thanksgiving. This year, like every other year, we headed to my brother’s in Boca for Thanksgiving dinner. This time it would be our family, Richard and his wife along with a Richard’s dad and his partner.
Shortly after we got there, I noticed an individual I didn’t recognize. I thought perhaps he came with Richard’s dad and his partner. This young man was non-verbal autistic and was plugging his ears due to the noise. He walked around the island looking at the food. Suddenly, he put his hands into the brownie tray and grabbed a handful of brownies and ate them.
After he finished the brownies, he moved on to the chips and dip. At this point, several of us are horrified that whoever’s he’s with isn’t stopping him from eating potato chips and French onion dip directly from the container with a spoon. Eventually, my brother and sister-in-law figured it out. It was there new neighbor’s son, who is non-verbal.
My brother walked over to his house to talk to his parents. Their only response to my brother was that they had told him not to go inside the house. Obviously, this didn’t stop him from entering the house. My brother came back into the house to escort him out. However, before Jon walked the surprise visitor back to his house, he put the dip and bowl of chips on a plate for him to take home.
While my brother and his wife could have raised hell over their neighbor walking in and helping himself to their food on Thanksgiving, they didn’t. They chose to treat him with kindness and dignity. Unfortunately, his parents don’t supervise him very well. This story could have easily had a different ending. After all, this is Florida where people shoot first and ask questions later.
“A life well-lived is the most exquisite form of art,” wrote Erwin McManus. This weekend my family lost our matriarch, my great Grandmother. As I contemplated her passing, I kept coming back to a life well-lived. Her life, while never easy, exemplified this axiom. My great grandmother Nellie Brown (nee Reynolds) and her twin sister Zella (Caroyln) were born on May 16, 1916, in Long Prairie to Florence and Andrew Reynolds. At this point, there were only 3.3 million cars registered in the entire US while only 11% of the population had a telephone. When she was just a toddler, the Great War was winding down, but the Spanish Flu epidemic was in full swing. She began her life as the Spanish flu pandemic took hold and her life ended as we continue to contend with COVID. Can you imagine how different the world is now compared to 1916?
Great Grandma Brown, her sister Zella and her mom circa 1920
Shortly after my grandmother’s birth, her father headed to Europe to fight in the Great War. After the war, her father left and her mother remarried. She grew up in Long Prairie, where she met her husband. In fact, she was telling Jake and me tales of watching Lindy practice while tending to the fields. In fact, they would wave as he flew over and he would tip his wings to them. Of course, Lindy was Charles Lindbergh and this was long before his famous flight across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis. As we drove back to my folks that day, Jake and I were trying to wrap our heads around the massive changes she witnessed in her 104 years. I would give anything to be able to sit with her again and listen to her stories.
One thing that was clear about my Grandmother is that change didn’t challenge her. Her generation was no stranger to loss having experienced both World Wars, the Spanish flu, the great depression, polio, the Korean and Vietnam wars. Perhaps that is why she was so adaptable and resilient. In fact, as the age of the internet broke, she didn’t run from it. She had an old computer that she used until she lost her eyesight. How many people can say they got emails and forwards from their Great Grandma? Not many, but I can. Undoubtedly, her adaptability and great genes played a role in her longevity, but it was more than that.
My Great Grandma lived her life according to three pillars: love, family, and God. As she held Jake’s hand that blustery October day, she shared the importance of rooting himself in love, family and God. I was struck at the moment by the power of her words, influence, and the moment. I was blessed to witness that moment. On that trip, she and Jake formed a deep bond that he’ll carry with him forever. We spent many weekends at my Great Grandmother’s house with our extended family. Our extended family is huge! Yet, she delighted in hosting all of us. Family really was everything to her. After my grandfather lost his mother to cancer in the mid 50’s, my great-grandma treated him as if he was her own child. She loved my Grandpa dearly.
She lived independently in her own house until the very end. After she suffered a stroke two weeks ago, my grandma and aunt stayed by her side. My heart aches for my Grandma, who just lost her mom. I took a picture of them together during our last visit. When I look at that picture, I realize no matter how old we get, we always want and need our mother. My Great Grandma was a woman, who lived according to her own terms. It is no wonder that she left this world exactly as she lived in it surrounded by love and family. Until we meet again Great Great Grandma, godspeed.
Tonight’s the night Vikings returns for season 5 on the History Channel. I love this show, so I’ve been looking forward to tonight. For the last several weeks, snippets of the 5th season have been showing up in my Facebook newsfeed. I’m not into many shows, but Vikings is definitely one of them. Fortunately, its also a show my kids love. In fact, when we traveled to Norway this summer I made sure we incorporated some Viking themed scenery in our trip. Although it would have been hard to avoid Viking related sights in any trip to Norway.
Serene Fjord
In Flam, we took the boat out on the Aurlandsfjord. This Fjord deep in the heart of Sogn Og Fjordane is sublimely serene and overwhelmingly beautiful. As we boated around the fjord, we approached an outcropping from the cliff. There was a grassy area on this outcropping, which was home to a Viking Burial. It was pretty cool to see. As an aside, Lagertha according to legends is from the Gaula Valley, which is in the northeastern part of the Sogn Og Fjordane region.
Now that the show has started, I’m writing during the commercials. How fitting that Ikea is one of their advertisers, but I digress. As an American of Norwegian descent, I enjoy watching a show about Norwegian/Scandinavian history. My dad’s family emigrated to the US from Sogn Og Fjordane the very same region that Lagertha is thought to have come from. Clearly, I was born to be a modern day shield maiden or Viking queen.
Our trip through Norway gave us a deeper connection to our Norwegian roots, heritage and Norway. Now as I watch the Vikings, I long to go back and explore the Norwegian Countryside. Additionally, I’d like to explore Ireland, where the show is largely filmed, and the U.K. retracing the Vikings travels. While in France in 2011, we ate lunch at a small seaside Norman town. As we enjoyed our crepes, our view was a replica Viking ship moored in port. It was beautiful and imposing much like the authentic ships housed in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.
Finally, tonight’s song, in keeping with my Norwegian theme, is “Take on Me” by Aha. I know a collective sigh of relief went out as you realized I wasn’t gonna torture you with “What Does the Fox Say?”
