Sweet home Minnesota

Words have power, and I believe one can speak perceptions into reality.

For example, when one tells a child he’s stupid, he’ll come to believe it and ultimately fulfill it. When a worker tells himself work sucks, his labors will be a drag. When a woman tells herself she’s good enough, she’s smart enough and people like her, she’ll carry herself with confidence.

It’s like the Cowardly Lion in “The Wizard of Oz” talking himself into faith: “I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do.”

To which the Wicked Witch of the West replied, “Ah! You’ll believe in more than that before I’m finished with you!”

But to a certain extent, one can’t rise above one’s roots no matter how many personal affirmations one repeats. I want to believe I’m cosmopolitan and worldly. I do, I do, I do.

I eat sushi. I’ve been to London. I don’t wear high-rise, pleated, ankle-length khakis.

But I’m a fraud. I’m just a Minnesota girl at my core, and I can’t escape it.

I had a moment of perfect contentment this morning. I was left alone in my 1983 motor home at the Minnesota campground that had been crowded during opening-of-fishing weekend but now sat practically empty and quiet. I sipped a cup of coffee, not quite Lutheran but not too strong either, reading my Minneapolis Star Tribune on my iPad. A gentle breeze blew through the screened windows, and Minnesota Public Radio played in the background. I was looking forward to the afternoon Minnesota Twins game that was about to begin.

For a little while, everything was perfect. I was just so happy.

But then the coffee got cold, my stomach growled and the Twins failed to score with the bases loaded (again). So my perfect contentment didn’t last forever, but I reflected at how comforted I am with my Minnesota security blankets.

I haven’t lived in Minnesota for five years — the longest we’ve ever lived apart — but my psyche has been forever shaped by my home state. I can’t outgrow it.

At least that’s what I say. And words have power.

In the heart of Minnesota

If you threw a dart at a map aiming for the heart of Minnesota, you’d hit Grey Eagle.

It’s surrounded by neatly cultivated farm fields which are lined with neatly stacked wood and field stones. The neat little silos are standing next to neatly wrapped round bails of hay. Main street in Grey Eagle is about a block long. At one end stands the church. At the other: Neat, nondescript buildings.

At high noon on Mother’s Day, one other car lined the street. The Village Cafe’s hand-lettered sign beckoned us, with empty bellies and no stomach for crowded brunch buffets: Open Sundays ’til 1.

We took two seats at the counter even though the rest of the place was empty. The daily special was potato pancakes, but I settled on the soup de jour, dourly noted on the chalkboard in English as “soup of the day”: Chicken dumpling soup, heavy on the dumplings, light on the chicken. My Beloved ordered a Midwestern favorite that is my own personal nightmare: Hot beef commercial. I’ve opined about my disgust for wet bread so I won’t do it again, but if you’re interested, read it here.

It was the pie chest that caught my eye. My mother makes a decadent, heavy sour cream raisin pie, the sort of baked good I would rarely attempt in my own kitchen. So I wanted to try the Village Cafe’s version. With a thick layer of meringue, the question of ice cream — hard or not — was not an issue.

The cold statement “We have hard ice cream” reminded me of a line in “Ladies in Retirement,” a play in which I acted in high school. My friend Jill had the line, “You’re hard,” which sent all the high schoolers into giggles whenever she recited it. Like the boy in the play, the ice cream at the Village Cafe was hard. And I wanted nothing to do with it. My Beloved side-stepped the issue, too, requesting a dollop of whipped cream for his pecan pie.

The pie, meringue and all, was nice. Just … nice. The meringue was sticky, and the lightweight custard could never beat my mother’s. Still, it satisfied my curiosity and my sweet tooth.

By now, two other couples had entered the cafe, probably as happy as we were to avoid a crowd. We left a tip and went on our way, back into the safe Central Minnesota uniformity.

3 things to love and 2 things to hate about sushi

To love:

• “Sushi” doesn’t automatically mean “raw fish.” Many options — including California rolls, shrimp variations and tempura options — abound for the rawaphobe diner. If you’re more adventurous, try tuna, which is actually awful if overcooked so you might as well enjoy it raw. I also like rolls with salmon and eel, but that’s me. Whatever you do, if you don’t want raw fish, don’t order sashimi (that doesn’t even come with the rice!).
• Roe is wonderful. When it’s little. Roe is fish eggs. When it’s little, it’s like little fizzy bubbles, popping in your mouth. (When it’s big, it’s gross.) Roe is a flashy garnish for some sushi rolls, and not every place has it. The ones that do are worth visiting again.
• Umami, baby! Sushi has umami, or savoriness, by the truckload. The vinegared rice, the various fish, the seaweed, the pickled ginger — oh! Did I mention wasabi? And a chef at a good sushi joint feeds the eyes, too, with pretty little garnishes made of carrot or radish. Art on a plate.

To hate:

• Ack, the sodium! Between the salty edamame, the miso soup and the soy sauce, I’m drinking water like a camel all night long after a sushi binge.
• The tradition to eat each piece in one bite. Honestly, it was easier to abide by this polite approach in Japan, but here in a America where bigger is better, a single piece of sushi can be more than a mouthful. When a single piece prevents you from breathing while eating it, you’re uncomfortable. But I suffer through it because I’m not such a rube as to try cutting a piece with a fork. Never, never, never. When in Rome, eat as the Romans do (or Japan … whatever).

Prayer for rhubarb

We may be pushing the limits of Zone 5, but my Beloved got his hands dirty yesterday planting things.

Here it is, late April, and we’re putting seedlings in the cold, dry ground and hoping for the best.

In a testimony to our commitment to this underwater house, we invested in a rhubarb plant.

I didn’t know one could plant rhubarb. I thought this strange flora just grew in certain places, situated there by luck or happenstance. Nope, it turns out your can plant this fruit? vine? bush? as long as you have the patience to allow it to grow for a couple of years before your intended harvest.

I had a rhubarb plant in the backyard of the first house I bought. I still own that house but it’s occupied by renters. I wonder if I could appear on the porch of that abode, claiming rights to the rhubarb in the back yard.

I only need a few stalks. One makes rhubarb crisp but once a season.

In any case, my Beloved has a yen for rhubarb pie (he’s getting crisp, not pie, but we can argue about that in three years hence) so here it is, struggling for life:

Impressive, isn’t it. Those spindly pink stalks? Squint — they’re the things with little green leaves on the end. Not a weed but a rhubarb plant. Trust me. It said so on the package.

He also planted a couple of raspberry plants in the “federally protected wetlands” beyond the fence in the back yard. I suspect the deer may find them irresistible, but we’ll see. Like the rhubarb, it’ll take a couple of years to harvest the fruit of our investment.  The raspberry plants sit beneath the mulberry tree, which looks dead to me now but yielded several cups of mulberries last June.

Looks can be deceiving.

In any case, a prayer for the little plants is in order. I found this stanza in a prayer titled “The Refuge of the Glen” from my book of “Graces: Prayers & Poems for Everyday Meals and Special Occasions” book by June Cotner:

I search for fruits from vines and trees
As I walk among the falling leaves,
I watch an eagle as he glides,
And think what wonders God provides.

Dream works

Grace is “a powerful force originating outside of human consciousness which nurtures the spiritual growth of human beings,” writes M. Scott Peck in “The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth.”

Among other methods, Peck argues, grace speaks in our dreams, so I have been paying better attention to my dreams since I read his book. Coincidentally, my horoscope this morning said, “Your intuition will be very strong at the moment, and you could even end up having some very powerful dreams.”

Early this morning, I dreamt I was standing at the edge of a swimming pool. The pool was crowded with swimmers and flowing over its concrete borders. It was so full, the water was contained only by the surrounding landscape — piles of snow. Standing there looking down at the water teeming with swimmers, I imagined the water to be icy cold.

A few definitions, according to SmartGirls’ Dream Dictionary:

• To see a swimming pool full of water in your dream is lucky, symbolizing that you will find much happiness and pleasure in friendship, love and marriage.
• Dreams about swimming are related to the need to trust your instincts and look to past situations for answers to problems. They can also signify the need for nurturing or mothering in one’s life (Mom, call me.)
• To dream that you are cold suggests that you are experiencing a breakthrough in some area in your life.
• To dream that you are part of a crowd suggests that you need to start thinking more for yourself instead of following others.

As I ponder these messages of grace, I’m thinking this dream speaks of my career aspirations and my wishes to self-publish my manuscript.

What do you think? How is grace speaking to you?

What snow means

What the six inches of snow that fell last meant to:

Friends on Facebook: A chance to post pretty pictures of the snow-covered landscape.

My mother: The potential for tragic weather-related car accidents.

My Beloved: “Ooh, a chance to use my new snowblower!”

The neighbor kids: A snow fort and snowball fight.

To me: Gratitude that I work from home where I can see the pretty landscape (and snowblown sidewalk and snow fort) but I don’t have to contend with the traffic.

Peculiarity revealed …

We’re all a little weird, but sometimes I think I’m more weird. Kind of along the lines of “remember, you’re unique … just like everyone else,” I suppose. If I’m special at all, it’s just because I’m willing to blog about my strangeness.

I recently took a leadership test (one undergoes such scrutiny when one begins a new job, you know), and I discovered I was a Manager type in the LEMON leadership paradigm, meaning I see the world through systems. “To the manager, anyone can do something once, but it takes a certain amount of process and discipline to make something happen again and again at acceptable quality levels,” writes Brett Johnson in “LEMON Leadership: Radically Fresh Leadership.”

True to form, I’m a big believer in this adage which tips its hat to systems and consistency and the results thereof:

Watch you thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become your character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Thinking thusly, I turned a couple of actions into habits last week. The folks among us who aren’t such fans of systems might consider them weird. You decide:

1. I spent nearly a week on the road for work, and I committed to eating soup and salad every day for lunch so I could dine out in the evenings and order whatever looked good, even it was loaded with cheese or gravy. Easy to accomplish because almost every restaurant a notch above McDonald’s offers a soup of the day.I enjoyed three different tomato soups, two wild rice concoctions (try the Turkey Wild Rice Almondine at Granite City Food & Brewery if you get the chance — truly sublime) and a bean soup. Delicious, not mundane.
2. I managed to visit with six different relations on a 120-mile route Friday afternoon: two former colleagues, my hair dresser, my 96-year-old grandmother, my aunt/uncle/cousins and my parents/brother-in-law/nephews. Why did I do this? Because eating, and getting one’s hair colored and driving for hours is inefficient (except you have to do it sometimes), but packing a whole bunch of visits into one day seems like a highly economic use of time.
3. I stopped at every southbound rest area in Wisconsin between Minneapolis and Rockford on the drive home Saturday. I walked around for 5 minutes to stretch my legs, clear my head and promote avidity (look it up — it’s a better word than the awkward alertness). I covered 1.83 miles at five rest areas and was impressed with the work being completed by our public servants on a Saturday afternoon: Tree replanting, bathroom cleaning, leaf blowing and collection. Added a half hour to my trip, but worth every minute.

Somehow, seeing the world through another’s eyes can be informative. Or amusing. Whatever. It’s all good.

Yesterday I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
How he got in my pajamas I don’t know.

~ Groucho Marx

Are your opportunities flying away?

How one kills a house fly informs how one approaches opportunity.

Flies are invading our house, it seems, as the weather turns decidedly autumnal. I’ve swatted at least a couple dozen flies in the past 10 days. Today at lunch, my Beloved observed my remarkable 3-for-3 record of swats to executions. “Well, they don’t have a chance!” he said.

This trio, however, had been pestering me while I prepared lunch. I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to swat flies and halve grapes for the couscous salad. When I finally devoted my attention to one of these airborne pests, I stood very still studying his rhythm. I wound up intentionally. My arm was like lightning when I whacked him forcefully. His lifeless insect body fell to the ground where I efficiently scooped him up and deposited him in the trash.

Success! Take that, spawn of Jeff Goldblum!

That is how I approach opportunities, too. I study the scene. I make a plan. So much thinking! When I finally believe I know what I’m doing, I employ more force than is probably necessary.

My approach, while ultimately effective, allows so many opportunities to slip through my fingers. And I was probably fortunate lethargy has befallen the fall flies; I could have waited forever for an impertinent spring fly to land.

Is there truth in the axiom, “He who hesitates is lost”? Should I have stuck the fly swatter in my back pocket to have it ready to swat indeterminately in the air or wherever they land? Perhaps that trio of flies at lunch today would not have lasted so long if I had taken that approach.

A wise mentor once told me, “Fake it ’til you make it.” He was telling me, essentially, not to wait until the title/the project/the team was officially handed to me but rather to take control as if I was in charge. I found it to be sage advice, especially when I encounter people in positions of power who have no idea what they’re doing: They’re faking it until they make it. No waiting to review the results of the focus group or details of a spreadsheet. No wavering. No hesitation. Uncertainty spells doom, while confidence inspires.

Other ways to kill a fly exist, too. Ignore it. Let someone else do it. Grab any suitable equipment (rolled up newspaper) and smash it a la John McEnroe. Open a door and let it fly out. Let it die naturally.

How do you bring down those metaphorical house flies?

9 things I learned from watching stock car races for a season (and 1 thing I still can’t figure out)

The last night of the season for stock car racing ended with a smoking hulk that came just shy of winning the demolition derby.

Junior, after the demolition derby. Nice rim, eh?

Casualty count: 4 cars, 1 wrist and about 20 evenings on the dirt track at Sycamore Speedway. We won’t count dollars spent. Don’t want to know.

Accolades earned: About six trophies and $100 for second place in the demo derby. Also: Machismo firmly established.

As the No. 1 fan, I sat in the wooden bleachers almost every race night and videotaped almost every race. Which is tricky with buttery fingers from the evilly delicious speedway popcorn doused in real golden flavoring. It wasn’t my first choice, but when we were dating, my Beloved and I made an agreement: He would go to baseball games with me if I would go to the races with him. So I did this for love. Here’s what I learned:

1. A dirt race track is not a fashion runway. I wore boots and jewelry the first night, and that was the last time. T-shirts, preferably with obscene comments, and torn jeans were more appropriate.
2. Sycamore Speedway smells like London. I’m not sure if I was catching whiffs of cabbie exhaust or the dank odor of the
   Underground, but especially in the spring and fall when it was cool and damp, I caught myself thinking of London. I know for sure it wasn’t the accents of the redneck fans that evoked those memories.
3. Races are won where the rubber hits the road. A bad tire brings even the fastest overpowered car to a stop. My Beloved and his brother went through at least 25 tires during the course of the season, most often the left front one, which took the most abuse on the quarter-mile track of constant left turns.
4. Lip gloss and dirt race tracks don’t mix. As the cars passed the stands at 50+ mph, they threw up a thin spray of grit on everything and everyone. Try looking sophisticated with mud on your glasses.
5. The super late models do not impress me. I was there for the spectator class — street cars modified only to remove the windows and unnecessary weight (like seats). The super late models look like sleek, nicely painted Nascar vehicles, but they’re louder, smellier and a lot more dainty. Every time there was a dust-up, the race was suspended. Babies. In the spectator class, disabled drivers were forced to sit in the middle of the action, flinching with every lap, until the race ended.This is what separated the boys from the men (or, in the poweder puff class, the girls from the gorillas).
6. Race car driving requires skill. I used to think anyone could step on the gas and turn left, but now I understand the courage, timing and finesse a successful race car driver must possess. Really!
7. A good race car driver requires a good pit crew. If it hadn’t been for our 17-year-old mechanic who loved wrenching, the season would have been over in June when My Beloved drove into the wall and killed the first car.
8. Race car fans breed. The roster of top drivers read like a script from a redneck “Dynasty.” Two surnames kept coming up, and in the Powder Puff category, two sisters — the daughters of the guy with the obnoxious cop car — took first and second place. And the stands were filled with kids! Last night, a woman brushed past me three times complaining “That’s how it is with potty training.” Really? Your 3-year-old needs to be exposed to smoke, noise and drunks until 11 o’clock? Yup. That’s how it is with race car fans.
9. Hot dogs taste better outdoors. This, I should have known, but I’m the woman who once enjoyed eating sushi and drinking wine at a Major League Baseball game in Toronto. Hot dogs are street food for a reason, and boy, those mustard-covered all-beef franks made a great chaser for blue smoke and gasoline fumes.

There’s one thing I still don’t understand though:

1. Crashes are awesome, man! The crowd was never so vocal as they were when two cars collided; 360-degree spins got extra points. Race track organizers saved the demolition derby for the final marquee event of the evening for a reason. At least a half-dozen cars flipped on their tops during the course of the season, and my heart always stopped when that happened. To the credit of the crowd, though, they cheered when the driver emerged triumphant from his upside-down vehicle.

Despite the dirt and blood-thirsty crowd (they must have been thirsty for something, given the piles of beer cups under the bleachers at the end of the night), I had a good time. I can’t say I’m sorry to see it end, because I’m not. But there’s a certain irony in the whole experience.

The speedway does a drawing every night for prizes like T-shirts and caps. Every night, I dutifully filled out my drawing slip, deposited it into the box and then listened to the track announcer call other people’s names. Until last night, the final night of the season. They drew my name! And guess what I won?

A free pass to a night of racing next summer.

Watch: Destined for the trash heap this time?

I sorted through my jewelry yesterday and found not one, not two, but seven wrist watches.

All stopped.

Those seven watches are in addition to the two watches I wear regularly (which are on time).

Whatever shall I do with them? If I were to replace the batteries, which would likely cost me a mint, what does any woman need with nine watches?

I’m entertaining suggestions.

Time, time, time … see what’s become of me.
While I looked around for my possibilities. …

Seasons change with the scenery,
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won’t you stop and remember me?

~ from “Hazy Shade of Winter”
performed by the Bangles