Memorial Day weekend list on things to remember

Summer officially begins today, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend! Exciting stuff if one lives in the upper Midwest where winters are cold and springtime is filled with cleaning, yard work and other activities associated with throwing off the vestiges of winter.
Here’s your Memorial Day weekend checklist to ensure you make the most of the 90-degree temperatures and time off from work:
– Swimsuit (maybe more than one).
– Sunscreen (SPF of 30 or higher to protect your lily-white epidermis).
– Ice cold beer.
– Ice (required to keep great quantities of beer ice cold).
– Salty snacks (I prefer Doritos, but potato chips will do in a pinch).
– Beef. Burgers, brats or steaks are required grill foods. If you’re a vegetarian, I respect you but I’m really sorry — grilled zucchini just sounds sad.
– Baseball schedule. Even if you don’t like baseball, a game on the radio is soothing to nap to).
– Patience. Traffic will be frustrating coming and going. Get used to it.
– Good company. Leave toxic spouses, children and relatives out of the festivities.
– WordPress app on your phone (necessary only if you’re a blogger obsessed with posting wittily about life’s ephemera daily).
Have a fabulous holiday!

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.

Menu finds

Today’s flavors worth savoring:

• Buckwheat pancakes with lots of butter at the Original Pancake House.
• Thin crust pizza at Broadway Pizza. The “more saddle than horse” toppings included pepperoni, sausage, green olives, mushrooms and extra sauce.
• Passed over the sweet cream ice cream in favor of limited edition? new? salted caramel at Cold Stone Creamery. Mix-ins were chocolate chips and pecans.

Not only that, the skies were clear and the sun was out today. Even though we were camping (we sleep in the camper, but we don’t necessarily cook).

Ghost tweet is souvenir of chill weekend visit

Some 10-year-olds are fascinating.

I’ve never had a 10-year-old. Or a little girl. But once a year or so, I get to spend some time with a friend’s charismatic little girl (now 10), and she’s such a joy, I revel in her charm for a few days after.

We took the dog for a walk while I was there, and as we passed a “Recall Walker” sign, she asked, “What’s ‘recall’?”

Oh, to explain politics to a 10-year-old! A little bit of heaven for a political science major (earlier she asked her mom what “wigged out” meant — I was glad I didn’t have to field that one).

“Well, do you understand elections?”

After a bit of discussion, she decided she agreed with the homeowner — time to recall the governor.

Yeah, a 10-year-old with an informed political opinion. Refreshing.

She ran across my iPad and was immediately immersed in it. The video function (with my dog as her leading lady) was endlessly interesting.

Unfortunately for her, the only game on my iPad is Scrabble. But she figured that out, too. Once I changed the setting from “super hard with 7-letter words on every other turn” (my preferred form of torture) to “easy,” she even managed to beat the computer.

I figured out today that she ghost tweeted for me, too.

I noticed a tweet from Saturday on my account: “Chillin at friends house whoo whoo!”

I didn’t write that. It didn’t come from my phone, so I know my Beloved didn’t write it. The timing and the lack of punctuation point to the precocious 10-year-old with access to my Twitter account via my iPad. Does a 10-year-old understand Twitter? I don’t know, but she understood me enough to tweet in my voice. I was chillin’, and it was a “whoo, whoo!” kind of evening.

In a couple of years, my annual visit to her house likely will leave her cold. But we’re not mourning that right now. We’re being mindful of the present moment and delighting in clever 10-year-oldness right now.

Whoo, whoo!

Without rain, there would be no rainbow

A camping trip can imbue motor home owners with God-like control of the weather.

Plan a camping trip, and the heavens open up. Down comes the rain.

Such were our powers this weekend. Freshly cleaned, wallpapered and generator-repaired, the 1983 Pace Arrow went on its maiden voyage of the season this weekend.

And the landscape was well-hydrated everywhere we went.

Perhaps it’s an inherited trait. When I was growing up, it seemed like it always rained when I went camping with my parents, too.

The old beast performed well despite the soggy conditions. The only exception was the mushy pillows, snagged from the linen closet. Instead of stored, they should have been tossed. We picked up a new, better performing set at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

I must confess, drippy conditions aside, we drive down the road with smug looks on our faces. Our 29-year-old motor home looks like a throwback to the ’80s, but it sleeps well and everything works. As we passed a slick-looking contemporary version, we mused about how much gas we could buy for $200,000.

Gas is nothing at which to scoff, however. We pumped 25.9 gallons into her auxiliary tank and 25.1 gallons into her main tank to the tune of $196.95. As Skipper from “Gilligan’s Island” might say: “Oof!”

When we arrived home, I made several trips in and out of the house, emptying the motor home of dirty laundry, luggage and dog accessories. The hot tub beckoned, so I changed into my swimsuit and made my way to the backyard patio for a soaking.

As I sat in the bubbles and leaned back, I felt a few drops on my face.

It was raining again.

Alphabet project: MIL’s RV DIY

When you own a 1983 motor home, repair projects and updates are a must.

Well, if the owner is a Virgo, that is.

And both my Beloved and his mother are Virgos, who tend to be models of neatness with a love for order.

No project is too small in that RV, and the 30-year-old wallpaper has not escaped attention.

While a light rain fell this afternoon, my mother-in-law re-wallpapered the Pace Arrow’s kitchen, replacing the decidedly 1980s floral print with a more contemporary beige marble design.

Kitchen wallpaper: Before

Kitchen wallpaper: After

The motor home is being prepared for its first adventure of the season. Minnesota Transplant, ever the practical Capricorn, has never wallpapered anything, let alone an RV, but she was on the hook to clean the whole vehicle from stem to stern. Doesn’t it look lovely?

My own ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’

A kid who grows up in Minnesota will eventually visit Mount Rushmore.

I suppose DisneyWorldLand is an iconic vacation destination for families in California and Florida, and I suppose East Coast kids invariable spend some time at Niagara Falls or Virginia Beach, but Midwest kids — especially ones with “uff da” and “campin’” in their vocabularies — visit the rock-faced presidents.

The destination is on the edge of reasonable driving distance for Minnesota families who can’t invest in airfare, yet it still carries star value.

My family visited Mount Rushmore on a whirlwind tour of the American west in the early ’80s. I recall literally holding down the fort with my dad in our pop-up camper one night during a wild storm. I returned to the memorial as an adult in the late ’90s and almost got rammed by a live buffalo my tiny Geo Tracker.

My Beloved visited the national memorial in June 1975. He remembers the big news at the time was the shoot-out involving two FBI agents and a Native American, activist Leonard Peltier.

While I gather Illinois families are less likely to visit western South Dakota, my Minnesota residing stepson has never been to Mount Rushmore, and that seems wrong somehow. So we’re thinking about returning to this must-see destination this summer with a 17-year-old in tow (if he’ll agree to spend four days with his boring parental units in a vehicle on the rolling roads of South Dakota).

What’s the vacation you remember most about your youth? The one you absolutely must take your own kids to someday?

For dessert: Please pass the salt

Behold, a thing of beauty: Salted caramel fudge.

We stopped at the Mousehouse Cheesehaus on Interstate 90 just north of Madison, Wis., over the weekend and discovered this delicious creation.

I first encountered a salt-and-chocolate combination a couple of years ago when tasting some small-batch gourmet dark chocolate at some soirée I attended. I thought, at the time, “how strange.” Then I tasted it with the salt crystals crunching in my teeth, and I thought, “oh my gosh, this is an explosion of flavor in my mouth. More please.”

Since then, chocolate-and-salt and salted caramel can be found in the most common places. Ghiradelli, for example, has a lovely bar called Intense Dark Sea Salt Soirée with almonds, and Starbucks offers a Salted Caramel Mocha.

Not long ago, I heard a nutritionist recommend the best diet one could follow — no matter what health or weight problems one was battling — was a low-sodium one. Salted chocolate wouldn’t be part of that eating plan, but since my blood pressure is so low I can barely stand up without fainting, a little extra salt in my diet probably isn’t a bad move.

The fudge at the Mousehouse Cheesehaus is made on premises with real cream and butter, and a dozen flavors  including peanut butter and Butterfinger are available. We got six flavors when we stopped, so I think I can say with confidence: The salted caramel is the best.

My mouth is watering just thinking of that last piece. Yum!

Road trips rock any time of year

We’re getting itchy here in Illinois.

We’ve made it all the way from Thanksgiving to March 1 without a vacation to sunnier climes.

Last year at this time, we had just arrived in Fort Myers, Fla., for a couple of weeks of spring training baseball games after spending seven weeks in McAllen, Texas, and then RVing our way around the Gulf of Mexico.

Thank goodness this winter has been as mild as it’s been because we might not have survived it otherwise given how we pretty much skipped it last year.

Still, despite 50-degree temps, we’re thinking about vacation.

We won’t be going anywhere soon (alas), but we talked tonight about what the year ahead holds for us. Napa Valley? Seattle, maybe?

Wherever we go domestically, I hope it involves four wheels. My favorite vacations are road trips.

About 15 year ago, I spent 10 days in October traveling from Minnesota to Cincinnati and back and stayed at a different bed & breakfast inn every night.

When my Beloved and I got married, we honeymooned in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and took a rental car west through Albuquerque, Gallup (check out the sights on the loop south of Gallup), the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam, ending up in Vegas. I distinctly remember enjoying a beer and pistachios after climbing a “mountain” and touring an ice cave south of Gallup. What fun.

I enjoying immersing myself in a region by seeing the distinctive sights, eating in different local restaurants and sleeping in different places.

Have a route to recommend? I’m all (itchy) ears.