Bring on Spring Dance

We're doing our part to inspire Mother Nature to bring us warmer weather. How 'bout you?

Mystery

On a walk in Columbia Heights today, we stumbled across some carnage.

So very much carnage. What happened here? Did a clown get run over? Did someone have a very unhappy surprise party? Or have an urgent need to speak like a chipmunk? Or have balloon angst beyond, you know, the usual balloon angst?Who would do such a thing, and leave such a heap of evidence in broad daylight? I looked and looked, but found no answers. But it explains these survivors we saw bouncing down the street.

I hope they made it to some sort of balloon safehouse. And I hope the perpetrator gets the help they so obviously need. Before another clown gets it.

March 13

80 years ago today, my grandmother gave birth to her second son, who grew up to join the Navy, be a carpenter, a volunteer firefighter, the guy who changed the lightbulb on top of the watertower, a farmer, and my father.

He was the kind of man who kept two pairs of wooden crutches hanging on a nail in our garage, just in case. When my sister hit me in the face with a snowball the winter I was in 1st grade, breaking my glasses, he used wire and electrical tape to affix my broken frame to an old frame of his, circa 1958. I wore those glasses for two months.

In the mid-1970s, when our local hardware store was going out of business, he and his brother bought up the remaining stock, displays and all. I just assumed everyone had racks of knobs and hinges in their basements.

He and my mother owned the local laundromat when they were first married, and lived in a trailer house on mainstreet, right next door. When my sister was born (or about to be) he bought the house next to his mother and informed his wife they'd be moving. When the laundromat went under, he stored at least four of the washers to use for parts or replacements in the house they moved to. They still required quarters to run, but he broke the locks on the coin drawers, so we used the same quarters over and over. He gave another washer to a family friend, who lived a few blocks away, in exchange for haircuts for his family. I didn't go to a professional salon until I was 12.

He loved to play games, and had a tendency toward obsession. When our family found a game we really like, we'd play every night, sometimes for months. He often made his own game elements, and created a customized Aggravation board, and wooden Rack-o racks (because he said the cards stuck in the plastic ones). He was excellent at cribbage, and had elaborate rules for jigsaw puzzles (which are a post unto themselves).

He loved my mother, and my sister and me, and his parents, and all of his siblings, and his entire extended family, and pretty much most people he ever met.

He died in 2002.

I miss him still.

Travels with V

Last weekend, V and I drove to Marshall, Minnesota, for the funeral of a dear man. It was V's second funeral, but her first one was before she was two, so she doesn't remember it.
I was worried that she would be so excited to see her friends Linus and Friday that she'd just sing through the whole service, but she didn't. She hugged Tenessa and said "I'm sorry" in the sweetest possible way.

And then she demanded toys. And candy. Not necessarily in that order.

But overall, V was a fantastic traveller. We borrowed a video player for the nearly 4-hour drive, and we turned it on around the South Dakota border, but she only lasted ten minutes. "I want to talk to you instead, Mama." How can a mama resist? These last three pictures are from the McDonald's in Watertown, South Dakota. (V absolutely loves that wherever we go, there's a McDonald's. I try to explain that this means the restaurants aren't especially special, but so far she won't hear of it). She tries hard to not smile in pictures, lately, but always ends up making herself laugh.

Which is just fine by me.