Many times I think that if I could choose what to do on my last day on Earth, I would have it be just me and my family hanging out at home. Me doing dishes. Everyone talking about their day. Popcorn in front of the TV. All of us on our phones, enjoying being in each others’ presence without having to talk. Dogs on our laps.

The routine comfort of everyday life.

It may seem boring on the surface but I’m not going to apologize for loving my home and quote-unquote normal family.

Hiccups.

Flies buzzing around your head. Why are they so bad this year??

Dogs making that licking sound for no reason.

When I’m looking for something at Target and someone comes to the same aisle and stands directly next to me.  Groceries, I get, but did that person really come looking for a muffin pan at the exact same minute I did? Me, if I see someone in the aisle I want to go to I pass by and wait until that person leaves. I’m not going to fight over that same candle they want.

Kids who always complain that there’s nothing to eat yet when you tell them you’re going to the grocery store they can’t name one thing they want you to buy.

Husbands who leave the toilet seat up like they’re on the job site. This is an age-old debate yet has been relevant since the indoor toilet was invented.

People who open candy wrappers during a movie while at the theater. Get that business taken care of before the show starts, bro! (Or bru, though I may be WAY behind on that term.)

There’s others but that’s all for today.

Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong.

Consequently…

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right.

I realize the above is obvious and logical, but the concept is something I’ve only come to put my finger on only recently.

Guns, abortion, masks, vaccines. This past year (and decades, if not centuries before for some topics) has opened up discussions on all levels of these things.

After reading an extremely private and gut wrenching post online recently, I have to admit to my grown children, as well as myself, that not everything is black and white.

In fact, there are all shades of grey in every topic.

The best we can do in public and private discourse regarding these and other hot topics is to keep an open mind and listen. Be firm with your stance, by all means, but pay attention to those who have come from a place of experience.

Life’s too short to hold back on your views, but it’s also too short not to pay attention or even seek out those views which differ from your own.

Here’s hoping I heed my own advice…

Living in Minnesota without a cabin is like living in California without a surfboard.

At least on the coast. But you get what I mean.

This is why long holiday weekends – we’re talking Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day – have always been a sore spot with me.

Sure, I’m lucky to have my family and our health, not to mention a nice house and good jobs.

But if I may digress for a moment, let me feel sorry for myself.

One of my best friends and I grew up together and in similar type of families – a mom, dad, and brothers. But as we often lament, even to this day, there were no boats, no cabins. No family get-togethers on hot summer weekends “up north” or “up at the lake.”

There was no lake.

At least not one that we had a cabin on. Or even visited.

Instead, my brother and I grew up going to Minnesota Twins baseball games. My mom would pack a huge bag with peanuts, homemade popcorn, and pop (the Midwest’s equivalent to soda). And we went to a shit ton of movies – drive in and theater. This, along with my parents’ knowledge of movie history, gave both me and my brother a love for the cinema. There were several movies I recall that I shouldn’t have been allowed to see at my age, including Taps (a kid my age got shot and died right there on the screen) and Jaws (for obvious reasons).

The folks also brought us to museums, zoos, and on car trips. We stayed in those old motels that were two stories and each had its own entrance to the outside.  Sometimes there was a pool (which sometimes wasn’t filled with water). We traveled to Cincinnati (cousins’ house and Six Flags) and South Dakota (Mount Rushmore, et. al.). Good times and great memories.

But the truth was, not having a cabin had more to do with not having the moola for such things. Nor did they have the desire to explore how to purchase such things.

In the end, if you don’t grow up that way, you tend not to live that way.

But last weekend was Labor Day weekend, and the days leading up to it came with the inevitable question from casual acquaintances.

“Going out of town this weekend? Oh, we’re going up north (it’s always up, it’s never down, in MN) to the cabin,” they’d say (spoken in the haughtiest British voice you can imagine).

Yeah, the second week of July my husband and I are working, so there’s that.

Instead, as in years past, we have come to create – or find – our own fun. Some years my family have glommed on to friends who do have cabins and campers and been at the mercy of an invite.

Last year I tried to be proactive and, instead of sulking, rent a cabin at a resort for the weekend for just the four of us – my husband, me, our 21-year-old son, and 16-year-old daughter.

Long story short, our son had to work so it was just the three of us.

And it was a bust.

Per my husband’s insistence, we brought the same cooking shit with us that we use in our kitchen – fish fryer, French fry maker, etc. And we prepared and ate, and I cleaned up the same fucking food and dishes I do every week of my life. The cabin was tiny and the water was choppy and someone “stole” (borrowed, my husband said but I called it like it was) our picnic table.

The culprits were a group of 100, so it seemed. They were staying in the giant rental next to us like they probably had, in my mind, for decades. Yeah, I’m sure they saw that there was just the measly three of us (and our 3 lb dog we smuggled in) and thought, gee, we’ve been coming here every year since the dawn of time. We not only require that extra picnic table but we deserve it since our great-great-great-(not-so-great) – (then great-again) grandparents have all stayed here (said in that same British accent I mentioned before).

So this year, as most years, I decided to leave the weekend open and not worry about not having a cabin (pronounced cah-bun, if you don’t know already).

My husband and I had dinner while listening to live music at a favorite haunt of ours on Friday. The next day I went to a flea market with a friend and afterwards spent the afternoon day drinking and bar hopping. Sunday was a wonderful afternoon with our son, his girlfriend, and our daughter having snacks and playing Scrabble. Monday was a feast of chicken wings and corn on the cob with our favorite neighbors.  

Perhaps I’m trying to make myself feel better, or perhaps I’m kicking myself in the butt, reminding myself to be thankful for the family and friends I did get to hang out with.

Still, it would have been fun to do all of the above “up north” at the cabin…

Buying a watermelon is one of those things that always seems like a good idea. Who doesn’t enjoy biting into a refreshing fruit while relaxing on the deck on a hot summer day?

Then reality sets in.

How to slice the thing? I mean, it requires using a big sharp knife, something of which doesn’t go well with my skill set. I’ve cut my fingers countless times while “preparing” food. Even went to urgent care for stitches on my thumb once.

But let’s say I get past the initial slicing; you know, that giant one straight down the middle. The melon is now halved and I’m feeling optimistic.

I am never, despite cutting into countless ones over the past decades, quite ready for the juice. Then I must decide whether I will attempt to cut it in cubes or in those cute triangles. And each time I always try to outsmart the melon. Oh this way will be quick and easy I say to myself…

Right.

But it never is quick and easy, is it? Even what I think of as a small watermelon seems to take for-ev-er to cut up.

And let’s face it, there’s nev-er a big enough container to put it all in, amIright?

I always end up with four containers of watermelon slices and no room in the fridge for all of them.

I’ve tried only cutting up one half of the behemoth and leaving the other half on the counter with plastic wrap covering the top to save for later. But I always seem to forget about it because well, despite everyone begging for a watermelon at the grocery store, no one seems to finish the slices in the fridge and the half I saved for later ends up dripping onto the kitchen floor.

And God forbid if that happens. I’m convinced God himself created something in watermelon that makes its juice impossibly sticky. Long after you think you’ve cleaned it up you step on the area and end up walking around the rest of the floor with your flip flop sticking to every step.

Then there’s the endless discussion of whether or not you can or should eat the seeds. It’s a question I still don’t know the answer to. And if you have little kids around, you as the adult are usually required to pick out the seeds before handing it over for consumption.

I mean, sure those pictures of 4th of July with the kids smiling for the camera holding a triangle-shaped slice of melon, juice dripping down their chins, are adorable. Until you have to clean up the kid. Re: kitchen floor.

I say all this because I finally “saw” the watermelon that has been in my pantry for what has it been – weeks? My eyes have passed over it countless times, telling myself that I really need to cut the thing up. But then I move on and look for whatever I can piece together for a snack.

Which is most always nothing because I hate to grocery shop.

I’m not much of a cook. One time I attempted to make corn on the cob and I kept dropping the piping hot ears from the pot onto the floor.

My favorite type of cooking is actually a hybrid, which is basically sprucing up something that is already mostly made, such as adding slices of pepperoni and green olives to a pasta salad purchased at the deli.

So when I find something I can make and that tastes good, I want to brag about it.

With that said, here goes my super-easy recipe for baked beans:

• Buy a large can of Bush’s Baked Beans.
• Drain the beans a bit in a colander but leave some of the sauce. Pour in a pot.
• Fry 7-8 slices of thick-cut bacon.
• Dice up a good portion of a white onion and – VERY IMPORTANT – fry in the bacon grease until golden brown.
• Put both the bacon and the fried onions on paper towels to absorb the grease.
• Dice the bacon and add both the bacon and fried onions to the pot of beans.
• Add several squirts of your favorite bbq sauce (my go-to is Sweet Baby Ray’s) and mix well.
• Heat on low/medium while whatever you’re making for the rest of the meal is being prepared.

Pairs great with brats/dogs and friend potatoes!

Why is it that I feel like a criminal every time I use the self-checkout at Walmart?

I find myself making a big show of scanning each item and setting it aside.

Sometimes I talk to myself as I scan, asking out loud to no one but me where the barcode is or if the price that came up was right.

I then push my cart past the self-checkout lady and hope I don’t “get caught.”

For what, I do not know…

7.28.21

• Tell people happy birthday on Facebook.

I send a card or a text.

I’m old and don’t know how to not tell everyone of my friends that I said Happy Birthday to one of yours.

• Respond to a same post on different platforms.

If I said sorry for your loss or great job to your daughter on Facebook I won’t say it on Instagram or Twitter. Or any other site that I’m not a part of. Or even know of…

• Post every living thing I think or do on Facebook.

I am part of a family that does not take good pictures. Most of my family photos of when me and my brother when we were young were of the sky and maybe our heads. Whatever we were holding or doing wasn’t apparently important. So picture taking is not in my genes. Hence, I do not take multiple photos – or any photos, usually – of every place I and/or my family goes. This includes pics of things we’ve either all seen either in person or online – ie: Mount Rushmore (no people in it, just Mount Rushmore). You know the people “Oh, we went to the North Shore this weekend – totes fun!” And then shows four photos +19 more on their page. Who actually scrolls through all of them, I always wonder. Grandparents maybe. But even they are probs so inundated with photos of Little Johnny that they too just reply – “Looks like you had fun!” without actually looking at the fun.

• Ask questions on social media that I could easily look up myself.

What time is the DMV open? Fireworks say they’ll begin at dusk. When is that? I mean, have fireworks ever in the existence of fireworks started before dark? Oh yeah, THIS year they’ll start at 5 so Grandma can see them with Junior before she goes to bed. Or, tonight they’ll start at 8, you know, after the season finale of CSI: Milwaukee, Season 32.

• Talk someone’s ear off.

Always leave your audience wanting more, I say. Even if that audience is your husband.

• Look people in the eye at the grocery store.

I just want to get in and out as fast as humanly possible, even if that means occasionally grabbing Lite mayonnaise instead of regular (gross, by the way but hey, glad I got out of there in 20 minutes without having to stop and talk to anyone).

Each time I go to a free event in town I’m reminded why I don’t go to free events in town.

Sure you get some goofy-looking folks at county and state fairs.

However, when they are right in front of you, with no pronto pup stand to shield them from your view, well, it makes it that much worse.

For starters, there’s the requisite unattended kids that always look like they haven’t bathed in days. And there’s always one too-old kid wreaking havoc on the playground equipment, freaking out all the littles around him.

Then there’s the insanely young woman with eight kids. I hope the smile on her face doesn’t betray some kind of inner turmoil of having to mind all of them as her husband sits on his chair watching the free show.

Over there I see Mr. Skinny Barefoot guy, bare-chested with a long scraggly beard letting his unleashed dog roam the grounds, jumping on a much better behaved and t leashed, pooch.

Then I catch myself.

Judgmental much?

Yes, but that’s the risk they – and I, I suppose – take when being seen in public.

Maybe it’s because I’m hangry. I was told there would be food and beer trucks but there are none in sight.

This is obviously a truly free event.

Alas, I look around, trying to find something positive of which to end the evening.

Look, there’s the old couple solely and uninhibitedly dancing in front of everyone. And over there I see a couple laughing with two little kids sitting on their laps, bouncing to the music.

I may just attend another music in the park after all.

I’ll just remember to buy a sandwich at Subway and bring my own cooler packed with a couple of ice cold beers.

Ever Forward.

That’s how I get through most days.

I say those two words when I’m feeling stuck. When I am sitting at my desk staring off into space with a million tasks facing me on my to-do list.

Is it because I don’t know where to begin or am I trying to figure out which item seems less daunting than the next?

So for a perpetual procrastinator and self-proclaimed idler, I need all the motivation I can get.

Ergo, somewhere in the depths of my brain, I pull out that phrase – Ever Forward.

I’ll say it in my mind, or whisper it aloud, and then will get up to do something – anything – no matter how big or small.

It may be putting the towels in the washer.

It may be running upstairs to take my anti-anxiety pill that I forgot to in the morning.

It may be telling myself I’ll wipe down the bathroom sink only, secretly knowing once I start I’ll easily move on to the tub and toilet.

It may be simply filling up my watering can, heading outdoors, and tending to my container plants. Inevitably, I usually end up seeing some weeds in the flower garden that need to be pulled. Which then, after tossing them in the trash bin, I may be inspired to empty all the small wastebaskets around the house.

Next thing I know, I’m doing one of my favorite, albeit satisfying, tasks of all – crossing things off my list.

Sometimes it may be picking up one of my beloved colorful pens and just start writing…

Which eventually – and satisfyingly – often leads to a blog post…