Sophie's Story

Our friend Kent and his daughter stopped by a few days before Christmas. They had a plate of treats and a Christmas card with a letter. I like Christmas letters so I opened it up as soon as I could. It was a good one. Instead of the details of the year as most letters tend to be, it was a list of lessons that had been learned during the year. I liked it so much that I am going to shamelessly steal their idea and use it for my column today. These are in no particular order. 1. Putting the word"step" in front of parent, still makes you a parent. I realised this when we sent Carrie off to London to study abroad this past fall. I wasn't worried about her safety or if she could care for herself. She is a capable young woman. I was worried that she would have so much fun travelling and seeing things in Europe that she would neglect her studies. I was afraid that she would like the lifestyle over there and would not want to return to finish her degree. When I was in Europe, I we

Hi! This is Skamp. I have decided that even though I am not going to be a famous TV star, I am going to be a famous writer. A famous writer should have a pen name. My pen name is Skamp. This is Kolbie. If Skamp gets a pen name, then I want one too. My pen name will be Kolbie. Skamp and I have been listening to the song "The 12 Days of Christmas". It has only confirmed to us that humans can be very strange. Leaping Lords? Piping Pipers? Do you really want all this stuff? It just seems like so much clutter. The only things that seem interesting or useful at all are the milking maids and the partridge in a pear tree. I wonder if partridge tastes like chicken? This is Skamp again. Kolbie and I have come up with a much more sensible list. We would like to share it with you. On the first day of Christmas, my humans gave to me one great big cat tree. On the second day of Christmas, my humans gave to me two cat beds and one great big cat tree. On the third day of Christmas,my humans

It is Christmas TV special season. People are tuning in to all their favourite holiday shows. "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer","Frosty the Snowman", "It's a Wonderful Life" and other shows an movies about the season. There is also at least one showing of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" I think the Grinch gets a bit of a bum rap. I don't think he was always a grouchy, green creature. He wasn't born that way. Let me tell you what I think happened to the Grinch. The Grinch started out as a happy young boy named Gregory. He had a brother and sister who he was nice to (most of the time). He had friends. He did well in school, but not outstanding and it was pretty much thought that he would go on the be successful in anything he chose to do. He liked to be helpful and was interested in science. He decided he wanted to be come a pharmacist. He went to college, where he studied hard and got his degree and license. He wanted to be in a job wh

Last Friday C and I ventured to the monument to consumerism otherwise known as the Mall of America. (We call it the "big mall".) I needed some ideas of Christmas gifts for C and we wanted to do a little people watching. In colder weather, the big mall is the perfect place to do that. As we drove around looking for a parking spot, C said, "Wouldn't it be funny if we saw Karla here?" I answered promptly, "No! It would not be funny at all." A word of explanation is in order here. Karla is a distant relative of mine that I wish were more distant. She actually lives within 50 miles of us. I'm grateful for the fact that the Twin Cities metro area is a large one so the chances of running into one another are fairly small. I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads at me. We are supposed to love all people and especially our families. We are not supposed to say such things. You are right. However in reality I'm sure that most, if not all, of us ha

I just read that the color of the year for 2012 has been announced. It is Tangerine Tango,an orange red colour. It is supposed to radiate warmth and create new energy. Designers of all sorts will be rushing to make clothes, accessories and just about everything else in this new,exciting hue. To me it looks like one of the colours from the big crayon box that nobody uses. I think it was called "burnt sienna" at that time. (Maybe if it was called Tangerine Tango it would have been used.) Fortunately for me I turned my back on the fashion world a long time ago. Actually I never paid much attention to it, which is only fair as it never paid much attention to me. Somehow clothing designers and manufacturers think that all the women in the world are tall and thin. Short,sturdily built people like me don't exist. (Sour grapes? No,not me...) I prefer comfort over just about everything else. When I was in third grade I got a pair of saddle shoes. I don't know how I found them,

Like many women I keep an emergency supply of chocolate in the house. I know that when a craving hits you are supposed to drink water and wait for the craving to go away, but sometimes that just doesn't work. There are also those days that are just so bad that a little chocolate seems to make it better. Now that the Marathon bar and the Cadbury fudge finger have disappeared, M&Ms are my favourite candy. I keep a bag around at all times. There is one reserve bag in the freezer and another in a drawer. They are perfect. Who could stay grumpy when faced with a cup of chocolate in colourful candy shells. The fact that I can put some in a Ziploc bag and carry it around knowing they will be in perfect condition is a bonus. (Unlike candy bars that can get smashed.) Most people who like M&Ms have a favourite. There are the plain M&M people and the peanut M&M people. I think it's a little like being a dog or cat person. I prefer the peanut. I can argue that peanut M&

One of the things that I like about our house is that I have my own bathroom. I think part of the reason why we have a good marriage is because we don't have to share a bathroom, but that's another column for another day. What I don't like about my bathroom is that it is dark. Not like living in a cave dark, but darker than I would like. It's always been that way. Part of the reason why it is darker is because it is painted a medium brown. If the room had a window it would be all right, but it doesn't. The floor is a brick coloured tile. The bathroom is lit by a fluorescent light over the counter and a small indoor flood light that shines in the shower/tub. I thought that the fluorescent light was too small and that's why it seemed dark. Someday I would have an electrician come in and put in different lighting. As time went on the fluorescent bulbs kept getting dimmer and dimmer. It would take a long time for the bulbs to light. I know that cold can affect them

The news from the sports world has not been good the past few weeks. Most of the stories are tales of athletes and coaches misbehaving. I know that the majority of professional athletes and coaches work hard and maintain high standards of conduct. The handful that don't seem to get a lot of press. As an antidote to some of the recent bad news coming out of the sports world, I'd like to share with you something I found on Yahoo! Sports this week. The American Heritage School's girls cross country team was disqualified in a Florida state meet that occurred earlier this month. The reason was an unintentional mix up of the timing chips that the runners are required to wear on their shoes. These chips are to ensure that the runners are running the correct course and crossing all checkpoints and the finish line. Each runner has a matching right and left shoe chip. Two of the runners mixed up one chip so they were wearing the correct chip in one shoe and the wrong chip in another.

It's that time of year again. Time for all of us to think of the things for which we are grateful. There doesn't seem to be much of it this year. Fear mongering politicians are trying to scare us into voting for them. Prices on everything (except maybe gas) are going up and unemployment is still widespread. The leaders of this country seem unable to agree on anything except that they want to thwart anyone who isn't on their side. President Thomas Monson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints once said, "While there are many things wrong in the world, there are also many things right." (I hope I quoted this correctly, I have been unable to find the original quote) In this spirit I would like to share a Thanksgiving story with you. It comes from the talk 'The Divine Gift of Gratitude' delivered at the October 2010 General Conference. This is my retelling of that story. There was a family who lived on a farm in Canada. The children of the family w

Has everyone heard that Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce? I thought so. Unless you have been living under a rock or have been in a coma for the past few weeks there is no way you could escape such shocking news. I'm tired of hearing about it. I started getting tired of it late last summer when she got married. There were all kinds of speculations about her dress. (or was it dresses, I remember something about her having three different dresses.) There was an article about the guests having a dress code. Everyone had to wear black or white. (Are you serious?) Then there were the wedding pictures on the front of what seemed to be most of the magazines I saw. I don't remember seeing any of them that showed the bride and the groom. There was an article or two about that. By September, I saw a magazine with a picture of her on the front and some headline indicating that the marriage was in trouble. I shook my head. Then,in October,came the big shock. Kim had filed for divorce. T

It had been a hard week. I'd spent part of it quarreling with a family member. It started as a difference of opinion and had blossomed into a full fledged quarrel. I felt like my point of view was being discounted and tried to explain how I might see things differently. My explanation was met with an angry tirade and I answered with some equally angry words. After I calmed down I apologized,but it was too late. Apology not accepted. Ever. At this point the best thing to do was to leave the situation alone. There was nothing I could say that would mend this. Time would either heal it or not. A few weeks after this I was on Facebook when a message from Kim popped up. She was online and wanted to chat. I inwardly groaned. Chatting with Kim would take at least a half an hour,I didn't want to be on the computer that long. I told her to hang on a minute, finished what I was typing and then started to chat. Kim and I go back quite a ways. I met her the summer after I graduated f

Andy Rooney died this past week at the age of 92. I had a feeling that this was coming. About a month ago he did his last commentary on 60 Minutes. Maybe he knew what was coming and decided he wanted to be able to write his last commentary knowing it was his last. We'll never know. I remember Andy Rooney from a long time ago. My mother watched 60 Minutes every week. Since there was only one TV in the house, we all watched with her. I didn't care much about the featured stories back then, but I would watch them because there would be Andy Rooney. Every Sunday night he would do his commentary. Most of the time he would be sitting in his cluttered office. There would be a typewriter on one of the desks. Most of the flat surfaces would be covered with papers or books. He commented on everyday topics. Things that people could relate to. He also used plain language,straight and to the point. As I got older I started to pay more attention to the rest of the show. I began to like it in

I've always been a bit envious of people who journal. I've kept a journal on and off for many years, but never for an extended period of time. I would find myself myself looking back at what I wrote and being dissatisfied with it. I would take the pages, rip them up and throw them away. One of my tenth grade English class requirements was to keep a journal. We had to write in it every week for 20 minutes while the teacher walked around and watched us write. Then we would need to turn them in for the teacher to read. I didn't know what to write. I was uncomfortable writing anything remotely personal since it was going to be read by someone else. I wasn't good at making up fiction and just flat out had writers block. I must have written enough to satisfy the teacher since I passed the class. (With a good grade as I recall) I was looking through one of the many catalogs I get when something caught my eye. It was a Q&A a Day journal. It is a journal that has 365 questio

I feel sorry for the Texas Rangers. (I'm referring to the baseball team, not the law enforcement agency.) In case you haven't heard, they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in the last game of the World Series last night. It doesn't matter that the series had to go to a full seven games. It doesn't matter that the Cardinals won game six in extra innings by one run. They lost. Period. That's the way it is now. Everyone wants to be a winner because as we all know,"Winning isn't everything;it's the only thing". "There is no such thing as second place. Either you're first or you're nothing." (Gabe Paul) This is the main reason why I have never liked to compete. I don't like the concept that the only thing that matters is winning. That you should do what ever it takes to win. Nothing matters more than being on top. My dislike of the whole "winning" idea came on early. It started in phys ed class. I had (and still have) no at

Someone I know is part of an anti vaccine group on Facebook. Sometimes she comments on posts from this group and because we are friends on Facebook they show up on my page. A week ago or so there was a story about how the pharmaceutical industry manufactures diseases in order to create a market for drugs. She commented that this has been going on for years. To say I was furious is understating just how angry I was. Thermonuclear pissed (excuse the expression) was more like it. I work hard to help my customers get well and stay that way. To imply that part of my job is to make people sick offends me. Now I know that I do not manufacture drugs, but as a pharmacist I am part of the pharmaceutical industry as part of my job is to distribute prescribed medications. To me it sounded like she believes that the pharmaceutical industry deliberately causes harm to fellow human beings for profit. The thought is obscene. It took awhile, but I did calm down. This was not targeted at me. The person

I enjoy the annual trek to Door County, Wisconsin every year. I like the shopping, the sights, hiking through the state park and talking with the innkeeper in the morning before the rest of the guests come down for breakfast. After a week I am ready to come home. I miss the cats, cooking my own meals and sleeping in my own bed. C is usually a little sad when we pack up the car to go home. I feel bad for him, so this year I thought I would help by making the trip home a bit more enjoyable. I suggested that we try to hit every cheese factory we could find on the way home. I had a name for it, it would be the Wisconsin cheese tour. He seemed to think that was all right. We packed up the car,said goodbye to the innkeeper and headed to the first stop, a place called Good Eggs. It's a little stand open from 7 am to 1 pm that makes custom omelets and then wraps them in a burrito to eat. When C craves eggs (breakfast at the B and B is muffins, fruit soup,granola and cereal) this is where h

I don't think it's any exaggeration to say the the Green Bay Packers enjoy one of the most devoted fan bases in the NFL. Football is almost like a religion there. C and I usually spend one day in Green Bay when we are out here. Since we have been to Lambeau several times we usually just eat at Curly's Pub and then find something else to do. This year was different. The Pack had won the Super Bowl this year. Since we had not really paid our respects to the shrine of football for a few years now seemed to be a good time to do it. When one visits the shrine of football it's always a good idea to dress appropriately. When Aaron Rodgers first took over as the Packer quarterback, many people were upset. It seemed unthinkable that Brett Farve would not be at the head of the team as he had been for so many years. I bought an Aaron Rodgers jersey because I felt it was important to support the quarterback. I packed my jersey along with a matching green Packer ball cap. The day be

C and I usually go to a certain restaurant the first night that we spend in Door County. C pointed out that we are on vacation and we don't have to do the same thing all the time. He wanted to do something different. I had no problem with that. We drove a bit looking at different places. C thought pizza might be good. There are many places one could go for pizza in Door County, but C and I prefer the Bayside Tavern. When we got inside it was busy. We managed to find a table after a short wait. The waitress took our drink order and dropped off a couple of menus. We looked at them. Pizza was not listed. When the waitress came back, C asked her about it. It turns out they don't serve pizza on Friday. Friday is fish fry day. We had seen the sign about the perch fry on Fridays. Normally we are either not there on Friday or have something else planned. We decided to try it. I should have known. Many bars in small towns in Wisconsin have some sort of fish fry on Friday. I had never be

I was locking the narcotic cabinet at work when I looked down at the key in my hand. I never really looked at the key before. No one ever really looks at their keys, unless you are carrying a bunch of them and are trying to figure out what key you need at the moment. If you take a piece of metal shaped in a certain way,put it in a small slot of a certain shape and then twist you can get into places. OK..It sounds pretty silly, but that is all a key is. A simple piece of metal designed to fit into a slot that has been designed to match. That is the system that helps to guard our homes,cars,storage lockers,bikes and narcotic cabinets. It just seems too simple. I started to think about the whole subject of keys. Keys have long been a symbol of temporal power. You could tell who was in charge by looking for the person carrying a large ring of keys. (Now the person in charge carries about six kinds of electronic devices.) If you have a key to a place it means you have the right to come and

There have been several news articles about bullying lately. Several of them have mentioned the need for laws to protect children that are bullied in school. As someone who was bullied for most most of her time in school, I should be very pleased. I should be jumping on the bandwagon and advocating for tough laws so that no one will have to go through what I went through. This is a no brainer, right? Instead I am a bit ambivalent about the subject. It's not that I don't want to protect children from bullies, I do. I'm glad that the subject is finally being taken seriously. When I was in school bullying was just kids being kids, boys being boys. If you are being picked on then you are probably doing something to provoke that kind of behaviour. My problem is that I don't think that laws and policies will work. You can put up all kinds of legislation. States can require teacher training, can attempt to institute a "no tolerance" policy and have requirements for d

Hi! This is Scamp. C has been complaining that there is nothing good to watch on TV anymore. I agree. I'd rather watch fish swimming in a bowl than some of the stuff that I see. (Note to self, ask Sophie if we can get an aquarium) I have an idea. C and I should star in our own TV show. We can go around the country in a really cool car and have adventures or maybe help people. C can wear that neat brown hat that I like so much. I think it's a good idea. I would need a stage name since I will be famous. Scamp just won't cut it. I like SuperSkamp! Doesn't that just sound cool? I like spelling Scamp with a 'K'. It looks more powerful that way. C would need a new name too. I like Charlie or even better Carolina Charlie since that is where he is from. We could call the show "The Adventures or SuperSkamp! and Carolina Charlie" Each episode would find us on the way to someplace where we would have an adventure or help some human or some cat that needs help. At

C has discovered a comedy channel on Pandora radio. We have been listening to Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, one routine from Andy Griffith,Jonathan Winters, Bill Cosby and a few other older comedy skits. Most of them were new to me and are pretty funny. There was one thing very noticeable about all these comedians. (besides the fact that they are all male) None of them used bad language,sexual humour,scatological humour,ethnic humour or were mean. Somehow these men managed to be funny. Is it just me, or has that become a lost art? A long time ago I knew a guy that was really into "South Park". He would tape all the shows and watch them as well. I had to know when it was on so I would know not to call him while he was watching. He loaned me an episode because he was certain that I would enjoy it. It was called "The Hunting Episode". I know that deer and other forest critters need natural predators to keep their numbers at a good level. Still,I dislike hunting. Hunters d

I used to watch football with my Dad on Sunday afternoons. On winter days in Minnesota there really wasn't much else to do. This was in the days before cable, though it wouldn't matter since there was only one TV in the house anyway. I did enjoy those afternoons, but I wasn't really a fan. It was something to watch if I didn't have a good book to read. I didn't start paying attention to football until after I got out of college. I knew that I would be working mostly with male pharmacists. I felt that it would be a good idea to have a working knowledge of some major sport so that I could start a conversation with a colleague if needed. The two sports I'd watched a lot of were football and hockey. I like hockey a lot,but prefer to watch club hockey. That left football. When visiting my parents I would watch games with my Dad and he would explain things as best he could. He had never played the game but he'd watched it for many years. I learned the basics from

It all started with a sore throat on Thursday. I assumed that it was sore because I hadn't been drinking enough water. I kept my water bottle near me at work and drank out of it as much as I could. By about six in the evening it was becoming obvious that my throat wasn't dry. It was sore and getting sorer. (Is that even a word?) That isn't usually a good sign. It looked like I had probably caught whatever bug is going around now. Fortunately I had the weekend off. I would rather be sick at home that at work. That was the good news. The bad news was that we had several things planned for that weekend. I wasn't going to be able to just stay home and be sick. Friday I had planned to have lunch with my Dad and then we were going to meet Sarah and Dean in the afternoon. We had tickets for the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on Saturday. We had planned to attend the Feast of Fantasy. All of these things had been planned in advance and I really couldn't get out of them, esp

My big sister, Sarah and her husband, Dean, were making their yearly trip to the Boundary Waters this past week. The term, "big sister" is something of an affectionate joke as Sarah is about five feet tall. I always feel like I tower over her. She's not my sister in the sense that we were born into the same family. However she is one of those friends who has become close enough that it simply doesn't matter. She is my sister, period. They live in North Carolina not too far away from the Blue Ridge Mountains. I'm told that is the most beautiful part of the country to live in. Once a year or so they travel back to Minnesota with one or more of their pack of dogs to visit Dean's family. We always try to spend at least part of a day together. We'd been texting back and forth and wondering if we would be able to see each other this year. Finally a date, time and place were found. Yesterday afternoon, C and I got into the car and went to Red Wing to meet them. I

Is there ever a time when some representatives are not busy and can take your call right away? I don't know about you, but every time I've ever tried to call any large organization (insurance company,credit card company,catalog,medical clinic) I'm always put on hold. Even when someone does answer the phone right away they ask me to hold. Why bother to ask? I'm going to be put on hold regardless of my answer. Just say "Hold Please" and do what you are going to do anyway. While you are hold, if you are lucky, you are treated to "hold music". I've become quite a connoisseur of hold music. I don't mind most of it. There is one place I call that has what I'm sure it considers soothing piano hold music. I don't find it soothing, because it is the same two minutes of sound repeated over and over again. I would rather have that then listening to ads for the place that is keeping me on hold. If my business is so important to you then why won&#

   "Does the dulcimer have a name?" asked C.       "No," I answered, "There's really no need. We only have one."    Actually, that isn't quite true. I've called the dulcimer 'Masterwork' before after the company that made her. Most of the time I just say dulcimer. I have two harps, Eve and Margaret. We also have four guitars. They are Alvarez,Gibson, and two Yamahas. (We had a Epiphone, but gave that to Carmen.) The two Yamahas are differentiated by owner. One is Carrie's and the other belongs to C.    It never really occurred to me to give the dulcimer a "proper" name.    "How about Dulsey?" C said. I scrunched up my nose. Dulsey the dulcimer sounded like a bad children's book. Then he suggested Dulcimaya. That was worse.    The word 'dulcimer' comes from the Latin "dulcis" (sweet) and the Greek word for song "melos". Personally, I think that it a perfectly good name.

I didn't take my cup of tea into the living room like I said I was going to do at the end of the last column. I was curious. I always write a column on my birthday and I wanted to see what I wrote about last year. I went into the archives and found 'Taking Sun on the Terrace' (I think that was what it was called). It was written by Scamp who was talking about how we were all sitting out on the deck enjoying the sunshine. He also mentioned that he prevented Colby from giving me a squirrel as a birthday present. I enjoyed reading it. I looked at the archives and saw some other things with titles that sounded interesting. I began to read going from July to June to May. This is really good stuff, I thought. Really good. Then I froze. Wait a minute! What am I saying?! Even worse, what am I thinking?!!! I live in the north for crying out loud! I was raised Lutheran! Northern women from Lutheran backgrounds are NOT supposed to admire anything they do or make. Ever. You can&#