Sophie's Story

                One of the discussions C and I have sometimes is about recycling. It usually starts when I see something in the garbage that belongs in the recycling basket. In the interest of fair disclosure, this conversation doesn't happen as often as it used to.               My family started recycling when I was in grade school. There was a recycling center in town where we took cans, glass bottles and newspapers. I remember taking the labels off metal cans and glass bottles, then I would put shoes on and smash the cans flat. My dad would take them to the recycling center.          Reusing and repurposing things were done in my home long before before it became fashionable. My dad made the grocery lists on envelopes from bills and letters. He would look through the Sunday coupons and cut out the ones he would use. The coupons he needed would go inside the envelope with th...

           Last Friday was rainy and windy in northern Door County, not the best weather for the annual Fall Fest. C and I wanted to walk around and see what there was to see. It's also a nice place to grab a bite. We put on our raincoats  and warm hats and ventured out.           We were able to find a really good parking place. We got our of our car and started to walk toward the places where vendors had set up. The only places set up were the larger booth and tents which had most likely been set up the previous day before the wind started blowing. C crossed the street while I was looking at something else. When I  noticed where he was, my first instinct was to run and catch up with him. Before I took one step, my foot slipped and I found myself flat on the ground at the edge of the street. I immediately got up as I knew the cars in the street would be able to see me. Gingerly I crossed the street and joined C on th...

           It's raining outside right now and I'm glad to be inside our comfortable little home away from home. I finished washing the dishes which are drying on the counter.  The rain is pattering against the window and dripping off the apples on the tree outside our window. I have a small load of laundry in the washing machine down th e hall.          This is the 23rd trip C and I have made to Door County.  In the beginning, this was a badly needed break when both of us worked full time. When we first started coming here, reliable cell phone coverage was only available in the southern part of the peninsula. There was Wi-Fi access at the B&B we stayed at, but it wasn't available every where. We were, to a small extent, cut off from the outside world for one week and one day while we stayed here. It was nice to get a break from work, but also from checking messages and email all the time. C would bring a guitar and pla...

           Last spring, when C and I were making our Door County reservations, we found that the room rates at the place we normally stay at went up again. This is partly due to the fact that the family that owned it, sold it recently and it was bought by a man who owns several other properties in the area. We decided to look around at other accommodations to see what else would be available. We thought maybe we could find something a little less expensive but still on the peninsula.          After some searching, we found the place we are staying at right now. It's farther north than we have every stayed and unlike the previous two places, children are allowed.  I was a little nervous about it as I've had bad experiences with children in hotels. The reviews that we read said this was a fairly quiet place and we always come when school is in session. We both thought it would be all right.          We ar...

           Several weeks ago a social media group posted a question. "What do you consider to be the best written song?" There were many answers spanning from classical music to country to rock. It was interesting to read the comments.          Although I didn't comment, I pondered what song I would choose. I wasn't sure I was even in a position to have an opinion on this subject. I'm not a composer or a performer so my choice comes from the position of being a listener. My musical taste is pretty broad, but was it broad enough to answer this kind of question?     I thought about it now and again for several weeks and decided that, in my opinion, the best written song is Year of the Cat by Al Stewart. It was written by Stewart and Peter Wood and released in 1976.     One of the things that I like best about the song is the lyrics. The lyrics describe an unexpected romantic encounter and does so in very visual ter...

           One of the things that I do almost every morning is check my Facebook memories. It's fun to see what I was doing or thinking about and sometimes it give me topics to write about. Many of my posts were football related about either the Green Bay Packers or the NDSU Bison. Sometimes I find cryptic posts that leave me wishing I remembered what I was posting about.          At one point in time I was posting conversations between Scamp , Colby and me. Those posts were so popular that I moved them to their own Facebook page. I kept it up after we lost Colby and closed it completely once Scamp was gone. I could revive it again with Willow and Barnaby, but I just don't feel like it.          There aren't as many past posts in recent years. I haven't been sharing much on social media. Part of this is due to changed interests. I'm no longer the football fanatic I used to be. I'm turned off by a lot of aspe...

           All of my life, I've heard variations of  'don't get old' from people I knew. In my opinion, the alternative is not better. Those of you who have been reading this column know that I see growing older as a gift.           Until lately, I haven't really thought about just how nice it is to be a woman of a certain age. Today, I'd like to list a few blessings,in my opinion, of being an older woman.           The first is that I don't worry about my outfits matching. Yesterday, when I went to visit my dad, I wore a pink cardigan sweater, a white t- shirt and tan cotton pants. I wore a pink canvas bucket hat that I like. The pink hat didn't match the sweater and I didn't care. I was comfortable and the hat kept the rain off my head. It framed my face in a way that I like. Now, it's not that I go around wearing colours that clash badly. I just don't care if things are a perfect match in a...

                   Over the years, I've found that I enjoy trying things. Sometimes things turn out well, like the pot of white bean rosemary soup made from dried great northern beans.  Sometimes they don't, like the basket made from rag yarn. I don't mind the fails. The fun is in the attempt.                Several months ago I rediscovered my love of tofu. This led me to several vegan cooking channels. I found a lot of cool ways to season and use tofu in dishes and have really enjoyed experimenting with it. One of these cooking channels showed something that looked very interesting to me.   The content creator made what she called Homemade Vegan Deli Slices. It called for tofu, vital wheat gluten, olive oil, cornstarch, nutritional yeast and various species.          It looked interesting to me. On days when I know it's going to be busy at work, I...

           Lately I've been watching a vegan cooking channel on YouTube. I started watching it because the content creator had a lot of good tofu recipes. There recipes mostly have ingredients that I already have or could easily obtain if I wanted to.           I look at a lot of things that she cooks. On her channel, eating a plant based diet seems to be pretty simple and affordable. Everything looks so good, especially the kale salad that you can customize with all kinds of things. (The secret is massaging the kale.) I could see myself adopting this type of eating. Except for one thing.          Cheese. Well actually the whole  dairy category. I like milk and yogurt, but I love cheese. I love almost all cheese made from cow's milk. Cheddar cheese, cream cheese, cottage cheese, asiago cheese are all good things in my opinion.           Maybe it's because I have some W...

           Yesterday, I went to spend some time with my friend, Dana, at her home.            I have no idea how long we have known each other. We met when both of us were members of Small Town Toastmasters. I remember one time mentioning that I wanted to learn how to knit. An elderly customer used to bring nice knit dishcloths to me at the pharmacy, but was unable to knit. I wanted to learn so I could make more for myself.           After meetings we used to go to a local bagel shop and socialize. One morning,Dana brought knitting needles and yarn. She showed me how to do the purl and knit stitches. That has led to several baby blankets, scarves, shawls, non baby blankets and a lot of yarn for future use. It was also the start of great friendship.           We don't get together nearly as much as either of us would like. Both of us work and that is part of the ch...

           In Red Wing there is a store in the depot down by the river. Area artists of all types can sell what they create there.  There is jewelry, pottery, pictures, carved wood and hand dyed silk scarves to name a few of the items sold there. It's a bad place for me to go into because I almost always see something I like and I usually purchase it. I'm wearing one of the things I bought there right now, a round gold pendant with a rose on one side and rays radiating from the center on the other side.          One time last year when I went in there I saw a silk scarf. It was cream coloured with splashes of red, fuschia, purple, pale blue, pale green and pale yellow. It was beautiful and I wanted to buy it. It was a bit expensive and honestly, when would I wear it.? I have many scarves that are in my closet that I don't wear. Since I'm trying to become better at not purchasing things I won't use, I left the scarf in the store...

           The primaries are over and we are now in the season I dislike the most, election season. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the right to vote, but I truly despise what happens between now and the first Tuesday in November. Hateful speaking will be pouring out from everywhere and since there are women running for office in Minnesota it will be even worse thanks to rampant misogyny in our culture.          I believe there is a better way. It will be less expensive so candidates for office can't be bought  by businesses and other groups. It will give voters information on candidates so they can vote for the person they believe is best. It would also give third party candidates a chance to get their information out there equally with those of established parties.          I think that candidates for public office should be treated like people interviewing for a job. All public offices filled by...

           Today is International Cat Day, created in 2002 by the  International Fund for Animal Welfare. Most cat "owners" know that every day is cat day when you live with one. Although the day is meant to bring awareness to the welfare and protection of cats, I'm using it as an opportunity to write about Barnaby.           For those of you new to this column, Barnaby is a three year old cat that lives with us. He is big and fluffy with a white and orange coat. He looks a lot like a Norwegian Forest cat, but is not a purebred cat. He came to us via a coworker of mine who was running a small scale rescue of cats living on an abandoned farm near her home. Many of the rescued cats became working cats on farms after neutering/spaying and vaccination. She was looking for a home for Barnaby as she felt he would do better as a housecat. She described him to me as "starving for affection".          When ...

           I'm learning Latin. I use the word learning very loosely as I'm using the free version of an app. It's fun, but as someone who took four years of German in high school and three years in college, it's more a game to play than actual foreign language study. I'm learning a few words and sentences, but nothing really usable at least so far. None of the lessons cover Latin sentence structure. That bothers me because I like knowing the rules for sentence structure. When I get a sentence to translate, I feel like I'm guessing.          I've always wanted to learn Latin. I had even signed up to take it in college, but I got accepted into pharmacy school and wasn't able to. The Romance languages such as Spanish, Italian, French and Galician descend from Latin. Some of terms used in pharmacy are Latin like BID (twice daily) and TID (three times daily) and PO (by mouth)          I was reminded of my interes...

           C was loading the bikes onto the car on Monday night when he discovered a big problem. The front tire on my bike was completely flat. As I looked at the tire I noticed that it was cracked and that's probably why it went flat. The tire was the the original one on the bike when I bought it about 30 years ago so it's no surprise. It's been really hot outside, the temperature in the garage would have been even higher.          This was a bad time for this to happen. C and I were really looking forward to a ride since it had been too hot to ride all last week. We wanted to get an early start, but the bike shop didn't open until ten. We discussed possibly hiking somewhere instead riding our bikes.           The next morning, C decided to play pickleball since we weren't going to be able to start our ride early. I did some chores around the house. When C came back we donned our riding attire, filled...

           It's Middle Eastern Festival time at the Eastern Orthodox church near our home. We've been going to this festival every year for most of the years we have lived here.          I have always enjoyed learning about different faiths especially when paired with other ethnic cultures.             We like to go when the festival opens and have lunch. They have Lebanese food: kabobs, kafta, kibby and my personal favourite falafel. They used to have a combination plate with a sample of most of the menu that C and I liked to share. Unfortunately they stopped offering it.           They play music while people are eating. The lyrics are in a language I don't understand, but the music is very rhythmic and loud. They have two dance groups made up of teenagers and preteens that perform ethnic dances at set times in the tent where people eat. I was surprised the first tim...

           A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. I use the word coworker very loosely. He was not a part of the pharmacy staff so I didn't interact with him. I saw him a lot around the store. He was kind of hard to miss as he had the longest hair I have ever seen on a man along with facial hair to match.          What I do know is that he was a dependable and well liked by everyone. When he didn't call or show up to work, people were concerned. This lead to a search which found his car parked with his phone and ID in it. There was a note in his apartment.           He wasn't found right away. Some of the people who knew him thought that maybe he ran away. Maybe he was in Las Vegas or some where getting away from it all. They didn't want to believe that he was really gone and that he had killed himself. I don't blame them. It's a hard thing to process.   ...

           This morning I decided I could wait no longer. It was time for a serious session of weeding the garden.           I do enjoy gardening, but I'm not always as diligent about weeding as I should be. My only excuse this time is that I had to wait for the peas and carrots to get a bit bigger so I can weed around them. Also it had been raining on and off for the last week.           This morning I officially ran out of excuses. Time to go out and pull weeds. I dressed in some older clothes and a ratty pair of sandals, filled my water bottle, grabbed my phone and headed into the garage. I got a hand spade and a tool that I refer to as the claw. Since there were a lot of weeds, I was going to need both tools to get at the roots.           I started on the vegetable side of the garden as it was in the worst shape. The weeds had grown up so much that I could not see ...

           I'm trying to limit the amount of time that I spend on social media. I used to enjoy posting thoughts and pictures, but now I find I really don't have much I want to share anymore. One thing I still like doing is looking at the memories section every morning. A few days ago I noticed that I posted about taking a leap of faith. Sometimes when I see these cryptic posts, I'm not sure what I meant. This time I knew what prompted that post. Eight years ago I quit my full time job.          This isn't the first time I quit a job. It is the first time I quit before I had another job lined up.           I wasn't planning on quitting. My plan was to continue working full time until I got much older. Then maybe I'd back down to part time. I felt like I needed to stay with the company I was at. There weren't a lot of pharmacy jobs open plus the degree I have is somewhat obsolete. Since it is better to h...

           Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic for past few months. As with all new technology many people have jumped on the bandwagon touting how useful it is. Businesses are assessing how to use it possibly replacing human workers which will help the business be more profitable.          As much as some may want to believe that AI can replace any human in any job, there are a few jobs that really need to be done by a human. One of them is my job, pharmacist. I'd like to write about an encounter with a patient that I had last week.          He is a middle aged man who had a prescription for an albuterol inhaler and a spacer. Albuterol is a medication that is used to help open the lungs in people with asthma, COPD, pneumonia and bronchitis. A spacer is a plastic device that has a mouthpiece on one end and a place to put the end of the inhale on the other. It's used to hold the medication to help pe...