Over and out

A blog takes commitment and discipline. When I began writing my blog I had both and was eager to share our story of moving from the Bay Area after 36 years to downtown Portland, Oregon. We turned our lives 180 degrees with that move which included moving into a loft in a downtown apartment building. We walked everywhere and dove into our new lives in Portland.  We met wonderful people who have become lifelong friends and we loved Portland…until we didn’t.  It took a combination of homeless everywhere, antifa riots nightly for months, Covid closing everything enjoyable and the ever present gloomy winter weather that wore on us more each winter.  Spending the month of August in Alexandria on a lake during summer 2020 awakened us to another lifestyle that didn’t involve skirting around homeless tents on the sidewalks.  So we upended our lives again and moved from the west coast to the Midwest.  We got very lucky and found a home on a premier lake and dove into small town living.  At first, I was excited to share our experiences through my blog so the commitment was easy.  Now that we’ve been here a full year plus, my priorities are changing and the discipline is waning.  You have probably gathered that this is an over and out blog.  I have mixed feelings but it’s the right thing for me at this time.  But before I sign off, I have one more small town thing to share.    

Tom works at Fleet Farm which is a Midwest big box chain, four days a week. You can get everything from nuts to clothing, and all things in between, but you can also get all you need for animals such as deer attractant, udder wash, brooder lamps for chickens, horse bedding, night crawlers and of course fishing lures. There are 8 aisles on both sides filled with lures. Tom does the pricing changes from 5:30am to 9:30am. There are an amazing number of price changes a day. He has been in the lure aisles for so long that he is now dreaming about fishing lures. So if you came into the store looking for the best lure to attract a walleye, you’d ask Tom of course. What does he know about lures other than price changes? Absolutely nothing.

This is Minnesota so it does snow here. A lot. But it’s also sunny a lot. Surely it will stop snowing at some point and the golf courses will reopen. Just this morning, March 18th, it was -15 degrees with the wind chill. I keep hearing from old time Minnesotans that this is unusual. Why is the weather always unusual when you are present? It takes about 20 minutes to put on all the stuff you need to wear to walk outside. Long underwear, warm pants and tops, neck warmer, hand warmers, toe warmers, boots with spikes to walk on the ice, stocking hat, face mask and mittens. Then you wonder what you were thinking when you decided to take a walk. I read online that some very high end homes are putting in snow rooms as the cold and snow are supposed to revitalize your cells. They could rent an ice fishing house on the lake like the ones in the picture for a couple of months. That would really revitalize those old cells.

We are expecting lots of visits this summer from friends and family, including one from Paris. We had an exchange student, Danielle, when she was 12 years old and Katie 10. Well, both those women are now in their 40’s and Danielle will be in the States in August and will take a side trip to see us. We are really looking forward to that.

I have to thank all of you who read this blog for your loyalty and comments. I have really enjoyed and appreciated that. With mixed feelings, this will be my last post. Looking forward to hearing from you!