I will judge you

Source: someecards.com via Devon on Pinterest

I have a teensy, weensy little problem with being judgmental.

I mean, it's not a big deal.

For example, the other evening we were listening to the radio and the folk singer dedicated his next song to his daughter, Sienna.

"Sienna?!" I nearly shrieked. "What kind of person names their kid after a minivan? I mean, what's her brother named? Sorento?"

But everyone does that  . . . right?  (No offense to any Mamas or Papas of Siennas -- or Sorentos for that matter -- out there.)

The truth is, I've been judgmental as long as I can remember. When I first took the Myers-Briggs back in Sunday School, I didn't really understand the difference between having a judging or perceiving personality. But my parents laughed pretty hard when they heard that all but one of my answers indicated a judging personality.  (Now why we were taking Myers-Briggs personality tests in Sunday School, I can not tell you. All I know is that I was raised in the United Church of Christ which is filled with dirty hippies bleeding-liberals the belief that we are all God's children and that there is no wrong or right way to go about religious instruction.) To this day, my introversion and judging are the two factors of my personality that show up most decidedly on such tests.

And you know those quote board you kept in your dorm room or apartment during college? One of the quotes attributed to me was: "I don't know her and I don't want to know her. I just want to judge her."  I think the quote was somehow related to someone's Facebook profile page. (Back when Facebook was just for college kids. Remember those days?) Regardless of how that quote came about, I mean, good grief.

I swear I'm not an awful, heinous person. I'm perfectly capable of being friends (good friends) with people who don't share my political, religious, or ideological belief system. I'm tolerant of other cultures. I try to approach life with an open mind.  I've just always had an issue with expressing my snap judgements verbally. Apparently the axiom "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" just never stuck in my brain.

Lately, I've been thinking I should probably work on not saying the first thing that pops into my head. You know, at least not all the time. 

But it's hard, you know.

Like last night, when I was sitting on couch, knitting away on a sock and noticed an unfamiliar truck rumble by the cabin. Because the cabin's perched on the tip of a bay, we have a great view of the road that loops around the bay and as I watched the truck creep up the road it became obvious that these people had no idea where they were. The truck went all the way up the farthest driveway, then backed out and stopped at the far end of the road.

Four men popped out of the truck's cab, all dressed in grey tops and jeans. Three of them had fishing poles in their hands and they each proceeded to hop onto various docks. Not public docks, mind you, docks owned by summer residents of the bay. One of them even jumped onto a dock which is anchored slightly offshore. (The docks are all anchored "at sea" during the winter months so they can bob around when the ice goes out and not get ripped to shreds.) The fourth member of the party walked down the road, picking up rocks and hurling them into the lake.Then, after about 10 minutes of casting their lines and throwing rocks, just as suddenly as they'd come, they all popped into their truck and drove off, never to be seen again.

All the while, I sat on the couch, knitting away. All that was needed to make me a "real" old biddy was a shawl, some glasses on a beaded lanyard, and a rocking chair. I didn't say anything at all. (Full disclosure: I was home alone.) But I sure judged the snot out of them.

Please make me not feel like a horrible person and tell me I'm not alone in making awful, off the cuff, "I don't know the whole story" judgements. And please, if you know how to make it stop, let me know!  I promise I won't judge . . . too harshly. ;)

 

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Blown In From the Windy City

I just blew in from the Windy City of Chicago last night and thought I'd attempt to catch you up on the whirlwind that was the last eight days. Be forewarned, this post is going to be a long one. Prepare yourself for an excessive amount of pictures and text.

But before we go any farther, can we get a shout out for K. Syrah, Meri, Megan, and Betsy who provided fabulous guest posts during my absence? Thanks so much guys!!

My week "away" kicked off with a friend's bachelorette party two Saturday nights back. Because I live at (what sometimes seems like) the ends of Earth, I don't get to see these friends nearly as often as I'd like. It's always fun when we figure out a way to spend time together despite the miles and schedules.

After a "layover" in the Twin Cities, on Tuesday, my friend Sarah and I headed down to the Amtrak station to catch the early morning train to Chicago only to find flooding on a western segment of the track had delayed the train by six hours. Rather than expecting customers to wait that long for the train to arrive, Amtrak provided inconvenienced travelers with complimentary bus travel to Chicago. While I was happy to avoid the delay, traveling on a packed coach bus wasn't exactly what I'd been imagining when I'd booked the tickets.

Nevertheless, we made it to beautiful Chi-town, where it was actually SPRING!!! I cannot express in words my excitement to find beautiful blossoms bursting out of every planter and garden in the city.

Sarah jokes that vacation with me should really be called "boot camp." In my mind, unless our feet throb at the end of the day, we haven't really traveled. Although I've been to Chicago many, many times before, this was the first time ever I'd spent days (four to be exact) on end in the downtown Chicago and I wanted to make sure we took every advantage of our hotel's convenient location right on the Chicago River, just a couple blocks up from Millennium Park. We spent a fair amount of time down on the Museum Campus on the city's south peninsula.

Hobnobbing with Sue, the T-Rex at the Field Museum

Watching the Jellies at the Shedd Aquarium

Hanging out with the lions over at the Art Institute

 I've often heard it said that Chicago is an East Coast city stuck in the Midwest and I rather agree with the sentiment. It's easy for me to forget just what an incredible amount of culture Chicago really has, especially since Minnesotans tend to (over) glorify the Twin Cities. While the Twin Cities are fine, Chicago, with its tremendous museums and transportation system, really makes every other Midwest metropolis look kind of . . . cute. 

In between our "cultural" experiences, we got in some shopping at Macy's, including dinner in the Walnut Room, (I'm really sad the store is a Macy's now instead of Marshell Field) and up on the Magnificent Mile, where I was very happy to find an H&M. While I love/prefer/can only afford fashion that stores like Target and Kohl's offer, sometimes as a Minnesota girl living in a sea of Target stores, it's really nice to get some clothes that aren't Target brands!

We had excuses to get gussied up for a couple evening shows: Spring Awakening (ugh) at the Oriental Theater in downtown and the Blue Man Group (amazing and indescribable) up in Belmont. 

Pretending to wash the Hancock Building windows.

We didn't visit the top of the Sears/Willis Tower, but we did check out the Observatory at the top of the John Hancock Building. I have to say, the Hancock offers much better views of the City and you really get to soak in Lake Michigan's "Great Lakey-ness".

While we were in the Hancock building neighborhood, we spotted the Water Tower, which is one of the few structures in the City which predates the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

We visited both of Chicago's ball fields. We caught the Minnesota Twins playing the White Sox (go Twins!) and the Cubs playing the Cincinnati Reds (go Cubs!)The Cubs lost, the Twins won. For some reason, I'm not surprised by this outcome.

We DID get to take the train back to Minneapolis. I really do think the train is an awfully romantic way to travel, even if it is laughably inefficient. (While it takes about 7-8 hours to drive to Chicago from Minneapolis, it took us nearly 9 hours on the train, even without any delays.) I would recommend the train for its roomy seats and the unique experience. Just be prepared for lackluster customer service (at least, before you actually board) and remember, the Amtrak's timetable is more of suggestion than it is a promise. 

Bye-Bye Chicago

Sunset on the train, near Winona, MN

Of course, we can't consider it a successful trip to the big city without a celebrity sighting. Who did we spot this time?

Vern from TLC's "Trading Spaces." (I know, I know . . . who?) He was on board our river architecture tour!

Hope you've all had a wonderful start to May! Andy's got vacation days at the end of week, so where we'll end up is anyone's best guess, but there'll be plenty of guest posts to tide you over until I really truly return.

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Being A Tourist in Your Backyard

Yesterday, as the result of an exciting new freelance opportunity, I had an excuse to spend the night downtown in my hometown. The NYC trip of April had started to fade into “far away” and frankly with the vast amount of highway construction along the one getaway route out of town -- Hwy 61 -- makes a quick day trip anywhere outside of the county anything but quick. Schedules have been consistently chaotic so we’ve pretty much hunkered down in the woods.

Time for a change.

Last night, even though I was only an hour away from the cabin and about five minutes away from my parents’ place, I was anxious for the excuse to shake things up a bit.

And the very best part was that my friend Kati agreed to be my travel companion. Since I sometimes look at as Andy as he walks through the door at the end of the day and think, “oh, do you live here too?”, you can only imagine what effect being uber busy and living an hour away from town has had on friendships. There was some much needed catching up to take care of.

We made the most of the time we had. For supper, we cooked up some wonderful homemade pizza. Then, once I was sufficiently full of cheese, pepperoni, and root beer, Kati suggested we go spend the rest of the evening playing some pick up soccer. While I was playing, I felt like I was 16 again, albeit, missing a bit of that handy hand-eye coordination I had back then in my soccer playing days. Today I feel like I’m about 60. Ya know, who needs knees anyway?

This morning, after a fitful night of sleep in a strange location, we headed down the street for a bit of breakfast. Afterward, although there were plenty of things I could have been doing, we opted to play tourist a little bit more. There are a couple new businesses in town and although I’d written preview pieces about both businesses' openinga, I hadn't been inside yet to get a glimpse of the final product. We poked around in those two stores, along with a few other gift shops, then headed out to the lighthouse.

In the end, we decided if you were really, truly a tourist in this town, it wouldn’t be half bad. I guess that's not a surprising conclusion to reach when the skies are blue, the conversation is pleasant, and there's nothing that truly needs to be done except enjoy the warm sun and gentlest of breezes.

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The Grocery Train Came In

Because the main industry in the area is tourism, anyone who’s lived here for any extended period time has had to answer their fair share of stupid odd questions from visitors. The universal favorite such question among locals seems to be “what’s that big river we’ve been driving along for a couple hours now?” (Lake Superior.) But there are other good ones, like “when do deer turn into moose?” Some, more legitimate, questions just grow weary with time such as, “what’s happening to the birch trees?” (A number of things: for one, birch trees don’t have very long life cycles and they’ve also been stressed out by an ice storm, droughts and invasive insects. Also, they die from the top down, which is a big part of why they look so very bad along the highway.)

And then there’s the one I never liked: “what do you do in the winter?” Part of what makes me so hostile to the question is that after graduating from college, I never knew what I was doing in the winter. Again, because of the tourist industry, a lot of jobs around here are seasonal. But there’s also an underlying implication to the question that makes me prickle. It seemed what they were actually asking was “this is lovely place to be in the summer, but you can’t possibly live here all year, can you?” I was never quite sure what to tell them: that we caught a ride on the steamer down to Duluth every October 1st? That we stayed and hitched up our dog sleds every month or so for the grocery/mail run?

Yes, we live 100+ miles from the nearest movie theater (which isn’t usually an issue, except when Sex and the City 2 has been released and you really, really want to go see it, even though you’re sure it’s going to be even worse than the first movie) but despite what we might want to think, we’re really not in the middle of nowhere. Sure, it can be hard to coordinate things like groceries, banking, laundry, and gas when you live 60 miles outside of the nearest town, but we make it work. In a lot of ways, I think it’s probably easier (and dare I say, less running around?) to drive an hour into town on a pretty much empty highway to run errands than it is to run errands in a metro area.

Still, every once in a while, it’s nice when the grocery train comes in. Whenever Andy or I venture out to the big city, we almost always make sure we do a major grocery run. The prices are lower and selection is so much better. (Did I mention that we live in a tourist town?) We mound the grocery cart to the point where I’ve been asked if I’m preparing for a blizzard. You can see the clerk shuttering as you cajole your cart – which by now has locking wheels – into the checkout line.

Andy was out of town at the start of the week and he brought home several hundreds of dollars of groceries back with him. This is good, because while he was gone, I found we didn’t have nearly must food on hand as I had thought. Once I moved around the basically empty jars in the fridge that had been taking up space, I realized we had only a few things in the house that were readily edible: three bagels, stale rice cakes, and lots of mustard.

Things are looking at lot less dire now. I think we’ll have plenty of food for the next month, at least, although we do have to stock up on fresh veggies more often than that. An arrival from the grocery train is always welcome: it’s one less thing to worry about as the busy summer season begins.

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