Walleye for Dinner

Jay and the boys are fishing on Lake Pepin today -- cross your fingers for them! Jay's been skunked there the last three times he's gone. Hopefully he'll get his Walleye Mojo back again today and we'll have fish for dinner!

But just in case... I put some chicken in the crock pot this morning.

Hope everyone is having a lovely, lovely Sunday afternoon. xo, jen

It's Officially Fall "Up North"

We returned tonight from a fabulous long weekend at the cabin. The weather was gorgeous, the leaves were several days into their yellows and oranges and reds, and it just smelled good. You know what I mean? That damp, earthy fall smell that you just don't get any other time of year? I took a walk in the woods this morning before we left and settled in on this bench Jay made me a couple years ago. Watched the leaves fall above me under a blue sky and wished we could stay another week.

Of course, it wasn't all peaceful and serene. I did take my peaceful little morning hike to the sound of gunshots. Jay and the boys were shooting at cans and a milk carton from the garage...

Christian and I rented bikes at Itasca on Sunday morning and went for a fabulous ride on the trails. We visited the Pioneer Cemetery and Peace Pipe Vista for the first time, and even made it to the beach where we skipped some rocks. It felt great to bike -- but those uphills were killer, man. I'm fully expecting a case of the DOMS tomorrow!

Anniversary

It's our 12-year, four-month anniversary today. (Ahhhh...)

Love you, honey. xoxo

Read This: On Sarah Palin

Want to know more about Sarah Palin? Have I found a blog, written by an Alaskan, for you:

http://mudflats.wordpress.com

For a backgrounder on Sarah Palin (and a picture of the "city" of Wasilla she was mayor of just two years ago), you can link directly here:

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/what-is-mccain-thinking-one-alaskans-perspective/

Mudflats also has a post on Palin's attempt at book banning (including a picture of the library), which was too good not to include here:

"...It’s out now that Sarah Palin, while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, tried to fire City Librarian Dorothy Emmons for not agreeing to remove 'objectionable books' from the Wasilla Public Library. Dorothy Emmons, to her credit, and the credit of librarians everywhere, refused. Something about….which amendment was that?….oh, that’s right….the FIRST ONE.

"Here’s what happened after Palin asked the librarian if she’d be 'alright' with removing books that Palin found unacceptable.

"According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn’t fully support her and had to go.

"Emmons had been city librarian for seven years and was well liked. After a wave of public support for her, Palin relented and let Emmons keep her job.

"The question everyone wants to know is, 'What books was she trying to ban?' Unfortunately, no concrete information exists on this…yet. Emmons has not been reached for comment, but may be able to shed some light, especially since she now lives in another part of the state and is no longer in Wasilla, where perceived 'Sarah bashing'can be risky.

"But until then, I present for your literary amusement, a random selection of 'the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century' as compiled by Newt Gingrich’s conservative online cabal known as 'Human Events'. Presumably, knowing what we do about Palin’s ideology, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume any or all of these would be on the hit list. (No link provided to Human Events because, trust me, …you don’t want to go there.)

"Das Kapital, The Feminine Mystique, The Communist Manifesto, The Course of Positive Philosophy, Beyond Good and Evil, Mein Kampf, On Liberty, Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Silent Spring, Coming of Age in Samoa and….wait for it…The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. And I’ll go ahead and do some wild speculation that the name Harry Potter may come up. It wouldn’t surprise me.

"Ironically, the first time I remember Sarah Palin being portrayed in the national media was in a piece on the Daily Show where she was salaciously compared to a 'naughty librarian.' I’d like to claim my very own Lloyd Bentsen moment right now and say to Sarah Palin, 'I know librarians. Librarians are friends of mine. Governor, you’re no librarian.'"


Sarah Palin scares the bejeezus out of me.

Jen's Column / Diaries

The toy room is history. Now that my kids are bigger — which means their toys are smaller — I decided to reclaim the toy room and turn it into a library. Two trips to IKEA and a new appreciation for power tools later, I was ready to fill the shelves. I pulled boxes upon boxes of books out of storage — excitedly shuffling through the eclectic mix of volumes I've collected through the years, from college texts to vintage classics to cheesy paperbacks.

At the bottom of one large container, under The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Tao of Pooh, I found six cloth-bound volumes stacked neatly on top of one another. My diaries.

From junior high to college, I kept a running log of my life — a collection I haven't thought about in years. But yesterday, surrounded by stacks of books in the middle of my living room floor, I became engrossed in my teenage self.

I read about my classes, my friends, my crushes. I read about my first pair of Guess? Jeans — and how "absolutely mean" my mother was when she wouldn't drive me into town to visit friends on a snow day.

Sometimes I'd write several times a day. ("May 12, 1988. 3:12 p.m. Update: He called!") Sometimes I'd go days or weeks without writing.

Because my mother promised me she would never read my diaries -- and I believed her -- I included details that, well, no one would want their mothers reading. (Sisters, however, don't hold the same code of ethics. I found a sixth-grader's penciled comment in one diary: "Amy was here!")

Sometimes it hardly seemed it was me who'd written the passages I was reading. I'd find myself appreciating the writer's candor — her ability to tell how she felt even when it wasn't attractive. I was taken by the passion of adolescence — the fervor felt for everything from hate to love to injustice. I felt the pain during the hard parts, and I laughed along at the funny parts — even if they weren't intended to be funny.

April 1, 1987. I now have 14 posters of Kirk Cameron. He is so awesomely choice.

February 20, 1988. I stayed at Lynn's last night. We did our hair. I crimped mine and put the sides up in a side ponytail. Then I ratted the bangs up — it looked really neat.

November 3, 1990. Why it sucks when your dad is a cop: If you get busted, your dad is the first to know even if you're 18 and were gonna tell him anyway.

And, oh, the song lyrics! Pages dedicated to the words of Billy Joel, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, Frank Zappa. After one momentous break-up, I recorded every last word of Against All Odds across several pages: "How can you just walk away from me, when all I can do is watch you leave?"

So now the question is this: What does one do with their collection of old diaries? They don't put them in the library for their children to read, I can tell you that. And they don't seem appropriate on the nightstand for evening reading, either. I mean, this foray into teenage me has been fascinating. But it's dangerous to spend too much time in the past.

I've contemplated burning them — thus saving future embarrassment. But it'd be difficult to light that match.

My friend LaNae thinks I should keep them. "You can't throw them," she said adamantly yesterday. "Someday your great-granddaughter will read them and think, 'If Grandma Jen got through it, so can I!'"

Grandma Jen. Now that's something to write about.

1st Day of School - 9/2/08

Video tidbits of Christian and Bergen as each board their own bus to school. Sorry for the poor video - any new videos will be of a better quality.

- Jay

Fishing Update

Thanks go out to Jen for buying the salmon for us to smoke over the weekend. We were not skunked... we just couldn't catch the right species to smoke. This PIC is Christian with a small mouth bass. I think it is his very first! The kids and I are going to Lake Pepin this weekend to see if we can fill the freezer with some walleyes. I will keep you posted.

- Jay

Jen's Column / I'm a Sap

By the time you read this, my sons will have headed off to their first days of school with equal amounts trepidation and excitement. Or at least that's how I project it will go. I'm writing this on Saturday, which means we still have a couple days until The Big Day.

They've already lined up their backpacks — filled with notebooks and fresh boxes of crayons and sharpened pencils. They've broken in their new tennis shoes. They've negotiated lunch boxes ("Why can't I get the one with the skulls?") and marker sets ("Pleeease can we buy the scented ones?").

They're ready. I'm not.

Don't get me wrong. There were days this summer when I would've liked to send them away on a school bus — or any bus, really. There were loud fights and house-length messes and, of course, a few cases of the "I'm boreds."

Regardless. What I'd like more than anything right now is another couple weeks with my kids. Actually, I'd kind of like to steal them away for a couple months.

This is a monumental year for our family: My youngest son is starting first grade. For the first time in nine years, I will be alone — as in "without kids" — for seven hours a day.

Do you have any idea how long I've waited for this day? I mean, really: Do you realize how many times I've dreamed, desperately, for days to myself?

And now I'm getting them. Seas of them. Weeks and months where I'll wave to my boys behind bus windows — giving our special "love ya" wink because it's no longer cool to blow kisses.

Whole days where I can have my teeth cleaned at the dentist without someone sitting on my lap. Afternoons when I can meet a friend for lunch without having to pawn my boys off on a neighbor. Mornings when I can work without someone scooting onto my lap.

So tell me why, as I type this, I'm crying. And not the pretty kind of crying — but the kind where tears and snot are actually intermingling on my keyboard. (I really shouldn't be left alone to write about my kids after watching them sleep.)

Everyone warned me. "It goes so fast," they said. "You'll blink and they'll be in school," they said. "They start kindergarten and then they're graduating and you can't imagine where the time went," they said.

I think about how my youngest son had colic — and how I spent months wishing him older. How I circled the living room for hours every night while he cried. How I couldn't get anything done because I had to hold him through entire naps. "This is never, never going to end," I told myself.

The days were so long. But as long as they were — the years have been infinitely shorter. My colicky baby is six years old. His big brother — the toddler who played patiently at my feet while his little brother wailed — is now nine. And I'd give just about anything to go back to one of those horrible days.

So this is my goal for the school year: Slow down. Watch. Listen. Love fiercely. Treasure the time we have together. Learn to share my sons with their teachers and friends — and hope these others see the same sweetness and earnestness and silliness in them as I do.

All right, my friends. I need to go grab a handful of tissues and compose myself. But I have to say, after our little talk, I feel much better. Thanks for listening.

Smoked Fish

Success! I smoked some salmon last night using my homemade electric smoker. You can dial in the temperature and maintain that temperature without babysitting it. It's sweet.

Thanks to Dave Wagner for his recipe. All but one small piece of fish remains (I left it at home on purpose).

If you are interested in making your own smoker.. here is a video on it as well. Just watch the first minute.. the rest of it is boring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ka2kpzTAL8

Today is the first day of school for the boys. More on that later as we get the pictures together.

Jay

Second Packet

Gone! Sent! Erased from my to-do list!

It's all going so fast...