Older eyes

They say you’re only as old as you feel, which means it isn’t about how old you look. But what about how you see?

I picked up my first pair of bifocals yesterday, which means… well, that my eyes are getting as old as the rest of me, I guess. But I’m OK with it. I’m not one of those people who obsess about my age, because it has been apparent to me since I was a kid that there are advantages to aging.

Take note, I did not say ‘to growing up,’ because I’m avoiding that at all costs.

But the aging thing, a process that starts at birth, has so far been a pretty cool deal. I started out bald and toothless and will probably end up that way barring any unforeseen accidents, but the journey from beginning to end has been interesting. Maybe because it’s all about learning.

We start learning from the instant we’re born. We learn to roll over, crawl, walk and run. We learn about empathy, love and humor. We also learn about sarcasm, which is pretty cool. Sure, bad things happen and we have to learn about pain, sorrow and anger, and we also learn that some people are jerks, but then we’ve got that sarcasm thing to fall back on.

So getting older is more of a blessing than a curse. Without getting older, there are certain things that couldn’t happen, like the beauty of falling in love and getting married, the joy of having kids and the awesome wondrous magic of having them leave.

Sure, there are trade-offs. I never battled weight until I hit my 30s. I creak, snap, crackle and pop these days. I’m more apt to nap than party once the sun goes down. And then there’s the whole bifocal thing.

But all in all, if getting a new pair of specs is the cost of getting older, I’ll take the grandbaby, the ability to leave for a weekend without getting a sitter, the better financial comfort, the ease of cooking for two… all of it, over being forever young.

So I guess I’m only as old as I see. And with the proper head tilting to accommodate the progressive lenses in my new shades, I can see everything!

Rubber Ducky, you're the one

I got up the other morning, did a bit of work on my computer, then looked at the clock and may have sworn just a little. Mornings are generally a hurried affair these days, even with getting up at 4:15 a.m.

I bolted toward the bathroom to turn on the shower, then pulled back the curtain and burst out laughing. Floating around and looking a little grumpy at being caught under a waterfall of cold water were three rubber duckies who looked like they wanted to swear, too.

I had forgotten to remove them from the tub the night before after pulling my granddaughter out of the tub and popping the drain. Sorry, little duckies.

The ducky armada was new at our house, because Maggie forgot to pack bath toys when she was loading her trunk with the 500 pounds of stuff it takes to send a 14-month-old baby girl off to Granny J and Grandpa’s house for a week. And somehow, Layla took the other bath toys home last time she was visiting. 

This small error was noticed when I plunked her in the tub on her first night at our house. I put in a little bit of bubble, made sure the water was the perfect temperature and plopped her in. She batted at the bubbles for a few minutes, ate a few and announced they were pretty, then looked at me expectantly.

Oh, right. Toys. Um… looking around the bathroom.

I handed her a washcloth, since it was nearby and we needed it anyway. Layla declared it pretty, then sucked on it for a second, made an icky face and blinked her enormous blue eyes at me.

Hmmm…my old Mommy skills kicked back in and I yelled for Grandpa to come watch her for a moment. Then I grabbed a few measuring cups out of a drawer in the kitchen and handed them over. Perfect!

Layla mentioned they were pretty (do you see the theme, here?) and had a blast playing and eating bubbles and banging cups together. There was a moment of potential disaster when she accidentally dumped a full ¾ cup of water in her face, but she just humphed a few times and went back to her bubbles.

The next day, I found a bin full of rubber duckies at the store and picked out three of them. She still played with the measuring cups every time I gave her a bath, but she did it with cheerful company.

Rocking a local beat, because we just can't help ourselves

You know how every now and then you have an idea you just have to implement, knowing it’s going to add to your workload? Yep, that’s what I did. And I’m loving the results.

A couple of months ago I was singing along with the tunes coming out of the 93.5 Rock It FM studio while working on a news story, when my eyes landed on a CD I had brought to work. It was recorded by the band Close Clearance, of which my son is the drummer. They’re a group of guys out of Sioux Falls. I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to listen to it, so I popped it in my computer.

As I was listening, I started thinking about how much incredible talent there is in our little corner of the world. I’ve been involved with local theater productions in Slayton, attended others all over the area and listened to bands in a variety of venues. At churches and schools, voices lift in song so beautiful people become still just to listen. The amazing thing is that some of these people are your neighbors, your clerks at the local store, your UPS driver or that guy you pass on the street often enough to recognize each other. In the words of the crew from Sesame Street, they’re the people that you meet each day.

Still listening to my son’s drum riffs, I opened a new document and starting jotting down ideas for a new project featuring local talent. What if we put aside a segment of time to feature music by local artists? After all, how many bands out there made it because a local station was willing to give them a listen? Well, before Youtube, that is. I recently read that the Andrew Sisters (I know, old school) got their start on Minnesota radio stations. They later became an icon and inspiration for soldiers during World War II.

So, maybe Rock It could help launch some talented local musicians, right?

Because there’s no way this project could survive without him, I enlisted the help of Rock It DJ Jaime Salinas. He heard me out, and one eyebrow went up, signaling intrigue.

And so, a project was born. We started chatting about it on the air, Jaime and I, and a few CDs and mp3 files showed up.

Can You Rock It? premieres Feb. 16 on 93.5 Rock It FM at noon. If you aren’t within our listening area, don’t despair – this bad boy is live streamed. Just go to our website at www.rockitfm.com and click on the live stream link.

Now, to keep this baby humming along, we need more. If we get enough people sending stuff in, we could expand to a larger or more frequent session. If you know someone with local ties to southwest Minnesota or northwest Iowa, tell them to send us some tunage. Covers, original songs – whatever they’re playing. I’ve got great submittals from Spirit Lake, Iowa to Sioux Falls, S.D. If your kid grew up in Fulda and now lives in Florida, as long as he or she is rocking out, we’ll play their stuff. Does your nephew from Seattle who once visited you in Heron Lake know how to rock? Tell them to send me their stuff.

Bands can send stuff via the good old snail mail to 28779 County Highway 35, Worthington, MN, 56187. You can email mp3 files to Justine@myradioworks.net. And if you have any questions, give me a call at 507-376-6165.

Preparing for an invasion

At the Wettschreck household, my husband Eric and I are preparing for an invasion. Not zombies or anything like that – we’re getting ready for the arrival of our 13-month-old granddaughter Layla. She is going to stay with us for a week while her parents take a belated honeymoon.

We’re very excited to have the little jelly bean come and stay with us, but it takes a bit of forethought on our parts, because we aren’t in working parent mode anymore. Preparing for this has been like planning a war strategy.

We’ve had to prepare the terrain, also known as baby-proofing the house a bit. That little girl can crawl like the wind and is taking steps also, which means all the stuff we toss in corners or leave on an end table needs picking up.

We’ve had to lay in supplies. Layla is a good eater, but some of her favorite foods are things I don’t always keep stocked. We like bananas, but tend to forget to eat them. We like Cheerios, but generally don’t eat breakfast during the week. I like kiwi, but Eric told me the other that to his knowledge, he has never eaten one. And since all the kids have moved out, milk goes bad faster than we use it. So, basically, I had to do a Layla-shop.

We’ve also had to handle equipment logistics. Her highchair needed dusting, crib sheets needed freshening and some of her toys are stashed in a closet.

I’ve also had to prepare the troops for this. Eric admitted the other day he’s a bit nervous about staying home with her for a couple of days while I’m at work. I reminded him that he is the father of three, but he says that’s different. That’s all the explanation I got, so feel free to be puzzled right along with me.

So, I’ll let you know how the visit goes. I’m really looking forward to having the little critter for a week. And to be honest, I’m looking forward to watching Eric watch her. I have a feeling it will be entertaining.

Catch me if you can?

Most people would find it disconcerting to wake up at 2 a.m. to the sound of “clink, clink,” a few dirty words and a man crawling around on the floor.

I just sat back and watched the show.

My husband and I recently returned from an ice fishing trip on Mille Lacs, renting a fish house from Appeldoorn’s Sunset Bay Resort. We spent three days in a 10 x 14 foot fish house and never got in an argument, so we must have managed to keep ourselves sufficiently entertained.

We caught some beautiful walleye, most of which had to be returned to the icy waters because they were outside the slot limits. Including the one that gulped our minnow at 2 a.m., causing the rattle wheel to go off and giving me a bit of cheap entertainment.

Clink, clink.

My husband flew out of his bunk and dove for the hole, never an easy task because first you have to figure out which one just hit. He groggily set the hook, then started to hand-over-hand the line up out of the hole. He had a pretty walleye at the top of the ice hole when it bit the line and tried to back up down the hole. Eric reached down to grab the fish, but when he hauled it in, it wiggled out of his hands and landed on the ice, trapped between the hole in the house and the hole in the house.

That was when the dirty words started. The fish was flopping around on top of the ice and Eric was flopping around on the floor of the fish house trying to reach it. He had pretty much shoved himself from the waist up through the house hole, so some of the swear words were mercifully muffled.

Instead of being the least bit helpful, I just snuggled deeper into my sleeping bag and tried to keep my giggles quiet. I figured if he heard me belly-laughing while he was battling nature, he might not appreciate it, thus breaking our no argument streak.

I didn’t tell him until the next day that I had watched the whole thing.

Getting away for a weekend of ice fishing might not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but it is something we enjoy doing together.

The house itself was warm, clean, comfortable and user friendly, with four fishing holes, four bunks, a table, chairs, a small cupboard and a small stove/oven combo. General Manager Paul Waldowski, who we have met several times before (he let me take over his kitchen once during a fall fishing trip) stopped by to visit, and his son Alex stopped by a couple times to check on us. When we had a small problem with holes icing over during a rather blustery storm, I let Paul know and someone was out there solving the problem within a short time and with a smile.

It was tough, as it always is, to come back to real life after a few days of camping out in the fish house, but at least I know there’s plenty of ice this year, so another trip is always around the corner, even if it’s just a day trip in the portable or a weekend in our permanent house out on Lake Shetek or Lime Lake.

Of course, after this week’s temperatures, a week of deep sea fishing in Acapulco sounds nice, too.