Simply Norma

I continue to be amazed by the people in Minnesota.

My husband brought home a flyer for a Christmas performance this Saturday. I checked online to buy tickets but there was no option for purchasing online. I called the number on the flyer and spoke with a nice gentleman.

The man explained that there is an online form I can download and mail in with a check.

Me: Oh, will I get the tickets back before Saturday if I mail it today?

Him: Let me put them in the mail to you today. You can send me a check.

Me: What???

Him: I’ll mail them to you today. Here’s the address where you can send the check.

Amazing! Such trust. I put the check in the mail right away.

I don’t believe I have ever encountered so  many people who trust that strangers are going to do what they say they will do.

It’s called “Minnesota nice.” Although, Wikipedia has a different angle on it.

I like it. Sure — people can be taken advantage of but sometimes one has to step out and trust that other people will do the “right” thing.

Go Minnesota!

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It’s the day before Thanksgiving. Things are pretty quiet.

This year we are making new Minnesota traditions.

Most years we would have friends over who didn’t have family in the area. This year, we don’t have friends to invite over. We haven’t been anti-social, just busy.

With all of the blessings we’ve received this past year, we have leftovers — more than enough to share.

Family will visit this year. It’s been quite a few years since we’ve had family come to our house for Thanksgiving so we’re looking forward to it.

This time of year has always been a time of introspection for me. Blessings always make me pause. “For me?” I say to God as He hands me one. “Yes, my child, for you,” He says as a big grin covers His face.

I am truly thankful.

With its white head facing upward, the eagle soared back and forth through the tall trees. I couldn’t make out what he was doing besides gliding. Earlier this year we spotted an eagle’s nest.

Perhaps it was looking for food. Eagles can lift up to 4 pounds approximately. The pest control company we use has put bait out for mice. The previous owners had bait so we assume they may have had problems at one time. I’d appreciate the eagles eating all the mice they can get.

The eagle is patient. Approximately 1 in 18 attacks for food is successful which explains why the eagle is seen “resting” a lot.

Victory comes to the eagle but he has to wait for it. So it is in life. Sometimes we have to do things over and over and over again until we finally get “it.” It might be our struggles with drugs, food, sex, anger, gossip, pornography, etc.

But like the eagle, we need to be patient and continue trying.

Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone. Proverbs 25:15

Note: The eagle picture is courtesy of Office Images.

The first real snowfall of the season gave us 2 inches of white fluff. It started falling Saturday morning and by the time we left church and got onto the highway the slush and ice had slowed traffic quite a bit. One hundfred fourteen cars had been in accidents by the end of the day.

This is Minnesota and people seem to forget how to drive in snow from one year to the next.

By the time we reached our neighborhood 40 minutes later, the local public works department had already plowed our streets.

Snow is very pretty but does have dangers if one is not careful.

By evening time, we continued getting a light dusting of the white crystals.

At around 10:30 p.m. I decided it was time to shovel. Dressing in my outside winter attire which consists of UGG boots, a Land’s End coat that’s warm up to down to -20 degrees, warm gloves and a hat, I opened the door to the smell of night.

At 25 or so degrees, I expected to be cold but I was not. Grabbing the shovel, I started up the driveway.

It was so peaceful. The semi-cloudy sky showed the occasional bright star that seemed to blink down at me saying “thank you for joining us tonight.” There was a stillness in the air. Hushed darkness with only the sound of a shovel going back and forth.

My husband and I were the only ones outside enjoying the night air.

I felt like going for a walk but thought better of it since our neighborhood does not have street lights and I didn’t have a fluorescent coat on.

Minnesota air is dry in the winter so it doesn’t feel as cold as one would expect.

It’s here. Winter that is. The calendar doesn’t say so but the first snowfall has announced it.

No matter that later this week we’ll reach 50 degrees. The snow has made its entrance and for the next few months we will live in a tranquil house. No bugs buzzing, no chain saws, no motor boats on the lake — only an occasional walker passing by.

How peaceful. My soul finds respite from the busyness of this earth. And the slowness of this season gladdens my heart.

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From city girl to country girl …

For a little while now, my countertop Brita water filter has looked a little reddish on the bottom. I thought it odd but figured I’d change the filter and things would take care of themselves. They didn’t.

The problem was not the Brita which worked beautifully. No — our problem was a sediment filter.

The water from the well goes through this filter and the filter removes any sediment like sand or rocks before it then travels to the water softener. But the sediment filter is not supposed to look like this. It’s supposed to be clear.

When we bought the house, the filter looked exactly like this. We were told that all we had to do was use the red lever at the bottom of the filter and flush it out every now and then. We have been faithful in doing that.

One day, I went to use the water. Just a trickle came through. As the day went on the water supply lessened. I was in a panic. What?!!! No water in the well? Impossible!

My husband had shown me that there is a way to bypass the filter. Of course, sediment might come through then. Aha! I thought to myself. I will try bypassing the filter and see if it helps. Voila! We had water. The filter was clogged pretty badly.

I called the company, Vu-Flow, to see what needed to be done. They suggested we clean the filter. A simple thing, I was told. Turn the water to the filter off (already done) and unscrew the plastic tubing. Then, remove the filter and clean it.

(By the way, the red you see is iron that has built up in the filter.)

I waited until my husband got home so we could try cleaning the filter. I had visions of me standing foot deep in water if I tried it alone.

We had no luck. The plastic tube would not budge.

I called our Home Warranty people. Not being “sediment-speaking” savvy, I explained we had a problem with red coloring in our water and the filter couldn’t be removed. The representative, through no fault of her own, explained that it was probably the water softener. She scheduled someone out.

Later that day, I decided to do some sleuthing. (I like sleuthing — it makes me feel like Nancy Drew, a storybook detective whose books I read voraciously when I was younger.)

I called three or so plumbers. They all gave me the same advice. They could come out and remove the filter and clean it but they felt we could do it. One plumber explained step by step how to do it. I needed to get a device from Home Depot to turn the plastic tubing.

(Notice that if I don’t know the name of something, I call it a device. It’s safer that way and sounds much better than a thingamajig.)

I called the installer who was scheduled to come out through the Home Warranty company and told him that we were going to try doing it ourselves. We have a $100 deductible and I later learned that if it was not covered, he would charge us $25 every 15 minutes. Ouch! That’s expensive. I canceled his visit.

The other three plumbers were very reasonable. One charged nothing for coming out and the other two charged $125 plus parts no matter how long it took.

Back to the sediment filter …

We bought the device and the plastic tubing came right out. One of the plumbers had also suggested I try Iron Out to clean the filter and plastic tubing so I had come prepared to do that.

I put the Iron Out in a pail per the instructions then put the filter and plastic tubing inside. The next morning — voila! again!

This is what it’s supposed to look like.

It’s amazing to me that the three plumbers I had personally contacted all instructed me over the phone on what I should do. By the time I spoke with the third plumber I thought I was an expert at what needed to be done. But, he was the most patient and explained in a lot more detail what this city girl needed to do.

Amazing! I have found that “Minnesota nice” is practiced over and over again in Minnesota.

Our sediment filter flows quite well now. I haven’t noticed the redness at the bottom of our Brita either.

“They” say that if your brain challenges itself that you won’t get Alzheimer’s. Well, at this rate, with all the learning I’m doing, I should be just fine.

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I was a student at a school. I wasn’t fitting in. Finally I went to my teacher and told her that I couldn’t attend anymore. When I left the classroom, I saw a man who had a gun and he was shooting at people. He was on the top of a hill and I was walking down it. When he shot at me, he missed.

I continued walking downhill. Later, I ran into the back of a funeral. I could see people trying to stop me as I walked passed all the cars to the front. They were talking about a woman and the speaker said “She wanted to make sure that “these” were all taken down.” She was holding a plaque of some kind.

The speaker looked at me and I took the plaque and said “She wants us to have the good words engraved on plaques lived in our lives. They mean nothing on stone.”

I continued walking and saw a boy on the bank of a river. There was a cake sitting on a ledge and he was trying to get a piece. Looking past the cake into the river, I saw the bodies of sheep floating downstream.

Me: What’s that?!!!! I yelled.

Boy: They kill them to eat them.

Me: But these weren’t eaten.

Boy: Sometimes they just slaughter them.

The boy got his piece of cake and I woke up from the dream.

Lambs slaughtered. The school in my dream leads me to believe that this was a dream about Penn State. The news brings it to mind morning and night.

There is more to this story I’m sure. Right now, it appears that innocent boys lives have been slaughtered. The victims lives are affected in so many ways:

• Their perspective of leaders
• Their sexuality
• Trust in people – can it ever exist?
• Self esteem
• Feelings of guilt