Journal: Wisconsin Travels

 

Last Monday morning found me scurrying around getting all the last-minute things ready to go.

Larry had thought to be ready to leave for Wisconsin at 10:00 – 10:30 a.m.  However, 10:00 a.m. found him rotating the tires on his pickup. 

Teddy once asked, bland of face:  “Don’t they just do that on their own, once you start driving?”  😆

It was chilly that morning, 38° on the way up to 44°, and there was a possibility of snow later that night.  West Bend, Wisconsin, would be cold until Wednesday.  There wasn’t any snow in their forecast – yet. 

Parts of northern Wisconsin had at least two days of severe ice storms the previous week, with half an inch of ice from each storm.  Trees and power lines were down all over the place.

At 4:00 p.m., a friend wrote, “Are you still on your trip.”

We hadn’t even left.  And no, she wasn’t kidding.  Maybe she mistakenly thought we were going to North Bend, Nebraska, 38 miles to our east?

Finally, at almost 4:30 p.m., we backed out of the driveway.

Or at least we started to back out.

Then Larry put the pickup in gear, turned it off (because, like so many of his vehicles, it’s a manual-shift and has a nonworking emergency brake), and hurried back into the garage for some forgotten frippery.

Back he came, started the truck, put it in reverse, got all the way out into the lane – and then I noticed that, though he’d hauled out the garbage, he hadn’t rolled the trashcan out to the side of the lane.

I pointed this out.  He put the pickup in gear, turned it off, and went for the trashcan.

Soon it was in place, and we were trundling down the lane, getting on the highway – and then we had to stop at a friend’s place where Larry has been keeping his truck, so that he could collect the, ... um ... , ? wiring? tool of one sort or another? that he thought must be in said truck.  Let’s just say ‘more bits and bobs’ and leave it at that.  Whether he found what he was looking for or not, I cannot say.

We pulled out (again) and headed north at 4:40 p.m.  Forty minutes later, we were getting fuel – both for the pickup and for ourselves – in Norfolk.  Diesel for the pickup, hardboiled eggs and some fruit for ourselves.  We were hungry!

Here’s some northeastern Nebraska scenery.  I saw one little calf in a damp huddle on the ground, his mother licking him thoroughly – and he was only just trying to struggle to his feet.  Fresh-hatched, ’twas!

At Elk Point, South Dakota, 131 miles to our northeast, in the southeast corner of the state, we made our first pick-up of a North Star turf sprayer with a 55-gallon drum.

Across the street was a 1954 Nash Ambassador Hydra-Matic.  At least we didn’t get that.  Look, it’s tri-colored!

We drove to North Sioux City, South Dakota, where we went to Bob & Ellen’s café.  Larry got a chicken bacon ranch sandwich entirely by accident, having intended to get the pizza rather than the sandwich; but neither he nor the young woman behind the counter could hear each other well.  I got a salad, on purpose.  We both got acai bowls, for the first time ever.  Scrumptious, they were.

It was 8:30 p.m. by the time we finished eating, so we got a room at the Days Inn.  My weather app said there was a bit of rain and snow there, but that wasn’t the case when we were carrying our stuff in.  The motel is listed as 2-star, but it’s underrated.  It was quite nice, really.  Roomy and clean, and it smelled good (which is all-important, in my book).  It was almost at No Vacancy; there were a lot of construction workers staying here.  The staff – and the construction workers, too – were friendly and nice.

Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m., it was 31°, and, once again, several of my weather apps and Larry’s, too, reported snow; but a look out the window did not verify this.  Meanwhile, I had the window open and the air conditioner on full blast.  Showers and blow-dryers heat me up!  I was happy I’d brought along a tall mug of Chocolate Trilogy cold brew.  It had been sitting in the little motel refrigerator all night.

Comb... hairspray ... and I was ready to head to the breakfast nook.

We then drove 260 miles east to Sumner, Iowa, to pick up a gas-powered, walk-behind Tennant sweeper.  The one pictured below is priced at $14,971.42.  Larry paid $129.47 for his.

Before leaving town, we stopped at Norby’s Farm Fleet, where Larry got a 2000w inverter which, hopefully, will run my computer.  He got it all wired in – and the laptop still kept going on, off, on, off.  I did a bit of research to learn why it was doing this, and found some recommendations to turn on Integrated Graphics Mode under the GPU Switch tab in the MSI Center.  This requires a reboot.  I followed the instructions... rebooted... but with the computer going off, on, off, on, I wasn’t completely sure it took – and it apparently didn’t, because the problem continued. 

I unplugged it so that it was running only on battery, and repeated the procedure. 

That didn’t work, because the battery was too flat, and the laptop went off entirely. 

I let it charge while it was off, and it did charge, at least. 

Once it was completely charged, I tried again.

The laptop did not again go off and on.  It’s fixed, it’s fixed!  Maybe... maybe... I could’ve done this while using Larry’s smaller invertor, and we wouldn’t have had to buy a bigger one.  Shhhhh, don’t mention it.

In Norby’s, there were brooder display pens with the cutest baby ducks, guineas, and chicks.  Wow, those tiny guinea chicks were LOUD.

All the little birds were noisy and riled up, because the boy who worked there was pouring food into their dispensers, and they didn’t appear to understand these things called ‘food dispensers’ just yet.

The boy went away, and the chicks and ducklings began settling down.  Some even lay down and went to sleep, but a few  of the more energetic ones continued to run roughshod right over the tops of the sleepers, peeping at the tops of their wee lungs.

We stayed the night at the Prairie Motel in Prairie du Chicken (well, that’s not quite right, but I forgot the odd name of the town) just across the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.  It’s an old-fashioned motel, and we were given a big, nice room.

Ah-ha!  Chien! It’s Prairie du Chien.  See, I was close!

At a quarter ’til ten that night, I was reading some posts on my laptop when I heard a loud back-up beeper going off. 

“Reckon I should move away from the front wall?” I asked a friend with whom I was corresponding.

Then, “Never mind; the beeping was just Larry looking at yet another scissor lift video on his phone.  He didn’t know it was so loud.  All the other guests have now spilled out into the parking lot.” 

Actually, there weren’t many other guests.  They pass this motel up because it looks old.  They don’t know what they’re missing!  Plus, it’s not at all expensive; just $70.

The only drawback:  they don’t serve breakfast.

But! – if the motel had’ve had breakfast, we would not have gone to Huckleberry’s Restaurant a couple of blocks down the street the next morning, and I would’ve missed out on the yummiest cranberry-pecan oatmeal, with a side dish of sliced strawberries, that I’ve ever had.  

Larry would’ve missed out on a scrumptious omelet of some sort and a waffle with strawberries and cream.  He only ate part of the waffle, so we saved it for the next day.

I tried half and half in my tea like my mother used to fix for me, and discovered I don’t like it that way anymore. 

Despite my oatmeal being scrumptious and just right, when I heard a lady behind me somewhere exclaiming over her bread pudding, I was struck with an acute bout of food envy.  I love bread pudding!  I’d read through the menu, but had somehow missed that entrée. 

Ah, well; the oatmeal and strawberries were better for me.  Sigghhhh...

Before leaving the restaurant, we got a loaf of fresh-baked apple bread, then walked through the gift store.  Larry found a 1/36 diecast 1955 Chevy stepside 3100 pickup with a surfboard on top.  The doors open, and it works by friction back-up.

I got a magnetic butterfly pin, which I’ll save for Hester’s birthday.

At 7:00 a.m., it was 42° on the way up to 71° in Prairie du Chien.  I started writing in my journal, “Finally, a nice day!  It was freezing cold and windy the last two days –” and then I saw the weather for West Bend, where we were headed:  “Heavy snow.”  😯

“Well, at least the pickup has good tires,” I added.

West Bend was 179 miles to the east.  While Larry loaded the two small scissor lifts he’d purchased and put more air in the trailer tires, I held a photography session with a pair of unimpressed Canada geese.

We then headed northeast to Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  

“If we hurry, we’ll get to Lake Michigan before sunset!” I informed Larry.

(But we didn’t, so we didn’t.)

We stayed at the Quality Inn for a couple of days so we could do some exploring along Lake Michigan.

After checking into the motel, we went to the Pick & Save grocery store for some meat and cheese to go with the apple bread from Huckleberry’s.  We also got Kefir blueberry yogurt/milk drink.

It started raining before we got back to the motel.  Brrrr, cold.

Thursday morning at 9:00 a.m. it was 45° on the way up to a high of 49°.  The wind was gusting up to 22 mph.  That was 15 mph less than the previous day, but we still needed our coats.  Brrrrrr, cold!

There are big, beautiful farms and barns all over Wisconsin.  Look at the barn quilt on the side of this red barn.

We spent the majority of the day along the lakefront.  It was too cold and windy for comfort, but we explored anyway.  I love to stand on the shoreline and watch and listen to the big breakers rolling in and crashing over the rocks and sand.

After returning to Sheboygan that evening, we ate supper at the Olive Garden just across the street from our motel.

Larry had Chicken Gnocchi soup and I had Zuppa Toscana soup, and it came with steaming hot bread sticks and a big bowl of chef salad for us to share.

Olive Garden serves as many bowls of soup as a person wants at no extra cost. I can barely down one, but Larry had two.

Friday, we started toward home.  It was 40° at 7:00 a.m., and would only get up to 43°.  It seems the weatherman was unduly optimistic, last week at this time, about the entire week there in eastern Wisconsin.  Ah, well. I’ll look at my pictures later, and forget all about how cold and windy it was.  Maybe.

And now, regarding The Science of Curves:

Ever since I was little, traveling with my parents, the things I see make me want to know more.  Back then, I’d write things down that I ‘needed’ to know, and then ask my mother to take me to the library for books on the matter when we got home.

But nowadays, I have the Internet!

So what was one of my questions this time?  Well, of course I wanted to know how high one would need to be in order to see both the east and the west coasts of Lake Michigan, which is anywhere from 62 miles to 118 miles wide.  The variable distance causes a variable answer.

But look at this plumb interestin’ stuff I found:

Here’s the equation:  8*59²/12 = 2320.7 ft or 707.3 m

But!  Math doesn’t always tell you what you think it does.  The following quote is from Geoffrey Widdison on Quora:

“What the math tells you is that, if you’re lying at the edge of the lake, 59 miles away from Chicago, with your eye level with the surface of the water (which would mean that your face would need to literally be half submerged), then the shortest object you can see at the other side of the lake would need to be 2,320 feet above the level of the lake.  That’s entirely true.

“However, because of how geometry works, raising your eye any higher changes the equation.

“If your eye is six feet above the water level (say, if you’re standing with your feet in the water), then you can see an object 2,091 feet above the level of the lake.  If you’re standing 20 feet above the water level, you can see an object 1856 feet above the level of the lake.

“There’s another issue here, though, and that is what is meant by ‘opposite shore’.  There is no single ‘opposite’ for an irregularly shaped object like a lake.  There seems to be no significant point that’s 59 miles away from Chicago.  Gary, Indiana, has a direct distance of about 24 miles; Michigan City is 40 miles away; and St. Joseph, 60 miles.

“What that means is that, from near the water level, you’d expect to see the full skyline from Chicago:

“...have just the trees and the smaller buildings occluded from Gary:

“...and have the shorter buildings mostly or completely blocked from view from Michigan City, with the tallest skyscrapers still visible (only about 850 feet would be blocked, depending on the observer’s height).

“Now, if you could see the entirety of the skyline from the level of the lake, 59 miles away, that would be difficult to explain, in light of the earth’s curvature.  But that’s not the case, and observations actually comport extremely well with exactly what the math would predict.”

End of quote.

I find all that ever so interesting, and I’ve always loved math; but what about my original question that somehow took me to the Chicago skyline?

The answer is...

>> drum roll << ... 

To see both shores of Lake Michigan simultaneously from its average width (roughly 100 miles), you would need to be roughly 1,300 to 1,500 feet above the water level.

There.  If you want more specifics, well, ...  Look it up!  😄

A little after 11:00 a.m., we stopped to look at Lake Winnebago.  Covering 215 square miles, it’s the largest lake entirely in Wisconsin.

We collected our homemade apple bread, some Cutting Board thick-sliced ham, and Wisconsin cheese we’d bought at the grocery store in Sheboygan, along with some Bloom fruit drinks and bananas, and headed for a nearby bench to eat our lunch while looking out on the lake, watching the waterfowl and the boats.  

We sat down.

Then we looked at each other, got back up, and returned to the pickup.  We could eat our lunch and watch the waterfowl and the boats just fine from there, and we didn’t need to freeze to death (or get blown into the drink) while we were at it.

Someday, as I said before, I’ll look at my pictures and think, ‘Oh, isn’t that pretty,’ and forget all about the earaches and the frostbite.  (Well, I don’t suppose one can get frostbite at 40°; but it sure feels like one might.  Hypothermia, yes.  Frostbite, no.)

There were still piles of snow on the ground in some of Wisconsin’s state parks.  We bought a year’s pass, so we really should’ve stopped at every state park in the state of Wisconsin.  But alas, we only had time to stop in three of them.

It’s surprising how just a few degrees of latitude to the south makes a noticeable difference in such things as the leafing-out of trees, this time of year.  Despite the blustery weather, there were signs of spring everywhere.  We drove past numerous farms where new little calves were romping in the pasture.

This pretty waterfall on the Fox River is right in the middle of the town of Montello, Wisconsin.

One evening we decided to eat at Culver’s – or, I should say, Larry decided we should eat at Culver’s, because he saw Northwoods Walleye advertised on their sign, and he likes walleye.

Culver’s walleye, however, is breaded, fried, and slapped into a white bun with a glob of mayonnaise.  Larry didn’t mind it, but I wouldn’t’ve touched it with a ten-foot pole.  Not that I don’t like walleye, mind you.  But, for one thing, I have never understood why people put breaded things into buns.

What did I get, I wonder?  Oh – I remember.  It was a Harvest Veggie burger.

Mine did not look like this picture.  It wasn’t even half as tall as this one.  Listen to the description:  “Fire-roasted chickpeas, peppers, corn, and real Wisconsin cheese come together to create this one-of-a-kind patty.  Grilled and topped with our signature lightly buttered, toasted bun, it’s one hearty burger to say the least.”

That’s mostly baloney.  I mean, the description is mostly baloney, not the sandwich.  The patty itself wasn’t too bad; but it was very thin, there was only one small lettuce leaf, a bit of tasteless tomato, waaaay too much and too strong of an onion, all on a soggy white bun.

I removed half of the bun and most of the onions and ate it.

However, had we not been there, we would’ve missed the following scene:

A mother and a little girl walked in.  They placed their order and came to find a table.  The little girl happily trotted straight toward the big wraparound booth in the corner. 

“Let’s sit here!” she exclaimed.

Her mother said, “No, honey, we don’t need to sit there; we can sit at a smaller table.  That one is for a group.”

In her piping voice, the little girl protested, “I’m a group!”  🤣

I was sympathetic.  I recall the few times my parents and I went to restaurants where there were large corner booths, and I badly wanted to sit there.  They just looked... fun, I guess.  Maybe I wanted to entertain myself by sliding all the way around the circular bench seat.  😄

Larry and I could’ve sat at those big booths when the children were with us; but we just plain didn’t frequent restaurants, because we simply couldn’t afford it.  Instead, we got our food at grocery stores and had picnics.

That afternoon, Hannah wrote to tell me that the Flexi Clip she had created in Los Angeles had won the contest.  This, even though she’d been busy with Easter preparations last weekend and hadn’t realized the contest was on; so she hadn’t given her customers and friends a chance to vote.  And still she won!  Her other clip was also on the top 3.

Isn’t it pretty?  No wonder it won!  😊

At Buckhorn Lake State Park, they were having a prescribed burn, clearing out needles and underbrush amongst the trees.

I don’t mind the smell, but it did get a little thick.

The ground was spongy, it was so damp from all the snow they’d had; so they had no trouble keeping the fire under control.

Arriving back in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, that night, we returned to the Huckleberry Restaurant for supper.  I had grilled salmon, rice, and vegetables – and the bread pudding I’d been drooling for, ever since I heard the lady behind me talking about it on our previous visit to this restaurant.  Mmmmm, it was worth waiting for. 

Problem:  I was full.

The waitress brought me a Styrofoam box to put it in.  I would be happy all over again when I had it to eat the next day.

That night, we stayed at the Windsor Place Inn.  Though we had liked the older Prairie Motel where we’d been before, the showerhead was not only much too high on the wall, it was also in poor shape, with the gasket poking out, and a quite unsatisfactory ‘spray’ coming out of it.  Larry tried to fix it; but although he got the gasket back in place, it still didn’t spray well at all.  Water droplets went all over the place, and it was impossible to find the right spot to stand where one could get the best benefit from the measly ‘spray’.

The Windsor Place Inn was very nice, and the showerhead was fine and dandy.  The room was large – and it was only $65. 

The Quality Inn we had stayed at the previous two nights in Sheboygan had also been nice, with one or two of the usual flaws to be expected in motel rooms.  One small flaw:  the hinges on the plastic cover for the air conditioner/heating controls were broken, so every time we lifted it to adjust the temperature or fan speed, the cover came off in our hands.

Each time this happened, we adjusted the temp or fan speed, then carefully fit the cover back into place, ready to repeat the operation the next time we got hot or cold.

This night at the Windsor Place Inn in Prairie du Chicken... uh, Chien, someone had prewarmed the room for us – and it was still a-warming.  Stifling. 

After helping to bring all our paraphernalia up to the second floor sans elevator, I was piping hot.  I marched over to the heater to turn it off and put the air conditioner on full blast – and discovered that the cover over the controls on this unit was missing entirely.

I commented on it, then thought no more about it —

— until I was searching in the bag in which I’d packed such things as tea, vitamins, ceramic coffee mug and warmer, paper towels, Kleenexes, etc.

I pulled a plastic air conditioner/heating control cover out of the bag.

What in the world.

That thing must have fallen off the unit in Sheboygan, straight into that bag!  I didn’t even recall that the bag had been anywhere near that unit.

It said ‘Amana’ on the control cover.

It said nothing at all on the ac/heating unit in this room.  Furthermore, I could see from across the room that, while the cover for this unit should be almost perfectly square with rounded bottom corners, the cover I had in my hand was wider than it was tall, and was almost a parallelogram.

Nevertheless, I walked over to the air conditioner and tried to insert the cover.

It didn’t fit.

I presented the perplexity to Larry.

He, like me, tried to fit cover to unit, unsuccessfully.

“I could whittle it down with my pocketknife,” he mused, looking at it and rubbing his chin.  😅

“Let’s just leave it here,” I said, “tuck it slightly under the air conditioner/heating unit, and let the maid or maintenance man wonder what the deal is.”

“They’ll really be scratching their heads,” Larry said, grinning.

The more we thought about it, the funnier it got, until we were laughing ’til tears ran down our faces.  We must’ve been sleepy.

“Anyway,” said I when I could talk again, “at least the people who stay in room 211 at the Quality Inn will no longer have to contend with a cover that falls off in their hands.”

I won’t bother sending it back; it’s broken, and there’s no fixing it.

Saturday morning, we prepared to leave Prairie du Chien (I only have to remember ‘Prairie du Chicken’, remove a couple of letters, and I’ve got the proper name of the town) and cross the Mississippi into Iowa.

Okay, let’s find out what this ‘Prairie du Chien’ means.  Hmmmm...  It’s French for ‘Prairie of the Dog’.  Not anything to do with prairie dogs, but, rather, an Indian chief whose name, translated into French, meant ‘dog’.  And it’s pronounced “Prairie doo SHEEN.” 

So now we know.  I was saying ‘Prairie du CHAIN.”  I hope I didn’t say it to anybody who knew better.  😄

Most of Saturday was cold, rainy, and windy.  It was 54.4° in Santa Land, Arctic Circle, Rovaniemi, Finland.  That’s 11° warmer than it was there in Prairie du Chicken!

I checked the radar to see where rain was expected, and if we might be able to avoid it.  

We couldn’t, or just didn’t, though it seemed to nearly stop [the rain, not the wind] each time we made a pitstop.

In Charles City, after I’d already been in the Kwik Star, I saw two people go into the convenience store with bedroom slippers on, and one older lady had thick-soled sandals and fuzzy socks.  Why did I go to all the trouble of removing my suede and Sherpa slippers and putting on my shoes?!

We stopped for the night at the Econolodge North in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Worst motel room of the trip.  At least it was cheap – just $54.  And the shower got hot (eventually), the beds were sleepable (should be a word), and the ac/heater worked.

After hauling our bags into the room, we drove ten miles to the south to get some supper at Perkins Family Restaurant.  I ordered half a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and chicken noodle soup. 

That sandwich was quite the slapped-together BLT.  The toast was dry with hardly a smidgeon of mayonnaise.  There was a scant amount of lettuce (are they running short of lettuce in the Midwest?!), and there was just one fat slice of tomato.  At least the bacon was hot and crispy.

The next morning, it was 65° on the way up to 84°.  We planned to go to Falls Park before turning southwest toward home – and neither Larry nor I had any short-sleeved shirts or tops along!

I have been through Sioux Falls many times – always on the way somewhere else.  We never stopped to see The Falls.  I was quite surprised to learn that the population of the city of Sioux Falls is right at about a quarter million.

Our first stop before going to The Falls was at a Goodwill store.  We went to two Goodwills, actually, because the first one was locked, and there was a note on the door saying, “Closed due to no power.”

“Did they forget to pay the bill?” queried Larry. 😄

The next store was open.  We each got two short-sleeved shirts/tops.  The shirt I wore that day was bright blue with big white flowers all over it.  And it’s a good two sizes too big.  

Ah, well... it was comfortable, and I’ll fix it one of these days.  The other is a dark blue, very soft, thin, crew-neck with little gold shiny things in a fancy pattern in the front around the neck area.  It’ll be perfect under some of my suit jackets for church.  The flowered top was $5.99; the crew-neck was $3.99.

I went to see how Larry was doing.  He was stumped.  There were about 328,912,632 shirts, after all!

“Are you having a parking lot moment?” I asked. 

(He has trouble deciding where to park, never mind whether the lot is full or empty.)

He laughed.  I grabbed two shirts for him:  a button-down pale gray knit and a white shirt with wide-set gray-and-charcoal plaid lines.  Either would go with the dark charcoal pants he was wearing.  His knit shirt was $3.99; the dress shirt (he decided to save it to go with one of his dark charcoal suits) was $5.99.

The total for our four items:  $19.96.  

When we got back out to the truck and were removing the tags, I discovered that my dark blue crew-neck was brand-new – the original store tag was still on it:  $30!

We only spent about 20 minutes in the store, though I really would’ve liked to hunt for a few more things.  But The Falls were waiting!

We stopped at the next convenience store, walked in with our new duds folded neatly over one arm, went into the restrooms... and soon exited in new tops, long-sleeved former attire lopped over an arm.  

If I hadn’t wanted anyone to notice me, I shouldn’t have chosen a bright blue shirt with big white Hawaiian flowers all over it!  Wow, that thing is noticeable.

I put my chin up and strode purposefully along, as if I’d just departed my dressing room and was headed for the stage.  It was soooo much more comfortable in short sleeves, that hot day, we quickly got over the embarrassment of doing a quick-change in a convenience-store restroom. 🤣

We went up in the tower at Falls Park – by elevator, not the steps.  There were a lot more hills and steps to explore, and we didn’t want to incapacitate ourselves before we’d hardly begun!

We got home at 7:00 p.m.  It took me an hour and a half to get everything put away and a load of clothes put into the washer. 

This morning, I showered under a showerhead that worked better than any I’d used all week, shined the bathroom back up, played the piano for a while (I sure can tell it, when I haven’t played for almost a week!), and was soon sipping cold-brew coffee, blow-drying and curling my hair, listening to the Rural Radio news, and reading email and posts.

I finished the laundry and ordered groceries.  Flowers are popping up everywhere, shoving and elbowing their way through winter growth to reach for the sun.  Gotta start working in the flowerbeds soon!  I can usually wait until May; but not this year.  But first:  Joseph and Jocelyn’s quilt.  Jocelyn just got her citizenship!

Below is the marina at Lewis and Clark Lake near Yankton.

Amazingly, the half-gallon of milk we left in the refrigerator is still good.  I had raisin/date/walnut oatmeal with half a banana sliced into it for breakfast.

It wasn’t as fancy as some breakfasts I had last week, but it was private.  Privacy is nice.

Still, I’ve heard many interesting conversations in restaurants during this last week.  Sometimes people seem to be getting reacquainted after having lost touch for many years.  Some were old friends or old married couples.  Some were youngsters on a first date.

One woman was telling a man about her two sons, the youngest of whom is 30 and moved out of the house at age 18 – so she and her husband have had the house to themselves for 12 years.

“Is he married?” asked the man.

“No, but he has a girlfriend,” said the lady.  “She lives on a farm and is always willing to dig in and help, not afraid to get dirty.  She’s a sweetheart!”

The man made approving noises and allowed as how “Most mothers-in-law or mothers-in-law-to-be (actually, he said ‘mother-in-laws’, but I can’t bear to write that) (guess I just did, heh) don’t get along with daughters-in-law or future daughters-in-law.”  (He said ‘daughter-in-laws, of course.)

She quickly added, as if just remembering, “Oh, I love Chloe, too!  But she’s a city girl, you know.  Likes fancy teas and coffees.”

“Oh, I know that kind!” the man commiserated.

Hmmmph.  What’s wrong with fancy teas and coffees, I’d like to know, huh huh huh huh huh?!

Here’s a little squirrel I saw by Lake Winnebago.  He’s almost the same as ours... but not quite.  Color is different, tufts on ears are different.

Time to get busy with the Constellation quilt!

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,