I was all prepped to do some taebo this evening when Jon came back in the house and announced that the doors to the car were iced shut. We tried boiling water, screwdrivers, and hairdryers before I went and got a neighbor who helped us try and get one of the doors open. (The problem, I think, was that the latches were also frozen.) It took us a good 90 minutes to do this. I ended up going with Jon to the churches so that I could make sure that he could get back in the car.

Taebo will be tomorrow — I’m cold and crabby and am off to shower and go to sleep!

We got 6-8″ of snow yesterday and had 40mph winds last night. This made for interesting snow drifts and so I went out to take pictures of them. My P.A. saw me when he was driving by and called me a crazy woman. (I’ve been called worse.) My mom called my cellphone and left a message saying that she had heard the news about the weather and she hoped that I had the good sense not to take my gloves off to check my messages. (Ummm… of course not.) When I talked to a parishioner, the first question she asked was whether or not I had gone out and played in the snow. (You’d think I was a former Californian or something!)

Some pictures now:

Me and my little ninja (who was happy that Mommy was also dressed in black)

A drift against our neighbor’s house.

A drift around one of my whiskey barrel planters.

Question: What is life like in rural Minnesota?

It was 65F when I left for my walk this morning. I had the good sense to wear shorts but I still came back soaked with sweat. I’ve been inside for most of the day with non-functional air conditioning and am having headaches from the heat. It’s 10 degrees cooler outside but we also have 94% humidity. This is just evil.

My neck is still being painful so I went to see my P.A. today. I was given more muscle relaxers (oh joy!) and a referral for a month of physical therapy. I’m not happy about the PT but if it works, it will be nice.

On Saturday, Jon had to go deliver bulletins at the churches and I decided to walk around the church grounds at the first one. Like most country churches in southern Minnesota, the graveyard surrounds the church and this one literally has people on all three sides. It was interesting to walk around and see the gravestones and names of the people. Many had epitaphs and I wish I’d brought my Norwegian-English dictionary so I could have read them. Some people were born in Norway in 1830 while others have markers that just say “Baby ______” and the year the baby died. It was humbling to see those markers because they represented something in the life of a family that most people probably don’t talk about.

Walking through the graveyard made me realize how strange I am as a West Coaster. Everyone seems to be from somewhere else and people really don’t have ties to the land in as much of a sense as they do here. Some people have farmed the same land for 7 generations and most people in the churches have an ancestor that settled here from Norway 150 years ago. Times like Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are huge around here because everyone lives within a few miles of their parents, grandparents, or other extended family. Church attendance is more constant because it’s a time to see all your family members and there’s a pride in the churches that I haven’t found in the West which is probably tied to that.

TwinCities.Com: The magical Gophers make the Final Four — and team history — after a colossal upset of top-ranked Duke.

The screaming was audible all over Minnesota last night when the Gophers beat Duke. It’s not quite the fanaticism I saw in Ohio with OSU football, but I think I kind of like this better. (Sorry Dawn.) This was definitely an interesting victory given Lindsay Whalen’s injury mid-season and Janel McCarville’s mom undergoing chemo but still making it to Norfolk to see her daughter play. If they win the championship, this will be big news for women’s sports here in Minnesota.

I have quite a few girls who play basketball in Jon’s congregations and quite a few who head to Gopher games whenever they can get tickets. Maybe I’ll see a few of them out there some day?

After Jon left yesterday morning, I tuned into MPR and fell asleep listening to it. I did some devo time before I fell asleep and for the first time in years, I actually wasn’t sorry to be missing church. I was just so tired because it seems like life is non-stop for us and we’re always doing something religious or church-related. I woke up when Jon called to tell me that he was coming home and could he stop and pick anything up for me at the store?

When Jon got home, we got Dairy Queen for me (we were down to eating random combinations of things in the pantry) and headed to the laundromat to wash the comforter. It took three cycles to get everything out and after it was dry, we tossed it in the car, ran home, I tossed some khakis on, and headed to church for the klub supper. (Klub is a potato dumpling with ham in it. It’s a member of the “Scandinavian-foods-that-haven’t-been-eaten-in-Scandinavia-in-100-years-because-these-foods-were-eaten-by-dirt-poor-peasants-that-immigrated-to-America” family. )

We were assigned to be greeters for three hours but we really only needed Jon and I was trying to find something else to do. I took people to tables at first but the busy time came and I saw that we needed people to bus tables instead. I think the organizers were surprised to see me doing it in my nice khakis and everything but nobody complained and I actually had more fun doing that than greeting. I finally got to sit down and eat around 7 and everyone was watching me to see how I’d like the klub. The verdict: it’s bland (as most Scandinavian food is) but not bad with some sour cream, pepper, and salt. There was also ham, carrots, coleslaw, and various desserts. I’ve now been initiated into the cult of Scandinavian food and people are making plans for the lutefisk festival in town this summer — something I’m going to skip because lutefisk is against my religion and my dietary practices. (I try to avoid things that contain ingredients that the EPA has banned the usage of because they are corrosive and pollute large bodies of water — like Puget Sound.)