So long Nibby, welcome Picasso

Nibby was definitely Grandpa's cat. He would come when Grandpa wanted him. He would follow him to bed, sleep with Grandpa until he fell asleep and then Nibby would stay up all night looking out the window, jumping on our bed or several other things that only cats understand. Before Grandpa woke up in the morning, Nibby would sneak back onto his bed so that Grandpa would be sure to think that Nibby slept there all night.

And if you dared even to try to move Nibby from Grandpa's bed or a chair or off the counter, Grandpa was always there to defend his poor helpless cat. Many a time, Grandpa's relatives got a tongue-lashing for something we might or might not have done to Nibby.

So when Nibby got sick and was put to sleep this week, I didn't really think I would get choked up with emotion. After all, this was a one-person cat, and I never was that one person. Nibby was a nice looking black-and-white male tom cat, but he wasn't what you would call affectionate. He was independent. Tough. And always made me feel that I was intruding on his turf.

Still, when I brought him into the vet's office last Tuesday afternoon, my eyes filled with tears and I could barely speak to the receptionist. Grandpa, on the other hand, was looking for the Men's room and seemed oblivious to the task at hand.

A couple of days later and I was starting to forget about Nibby and the tears that were shed...that is, until we got a letter from the vet's office. It was a condolence card but it also had a card with inked paw prints and the name "Nibby" calligraphed underneath. I saw the card and thought, "Is this some cruel joke...I'm tearing up again."

Yeah, I fed Nibby and hunted for him when Grandpa would let him outside and he'd run away...but I couldn't say I was ever close to him.

So when Grandpa said on Tuesday that he didn't want another cat, I had mixed emotions. On one hand, I wondered if he would miss his companionship that he had with Nibby. But on the other hand, Nibby never liked anyone but Grandpa so it wasn't hard to say that you really wanted another cat like Nibby.

But as the days passed, it soon became apparent that Grandpa had not forgotten his cat. Even though I had moved the kitty box, kitty food and dishes out to the garage, Grandpa still was relentless in his search for his cat and wondering where Nibby was.

So what was clear to Belinda, Scott and Derek, soon became clear to me. We had to find Grandpa another cat.

On Friday afternoon, Scott and his cousin Janelle drove to the animal shelter to scope out the cats. Scott called me at work and told me they had three choices but Picasso was definitely their first choice. At 3 p.m. on Friday, I met Grandpa, Belinda and Janelle at the shelter and I agreed that Picasso was definitely a good selection. He loved to be held and purred when cuddled.

Plus there was a story that came with Picasso. He had been found in a garbage can and given to the shelter. It seems that his previous owners had abandoned him. They put him in a cardboard box and threw him away.

How heart-wrenching...and yet it felt like what we had gone through. No, we hadn't been thrown away. But we felt a loneliness and emptyness after Nibby died. So it seemed like a match made in heaven. We would provide a good home for Picasso and just maybe Picasso would fill the void left behind by Nibby. Grandpa might yet again have a cat that will follow him to bed, put him to sleep and then jump on our bed to wake us up in the middle of the night.

No, Picasso isn't the classy dude Nibby was. Nibby always looked like he showed up in a black and white tuxedo. But Picasso seems to have a much better attitude than the somewhat peevish and very spoiled Nibby.

Anyway, we got a call at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday that if we wanted to adopt Picasso, we could come to the animal shelter in an hour and pick him up. In the mean time, I went to the garage and fetched the kitty box and washed the kitty dishes and put fresh water and fresh food in them.

Grandpa walked by me and spied what I was doing. He said, "It looks better already."

So in the period of a few days, it seems like our family has fallen into a great abyss only to emerge...hopefully better than before.

The land of Dancing Cabbages

When I look back now, I'm surprised I got to keep my job at Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative, especially after my first two weeks on the job. People think I have a hearing problem now, but it turns out I couldn't hear when I was younger either.

It was January 1983 and I was 23-years-old. I had worked at couple of weekly newspapers and had just landed a job as a community relations coordinator for a telephone cooperative headquartered in Circle, Montana. I really didn't know what the job entailed so wasn't surprised when someone from the accounting department asked me to look through a stack of expense reports and pull out any that had to do with Dancing Cabbage.

I didn't give it a lot of thought because I had just gone through the Christmas season and knew that Cabbage Patch dolls were all the rage so Dancing Cabbages shouldn't come as a surprise either....although I had never heard of them before that day.

When the day was over I told the person who had asked for my help that I hadn't come across even one report with Dancing Cabbages. She looked at me with a quizzical appearance and asked me to repeat myself.  So I did. She then laughed and said that I would have to go through reports again the next day because she wasn't looking for Dancing Cabbages. She was looking for expense reports for a former employee of the cooperative, a man whose name was Dan Sincavage.

That episode was just the precursor. The next occurred in the middle of the week when I was asked to drive an old four-wheel drive pickup to interview an old couple who lived southeast of Baker, Montana...almost where the states of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota meet.

When I reached their ranch, I spied a big pile of manure across the road from their home. After conducting the interview, I asked the old man if he would mind loading up the pickup with manure because I hoped to start a garden in the spring and the manure would fertilize the soil that I planned to spade up in March or April.

I was living in an apartment in Glendive, and the landlord had told me that he wouldn't care if I planted a small garden behind the parking lot.

The old rancher was very generous with his manure and he used a tractor to pile it nice and high in the back of the pickup. The old couple thanked me for coming to visit and asked me to stop by again if I was ever on their road because of travels for the cooperative.

As I left their ranch, I was delighted with myself. Not only had I gotten the interview and photos for the cooperative's monthly magazine, but I also had this load of fertilizer. And then somewhere between Baker and Glendive, my mood changed. The gray sky opened up and it began to rain, and then it began to snow. By the time I pulled into my parking lot, the manure had turned to a large frozen mass.

The next day, I drove the pickup -- manure and all -- to Circle. However, thinking that I could somehow sneak by without getting caught, I parked the pickup on the edge of town and walked the two blocks to the center of town and the headquarters of the co-op.

It was getting late into the afternoon and I thought I had been successful. But then my boss called me into his office and asked me to swing the pickup around as there were some bills that he wanted me to load into the back of the pickup and take to the post office in Circle, which was also about two blocks away.

Needless to say, he wasn't too keen on the idea of me using a cooperative-owned vehicle to haul a load of manure for this garden that I intended to start in the spring.

In fact, he told me that the next time he saw the pickup, the manure had better be gone and I had better have the back-end cleaned out.

As it turned out, this was a Friday so I drove back to Glendive in the pickup and then I drove to Roundup to visit my folks for the weekend. My dad gave me a small pick that he used for hunting rocks so that I could chop out the frozen manure before I drove the pickup back to Circle on Monday.

So on a cold Sunday night in January, I backed up the pickup full of manure to a spot where I hoped to plant a garden. I threw a trouble light over a tree limb and I picked at the manure until I had chopped up the frozen top layer. Then with a shovel, I was able to remove all of the rest of the manure. It probably took a couple of hours before every last inch of manure had been removed from the back of the pickup.

As I look back now, these episodes are funny. But at the time, they were serious glitches in good judgement. Luckily, my supervisor was an understanding fellow and later we became good friends. However, at the time, I was wondering if I was going to be able to work long enough to cash my first check.

These stories came to mind because a guy I know was telling me about a job opening in Circle, Montana, and wanted to know if I might be interested. I asked him what it entailed and he said I would be the manager of a gas station. With my luck in Circle, I had to quickly decline. Otherwise I might blow up the whole town.

Fighting a summer cold

How much ambition do I have today? Zero. Nada.

I've been fighting ragweed allergies this week and I think they've now turned into a cold. By tomorrow or the next day, it might manifest itself into bronchitis as I'm already wheezy and spitting up phlegm.

I took a Saturday afternoon nap, which isn't unusual. What is unusual is that I slept for three and a half hours. Also, I missed watching the Yankees win on TV. I knew they were playing but if I had watched them, I would have fallen asleep in the chair. So I decided to fall asleep in bed.

Tomorrow, we have a full calendar of events so I'm really hoping to feel better. But if not, there is always the walk-in clinic.

I planned on writing some more about my hacking cough, fever, runny eyes so you know exactly how I feel...but if you've ever seen a commercial for Dristan, you understand how I feel.

When I was growing up, I think my dad was addicted to Dristan. Now I don't think they even make it any more. Household medicines have changed over the years. We used to have either aspirin or children's aspirin. Now there's Tylenol and Advil and a bunch of knock-offs.

For colds, we use to take either Dristan or Contact. Both of them would dry out my sinuses and generally ended up with a nosebleed. I don't think they make Contact either...at least we don't buy it if they do.

I've never been very good at swallowing pills, so I always try to find the smallest pills I can take. Today, I went to the pharmacy to buy a multi-vitamin. I asked the cashier what was the smallest multi-vitamin he had. He opened a box and took out the pill bottle. Then he unscrewed the lid. Of course, there was a seal on the top of the bottle.

"I don't know," he admitted.

So I bought the bottle he held in his hand. It not only said it was a multi-vitamin but also formulated especially for men. I can't imagine what special ingredients it might have contained just for men, but it was enough to sway me to buy them.

When I got them home and popped the seal with a sharp knife, the pills were huge....three times bigger than the little red vitamin pills I had been taken. So I thought there must be something interesting in the vitamins. Of course, you're way ahead of me on this one. Most of the pill is simply inert ingredients. I guess it won't kill me, but I would just like to take a small pill without having to gag every morning. And the vitamins stink. I won't be smelling them before I take them.

The other bad thing for me about having a cold, or a cough or a runny nose...is that my dad seems to catch everything that is brought into the house.

So my outlook for this cold goes like this...I'll probably go to the walk-in clinic tomorrow and I'll probably have to take dad to the walk-in clinic later during the week.

Provocative "life" questions

I saw these questions on another blog and thought they would act as fodder for an article. They are questions that we typically ask ourselves when we reach a certain age.

Questions people are asking by the decade:

• 20's Who am I? How am I different from my family? What will I do? Am I capable of love? Is there anyone who would love me?
• 30's How do I cope with the demands of life and all these people who want a piece of me? What can't I follow through? How come I feel like I can never please anyone? What happened to my friends?
• 40's What happened to me as a child? Why are others doing better than me? Why am I so disappointed in myself? Isn't it supposed to be better than this dull-drum life? Why these uncertainties?
• 50's Why is time moving so fast? Why is my body unreliable? How do I deal with failures/successes? Why is my marriage not great? Are the best years of my life over?
• 60's When do I stop doing the things that define me? Am I ready for old age? Why do I feel separated from the world? Do I have a spiritual legacy?
• 70's Does anyone know who I once was? How much of life do I still control? Why this irritability? How long will people miss me?

Since I'm now "into" my 50s, I'm going to skip the 60s and 70s and concentrate on the earlier decades....starting with the 20s. Truthfully, I was pretty ambitious and looking for "greener" grass during my early 20s. I graduated from the University of Montana at 20 and took my first job. It lasted 6 months. My second lasted two years, my third was three years and at age 26, I found myself newly married, with a new job in a new state and with a new home mortgage. I'm not really sure I had time left to ask myself any questions. I had a lot of energy and wanted to get my life established, begin a family and plant the seeds for a happy existence. One of the things I learned in my 20s is that are two ways of making money...one is to start with a lot of money and two is start with a lot of time. Since I didn't have a lot of money, I began saving. I'm proud to say I've never spent the savings from my 20s and have added to it since. While I'm not rich, I have built some cushion that will help us as we look at retirement. 

I continued to be ambitious in my 30s as well. Here is when I became deeply involved both with my company and with Toastmasters. I saw many opportunities open up to me with both and the synergies were pretty obvious. I was an executive speech writer, whose speeches were being heard in the largest financial markets throughout the United States. Also, I was traveling all over the United States and missing out on what seemed like my children's childhoods. Belinda was often home to raise the children. Some people adore that lifestyle. I didn't and found my career at odds with my values...especially when it ran counter to my children and their needs. So looking at these questions, I'm sure these, in fact, were the questions I was asking. And sometimes I wasn't enjoying the answers. 

In my 40s, I certainly faced a number of uncertainties, especially when I went through a career change at age 41. However, having already proven myself in my 20s and 30s, I had adopted the philosophy of one of Liz Taylor's many husbands who said, "I've been rich and I've been broke, but I've never been poor." As the decade progressed, I poured a lot more time into my family along with my career and decided that I liked the "new" me. 

Now, I've only been in my 50s officially for one year, but I agree that the years go by extremely fast. One son is out of college and beginning his own career and the second son has only two years left...unless he goes to graduate school. So I find myself pondering more and more of life with Belinda...without the children. At least, the children won't be as close as they have been. Grandpa has been an extension of our family for the last four years, but let's face it, he's not going to live forever either. And there's the questions about your human body. No, it doesn't perform like it once did. I had shoulder surgery in my 40s so I'm sure the Yankees won't be coming to sign me as a pitcher in my 50s. Also, my metabolism has slowed if not completely stopped. I'm going to be one who fights a constant battle with his weight. This is troubling when you watch your sons eat and eat, but you know your days of gluttony have ended and not for the better. To win the weight war means to eat less and exercise more. This is hard in North Dakota, especially in the winter when we seemingly have daylight from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Food becomes a major portion of what we do for entertainment. 

As for marriage, I couldn't be happier. I met and married my soulmate for life. However, I certainly feel for those who are struggling with their marriages. Life is simply too short and at 50 we know it.

So as I look back at the past 30 years, I'm generally happy with what has transpired. I'm not the eager beaver I was at 25, but I'm the wiser, more practical father and husband whom I'm proud to be. 

Summer activities

Growing up in Roundup, Montana, I saw a few Fourth of July rodeos. Living now in Mandan, North Dakota, I've never been to one....even though Mandan is the rodeo mecca of the state. In Roundup, I went to the rodeos because I knew a lot of the cowboys. Some were even my classmates. However, rodeos were never my cup of tea. I tend to think of them as being hot, dusty and taking up lots of time between events.

If I had my druthers, I would prefer being in a baseball park -- preferably Yankee Stadium -- on the Fourth of July. But I live in North Dakota, not the Bronx, so I'm left watching the men in pinstripes on my TV set. That isn't all bad, because the numerous TV cameras covering a major league baseball game truly give you a better view of the players and the action than watching the game in person. However, there's something about being there. Perhaps that why I still like to go see movies. There's something intrinscally interesting about watching a movie with people you don't know. Sometimes I'm the only person laughing out loud when something obviously hilarious happens to the actors. Did the other people fall asleep or perhaps they are not as clever at picking out the funny parts of the movie?

So I don't go to rodeos, nor baseball games...and actually don't see many movies. So what does occupy my time in the summer?

Probably number one is my garden. I love to grow a garden. Every morning, every evening and sometimes oftener, I go stand beside my garden and see what's growing now. My potatoes and peas are in bloom. I'll be eating peas in a week as some already have pods hanging down. The potatoes won't be harvested until the end of September when they've developed a good thick skin on them. We've eaten a lot of onions and lettuce already. I plant two kinds of lettuce -- leaf lettuce and romaine. Belinda likes to make a salad with both kinds of  lettuce, onions, dill and cream. It's a favorite around the house.

My beefsteak tomato plants, peppers and cucumbers also have budded and now are bearing fruits and vegetables. My winter squash plants are also looking nice but I haven't seen any blooms yet. Carrots and beets are also getting bigger but they need another week or two before I start to pick them. The sooner you pick these two, the sweeter they are...so I won't wait too long before tasting them. However, I'll let some grow though middle of September so we have some for the winter months.

Besides my garden, there is golf. I seem to be playing more golf this year. We always play a lot of golf at Mandan Muni where Scott has a yearly pass. But we've also played several times at Pebble Creek and Tom O'Leary. I'd like to play at Riverwood this summer. That's a beautiful course surround by stately cottonwoods. Tom O'Leary is fun because you are in the middle of town and ever hole seems to have another scenic view of Bismarck - such as the capitol or Bismarck State College.

I'll also play at Apple Creek east of Bismarck at the end of July in the Lignite Energy Council's CoalPac tournament. That event gets special attention because I'll be playing with two of my brothers-in-law along with Scott. We've been doing this event for seven or eight years and it's always a blast. When the golfing is done, we are treated to a big steak and baked potato out on the veranda of the country club. The view is of the verdant Apple Creek Valley covered with trees, bushes, fairways and greens.

There are also family reunions. This weekend, for instance, will be the Frohlich family reunion. When I first started going to these, there were a lot more of the great-grandmas and great-grandpas who showed up. Now, they've died and there are more of the great-grandchildren who show up. It's always interesting to see the new ones and visit with the old ones. Some of these are Belinda's uncles and aunts who we have breakfast with on Saturdays.

Then there is the Mandan Fourth of July parade. In Roundup, we were happy if the parade lasted a half hour...often it was a lot shorter than that. But in Mandan, the parade can last up to two hours or longer. So it's good to have plenty of sunscreen and a cooler with some liquids. A bag with some sunflower seeds and a comfortable chair are also nice. You'll never see more old tractors or horses or politicians that in the Mandan parade. The float from our church and the Mandan marching band in black and white uniforms are also highlights.

Luckily, we live about two blocks from the parade route so it's easy to get to and from Main Street. There's a lot of road construction in Mandan this year so it will be more difficult for people living out of town to see the parade.

Another favorite summer time activity is taking in the "Concerts in the Park." On Mondays through Thursdays, there is live music in Dykshoorn Park from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The Monday night concerts in June are the best because of the patriotic music played by the West River Winds, a big band with a huge sound. John Philip Sousa marches are standard fare and they always close with "Stars and Stripes Forever."

I've probably left out some other activities. But this is pretty standard stuff that I look forward to. The weather is warm in North Dakota during June, July and August so it's a great time to be outdoors. Oh, and I like homemade peach pies in the summer, too.

What I learned about life from a bunch of bird brains

In mid-May, a robin built a nest in our neighbor's bathroom window. We had a "birds-eye" view of the operation because the nest was 10 feet away from our kitchen window.

For about two weeks, the robin (or robins, I couldn't really tell) would come to the nest and incubate the eggs. With each passing day, my anticipation mounted because I wanted to see the baby chicks. When they were born, I was extremely disappointed because the chicks seemed to be nearly naked and were extremely ugly. I guess I thought they would look like the little yellow feathery chicks I saw on TV cartoons.

But mama robin didn't care. She brought all kinds of food to the nest and the babies got to where every day they were "begging" with their mouths wide open and their heads straight up for hours on end waiting to be fed.

With such a voracious appetite, it wasn't long before the chicks started growing. I think it was last Sunday that the nest had become completely full -- too small for the five chicks. The biggest chick was actually sitting on the others. This one was also preening his feathers and fluttering in front of the others. I was sure it wouldn't be long until he (or she) had flown away to hunt for bugs and worms.

Much to my chagrin, by Monday morning there were only two of the five chicks left and by Tuesday morning, they were all gone.

I had become attached to the little buggers or should I say 'bug eaters'. At first, I kept my distance from the nest, but by the time the chicks were growing feathers, I couldn't help myself. I had taken to walking up a step ladder and taking photos with a telephoto lens on a digital camera. I could almost see their eye-teeth in the back of their beaks.

Somehow, mama robin and the baby chicks must have accepted me as a necessary evil of building a home in town...I had become the annoying neighbor that they tried to avoid so I would go away. However, a squirrel in our neighborhood was not as lucky. The squirrel was probably 30 feet away but walking on the fence that went two feet from from the nest. Mama robin started flying as fast as she could and actually ran into Mr. Squirrel. This made a heckuva a thump and Mr. Squirrel quickly turned tail and ran away. Fur and feathers went flying...so did the robin.

Now I'm an empty nester -- actually, even the nest is gone -- so all I have are the memories....and about 2 million photos of mama robin and her chicks.

It's sort of like raising children...but it's too emotional to describe. Remember when the little tykes looked out the window and then came running to meet you when you drove home from work? Now they are gone because they are working themselves. And you are left wondering, "Had a I known it was going to go so fast, I would have done things differently and spent more time with them, and taken more pictures ...so I could enjoy the memories in my old age."

Well, at least next spring I'll have my robins again.

Random thoughts on graduation addresses

In the last couple of weeks, I've heard more than my share of speeches given by graduates and invited guests. As a person who loves to critique, let me offer some "do's" and "don'ts" for future graduation speakers.

Let's start with the "do's."

• You are not the president of the United States giving the State of the Union address, so be mindful of your audience and keep it short. Five minutes will feel like 50 minutes to an audience sitting on wooden bleachers in a high school gym sitting oddly with their neck cocked to see who's speaking. And some in the audience came an hour early to save seats, so remember these brave souls and keep your remarks short. The big event is seeing their loved one receive a diploma...everything else is secondary, including your speech.
• If you must quote someone, stick with Dr. Seuss, Yogi Berra or Will Rogers. This is not the occasion to quote Malcom X, Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao or some other controversial historical figure.
• Remember that speeches can also entertain, not just bore people. The story to remember is that a speech should be like a mini-skirt...short enough to entice, but just long enough to cover the essentials. 
• Also try to remember who spoke or what they said at your graduation. You can't...so keep this in mind when you decide to give your "earth-shattering" dissertation. Be humble and be one of us. 
• Speak to communicate, not to impress. Your audience will simply find you arrogant if you choose words they don't understand or concepts that are too abstract. 
• If you feel compelled to offer advice to the audience, make sure it's something that can be universally agreed upon, like the old axiom "As you sow, so shall you reap." Leave the New Age philosophy for a coffee house talk on a college campus. 

I know, many of my "do's" sound like "don'ts....but there are also some obvious, plain old "don'ts". 

• Don't talk about issues that are controversial. No need to espouse the evils of global warming because half of your audience doesn't believe it's a problem. If you don't believe me, look at the national polls by George Gallup and others.
• Don't dabble in cliches, such as the "free speech." That's where the college president asks you if you believe in free speech. You say you do and the college president asks if you will speak at the commencement exercise and give a free speech. It was funny once upon a time, but it's now been done to death. 
• Don't offend people in your audience by using language that 30 years ago was questionable but today is deemed offensive. An example is describing a conference on your campus as a "powwow" between the muckety-mucks of your college and other institutions of higher learning. And this example is really one of the tamer ones I've heard. Come on people, this is now 2010. 
• If you are 18 years old and you are the class valedictorian, resist the temptation to tell all the parents and grandparents in the audience about the "keys to success" or the "meaning of life." At 18, you don't have the credentials and you won't be taken seriously. 
• And my last one goes back a few years to when one of my wife's sisters was graduating. The speaker was a retired superintendent in Glendive, Montana, who urged the students to move on to new learning opportunities. Unfortunately, in doing so, he insulted half the audience. He started about by saying that students might want to be teachers, a noble profession, and they could attend Eastern Montana College  as he had done. If they wanted to pursue an engineering degree, why there was always Montana State University or they could attend the University of Montana and seek a degree in geology or business. If they didn't feel they were up to college quite yet, then there was still the military who would train them to be soldiers. And if they didn't have they acumen for being a soldier, there was always "Harvard on the Hill." Now "Harvard on the Hill" was the colloquialism for Dawson Community College, a two-year school, perhaps best known for its rodeo teams. But still, I wondered how many people in the audience had either attended DCC as a full-time student or went to a night class to learn about computers or had a relative as a DCC alumnus. 

So there you have it. Keep it short, don't insult the audience and entertain them for five minutes. The best you can probably hope for is to not be remembered. If you do a terrible job, you will be remembered, but for all the wrong reasons.