Endings and Beginnings

Endings and beginnings are strange to write about because I'm never sure what to say and I always feel like whatever I say should be profound. Usually I skip those posts - I put them off long enough that they become past tense and don't get written about at all.

Driving away from the office in Windom for the last time

But, I do feel like I have to write about this. I have never ever left a job for another job. I left my first after college job because I was going to law school. My first summer law clerk position during law school was a term thing - it ended so I left. The second law clerk position I had I loved for almost two years and it ended because I graduated and it was policy not to keep law clerks on after graduation - so I left.

But this is the first time that I have left one job voluntarily for another job. I worked with human resources people on both ends to coordinate the leaving and arriving, I arranged end dates and start dates and after a few weeks of insane activity and decision I am just waiting. Waiting. Waiting to show up for work on Monday. Waiting to meet new co-workers and set up in my new office. I'm waiting to meet new judges and files. Waiting.

At least I get to wait with this guy

On the subject of waiting - you, dear reader, may have to spend some time waiting for blog updates in the next few weeks, until we find our own house and get the internet going. Until then, I will do my best!

Weekends in Minneapolis

One of the great things about living in Windom is that it is very easy to make a weekend trip to Minneapolis. The ease of a Minneapolis weekend is increased by our incredibly generous friends, who host us and Sogn and are always happy to accommodate us into their weekend schedule. One of the hardest things about facing this new move is that even though I am so happy about this job I could cry (in fact, I have cried - tears of JOY), it is really far away from the Twin Cities and all of our friends and family who live there. I'm afraid weekends trips to the cities aren't going to happen as often and they're going to require planning. Planning? Eek.

Anyways - one of the new summer events we have enjoyed the past few years is the Lawn Game Olympics. No - there's no link, this isn't an even that's sponsored by a local brewery (although that's a great idea) - instead it's a fabulous event that is put together by a friend.

Basically, it's as amazing as it sounds. We arrive at a super secret location (well not really, but I'm not going to tell you where!), haul the coolers and grills, set up hammocks and lawn games, let the dogs off leash and enjoy the day. Although all of those things are great, it's wonderful just to stand around in the shade and chat with friends we don't get to see regularly anymore. It's amazing the things that happen when you're away for a few weeks - nieces are able to walk around the Patagonia store, people have moved and moved in together, and new jobs abound.

I will miss our weekend trips to the Twin Cities, but we will still visit and once we get settled in Crookston we willl extend some invites to return the generous hosting!

p.s. If you're reading this to procrastinate for the 2012 Bar Exam I wish you good luck. You will pass.

Feeling Like a Kid

I work really hard in my professional and personal life to be a responsible adult - because according to my age and the letters behind my name I am. But sometimes I just feel like a kid, and when that feeling strikes I love it. It feels carefree and fun and it's great.

It's been crazy hot. You know that, you live here too. I generally manage the heat well since I work in an air conditioned space and when I'm outside I walk slowly so I don't mess up my new "professional" hair cut. On the whole, I manage the heat in a very adult way.

But Sogn could care less if I'm an adult. He is a hairy animal, who has a lot of energy to burn, and it means that we play like kids! The other day I threw on some shorts and my favorite pair of sandals and Sogn and I walked down to Island Park to do kid things.

I played with shells on the dirty beach shore and snapped a few pictures while Sogn wallowed in the mud, chewed on some sticks, and got real stinky.

I missed this animal when he was gone. He really does make my life better. 

On our way home from the park we stopped by River City Eatery and got a waffle cone with rainbow sherbet. I even let Sogn have a few licks after I was done (don't tell Calhoun).

The Des Moines River in Windom

We were stinky and sweaty and had a great time just playing, and not caring about how our hair looked. 

The Earwigs Aren't Helping

I've been a little stressed out this week. Nothing really terrible has happened to me, personally, but a variety of little things have added up to the development of a twitching eyelid that I'm pretty sure was brought on by the stress.

I don't want to get into any of the personal or family details, but on top of all of that stuff it has been a very busy work week! We had a full day various hearings on Monday and stayed until 6 p.m. - which is pretty much unheard of in district courts in Minnesota. The county craziness continued with a jury trial, a court trial, and many more hearings including sentencing and guilty pleas. I do love my job, it has just been far more action this week than I'm used to!

Then the weather, it's been hot in Minnesota this week and I'm variously uncomfortabley hot because it's 95 degrees outside and I'm wearing a suit or freezing my butt off under the AC at work.

And then, there are the creatures in our house. I may actually be to the point where I would take the mice over the bats and the bugs! A few weekends ago Calhoun got up in the middle of the night, he didn't say much to me but warned me that he was going to turn the light on in the bedroom. He did and looked around for a minute and I - in my 3 a.m. sleep stupor - am afraid I was not very nice when I asked what he was doing.

He thought he had seen a bat in the room.

Oh no.

But, earlier that week we had had a bat in our mud-room that he managed to get it outside and that very day we had read a story in the paper about a call to the police reporting a suspected home intruder that ended up being a bat stuck between the front and storm door of a house in town. So - we looked around and couldn't find it and both hoped it was just a figment of Calhoun's overly active imagination.

So, I jumped back into bed, turned out the lights, and pulled the covers right up under my chin.

A few minutes later a real bat swooped down right over our heads.

We were freaked the hell out! We jumped out of bed and Calhoun grabbed his fishing net and we scoured the house for this bat. We stayed up for a while, eventually crawled back into bed, fishing net in hand, and never did find that stinkin' bat.

Now I am always afraid there's a bat that's going to come swooping around our bedroom.

Then, to top it off, after a weekend in the cities I came home to dicover these little monsters all over the place.

It's called an earwig and they are ugly crunchy things that like to hide in damp, dark spaces. AHHH! I came home very late Sunday night and found myself screaming and stomping around my kitchen to kill the little things and I can't wait until our landlord comes back from vacation to help us deal with the problem. I've tried not to read too much about them because the less I know about the extent of this possible earwig infestation the better. AHH!!!

So there we are. To top off all of the normal stresses of life, every time my new short hair brushes against the back of my neck I'm afraid a bat has swooped over me or an earwig is crawling down my shirt. I'm afraid this eye twitch isn't going to go away any time soon!

Ducklings on the Courthouse Lawn

When I was in law school I worked in downtown Minneapolis, steps away from the Hennepin County Government Center and the Federal Courthouse. I loved it. I loved every moment of being in the middle of the action. I loved that I could be on my way to work or out for lunch and catch a glimpse of a well known attorney, that I could easily attend an event at a major downtown firm with only five minutes lead time and could drop by any courtroom to catch a star witness in a major case. For a suburban kid, it was pretty awesome. For a law student, it was a spectacular experience.

Another thing I loved about working in downtown Minneapolis was that when the nice summer weather arrived downtown came alive in a whole new way. Yes, the skyways are filled with life throughout the dreary months but as soon as it hit the low fifties the hunt was on for a bench to sit on at lunch. Frequently, I found myself sitting around the reflecting pool on the government plaza, feeling pretty impressed with myself and that I was doing it - having lunch, in my suit, outside of a courthouse, soon to get back to my very important job of brief writing in my cubicle.

Here in Windom the nice weather has brought on an outdoor spectacle of a different kind. First, unlike government plaza our courthouse is actually surrounded by a lawn, with trees! There are a few benches outside and it's never a challenge to find a spot in the shade. Second, rather than watching law clerks hustle around to ensure that documents are timely filed, a person lunching on our courthouse lawn is likely to see a mama and baby ducks hustling from evergreen to evergreen. It was a busy Monday for me so I was inside, but all afternoon we watched the ducks make their way around the courthouse, and late in the afternoon even saw a family laying on the grass near a tree watching them.

It's sometimes nice to be reminded that some things are just always fun. Yes, star witnesses in a major case are always fun (in a strange legal way), but so are ducklings, waddling around on the courthouse lawn, on a Monday afternoon.

Community Pride Day

Yesterday was Community Pride Day here in Windom.

As with most things in town, I'm a little behind the curve. I'm slowly learning the importance of the local paper, the Cottonwood County Citizen and the school calendars as they obviously report and set most of the major events around here.

So, yesterday was the last day of school in town. When I was in high school - oh so many years ago in my suburban jungle - I remember watching videos and signing yearbooks on the last day of school. But not here in Windom. The kids were farmed out to sites around the city to do general clean up duties, the locations and challenges of the sites varied depending on the age of the student, along with the degree of independence they had in executing their activity and their lunch time.

I figured this out at about 10 am when I noticed that picnic tables were being set up on the Courthouse lawn. Then, about noon the dull roar of a few hundred high schoolers drifted up through my open window as they sat down to enjoy their bagged lunches and fresh carnival popcorn.

Calhoun also happened to be across the street at our new favorite place, The River City Eatery, and I decided to run across the street and meet him there for lunch. The place was packed, filled with people of all ages enjoying their lunches, complete with high schoolers indulging in ice cream and cupcakes during the Community Pride Day free-time.

And even though I'm not in high school anymore, and even when I was in high school there was not a local restaurant that served up pesto pastas along side delicious cupcakes, I still eat like a higschooler. And lucky for me, Calhoun does to. After enjoying our healthy lunches we were so tempted by the sweets around us we indulged in a turtle pecan chocolate deliciousness cupcake.

Not only was it great to run across the street to meet Calhoun for lunch, and support our new favorite local restaurant, it was really incredible to look around our new small town home. Windom's population is a little more than 4,600 people, which might be just about right. While we were in River City we saw the community connections that exist between the people here - high school kids greeting what I can only assume are older church ladies who are out for lunch is something I'm not used to seeing.

One of the things I loved about Minneapolis was that we could go to places filled with people like us, young folks who like craft beers. In Minneapolis, I never had to see anyone who didn't fit in well with my demographic, I could even select my grocery stores and modes of public transportation to further refine my urban experience. In Minneapolis, I never knew when the last day of school was because that seasonal change didn't affect me, and if I did notice a change I was sure to steer clear of any sign of highschool students. But not so much here. People like each other. People like people of other ages. People like people who are different from them.

This is going to be great.

Maybe next year I'll have my act together enough to be someone helping out with Community Pride Day, this year I was just happy to get to see a small part of it.

Welcome to Windom

It's been a solid two months since my last post. I guess it's time to get back on the train!

We've moved to Windom! Long story short, but we had rented the house on Little Spirit Lake for only six months and as we approached the end of the lease various factors made it apparent that it was time to move to town. We loaded up the truck last Thursday and Calhoun and I managed to move the whole house in one day. The one piece of sadness is that our couch doesn't fit in the house! It's temporarily housed in the garage, possibly to be lent to my brother (eek!) for the short-run.

I love it. I am so excited to be in town, a mere two and a half block walk to work and surrounded by the happenings here in Windom-town. And, Calhoun is getting more and more excited about being here as the days go by, constantly discovering the town I've been working in for six months! For example, the courthouse bells are used quite regularly throughout the week, and on the weekend - including 7 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings, tolling out patriotic songs to ensure that there is no sleeping in.

The only downside of being here in Windom is that, with each progressive move, Sogn gets less and less freedom which I feel bad about. When we were in Minneapolis we had a fenced backyard and he was left to his own devices to dig holes and cause whatever other havoc he could imagine. On Little Spirit Lake he had a little less freedome since there was no fence, but there was a trail close to the house we would walk on and he could be let out on the deck and kept there. But here, Sogn has lost even the freedom of an enclosed deck and has been relegated to sitting on the porch on the sideyard, watching the world go by. We absolutely can't leave him out there by himself because we're sure his sniffer would get the best of him and lead him astray, and Calhoun is fundamentally against him being staked out in the yard so we're going to have to be creative about how dog-in-small-town works, but I'm sure we'll figure it out and he will get much better at walking on a leash.

For now, we're happy to be getting settled in and starting this new chapter in out continuing adventure in southwest Minnesota!