A weekend of running

A weekend of running

Photo: Abigail finally got make her almond bark covered pretzels last weekend. I sampled plenty to make sure she was doing them right, so I can say with confidence that she did a great job!

By Allan Olson

This past weekend sure wasn’t very restful – most of it was spent on the go, either in the house doing baking and cleaning, or on the road heading to one town or the other, or a road trip north for our first Christmas celebration of the season.

The craziness started with my wife heading out of town to visit a friend in the metro area on Thursday. Then there was the 2016 Big Bear on Friday, along with general Christmas baking preparation for the holidays. I headed into Bemidji and picked my niece up from work on Thursday evening, and stopped at the store to do some Christmas shopping. That’s not my forte, but there were some things I was in charge of getting. Of course, instead of getting what I was supposed to get for the girls, I got what I thought was needed (instead of what my wife wanted me to get). Thankfully, the stuff I purchased was still needed, although it was not what was needed at the moment (if you’re confused, I still am, too). We finally got home – much later than anticipated – and sorted things out before heading to bed.

On Friday morning I made French Toast, which is one of my three morning specialties, the other two being hot cereal and eggs (I won’t be hosting any cooking shows anytime soon). My niece had the day off, so she was left in charge for the rest of the day. After leaving a few instructions for the kids, I headed off to the Big Bear. I finally got home at around 7 p.m. with plans to bake some rolls and hit the sack, later than usual, but not too late.

At home, I found the dough hadn’t risen as much as I had hoped, so I fast-tracked the process. A little while later I found out another niece was coming to visit us and her sister, and to do some shopping. I was also informed that they wanted to help with the rolls, so I delayed the process as long as I could. Then I found out later that they were just interested in a bed for the night. 

Nikolai and Abigail helped with some of the work, but in the end, it was just me finishing up the rolls at 2 a.m. I was okay with that, because I had no plans for anything other than sleep on Saturday morning. I should’ve known better. At 7 a.m. my phone started buzzing. My niece had slid off our icy roads to avoid hitting a deer on her way to work. The phone call was to inform me that she needed assistance. Instead of telling her that I needed a couple more hours of sleep and to just keep her vehicle running, of course I headed out to get her. I picked her up, came home and crawled back into bed for another hour, although I never really got back to sleep.

Late that morning I tracked down a tow strap, and that afternoon we headed out again, hoping to get the vehicle out of the ditch without the assistance of a tow truck, and without doing damage to either vehicle. Thankfully, with minimal effort we were able to get it back on the road with minimal effort. Since I needed a few grocery items for supper and breakfast the next two days, we all continued from there into town. I got what I needed and then headed back home to unload so I could get back to the Big Bear for some of the final matches of the evening. I knew there was a chance that, with a little luck, our team could get into one of the top three brackets. They wrestled hard, but it was not to be this time.

That evening, as much as I wanted to go to bed super-early, I knew that wasn’t the answer to sleeping in the next day. So instead I opted to wait until about 10 before getting some shuteye. I managed to stay in bed until 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning, a rare occurrence for me. The rest of the morning was spent feeding people and getting the stuff I was responsible for ready to go for the afternoon trek to International Falls.

My wife arrived home just after noon, making good time from the concrete jungle in the south, and by 1:30 we were on the road again, heading north for the first Christmas celebration of the season. The food was great and the visiting was fun, but the drive home was tiring. Thankfully, we made the trip with no encounters between wildlife and our vehicles.  

Plans for this week will include another trip north, and also another large sporting event as the home basketball teams will host the Red Lake Warriors for an exciting annual showdown on the CL-B court. It’s going to be a busy week, but it will fly right by.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit. Be safe on the winter roads!