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Fridays Suck: Where’s My Margarita

My last blog post was three months ago. I could write a whole book about our life in the three months since. It has been full and meaningful and slightly hard and very beautiful. The book would be a little all over the place which sounds… fun. I’ll give it a go.

Chapter 1: Goats, Pigs, Chickens, Oh My

Michael and I don’t do much planning but when life brings you 20 acres and people with animals for sale, you follow the aligned stars and start a hobby farm.

Of course, the purchase of the farm came first. We bought my grandparents’ farm on March 30th. One month later, we bought three adorable and loving Nigerian Dwarf goats. This purchase stemmed from a work conversation. I said, “We’d like to get some goats.” A wonderful woman named Laurie said, “I got goats.” The rest is history. Lillian, Pickles, and Fern became our first farm animals. Fern joined us by happenstance. We were supposed to get Scout but when the guy who wrangled up the goats for us did his thing, he mistook Fern for Scout. When Laurie saw Fern instead, she and I both decided it was meant to be. Fern was ours. Scout would stay.

The piggies came when I did what most modern human beings waste their lives away doing- scrolling through Instagram. Taira, a former coworker, posted her adorable Mangalitsa piglets for sale. The breed appealed to me instantly- a rare wooly breed that foraged much of its diet and had a docile and friendly demeanor; they also make for fine tasting pork. Interestingly, Mangalitsa pigs were first introduced to the United States in 2007. They are indigenous to Hungary. We purchased two 8 week old male piglets from Taira and named them Finn and Sawyer.

On that same day, we picked up another Mangalitsa pig, this one a female, from another farm found on Craigslist. She was a 10 month old gilt named Rosie. With only eight months of age between Rosie and the male piglets, we planned to eventually breed them to expand our herd. It was comical to see the size difference when we got them all home. Rosie was huge. Any sort of natural mating tactic would be physically impossible for quite some time. Rosie could crush Finn and Sawyer with one hoof.

The chickens arrived to our farm with no help from us. My aunt Arlette raised them from chicks. She purchased a wide variety of “heavy layers” and kept them in her garage under heat lamps until they were ready to join the party. Arlette continues to raise them while Michael and I are their proud aunt and uncle who built them their nesting boxes in anticipation of this heavy laying phase. Hutch is their pesky cousin who is always trying to hold them or throw wood chips at them like its food.

The goats, pigs, and chickens live fairly communally. The chickens wander into the goat pen and sleep under the same roof. The pigs are still separated for fear of Rosie’s hoof finding its way on top of little Sawyer. While separated, Rosie’s fencing is shared with the “itty bitty piggies” as Hutch calls them, and the itty bitties are sandwiched between the goat pen and Rosie’s fence.

We love these animals. It is a welcomed ritual to visit them upon waking and again at bedtime and somewhere in between.

The goats are so friendly and sweet. Rosie is equally so. The itty bitties are a little more rambunctious, and the chickens are always up to something. Hutch might be the wildest animal of them all, but we love him too.

Chapter 2: Grandma Johnson

We lost my Grandma Johnson to the heavens on May 21st. I held her hand as she passed. Seeing her to the other side, along with my mom and my aunt, was one of the most important moments of my life. We all whispered love, thank you, and permission to leave and be with Grandpa. I know she was listening.

It has been a great honor to live in Grandma’s home in the wake of her passing. She is present here in so many of my favorite memories.

Her piano stayed and I smile to think of her fingers moving seamlessly across the keys. I laugh to think of her tolerating the pounding of keys performed by my cousins and me, the same kind of joyful tolerating I do when Hutch helps himself to the trial and error of musical artistry.

I look at my childhood climbing tree and remember Grandma’s gentle reminders to “Be careful sweetie!” Michael already has plans for a treehouse in that very spot.

Sometimes, there are parts of the house that smell like my memories. If I cook something in the kitchen, I might get a whiff of all of the cousins huddled around the table passing corn and mashed potatoes around and around.

The laundry room smells like Grandpa Johnson when he came in from the barn. The basement still has his pool table- the one that my mom grew up to be a pool shark on. (She’ll appreciate that acknowledgement.) Hutch loves to “go play pool balls” now, so watch out Mom, there’s a new shark in town.

I could go on and on about my memories with Grandma and Grandpa Johnson in the place we now call home. Memories of them are embedded into our daily lives. I get to pass those on to Hutch and Winnie by explaining Grandma’s garden or where the Brown Swiss cows roamed. I can talk about Grandma’s elaborate cake making and where Grandpa stored his encyclopedias that he read front to back and then over again.

Losing our earthly version of Grandma was hard but so full of love, just like every day with her gentle soul and beautiful smile. I see her still- in the garden, in the red pines she planted on the hill, and in the nooks and crannies of our home. She is with us- felt, honored, and loved.

Chapter 3: The Garden We Almost Never Had

Being 38 weeks pregnant does not lend itself to skillful gardening. The bending feature on my body was temporarily out of service. I could maybe lay down as I plant the seedlings, but passerbys might be compelled to issue a well check or the hawks might think I’m rotund looking roadkill. So, I avoided planting a garden. We actually tried once in May but broke the tiller immediately which led to a three week wait time until a new drive belt could be delivered. Meanwhile, we were out of our house for 10 days while our wood floors got refinished and also fell ill with something fierce. There were many excuses to put off the garden.

Then, on June 4th, a beautiful sunny day, we came home to two of the youngest old folks I know digging their hands in our garden with plants they purchased for us. My seedlings were past their prime now so these small plants and some seeds were exactly what we needed, along with ambition and gardening expertise.

It was Grandma Larson and Papa, my other grandparents that live on a farm a few miles away. They always have a knack for knowing what is needed and when, and they go above and beyond for everyone they love.

Michael and I joined Grandma and Papa in the dirt and asked all the questions that garden novices should ask- questions about spacing, thinning, watering, etc. Grandma passed me the knowledge from her own mom, the woman I remembered to love gardening, the Minnesota Twins, and an occasional cigarette. Grandma Millie was diligent about straight rows in her garden marked by strings that spanned from one end to the other. We followed suit.

I will always remember this summer day that concluded with planting our first garden here. It was special in many ways. First, Michael’s mom was visiting us at the time. We had such a good day of going to the park, making rhubarb dessert, and going for a long walk up the hill behind our house.  Rennae, or as Hutch calls her “Gigi”, was now getting Hutch ready for bed, bath time and all. Hutch adores his Gigi.

Now, our garden would exist in the same place my late Grandma Johnson gardened for the span of my lifetime and even decades before- where I ran by and picked beans to eat as I climbed the trees, ran in the corn fields, and splashed in the creek.

It was special for the kindness of Grandma Larson and Papa to instigate a garden that almost never happened, absorbing their lifetime of gardening wisdom, and getting our hands dirty together on a perfect summer night. Thank you Grandma and Papa for this and the million other ways you love.

To continue the theme of wonderful grandparents who whip up a mean garden, I want to give a shout out to Grandma Ellen who turned 90 years old this year on July 8th.

Grandma Ellen is the sweetest soul you would ever meet. That sweetness got passed down to Michael’s mom and then to… Michael’s sister and brothers. The other trait that Michael did not inherit from Grandma Ellen is her pellet gun skills. We once found a pellet gun sitting on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. Turns out, Grandma Ellen wasn’t a stranger to taking out the bully birds by her feeders, even if it happens to occur in the middle of washing dishes.

Michael took a turn at the pellet gun that day. He missed his target, and when he turned to me, he had blood dripping from his eyebrow. I guess he didn’t expect such a kickback. Perhaps, he should stick to bow and arrow… or get some lessons from Grandma Ellen.

Chapter 4: Welcoming Winnie & Riley Too

I have a knack for moving residence at the most inconvenient of times, mainly when super pregnant. This happened with Hutch at the boathouse and again now. The inconvenient part is being unable to participate in construction and renovating activities that come with a new home- staining, lifting heavy objects, climbing into precarious places. Some may say this is well planned as Michael shoulders the bulk of the work, but that’s only cool for a day or two.

Waiting for Winnie was tough. Again, I was very round in the midsection which made for an interesting time at work where bending and lifting full grown humans was part of the hourly routine.

I always got a kick out of the things my patients would say. They included, “You look like a house on wheels.” One woman just said, “holy shit!” when I walked in the room. Another sweet and slightly confused man who I took care of for five days straight would rub my belly and say “six days left” then “five days left” as each day was a countdown to my due date. From some, the rubbing of my belly would be quite weird or intrusive but this man was so sweet down to his soul that it was nothing but precious. Plus, it was better than “holy shit” or “you look like a house on wheels.” I’ll take my wins where I can get them.

I expected Winona (the name we had already chosen for our baby girl) to be late. Hutch was two weeks late even with an induction. I wanted so badly to have Winnie arrive on her own time. We set an induction date for June 20th. I was bound and determined for her to arrive before this.

My attempts at initiating labor naturally were borderline comical. Starting at 38 weeks pregnant, I did it all- lunges, curb walking, eating pineapple, using my breast pump, raspberry leaf tea, swaying around on an exercise ball, walking up hills, and sex. Sex is probably the number one way to get labor going or so said my midwife when I asked her what to do at my 39 week appointment. She said, “sex, walking, then more sex and more walking.”

On June 18th, I performed all of the above, some of them twice. Yes, two pineapples. Yes, two sexes.

It worked! On 5am on Juneteenth and Father’s Day, I started to feel true labor pains. Hallelujah!

Winona would be born 13 hours later at 5:59 pm. It was a perfect birth experience with Michael and my sister Jessi at my side. The birth team I had at Gundersen Hospital was exceptional and helped make the whole experience incredibly fun.

Winnie came out crying at full volume for 10 minutes or more. Michael and I looked at each other like, “Eeks, we forgot about this part.”

I loved her immediately. I had already loved her but something about her coming into this world loud and proud as a robust 8lb 6oz female with a full head of hair and lots of strength made me so excited to be her mom and watch her take on life full steam ahead. Watch out world, Winnie is here.

Exactly two months before Winnie was born, we welcomed our niece Riley into the world. Just as I was with her two sons, I got to be with my sister during the birth of their beautiful daughter.

My sister is my best friend; she always has been. We are only a year apart in age. Jess and I are so excited to raise daughters together and have them be close in a similar way that we were… or maybe they’ll fight and hate each other. I guess one never knows!

Chapter 5: Neighbor John

For the last three years, Neighbor John has been a prominent person in our daily life. He is our downstream neighbor at the boathouse. John died on July 6th. After he died, I spent some time writing about his dynamic life. I will share some disjointed tidbits from those writings here.

John was 87 years young at the time of his death on July 6, 2022, or as John said at his recent birthday party-  “29 for the third time” as he wore one dangly earring because “that’s something a 29 year old would do”.

The boathouse community at Latsch has a vibrant and tenacious history. It is a place where outliers, independents, creatives, rebels, heartbroken and soulful individuals have landed and often stayed. John was one of those. His controversial life led him away from mainstream society and straight to the river. John was gay and lived in a community of Christian Brothers until his early forties. In 1978, John left the Christian Brothers community, came out of the closet, and found the river. John later writes this as the last line in his own obituary, “The love experienced by the gay people God creates is God’s loving gift to them, a gift to be appreciated, enjoyed, and celebrated.”

John would stay as a resident on Latsch Island and more specifically Wolf Spider Island (the lower portion of Latsch and the part of the island that remains off the grid) until his death. John documented life on the river thoroughly. He was observant and thoughtful. He marked down water levels and knew what ducks were mates. He loved the birds. He protected swallow nests at all costs and fed the ducks while providing them areas to reside by tying floating logs off his boathouse.

He was a man of independence and routine. John was an advocate and a thinker. He often wrote controversial but important letters in the Winona Post about how harmful religious hypocrisy can be and how the current teachings of Catholicism are dangerous to the development of gay kids. John attended protests to stand up for his strong beliefs. At the age of 86, John counter-protested at an anti-abortion protest. At the end of the day, he was the only counter-protester remaining.

John always made Christmas cards that had a picture of the river or an eagle or ducks or some other form of river wildlife on them. He would go to the library to print these off and then would fold them into a card and write on them. He also gave Hutch a homemade birthday card made in the same way for his first and second birthdays. He had a special place in his heart for Hutch, and Hutch loved to wave out the window to John or yell to him from our dock.

John was dynamic and true to himself. He was a simple living man with complex thoughts. He loved the river, the wildlife, and the small circle of people he lent his time and wisdom to. I am so honored we were a part of knowing and loving him. Our family of four went to visit him the day before his death on July 6th. The last words I said to him were, “I love you John.” His to me, “I love you too.”

Also, and this is something I am so thankful for, my upstream neighbor Gina has spent the previous couple of years talking with John to document his life and the history he carries within the boathouse community. She will have a podcast coming out this fall to share this meaningful work. You can follow along with this in the following spaces: www.patreon.com/ginafavano or on Instagram @backchannelradio

Chapter 6: Fridays, Buzz Off

Everyone is out there yelling “TGIF” and glorifying Fridays like it brings nothing but sunshine and rainbows and delicious margaritas with salted rims. Fridays got a little weird for us though. If you work in healthcare or have any superstitious bones in your body, you know that unfortunate things happen in threes. I work in healthcare and have a tiny pinky toe bone that harbors superstition, so of course, the power of threes reared its mighty head for us.

On Friday, June 17, Hutch awoke from a nap and was unable to walk. He tried and limped with both legs and cried and stopped… for multiple hours. This is very outside of his personality. When I prodded around to feel for pain in his legs, he withdrew them both as if they were sore. As you may remember, he recently broke his right leg. This pain was different- generalized and in both legs. My nurse experiences led me to think of all the bad things- Guillian Barre Syndrome and Lymes Disease being at the top of the list. We took him to Urgent Care. They did all the necessary tests- all negative. Whew! He was walking normally by the next day. Perhaps a case of growing pains? Apparently, this is a real diagnosis. I found it on Mother Mayo’s website, so it must be true.

By the next Friday, Winnie was five days old. I was living in a headspace short on sleep and in the land of the baby blues. That night, Winnie began to grunt with her breathing- each exhale a grunt. I counted her respirations- over 70 breathes a minute. My intuition told me something was up, but my sleep deprived noggin made me question myself. At 2:30am, we decided to take her to the ER. She spiked a fever there of 102. At only five days old, a fever that high means they have to run every test in the book. They did just that.

She eventually needed some oxygen, antibiotics, and fluids. Her diagnosis was never definitive as all the tests came back negative. The important thing was that she improved. By Monday, we were back home with our baby girl.

Are you ready for Friday #3? I’m not. Friday #3 involves another Urgent Care visit for a baseball sized blood clot emerging from the lady parts of yours truly. Yes, baseball sized. Being a woman sucks sometimes. The Supreme Court has exacerbated that sentiment exponentially.

And on Friday #4, we decided Michael should stay in bed. The End.

Chapter 7: Grateful

Thanks for hanging in there. I hope I didn’t lose too many people at Supreme Court or baseball sized blood clot because this is the part where I acknowledge all the good stuff.

The last three months have involved life and death and illness and baby blues and lots of change and new responsibilities. It has also included laughter, fulfillment, milestones, and inescapable joy. The people in our lives have a lot to do with the latter.

When Winnie was in the hospital, I went two floors down to see my coworkers. I didn’t expect this but seeing them made me cry instantly. All of the tears I carried from that day of constant tests, pokes, and interventions fell on the shoulder of my coworker Elizabeth as she held me in a hug.

I felt so safe with these people, like I knew they could carry my stress and sadness. We do it every day at work, and these coworkers and dear friends of mine do it with such honesty and love. They were my safe place.

Later that night, my coworker Karly brought me all the snacks, Tylenol, and Ibuprofen a mama could need. My other coworker Elizabeth and her husband Andy brought us their own clothes so we didn’t have to be dirtballs for three days. Their delivery also included snacks. Our needs and wants were more than met.

When we got home from the hospital, we were greeted with a fridge, freezer, and cupboard full of food. My friend Katy did this and she did it big- ice cream, chips, guacamole, fruit, all the fixings for s’mores, and the list goes on. This friend of mine since high school knows me deeply… as evidenced by the cotton candy ice cream.

The gratitude list goes on. Grandma and Papa brought us dinner on our first night home from Winnie’s birth. Our upstream neighbor Marla made me an herbal bath mix to use postpartum. My aunt Arlette tended to the animals while we were gone. My parents checked on the animals too and took Hutch for multiple days at a time… twice. My parents have also helped with nearly every project going on at our new place- roofing the shed, cleaning up scrap metal, cleaning up brush, etc. I often think we’d be lost without them.

My friend Kelly checked in frequently just to remind me she was there to talk when I needed it most. 

Good people have been our greatest blessing. To all of you, thank you.

Epilogue

So, that’s my book! The titles I am playing with include Fridays Suck: Where’s My Margarita, Life as a House on Wheels, Sex Works & Other Induction Wisdom, When John and Arlas Meet in Heaven, and Having the Best Grandparents and Other Gardening Hacks. I guess it depends on what section of the library I’m going for… TBD.

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The Warm Glow

We build a fire from the scraps that built our home. We smile in it’s warm glow… If that’s not the metaphor I need right now, I don’t know what is.

We are in the midst of wild times. Trust me, my maternity leave ended in the thick of a global pandemic. I had to trade in the comforts of my mom robe and slippers for evening shifts donned in scrubs and uncertainty. But tonight, I don’t work, and tonight, my husband built a fire for our little family of three: a fire fueled by the unusable scraps, the broken pieces, and the unnecessary slices of a former whole. In less metaphorical language- he was burning up the leftover trim.

I do this thing sometimes where I try to capture moments with mental snapshots. I focus on the present and all the tangible pieces it provides- the warm glow on Michael’s face, the still but crisp air when I step away from the fire, the variety of colors that the flames provide- darker at the base and lighter as it rises, how Michael set up the chairs on pieces of wood so they won’t sink into the mud, our boot imprints in that mud, the outline of our boathouse over the still water, the way the lights of Winona glare through the cottonwood trees, the secure feeling of holding Hutch close to me as he sleeps so peacefully in my arms.

I started this practice of capturing mental snapshots years ago when Michael and I were traveling around the world. We didn’t have cellphones to capture every second, and I didn’t want to forget how good some of those moments felt or smelled or looked or sounded. It’s now become a form of meditation, a source of calm in wild times.

I am a nurse. I talk to a patient about his upcoming surgery as he coughs on my face. He later has a fever. After this shift, I go home to sleep next to my husband and baby. A nearly debilitating amount of fear accompanies that experience.

Did I mention that this is a crazy time? I’m sure you’ve noticed. It’s uncertain and scary. It’s also many other things. Let us not forget that we are still very much alive. I still sit in front of a warm fire. I cuddle my smiling baby. I watch the birds migrate right outside my front windows. I read books unrelated to the chaos. I drive my boat under the moonlight on my way home from work. Sometimes, less preferably, I drive my boat in the freezing rain on my way home from work. This is a crazy time but there’s beauty too. Believe it or not, sorrow and joy are not mutually exclusive.

We build a fire of the scraps that built our home. We smile in it’s warm glow. The pandemic will pass. It will not pass without some loss. We have been forced to strip down- to only buy the basics, to eliminate our social calendar, to limit our interactions to only our household (and if you’re not doing this one yet, you must; it’s critical), to go nowhere or do nothing with our extra time, to just sit by the fire or watch the birds migrate.

We will be changed. Things that seemed to matter before may not so much matter again; they may become mere scraps of our newly built selves. This pandemic will pass. We will sit by a fire again with all the ones that we love. We will burn the parts of a former self  that no longer serve the foundation of a good and meaningful life. We will smile in it’s glow.

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It Takes A Village

Belonging. Love. Acceptance. No matter what human you come across, that human desires each of these things. We all do. The crabby coworker, the drunk uncle, the friend who never returns your calls, the introvert, the extrovert, that guy in The White House who tweets nonsensical criticisms, and everyone you love or despise, they all want these: belonging, love, and acceptance. I will refer to these three desires as “a village”.

In 2018 until the spring of 2019, over 300 tents accumulated in a small area alongside Highway 55 in Minneapolis. These tents became a village of homeless people who now made a place they could call home. I drove past this community on my way to work and often pondered the good and the bad of a place like this. Of course, living in a tent in winter was unsafe, drug use was prevalent, and sanitation was challenging. However, people who once felt alone and vulnerable to dangers on the street now had a village- people nearby that would support them, check in on them, or simply accept them. I get it.

After passing the hundreds of tents and pondering a life experience outside of my own, I get to work. I’ve been a nurse for eight years now and four of them have been in the area of rehabilitation- rehab of trauma, stroke, burns, amputations, spinal cord injury, etc. I have found that the two factors that most contribute to quick progress and good outcomes are these: the patient’s health prior to injury (the healthier then, the better they heal now) and their village or the amount of support and involvement that surrounds them now. Do they have a horde of family or friends or at least one or two tried and trues that check in daily, bring food, decorate their room in photos and cards, make them laugh or let them cry in company? Without doubt, that patient will heal better and faster.


Belonging. Love. Acceptance. Having a village and contributing to one too. These are human necessities. Forget our modern society’s idea of necessities- a big house, new car, or big paycheck. I’ll take my little floating home, rusty old truck, and part time schedule any day. It’s the village I can’t live without. I need my family, my friends, and my neighbors to stay sane, healthy, and quite literally afloat. My baby boy needs them too.

I gave birth to Hutch on January 9. On the evening of January 11, it was time to go home. I fed him at the hospital as Michael packed up our stuff and brought in the carseat. After Hutch was fed and bundled up, I put him in the carseat. Eager to get on the road, Michael quickly fastened the carseat latch at Hutch’s chest, and the plastic latch broke. Michael tried to repair it to no avail. He showed the nurses. After they asked why the latch looked melted (part of Michael’s repair attempt), they told us we would need to get a new one. Michael drove to WalMart (a store we recently vowed to boycott which is a whole other story) to get a new carseat. An hour later, Michael was back. We opened the “new” carseat and put Hutch in it. It wreaked of cigarette smoke… WTF. We ruefully continued with our departure, hurrying home to get Hutch out of this cigarette basin as soon as possible.


What Michael and I did not know is that the river level had risen two feet in that single day. Our life on the water revolves around the attitude of the river and for the last five days, our focus was diverted to meeting and loving our little boy. We forgot to check in with Ol’ Man River. The river height was 10.8 feet this day when it usually sits around 7 feet.

Ice dams had caused the rise. As we carried Hutch across the island in the dark in 12 degree weather, we came upon the flooded center portion of the island. One of our neighbors had left a canoe for himself and the other islanders to traverse this section. Hutch very quickly had his first canoe ride. We came upon another flooded portion. We didn’t have our headlamps but the moon was full. We thought we could walk this part. I had my knee high boots on; Michael did not but felt fine getting his shoes and pants wet. We went separate ways, each believing one way would be better than the other. We both got soaked. The water went past our knees, into my boots, and after this, we could not wait to get into our warm little home.

Another unexpected circumstance greeted us as we opened the door to our boathouse. The batteries had drained down to nothing, and the usually cozy boathouse was sitting at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. I wanted to cry. I was exhausted and holding my bundled and hungry baby while feeling like the worst mom to ever walk the planet. First, he had to ride in that disgusting carseat. Now, we didn’t even have a warm home for him.


It was 7pm when we got to our cold boathouse. It would take the rest of the night to charge the batteries and reheat our home. In that moment, we were wet and without warm shelter, but we were not without our village. We could have traversed the island again to stay with our land-dwelling relatives or we could walk the 30 feet to our neighbor John’s house.

We called John. As always, he was there for us. He happily put us up for the night- a night that involved many instances of baby cries, lots of breastfeeding- something I was still getting used to and was quite the process, and a full takeover of his main room with a bassinet set up, diaper supplies, etc. We were welcomed and warmed.

I recently read a book by Sebastian Junger titled “Tribe”. It discussed the value of a village and the detrimental effects of not having one. As always with books read, I wrote down some of my favorite quotes.

The following two quotes ring true to me as I recall comfortably sitting on Neighbor John’s couch feeding Hutch as he watches the Tennessee Titans upset the Ravens in the divisional playoff game:

“Some people are generous. What made him different was he had taken responsibility for me.”

“Robert Frost famously wrote that home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”


In an increasingly individualistic society, I choose to rebel in small ways. I choose to be vulnerable and allow others to do the same, to keep my door open and lack hesitation in entering the open door of another, to live minimally and buck the culture of consumption, and to share experiences, stories, and life with a village of people both similar to and different than myself.

I choose to raise a son in this ever-growing village of love, belonging, and acceptance. I hope to allow him the priviledge of knowing a plethora of human experiences outside of his own. It takes a village. It always has.

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Moving Port

It is 6:45am on Saturday, August 24, 2019: Day #2 of driving Neighbor Girl down the river to her new port of Latsch Island, Winona, MN. We beached our sturdy steel houseboat on a sandbar last night near Mile Marker 810. One lock and dam down, four to go.

The river treated us kindly yesterday. Perhaps she feared that I would flood her with my tears. We left our home yesterday. More specifically, we drove our houseboat out of her home port. We left Watergate Marina in Saint Paul, Minnesota- our home base for the last four years.

We bought our houseboat there five years ago, left the country to travel to 13 others assured that in six months, we would have this 142 square feet of living space to exist on for the summer. One summer of living aboard turned into a fall, a winter, a spring, and three more years just like that. Michael and I joyfully resided on this tiny floating home together tucked away in a quiet park marina along the floodplains of Saint Paul where even the locals don’t know we exist. (Trust me, getting an Uber pickup had about a 45% success rate.) We continued to exist there purposefully and peacefully with eight other boats year-round and countless more during the seasonable and vibrant summers.

During these last four years of life, I worked at Hennepin County Medical Center at a job that I loved for challenging every part of me and showing me the hardest and most beautiful parts of humanity. Michael and I spent weekends building our cabin up north. We got married. We made a baby. We made a whole family in this marina and some very best friends; I’m looking at you tugboat and sailors. So, as we leave port with Ken and Roger tossing our lines, it’s no wonder that the Mighty Mississippi fears I may flood her waters with these unsupressable tears that well up from the pit of my gut and burn my heart on their way up to my pathetic sniffling face.

Watergate Marina is beautiful on this day- a sky as blue as I’ve ever known it and a sun that casts down an easy 70 degrees.

Video: Leaving Port

As we slowly leave the marina, I hand the wheel to Michael and spend a minute on the stern (slightly embarrassed by the puddle I’ve become) as our home harbor disappears from sight. Michael joins me, and I tell him, “I’m not sad, I’m just so so grateful.” He hugs me and says, “me too.” We agree that there is nothing more we could have wanted out of these last four years. For us, they were perfect. When I finally clear my eyes to look up at Michael, he has two big tears living on his cheeks- a rare sight on his typically cheerful and mischievious face.

Now, on this Saturday morning, we revel in our first day of river boat journey success and last night’s very primal joy of sitting along the river’s shores with our feet in the sand and a warm campfire glow across our faces. Today, we are fresh-faced and confident going in to the biggest test that trusty Neighbor Girl has had to face in her last four years with us and likely in her 49 years of existence: the Lake Pepin crossing.

Lake Pepin is where the Mississippi River becomes it’s widest and deepest for a stretch of 22 miles. Lake Pepin widens to a distance of two miles and has an average depth of 21 feet and a maximum depth of 60 feet.

For those of you who have not done much river travel, I will enlighten you on the treachery of wing dams. The Mississippi River is lined with them. Wing dams are human constructs that were built during the 1930s and ’40s with the purpose of crafting a deeper and more reliable navigation channel. These wing dams were built prior to the present day lock and dam system as a means to control the flow of the river. Wing dams extend partway across a river channel and often go undetected depending on the depth of the water at that time. If the water is low enough, you will see a line across the water that delineates a smooth water surface upstream and a choppy water texture downstream of that wing dam. It takes a practiced eye to identify these.

Now, on to the treacherous part. Wing dams are unmarked. Boats and boat engines are frequently wrecked by these shallow lurking structures. The good news? Wing dams do not exist within the main channel which is marked by red and green steel buoys. “Red, Right, Return” means that the red marker will be on your right as you return north. Since we are traveling downstream, the green is on our right and the red is on our left, or so we expected…

At the head of Lake Pepin where the water widens considerably, the reassuring red and green channel markers suddenly become non-existent. Things had been going very well so far. With a high level of confidence, I thought, “no big deal, the whole width of the river must be open for business.” We didn’t bother to check the river charts that Michael had downloaded on his phone. Within 15 minutes of cruising cockily along the Minnesota shore, I blazed our little houseboat right into a submerged sandbar. The engines grumbled as they tried to process the run-in with sand and thick weeds. My relaxed mood shifted to “shit, shit, shit.” This was not the spot to lose an engine.. or two. Thank God we have two. I inched out of this disaster and let the engines relax. They sounded gruff for ten minutes before regaining their deep calming purr. We lucked out. Michael checked his river charts and sure enough, the elusive submerged bar was marked on there. “What the f***. If that’s been known long enough to include on a chart, why isn’t there a frickin’ marker by it?!” I exclaimed this in defense of my sweet old boat and dented captain’s pride. Michael laughed, and we chugged on.

We had 22 miles of Lake Pepin ahead of us; three hours of white crested waves beating our steel hull from all sides. We were fortunate that the day’s wind came from ahead as Neighbor Girl does not fair well in a side wind. A side wind of today’s speeds would have forced us to sit this day out, but with a head wind, we pressed on. We quickly learned that both of our bilge pumps were in working order… whew. Water was leaking in from somewhere, or everywhere as the decks were fully rinsed with each wave. Thankfully, our pumps had no trouble keeping up and expelling this intake. Neighbor Girl was doing great.

What I did not expect from our Lake Pepin crossing, besides that disruptive submerged sandbar at the start, was that the main channel crosses through the middle rather than along the shoreline; this caused us to be nearly a mile from shore for most of the venture. With the wild wind splashing from ahead, mysterious dark waters for a mile on all sides, and migrating birds overhead, we felt like true river nomads now! We cranked the music, danced at the helm, and celebrated feeling free and dry in our little moving home.

Later that night, following a celebratory dinner at Slippery’s Bar in Wabasha, we ran our boat aground once again in an attempt to beach up for the night. Neighbor Girl made it out of grounding incident #2 unscathed, and we found another, more perfect spot to make dinner and watch the sun set behind the distant bluffs.

Video: Beach Camping

As night fell, a beaver played near our boat. We did our best to keep quiet and observe his antics, but he caught a glimpse of us, slapped his tail, and dove smoothly away.

It is now Day #3 of this river boat adventure. We wake just south of Alma, WI to find that we have no maple syrup for the pancakes I have been dreaming of all night. These are the things that matter at sea- a good warm meal in the morning and a cold hard drink at night.

Since my little growing fetus disallows me from the cold hard night drink, I am living for these warm morning meals. My husband must love me or something, because we backtrack a mile to Alma’s city dock with the mission of maple syrup acquisition and a propane tank refill. We get distracted by good conversation and fresh pretzels at The Alma Bakery where we are introduced to a 50% off closing sale at The Junk Market down the street. Two hours later, we reboard our boat with propane, fresh pretzels, four wooden folding chairs, a canvas painting of a ship, some sort of antique cutting tool, and with the baker himself for more conversations on scheming and dreaming. The baker didn’t end up departing with us. I suppose he had more pretzels to make after we cleaned him out. The syrup never made it on board either. We are far too distractable to ever become pirates, at least productive ones.

We left Alma at 11:15am, made it through Lock and Dam 5 at 1:12pm, and through the final lock, Lock and Dam 5a, at 2:35pm. We were greeted on the other side of the lock by two boats- one with my parents and the other with the Brandon family. It was a lovely welcoming. We made a small parade to my parent’s cabin where my sister and more family boarded for the final stretch to Latsch Island.

We arrived at The Wheel House, our future floating home under construction, at 4:45pm. We docked with a bang… literally. Michael drove flawlessly up until this climatic point when he made a small but very audible dent in the side of our new boathouse. The excitement got the best of him. I’m taken back to over four years ago when we took Neighbor Girl out for her first trip. With a fresh coat of paint, newly placed engines, and not a bit of knowledge on how to drive this big box of steel with twin engines and no keel, we enthusiastically headed for open water. As brave as ever, we felt like two free birds exploring a world of new possibilities; it was a very familiar feeling that resided in us throughout these last three days. Eventually, on this day four years ago, Neighbor Girl’s maiden voyage came to an end; it was time to dock her back in the slip. Michael took the wheel, used both the wheel and the two throttles to steer (We later learned that this was the beginner’s mistake. You must only use the throttles and no wheel if you hope to park without incident.), and not-so-gently rammed in to the bowsprit of our neighbor’s much nicer boat. Luckily, only ours came out with a scar- a four foot gash through the cabin’s port side. Neighbor Girl’s beauty scar still remains today.

The Wheel House now has an upstream scar to match. These two little river homes now live side by side, each with an imperfection to remind us of the joy in our wildest ideas and new beginnings. May we never be ashamed of these scars or scared to make new ones; they each tell a great story. May we continue to live our lives being too novice, unintimidated, a little stupid maybe, and much too eager in all the new and unusual waters that come our way. May we sometimes forget the syrup and come home with pretzels and a new friend instead.

Video: Celebratory Champagne

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When You Have To Boat To Your Boat

“Whatchya writing about?”, says my husband as he shaves his face over the sink while sitting next to me on our bed. There are no distinguished spaces here. It is one room containing all the aspects of a home… except for no laundry machine or any sort of closet. I tell him, “the flooding”. He says, “whoa, that’s a biggins.” “I know; where do I start?”, I say, “at ten feet, twelve feet, eighteen feet?” Michael says, “Start at the bottom of the river.”

I still didn’t know where to start so here we are. I began by giving you the visual of Michael inches away from me at 1:12 am while I sit cozy in bed tip-tapping away on the keyboard. We have three candles lit because our power is out. It’s been out for 22 days now. We’re borrowing Neighbor Mike’s generator because ours fell in the river last night at 4am. I know it was 4am because I wake every time the generator turns off. I’ve turned in to one of those people that has to sleep to the sound of a fan, except in my case: a generator. The whole dock hums of them at night. I met a neighbor for dinner on the dock yesterday and we yelled across the table to hear each other over the loud drone- it was lovely. Anyway, here we are. We’re off grid. Our generator is in pieces to “dry out” on our boat’s floor. There is six inches of snow on our dock. We have to kayak to and from our boat to traverse the flood waters. And Michael shaves his face at 1am while I try to process these last few weeks of Minnesota madness.

Spring isn’t always like this. We usually don’t get flooded out of our parking lot. Our power has never been turned off. We’ve never received an email from the city to evacuate our floating homes due to major flood levels… how strange that none of us checked our email that month.

One month ago, the marina started buzzing with the information that this would be a year of historic flood levels. Would it be something like 2014- a river crest of 20.13 feet? Many neighbors were familiar with this year and smiled as they shared stories from it. It was one year before Michael and I made the marina our home. Could it be something akin to 1965, the highest waters here in recorded history? The river crested at 26.01 feet then.

I’ll quickly brief you on the river levels. The river depth here in Saint Paul, MN is about 9 feet deep. There’s a ton of history on how the 9 foot navigable channel was established. The Upper Mississippi River was not always navigable, not even close, but humans have knack for manipulating nature to suit our wants. I read a book recently that brilliantly goes through the history of our local river: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I highly recommend it: “The River We Have Wrought” by John O. Anfinson. Anyway, back to river levels. The action stage is 10 feet, the flood stage is 14 feet, the moderate flood stage is 15 feet, and the major flood stage is 17 feet.

In the week leading up to the river’s rise, the harbor’s waters remained frozen, and the summer’s boats lined the parking lot just waiting for the spring thaw and eventual release to their dock slips. This year, this transition from dry dock to water would not happen naturally or smoothly. It would require a 65 foot barge pushed by a tug to break up the frozen ice. It would require volunteers to chip away at snow and ice surrounding the stands that held the seasonal boats on land. It would require hundreds of different maneuvers to get the seaworthy boats (boats that can float) in water and the not so seaworthy ones on high ground. The parking lot was going to flood, maybe six feet high. This meant that all the boats safely stored on the lot for winter would not be so safe anymore; they would be floating away… and fast.

This year’s flooding was already different from that of 2014. In 2014, the flooding happened in June- a rather pleasant time of the year to hassle with extra water. Now, it’s March; it’s cold and everything’s frozen. We are understanding these things: we’ll soon be off grid as the power will be turned off before the water reaches the breaker box, we’ll be kayaking to and from our boat as the parking lot is sure to flood significantly, and if all the boats on shore can’t get in the now frozen harbor, they will float away, sink, or surely be damaged. I’m not sure we’ll be telling stories of this flood with a smile on our faces.

Letters were written to the city officials, and the marina acted quickly and with minimal rest. They got that barge to come in and break up the marina’s main channel. Volunteers came forward in impressive numbers to break up the ice within the dock slips and where the barge could not reach. The marina employees worked tirelessly to slip in 48 boats in a span of three days. The boats would be safe.

The water rose quickly, and when we arrived from a weekend away, the liveaboards were in full flood mode. A dinghy dock was established, Neighbor Sam purchased a new motor for his dinghy while Neighbor Mike purchased a new generator, Neighbor Roger lended me his neighbor kayak for the flood season, Neighbor Sam gifted us gimbaled oil lamps for the weeks of power outage to come, and Mystery Neighbor delivered my rain boots directly to Neighbor Girl’s door. As evidenced over and over again, lots of looking out for each other seems to happen here when conditions aren’t fabulous.

Weeks have come and gone now- more than three of them. We are still off grid. Roger’s still letting me use his kayak. We’re getting our day time warmth from the sun (if it’s out that day) and our night-time warmth primarily from candles or our solo propane heater that kicks off frequently for no good reason. We gave up trying to power our fridge, so we’re consuming a hardy amount of dry goods and making more frequent trips to Mickey’s Diner.

We are caught up to the present now. Just when we got settled in to this off-grid flood life, the 5th biggest April snowfall on record blasted us with nearly 10 inches. As temperatures dropped in to the twenties and the wind picked up to 20 knots sustained and 51 gusting, our generator landed in the river at 4am. Michael retrieved it, but it hasn’t been able to be revived. We woke up to one cold boat being tossed back and forth by the unrelenting winds. With my winter coat on, I packed a bag with three days worth of clothes. I impulsively determined that I would find somewhere to stay until this wintery spell seceded. I stormed off the boat in my knee high rain boots in to the snow and across the flood waters. In that moment, I thought I’d be gone until summer.

My rage did not last long. That night, I was back on the boat with my three days of belongings put away and a borrowed generator for heat. It is now 1:12 am. I’m cozy in bed, loving this boat again in all her resilience and charm. “Whatchya writing about?”, he says… I write without really knowing I guess. I start with one small thing, event, person, and I wring it free of all the sensations it has to offer. I write to understand this life all over again; to feel it fully. It goes too fast otherwise. I write to share the beauty in life and the funny in it. I write to honor the very essence of living stripped from all the extras. “The flooding,” I say. I’ll start there. Of course, I start the story talking about him. I can’t help it; it’s just where I feel the most.

If you’re wondering how we (Saint Paul, MN in the year of 2019) ended up in the historical flood contest. The river peaked at 20.19 feet. Yes, 20.19 feet in 2019; I bet you won’t forget that now. It’s the seventh highest in recorded history. The river was higher (and colder!) than 2014, but not as high as in 1965. What a year to have two floating homes on this mighty Mississippi.. uffda. We’re not out of the woods yet, but so far, both are surviving. I wouldn’t say thriving but definitely surviving; I’ll take it.

Since I started this story with Michael, I’ll end with him too. I like to bring things full circle. Since Michael and I work evenings and not always the same evenings, the commute home during flood season has involved a kayak trip from dinghy dock to boat between the hours of midnight and 2am, either alone or together. At first, I though I would dread this after a tiring shift at the hospital. It morphed in to one of the favorite parts of my day (except when that April blizzard hit; screw kayaking in that mess). The water was the most calm at night. It looked like glass, and the moon shine would light our path home. On my nights alone, Michael would always text me things like, “wear your life jacket” or “paddle over the parking lot; it’s more shallow there”. We also debated nightly on which was the best exit point at the dock. I liked to venture straight to our dock finger where a ladder dipped in the water to meet me. Michael preferred to go up the walkway at the dock’s end; it was a gradual slope up and one he insisted was less risky. The water is still icy cold, so any fall in could be dangerous.

One morning, I woke up to Michael blasting through the boat’s door in only his underwear. I didn’t have my contacts in or glasses on, so this was just a strange, blurry vision at first. He had fallen in the water, swam to the dock, got assistance from our neighbors to fish the kayak out, and then stripped his wet clothes off and hung them outside to dry. (The clothes were later found to be frozen stiff.) I couldn’t help but to laugh at him as this blurry image shared his story. “And you always tell me to be careful,” I said, “how ironic.” So, for the official record of Mississippi River fall-ins over four years of life aboard: you can tally Michael’s at a whopping three, while I sit cockily here at zero.

April 2019 Stats To Remember:

  • The 7th highest river crest with a height of 20.19 feet.
  • The 5th largest April snowfall in history.
  • An astounding jump in the river fall-in count with Chelsi securing a 0-3 lead. Booyah.
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“Do You Know What You’re Doing?” (the tower tale)

So, Michael just bought a fire tower today…
That’s correct. For a whopping five dollars paid to the Wisconsin DNR, Michael purchased a 116 foot lookout fire tower- the kind that looms above the tree line to see as far as the birds. I woke up this morning to Michael shaking me awake and saying, “five minutes left (in the online auction) and the tower is ours!” I try to process this insane project with my mind still halfway in dreamland… I cannot. We watch as the minutes tick away (Michael excitedly, I with a sense of impending doom), and then suddenly we own a humongous fire tower somewhere in Wisconsin. Michael shares his thrill in a text thread where he starts recruiting his buddies for all weekends over the next 90 days (the time allowed to remove the tower before we get fined). Sam immediately responds, “Nope”; this is definitely a logical response. Calli volunteers Chris to which Chris readily agrees with the clause “just don’t kill me Mike!”. Neighbor Sam has been encouraging this idea all along and told me yesterday “if Michael buys that tower, I’m in”. The answers are varied, and I don’t know what to think.

I think back to cutting down the looming tree limb at the boathouse spot. The neighbor downstream asked Michael, “do you know what you’re doing?”. I know Michael well enough to know he said, “oh yeah, this will be no problem” or something that similarly instills a maybe false but certainly reassuring confidence. I hope I’m not revealing too many of my husband’s secrets here. I haven’t figured out if he truly believes he can do anything, or if he just wants us to buy in to what’s happening here. Either way, the b.s. he’s putting out has yet to fail us. I wouldn’t have half of these adventures without him.

You may be wondering what one does with a 116 foot lookout tower. From my understanding, one looks out from it and that’s pretty much the gist. I’m sure there will be stories to come on how this massive structure makes it’s way from Eau Claire, Wisconsin to Two Harbors, Minnesota. I can’t quite wrap my head around the process but Michael claims he’s got it all figured out… typical.

As Michael’s off to the bank to get that five dollars where it needs to be, I’m here writing and reminiscing. I think about the question “do you know what you’re doing?” as so logically asked by our neighbor. I wonder now, do any of us really know what we’re doing? If we truly know what we’re doing each step of the way, are we doing it right? If there’s no challenge or uncertainty, are we doing enough? I can imagine that the ones who’ve made waves before us- ambitious souls like Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King Jr., and Amelia Earhart- did not make waves without failure, uncertainty, and fear. One of my favorite quotes is this by Thomas Edison: “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” I’m certain that Amelia Earhart got asked over and over again, “what are you doing?”; she certainly stepped outside of the box she was put in, and controversy and fear were no match for MLK’s tenacity. Now I know that I’m comparing MK (Michael Kahl) to greats like MLK here but just go with it. Apparently, I put my husband on a pretty high pedastal. Don’t worry, I kick him in the ego once in awhile too; I believe in a balanced life.
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I scribbled out the above on the day that Michael bought the tower: August 20, 2018. Since that date, the hourglass was flipped- the tower must be down in 90 days or we will be fined ten dollars per day; that is two large extra shot lattes per day or one week’s worth of laundry at the laundromat- both washed and dried. I began to wonder- will I have to budget out coffee or clean clothes if this thing doesn’t get down in time? I wouldn’t know which to choose. I still had no idea how Michael planned to remove this looming steel structure. It was tall, heavy, and seemingly permanent in it’s place. While the tower did cost $5, I soon realized that the extras would add right on up. First, gas money. It would be a 170 mile round trip at least once per week. Also, we were finding that on more days than not, one of our two trucks wasn’t running right for one reason or the next. The removal required an insurance policy (understandably so), so Michael called our buddy Paul who also happens to be an insurance guy; he was crazy or kind or both of those enough to insure it. The work also required multiple Menards trips and a trailer that would exist in Eau Claire for three months (thanks Neighbor Sam). A storage shed rental near the removal site was also necessary, oh and time.. lots of time.

Have I said how much I love my husband? I really would do anything for the guy but this whole tower thing… it stretched my limits. One night, with the 90 day cutoff date looming and half the tower still remaining, we sat in Happy Hollow Tavern guzzling a beer and a hamburger after a cold and long day picking at the tower piece by piece. I was exhausted and thoughtlessly spilled out the sentence, “Michael, you bit off more than you can chew on this one.” He was quiet and thoughtful and said “If I could go back in time, I would have never bought it.” This sentence broke my heart. He said this in response to a fatigue and frustration that he knew I was feeling and that was inevitably rubbing off on him. He said this after a very long weekend in abnormally cold fall weather. He said this with a very hungry stomach. Michael had talked about deconstructing and reconstructing a fire tower for YEARS, multiple years. While I’m aware that this is a very odd and specific goal, it was one that never went away. Michael kept showing me towers on Craigslist, admiring towers on road trips, and dreaming about the day he would work on one. Believe it or not, I vetoed a handful of towers for sale before this one fell in our shopping cart. So when this one came along, one that was accessible by road and cost thousands of dollars less than the others, I decided to keep my mouth shut and let him live this one out, for better or worse. That is what I promised, right? “For better or worse, richer or poorer, fire tower debacle or not.” Now, here we were at Happy Hollow Tavern and Michael was confessing to the notion that this project might be over his head. I immediately wanted to backpedal, reverse my negativity, swallow that phrase “you bit off more than you can chew”, and encourage him, cheer him on, slap him on the butt and say “you got it slugger”.. or something like that.

After that brief exchange of guilt or regret or whatever, we did what all the great drunks of past and present do, we left those tortured emotions on the barstool and never looked back. Well, actually, a drunk would probably go back. Also, we’re not drunks… bad analogy. Anyway, we moved forward and moved forward fast- 90 days to remove a tower with no heavy equipment. The tower came down the old fashioned way- bolt by bolt, piece by piece, in both good and foul weather. It had too, or I was going to have to give up extra-shot lattes and clean laundry.

Our 90 day cutoff date was on the horizon when Michael got a phone call. A woman from the DNR office called to say, “We checked the site and it looks like you’re making a real honest effort”… she extended the deadline. Magically, we had three more months. With a ton of help from Neighbor Sam, I am happy to report that the tower did come down in it’s entirety. With climbing harnesses strapped on, ladders rigged with ropes, tool belts tied tight, a grounds crewman or crewwoman to detach and load up the beams, and Kwik Trip pizza for lunch always, the tower removal was a complete surprise.. I mean success. With the extended deadline by the grace of the Wisconsin DNR, the fire tower was removed in time and somehow, someway, without injury. I think back to the night when Michael said “I would have never bought it”… he had never said anything like that before that or after that. I know he never meant that for himself; he meant it only for my sake. He knew I wasn’t utterly jazzed up about the tower idea and the takedown took longer than planned. But Michael, he was never intimidated, never scared, never uninspired. Michael dug in to this project like he does everything else- tenaciously and without regret. While I outwardly hated (not to sugarcoat it or anything) this tower from the beginning, Michael loved everything about it- the challenge, the planning and forethought it required, the heights, the often inclement weather, and the physicality and guts required to reach, unbolt, tie, and maneuver while strung up high in the sky. I have to admit something here: the tower project was a lot of things but the most unavoidable of those things- it was a lot of fun.

At the time Michael purchased his, the Wisconsin DNR attempted to sell eight fire towers. They only sold one. That’s right. Only one human in Wisconsin and the surrounding states decided they would buy a fire tower; that human is my husband. So what do you say when someone asks, “do you know what you’re doing”? I think it’s less about what you say and more about what you do; you do it anyway- tenaciously and without pause, without regret, without internalizing the doubt that the world, and even your wife, might eagerly offer. You might only know what you’re doing when you find 10,000 ways to do it wrong, or you might get lucky- your big humongous looming steel tower might just come down without a hitch.

After I read this blog to Michael, he informed me that, “I don’t really like Thomas Edison though.” When I asked him why, he let me know that Edison didn’t actually invent the lightbulb… I’ll have to fact check that later. Michael went on to share a favorite quote of his that he finds more applicable to his experience, and I have to agree- it’s better than Edison’s. His preferred quote is this: “Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement” as stated by writer and activist Rita Mae Brown. So, allow me to revise my ending: You might only know what you’re doing when you find 10,000 ways to do it wrong, or you might get lucky- your big humongous looming steel tower might just come down with a bit of bad judgement, a lot of experience, and seemingly… without a hitch.

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