Amy Lu's View

When I was a kid, I was strangely obsessed with the song “Minnesota” by a band called Northern Light. 

Only I had my own version of it–“Being a Soda.”

Honestly, I can’t remember if I thought the lyrics actually were “being a soda” or if that was my intentional attempt at a parody. I think I was trying to be funny. My version of the song went something like: “Being a soda, I can almost smell the air, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, and I’m glad I don’t have any hair.” (Take that, Weird Al!)

I even made an audio recording of my performance of my version of the song (thankfully, video recording was not widely available in the mid 70’s). I remember my older brother very patiently helping me out with the tech (i.e., a tape recorder). 

Yes, two things about this anecdote demonstrate that from an early age:

1. I’ve liked to record myself and create “content”
2. I’ve wanted other people to handle all my tech needs

The song was released in 1975, but I think I was into it a little bit later–say 1978 or 79, when I was 8 or 9?

Recalling this 70’s musical gem (and cringing at the memory of my forays into the world of musical parody) seems like a fine way to celebrate Minnesota Day. 

It does feel cosmic that the only three states I’ve lived in (Wisconsin, Iowa, and now Minnesota) have had their “holidays” come up during my holiday blog challenge.

Minnesota has been my home for over 25 years. Not that there are huge environmental or cultural differences between Wisconsin and Minnesota (availability of deep fried cheese curds aside) and I live less than two hours from where I grew up, but it’s still a little weird to realize that I’ve lived in Minnesota longer than anywhere else. 

My home now is pretty different from where I grew up not because of a state border, but because of a rural compared to urban (semi-suburban) difference. We basically grew up without neighbors, and I could go days without seeing people other than my family members. 

Admittedly, I am not the most social of neighbors. I get into my daily habits and routines, and often only venture out to go running, and I do NOT stop for socializing while running. But I can usually at least see people walking around the neighborhood from the comfort of my house.

And thanks to the lovely neighbors we have who do actually invite others over and foster communication and relationships, we live in a supportive community. 

It’s more than a soda could hope for.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being backstage, waiting to go on to perform.

It’s terrifying–so much could go wrong. Depending on what type of performance I’m doing, there’s a menu of potential mishaps–I could forget my lines, or my voice could crack, or I could totally mess up my piano playing, or I could trip. 

It’s also exhilarating–so much could go right. 

At some point, I just have to trust in the preparation that I’ve done to get me there, and trust and hope that if (when) things do go wrong and/or I mess up, I (or we if it’s an ensemble endeavor) will be able to deal with them. 

It’s a leap of faith. 

Yes, in case you haven’t guessed it yet…my theme for Leap Day is Leap of Faith. (The Bruce Springsteen song popped into my head and there you go).

“It takes a leap of faith to get things going
It takes a leap of faith you gotta show some guts
It takes a leap of faith to get things going
In your heart you must trust”

Bruce Springsteen, “Leap of Faith

Accepting my current position at work was definitely a leap of faith for me. The opportunity was completely unexpected, and I had a lot of self doubt–was I up to a new challenge and level of responsibility? Now that I’m almost exactly 5 years in (Yay for a work anniversary) I’m so thankful I took the risk. I certainly have made, and continue to make mistakes, but with the help of awesome people I work with, things get figured out. 

Running a race always feels like a leap of faith for me, too–especially a marathon. But it’s not just the big races that require me to take an optimistic plunge into something that feels scary. Sometimes a short everyday run feels impossible, and I can’t imagine how I can run more than five minutes. 

Then I need to not take a leap of faith, but just a step of faith. And then another. And another. 

Leaps and steps are appealing metaphors, but I think we should consider all types of ambulation. Maybe sometimes we need a skip of faith–that feels playful. Or a hop? Like a leap but less extreme. A waltz? Gentle and graceful. And sometimes, maybe all we can is a crawl of faith.

Or a pub crawl of faith? Hey Bruce–I may have your next hit!

I’ve never been into flower gardening–it seems like way too much work (all gardening seems like too much work.)

I tend to just wear my flowers.

I wrote a rather in-depth post not too long ago (https://amyluedtke.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/flower-power/*) about my penchant for floral print clothes, focusing on an artifact from high school I still own and occasionally wear. (I wore the dress at church as service leader just last week).

I thought it would be relatively easy to create a related post in honor of Floral Design Day that just featured photos of my various floral outfits, but looking for photos always turns into more of a project than I’m expecting. Finding the photos is hard, and experiencing all the stirred up memories and emotions is harder (lovely, and funny and bittersweet.)

Dealing with photos from the pre-digital era is even more arduous. How to transfer these magical images from the mysterious substance of paper to the realm of the internet?

I actually have become rather skilled at taking digital photos of paper photos so I can post them.

I’ve been surprisingly remiss in taking selfies while I’m donning my contemporary flower fashions. I briefly considered doing a mini at-home photo shoot to get more photos (and content), but it was too cold today for me to get out of my flannel and sherpa and dress up. And I was having a no makeup day.

*Wow I realize now my original post about flower clothes was almost 3 years ago!

I recently discovered that I can make even latch hook harder than it needs to be. 

I love latch hook because it doesn’t require much brain power. Once you learn the basic hooking technique, you’re set. As Chad has said, it’s basically “yarn by numbers.” It’s definitely possible to latch hook while you’re brain is doing something else–like listening to podcasts or audiobooks, or having a conversation. 

Yes, I will sometimes expend emotional energy lamenting the quality of the yarn, or how yarn has exploded all over the house, but that doesn’t take great thought. 

The only thing that sometimes gets intellectually tricky is figuring out the pattern, and learning the key so you know what color on the canvas corresponds to what color yarn. Kits will have a chart you can follow, but I often find it hard to match the colors on the chart with the right yarn. 

I was explaining this all to my friend Patti a couple of weeks ago as I was trying to show her how to do latch hook. And she said, “So that’s why the yarn bundles have letters on them, so you can match them with the letters on the chart.” 

“No, the bundles don’t have letters on them,” I replied. 

“Isn’t that the letter here?” Patti asked, pointing to the letter. 

“No, that’s just a random…oh, wait, yeah, that is a letter. Oh, wow.” 

I’m not sure I described this situation very well, but the key takeaway is that I’ve spent a fair amount of time and thought trying to figure out what color a bundle of yarn was supposed to be and giving it the right letter code, when the letter was already on it. 

Chad laughed so hard when I described this to him, and showed him how I had actually written letters with a Sharpie above the letter that was already there. 

I’m thinking about this on No Brainer Day, as latch hook is basically a no brainer activity, that I somehow managed to turn into a some brainer activity. (Although many of the kits I do are clearly intended for children and are so simple that there is no need to have any pattern chart or any type of color or letter coding scheme–as long as you can tell blue apart from pink, you’re set). 

I could also count a post about latch hook as an observance of Retro Day–you can’t get more retro than latch hook. But I don’t have too much more to say about the “classic” nature of latch hook, other than I’m a big fan of contemporary kits that already have finished edges so you don’t have to do any sewing (or, in my case, duct taping). 

I’m sure that it’s not just latch hook that I make harder than it needs to be. How many things do I overcomplicate by simply not recognizing what is clearly there, because I’m too set in my ideas of how I think things are?

At least I was able to pivot rather quickly, and accept that the letters were indeed on the yarn bundles (although I had a set back the next day when Chad had to help me see that yes every bundle had a letter on it). While it’s likely that I’m probably oblivious to many things, I hope I can be open to being shown that I was wrong and making adjustments. 

Being willing to change after learning that I’m wrong–that really seems like a no brainer. 

This weekend I got my Walker Art Museum membership card, so I feel officially qualified to celebrate and blog about Museum Advocacy Days (although I feel like I will be appreciating more than advocating, but close enough for my blogging purposes). 

I didn’t go to a museum today, but I have plenty of photos (not all of them selfies) of various museum outings to look back on. 

I love museums. I love museums of all types–art, history, science, culture, general weirdness. I always try to get to as many museums as I can when I travel. Two especially memorable museums I’ve been to are the Museum of Sex (New York) and the now extinct National Coin-Op and Video Game Museum  in St. Louis (we went there on our honeymoon). 

I also try to take as much advantage of our local museums as I can. Repeatedly visiting the same museum can be comforting, and I even feel like I’m visiting old friends when I see the same piece of art or artifact multiple times. Although I didn’t go to a museum today, I am going to go on the record and say that I do have a goal of visiting the Weisman Art Museum and Bell Museum sometime in the near future–two local museums that I have never been to. 

I’m not a super serious or disciplined museum goer–I tend to let things wash over me. I read label copy, but not meticulously, and I certainly hit a limit for how much I can process. And I’ll admit that when it comes to art museums, I’m mostly a celebrity chaser. I gravitate towards works by artists I’ve heard of. I’m also not a fan of tours–with a real guide or audio. I just like to wander around and do things at my own pace. 

I’m happy I became a member of the Walker, but it’s often too “out there” for me. I frequently get  confused and bemused because I don’t know what’s going on with the art. I’m not above the cliched questioning of “Is this art?” and “I could do that, but I guess it’s when you’re the person who thinks of doing it first.”

I don’t know how much knowledge I’ve taken in or retained from all the museums that I’ve been to, but I do hope that some of the things I’ve experienced and learned have seeped into me and are still there, even if I don’t remember or am not aware of what I’ve learned. 

I even considered getting my Master’s degree in something that could lead to a career in museums, and took some type of museum studies class before I started Library School. I don’t remember how or why I switched from the museum world to the library world, but maybe someday I can combine my fantasy of owning a bar with owning a museum. Many museums also have restaurants and bars*, so I think I could easily put a little museum in my bar. 

I’m certainly at the age now that many of my personal artifacts have historical relevance (if not artistic merit) and could be considered museum pieces. 

*There’s no smooth way to incorporate this little anecdote in, so I’ll resort to using a footnote to say my friend Stephanie and I sat next to the actress Lili Taylor at the Walker’s bar last week! We played it cool and didn’t bother her, so there’s no photographic evidence. But I still have the song that she sings in “Say Anything” (“Joe Lies”) stuck in my head.

When I was in third grade, a teacher whom I liked very much told me that I didn’t always have to talk so loudly. 

HAPPY QUIET DAY!

Conventional wisdom might suggest that as a librarian, I’m all about the quiet. It may also suggest that as a drummer, I’m also about making as much noise as possible. 

As is often the case, this conventional wisdom misses the mark–libraries are not bastions of quiet, and librarians don’t spend their days shushing people. Well, since I work at home, I actually do spend a lot of my day trying to get StanLee to quiet down and stop barking at other dogs, and our cats, and people passing by our house, and turkeys, and other birds, and squirrels, and airplanes, and the air, etc., but I don’t think that’s what the shushing librarian stereotype is trying to capture. 

And as much as I love Animal and consider him a personal hero, I don’t tend to go all that wild with my drumming. 

I have rather conflicted feelings about quiet and noise. Or maybe I’m just seeking balance. My hearing isn’t great, and noisy restaurants can overwhelm me and make it impossible to hear what others are saying. But I also like background noise and almost always have the radio or music on. 

A noisy environment can be problematic, but I’m fortunate that I can usually deal with that–worse case scenario, I can leave. It’s much more challenging to deal with all the noisy thoughts in my head. I’m sure I’m not unique in struggling to quiet all the unfocused thoughts that race around in my head–What will I wear? What will I eat? How can StanLee be five years old already? How will I answer that work email? How can we once again have a Trump v. Biden Presidential campaign? When will I be able to get together with this friend? When will I run this week? When will I finish my latch hook? When will I get groceries? Will climate change kill us all? Will I ever get cast in a show again? What will I blog about today?

I do realize that meditation is a wonderful, powerful tool that could help me calm down these scattered, racing thoughts. I do not need to be convinced of the value of meditation, but I’m just not ready to embrace it. Why? 1) It’s work and 2) (more significantly) I just can’t make that imaginative leap to who I would be without constantly thinking and obsessing. 

During the height of the pandemic, I participated in a small group discussion and reflection class through our church that met via Zoom. It was a wonderful experience, and I still think about when our minister asked me where I went or what I did when I wanted to be quiet and reflective. I was completely stumped. I think a “Does not compute” message flashed across my forehead.

I’m not ruling out that someday I’ll be someone who’s more comfortable with the idea of inner quiet, but for now, I can resort to drumming or rely on StanLee’s barking to provide white noise for my inner monologue. 

I use the word “chip” as an umbrella term for all types of salty, crunchy snack foods–chips, crackers, pretzels, puffs, etc. And I eat a lot of them. More than I wish I did. 

So I feel like I should find it easy to write about “National Tortilla Chip Day,” but two-thirds into my holiday blog challenge, I’m feeling stumped. Maybe even overwhelmed, like a tortilla chip overloaded with toppings. 

I can see how someone could be a connoisseur of tortilla chips, and perhaps have a great deal to say about them, or about the toppings they put on them. But I basically just like anything non-meat based that I can obsessively munch on. And I usually have my chips plain as I eat them while wandering around the house, and to attempt to minimize the calorie damage.  

I thought about buying some specialty or at least interesting tortilla chips today for the sake of this post while I was doing some desperation grocery shopping, but decided just to stick with the tortilla chips I had on hand. These happen to be cauliflower tortilla chips, which I’m sure violates various culinary, moral, and spiritual laws. I think I bought them because they were on sale, and I like cauliflower snacks, even though I don’t think they are “healthier” (I’m not at all concerned about my grain or carb intake). 

It shouldn’t be surprising to me, but I am somewhat frustrated by how many of the fake holidays I have to choose from for this blog challenge are food based. Maybe I just should have went with an all food-themed holiday blog challenge–then I wouldn’t feel like I was being extra boring every time I decided to write about food. Or I would feel like it was okay to be boring because I was sticking to a theme. 

But as I’ve already written in posts about other food items, all I can really think of to say is “I like this food, but it stresses me out when I eat too much of it, although I continually do so.”

I thought perhaps I would have some interesting photos of tortilla chips, or at least a photo that would spark a blog-worthy memory or anecdote, so I spent a fair amount of time today looking through old photos. While this was enjoyable and sentimental and startling and funny, I didn’t find any tortilla chip photos. I did find lots of food photos (french fries, noodles, sticky buns, and on and on) but no tortilla chips. So I decided to go with the classic “selfie while holding the food in question” photo. 

I am also including a picture of the inside of our oven–which we use for “chip” (in the larger sense) storage (along with bread). We often tell people this is what we use our oven for, but I think people usually think we’re joking, so this seemed like a good time to provide photographic evidence. It makes sense for us–we don’t bake or do anything that requires an oven (except possibly for making a tofurky once a year), and we always have way too many chips on hand to store anywhere else. Plus, the oven is basically airtight and keeps them nice and crisp. 

Clearly, I am a little grumpy about this blog post, even though I do really love chips–tortilla and otherwise–and know I should be thankful I have such a plethora of chip sensations to choose from. It’s not the chips’ faults that I am not a great food writer–I shouldn’t have a chip on my shoulder about it. (Yes, I went there). 

One of the (few) good things my mom had to say about my dad is that he was a good tipper.

He was reportedly consistently nice to servers. I remember my mom telling a story about a time when a carhop spilled an entire tray of food in his lap at a drive in and he just shrugged it off. 

My dad is a good role model for how we should treat servers on this National Hospitality Workers Appreciation Day. 

Even though I worked years and years (and years) in customer service with retail and library work (and still supervise staff who do this), I’ve never worked at a restaurant or bar. 

When I was a kid, I did pretend that I worked at Burger Chef, and used to get napkins and condiments for the whole family when we visited (Burger Chef, a now defunct fast food chain, was a big outing for the Luedke Family in the 70s.) I also used to threaten to sell my sister to Burger Chef when I got mad at her. 

Now that I think about it, I don’t think anyone in my immediate family ever worked in hospitality, although they certainly worked in people facing professions (army, teaching). 

I can only imagine how stressful customer service must be when you add food and/or alcohol to the mix–people get emotional enough about books and library services. I certainly get emotional about food and drink. 

I try hard not to be that customer, but I do sometimes embarrass Chad. Mostly, I’m just that middle-aged white lady who asks for dressing on the side (#stereotype). I don’t think that’s too extreme–even when I send a salad back if there is a mixup and I get a fully dressed salad. But I have definitely had breakdowns when a place is unexpectedly out of vegetarian food or it’s taking an extra long time to get our food when we’re trying to get to a show. While I don’t directly aim those breakdowns at our servers, I’m sure they don’t enjoy being caught up in my emotional swirl. 

Writing this post is making me reminisce about one of our favorite places–Sanctuary– that, like Burger Chef, is also unfortunately no more. That is the only similarity between Sanctuary and Burger Chef. And unlike Burger Chef, I didn’t have to pretend to work at Sanctuary, as it had marvelous staff and an owner, Michael, who was just a delight–warm, personable, funny. He made every visit to Sanctuary special. Sadly, Michael died years ago, and is greatly missed. 

Even though I know working in a restaurant or bar must be extremely challenging, I do have a fantasy of owning a bar. I’d probably call it Chamy’s, although I’m not sure how involved Chad would be. Or maybe StanLee’s  But in my fantasy, I can work whenever I want, perform whenever I want (Amy at an open mic would always be a possibility), and tell people to f*#k off whenever I want. 

What could be more hospitable than that?

I’ve been thinking hard about what to write for World Thinking Day.

This is another holiday that I had no idea what it was about based on the name. Once again, I chose it as the best of lackluster options…certainly I could come up with something to write about thinking. But then I actually looked at the description and ding, ding ding…it’s about Girl Scouts. 

And I just happen to have my Girl Scout sash from the late 70s/early 80s hanging around in my/StanLee’s office. 

Even though I’ve held on to my sash for 40 some years my time in the Girl Scouts was rather uninspiring. Sometimes, it was downright odd and stressful. I’m not even sure why I was in the Girl Scouts, but I was in the Brownies and then then the Girl Scouts, for several years. Some of my scouting years overlapped with my participation in 4-H, and doing both always felt a little radical. 

My sash proves that I earned some badges, although I don’t remember what they were for. I know I managed to avoid most outdoor activities, although I did attend a day camp one summer. 

Although it’s surprising, it does look like I earned badges related to camping and cooking. If those are indeed camping and cooking badges, that may just demonstrate that I was good at figuring out how to earn the badges in creative ways that required little camping or cooking. 

I do remember trying to earn a badge that was theater related, but none of the badges seem to fit that. But one of the badges apparently depicts reading books to children so that seems appropriate. 

I think Girl Scouts are supposed to be spending today thinking about how to make the world a better place. I’m thinking about how I ever managed to earn Girl Scout badges. 

I know almost nothing about Tarot cards, and have few thoughts or feelings about them. But I thought I was going to have to come up with something to say about Tarot cards, as Card Reading Day seems my best option to blog about today. (The other “top” choices were National Sticky Bun Day and National Grain Free Day. Yeah, February 21 is a rough one). The only thing I possibly have to say about Tarot cards is that I gave Chad a Dungeons and Dragons themed deck last year for his birthday, and he occassionally uses them for meditation. 

Resigned to my task, I read the description of the “holiday” in a vain hope that I would find some inspiration, and discovered I had completely misinterpreted the meaning of Card Reading Day. And while I’m totally willing to interpret a holiday in any way I want for the purposes of blogging about (as demonstrated yesterday in my Tug of War Day post), the actual intent of the Card Reading Day is so much easier for me to relate to. 

Today is a “…is a sentimental holiday on which people savor the greeting cards sent to them over the years” (NationalToday.com). 

Savor greeting cards? Now that I can do. Well, maybe “hoard” is more accurate–I have stacks of cards all over the house, including my bedroom dresser, in addition to the ones I have “put away,” i.e., stuffed in boxes. I still have the cards we received when we got married, in addition to the box my sister-in-law, Kelly (at the time a young teen!) made for people to put them in.

I could easily spend a whole day looking at cards I’ve received, and being sentimental. It would be lovely, but also rather intense–that would be quite the emotional journey for this Gen X midwesterner to experience in one day. 

In light of the limits of time and my emotional stamina, I only went through the pile of cards of my dresser and rather randomly selected a few to photograph to illustrate this post. 

The cards cover an array of occasions and senders. I was definitely drawn to the birthday cards, as it’s almost my birthday time again, and of course found several cards from my friend Pat, with whom I’ve had a long and ongoing card sending practice. I was most struck by a handmade Halloween card from my sister, as well as the sympathy cards I received after her death last year (including one from a fellow church member who just died).

A sentimental holiday, indeed, which did give me the opportunity to savor some sweet memories. Turns out, February 21 isn’t the holiday dessert I feared. Perhaps there should be another holiday that recognizes items I have piled up on my dresser.

I’m looking forward to Crumpled Up Laundry Day!