Amy Lu's View

“Wow, you really don’t know how to follow, do you? I gave you a pretty strong cue about which way I wanted you to turn and you went the opposite way. You had to work harder to NOT follow me than to follow me.” 

Chad offered this evaluation a couple of Sundays ago after he attempted to spontaneously dance with me at church. (Yes, we have that kind of church). 

Chad wasn’t wrong. I always have an extremely hard time following his lead when we dance. We’ve even taken dancing lessons a couple of times throughout the years and I still struggle with following. 

This isn’t because I’m trying to be difficult or contrary. I’m not making a philosophical statement against patriarchal gender norms. I think I’m just highly uncoordinated and have little body awareness and or proprioception (sense of where my body is in its physical environment–yes look at me using a fancy science word!). 

Despite, or maybe because of, my awkwardness, our brief dance was fun and funny for us, and possibly endearing for onlookers. 

I’m also bad at following directions. Obviously, with my lack of a sense of geographic direction, those are hard for me to follow because I don’t really understand where I am in time and space. But I also find following multi-step procedural directions, especially for techy things, tedious and stressful. 

I do think I follow orders pretty well, especially if they’re simple, clear, and I don’t have any moral objection to them. At work, I often prefer to just be told what I need to do, without detailed explanation.  

I’m frequently not great at following the plot of whatever TV show or movie we watch, especially at home–I’m usually just not paying enough attention. 

It’s probably obvious that my chosen holiday for today has something to do with following: Today I’ve chosen to celebrate “Courageous Follower Day.” It’s inspired by the book “The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders,” by Ira Chaleff, which I’ve never read (and have no intention to). At best, it sounds like corporate babble, and worst, it sounds culty. 

But there may be something to needing courage to be a successful follower. I may have trouble following Chad when we dance because I don’t have the courage to dance without worrying about looking like an idiot. 

It’s my birthday, so I’ve made it to another year!! Yay!

Yes, this is me putting a bit of a forced positive spin on my birthday and growing older. But even though it’s cheesy, birthdays are worth celebrating because another year is another gift. And in a way, making it to another year is a bit of an accomplishment, too…which is how I’m going to awkwardly and inelegantly tie my birthday to Finisher’s Medal Day.

No, I’m not saying that with this birthday I’m finished, but that there are a lot of victories and triumphs to celebrate in life that we don’t get medals for. I’m really proud of my marathon finisher medals and the hard work it took to earn them, and thankful for all the good fortune in my life that made it possible for me to complete marathons. And I’m really grateful for (and also sometimes proud of) the things that have gotten me this birthday. I don’t want medals for these small victories–we’re already out of space for the actual running medals we have. 

Is this attempt at connecting Finisher’s Medal Day with my birthday a bit tortured? Indeed! But I’m just relieved to have finished this blog post (and before midnight so it’s still my birthday!)

On Read Across America Day, we should celebrate everywhere, in all communities, in all types of venues. 

So I celebrated by reading in a Bingo Parlor. 

Yes, artistic license alert–I wasn’t actually in a bingo parlor–just a local bar/restaurant that has Bingo every Saturday afternoon. But this is some serious bingo action, almost THREE HOURS of bingo, so I feel it has a “parlor” ambiance. 

And okay, reading bingo cards might not be considered robust reading, but as a librarian, I get to say reading is reading and should be celebrated and upheld in all its forms. There were letters involved in today’s endeavor, so I call it reading. 

And I won $49! I was triumphant in the next-to-the-last round, when I had just about given up all hope of winning. My victory was especially sweet because I won with the card I got free because it was my birthday month. 

The goal of the round I won was to get a “six-pack” pattern. Since I’m a bingo novice, and because I was talking more than I was paying attention to my cards, I almost missed it when I got bingo. Luckily the friend sitting next to me was able to verify that I did indeed have bingo. (I did not want to be “The Lady Who Cried Bingo,” the less popular companion to “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”).

Winning at bingo on my Birthday Eve feels like an auspicious way to close out being 53 and ring in 54. 

Is this next year going to be a good one? BINGO!

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).