PrACtiCaL JoKEs

Having just spent time at the ultra-fun Nachtigal Family Reunion, I was reminded of how much all the Nachtigals enjoy practical jokes! So, it was appropriate that we kicked off the reunion weekend playing a joke on someone.

The challenge was that five relatives would share a ride from Sioux Falls to Platte. In addition to all the luggage there were also two sets of golf clubs. The Aunties suggested taking two cars, but encouraged the group to try to fit everything into one vehicle so as not to miss any stories on the drive.

Uncle Roger, known for being quite meticulous, took charge of packing the car. He arranged, then rearranged, positioned then repositioned luggage until all the items just fit with no room to spare.
Aunt Irma and I waited until everyone and everything was all packed into the car - then we brought out another piece of luggage for our joke. As soon as Uncle Roger saw us with one more suitcase, he started sputtering "Oh No! Who's bag is that? That luggage is not going to fit!".
Aunt Irma and I were tickled pink, having kicked off the reunion with a practical joke at UncleRoger's expense.

happy father's day or the one which ends up being about fish

it's father's day and that has me thinking of what it was like growing up with my father. the last time, i wrote about how we used to leave him at home alone on father's day while we went to the big paint-o-rama in huron. a bit of peace and quiet at home, a round of golf and a few beers with his friends was undoubtedly the best father's day present we could give him.

i thought that in honor of father's day, i'd share a few of my memories of growing up with a dad like ralph:

~ as some of you know, ralph isn't the most patient person in the world. i remember on one occasion when he attempted to teach me and a friend a bit about golf over in the swimming pool park. and i recall him rather quickly putting up his hands in frustration and wandering away. i never did really learn to golf.

~ he used to encourage monica and i to get on our horses and race. we had susie and BJ so trained for a particular race track up the second row of the shelter belt (couldn't do that today, the trees are too big!), that as soon as we turned the corner, they took off. and i always won.

~ fishing in the little green boat. i recall a storm where we were across the river. my friend was along and  we were way up in the front of the boat. dad crossed in really bad conditions and on an unreliable motor. he later admitted what a white knuckle trip it had been and there were my friend and i, giggling away with each slam down into the waves, all the way across the missouri to wheeler. we're probably quite lucky to have survived the trip.

~ when we went fishing, i was constantly being cussed out for not paying enough attention. i always had a book along and would devote most of my attention to it. i'd put the fishing pole between my big toe and my second toe, so i could feel if there was a bite and i always put the book down when there was.

~ there was a lot of talk on fishing trips about setting the hook when you got a bite. after particularly violent hook settings, there was a lot of talk about fish lips, but i never did see any that had been detached from the fish.

~ when monica was really little, we were out on a particularly cold, windy day and she had on a coat with a string through the hood. she got a fish on her line and set the hook and began to reel it in. being rather little (i picture her as very little, but she was that for years, so she could very well have been 10), she would reel the correct direction for awhile and then her arm would get tired, so she'd reel for awhile in the other direction. at one point, the strings from her hood got wound onto the reel along with her line. i recall quite a lot of cussing on that occasion as well, tho' i also recall that that fish, while tired when it was finally landed, was the biggest one of the day.

so i hope my dad got to go fishing today if that's what he wanted to do. or golfing. or whatever. but i wish him a happy father's day. we'll see you in a week!

friday confession - i'm a little worried about the upcoming nachtigal family reunion

i'll admit i look upon the upcoming nachtigal family reunion with a mixture of excitement and apprehension (and it's not only that no alcohol is allowed in north park). it's been several years since i was in platte. and i know that as a nachtigal, i have a lot of accounting to do for the air i've been breathing since you all last saw me.

on my real blog, i do the occasional friday confession and that seems to fit this situation. i think i'll do a bit of confessing so you all don't feel compelled to tie me to a chair under the bright lights of interrogation to see if i've been worthy of all that air i've been using since you last saw me....

~ i confess that i left a perfectly good job in the world's largest container shipping company and denmark's largest company at the end of 2007. i also confess that i couldn't face breaking in my fourth new boss in as many years and the fact that i'd traveled 180 days of 2007, so that's why i left. sometimes you just get burned out.

~ i confess that i spent the next two years working in a company that wasn't in the same country i lived in (totally indefensible in light of climate change). and i confess that that was tiring, tho' i got to indulge my inner writer for the last year in that company and that was a good thing.

~ we moved recently to a 17-acre decommissioned farm on the other side of denmark, which is a lot like moving from one side of wisconsin to the other. in the process, we totally bought the complicity of our 9-year-old child - she got an iPhone, an iPad, a season pass to Legoland and a horse. she totally scored. we should be nominated for parents of the year. totally.

~ i confess that i've lost my gold status on KLM and am now only silver. same on SAS.

~ i confess that after Uncle Red once said to me after i left SDSU after only one year, "good thing you dropped out before you flunked out," that i went on to get my BA and two Master's degrees, a Fulbright scholarship and most of a Ph.D. pretty much just because he said that. and because i hated Ronald Reagan (tho' he seems pretty harmless in retrospect).

~ i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up. but now i'm working in the renewable energy sector. and that seems like a good thing. tho' please don't ask me what the company i'm working for did during WWII....

~ my husband really is The Great Dane. he's a keeper. but he sounds a bit like a brit (which is way better than sounding like a dane). the child, however, is danish. and sounds like it. so go easy on her.

and please go easy on me when you see me in july. it's not easy being a nachtigal.

grandma kate's noodles

i just posted the recipe for grandma kate's noodles over on my foodie blog--domestic sensualists. you may want to come over and check it (and all the other goodness) out.

would you have made a good 1930s housewife?

8 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

i wonder how grandma kate would have done...

a little "how to"

i heard from gisel that some of the luddites nachtigals have complained said that they have written posts for this very family blog and have been unable to post them.

as an admin on the blog, i cannot see any draft posts in the list by anyone other than gisel, who has two empty ones, so i thought perhaps a little tutorial  on how to publish here was in order.

once you have gone to blogger.com and signed in using your personal sign-in information, you will see the blogger dashboard. here is what part of mine looks like:

bear in mind, yours will look a bit different than this because you probably don't have eleven blogs and if you do, you don't need this tutorial.

yours will look more or less like this:

once you see this, you can either "view blog," just to have a look and see what others have written. of course, you can ALSO do this without being an author, just by going to http://thenachtigals.blogspot.com. that means that ALL NACHTIGALS can LOOK at the blog at any time and just read what's going on there. most of which is currently written by me, which is admittedly getting a little old.

However, if you want to write, you need to press the pretty blue button that says "NEW POST." once you do that, you will see this:

it's a pretty, empty space in which to compose your blog post. you go into the space and begin to write whatever hilarious story or poignant memory you wish to share. when you are finished, you will press this pretty little orange button at the bottom of the screen. it says, intuitively enough, "PUBLISH POST."

now, you have published your first story on the blog.  you will get a message that looks like this:

i didn't get fancy and tell you how to upload pictures or anything, as i think it will be quite enough to just try to get text up there in the first run.

if you already have permission to post on this blog, you can use this information to write a post right away. and i sincerely hope you will do that.

if you would LIKE permission to post, please email myself or monica and we can send you an invitation to contribute. you will receive an email from blogger, which will contain directions for you to follow in order to accept the invitation. i can be emailed at jknachti (at) gmail (dot) com and monica's email is mqnachti (at) gmail (dot) com. obviously with @ and . in lieu of the words in parentheses--i type it like that to avoid spam.

The Little Boys

My three younger brothers were always referred to collectively as "The Little Boys".

Kent, the oldest, was always Kent. And, me, the only girl, Gisel. But Dan, Tom and Sam were always "The Little Boys" as if they were an ameoba and could not be divided into individual cells.

My mother would call us in for dinner: "Kent, Gisel...The Little Boys!"

When we lived in what we now call The Harvison House (because the Harvisons later bought it) the kids were delegated to the upstairs. Kent had his own room, I had my own room, but "The Little Boys" not only shared a room, but all slept in the same bed.

"The Little Boys" didn't have their own designated clothes but instead operated a shared clothing consortium - anything from the "clean" pile was fair game.

I wonder if the Little Boys have joint checking accounts...

once upon a time...

once upon a time a very, very long time ago, this little girl was dropped off to attend a week of bible school at the trinity lutheran church. now her family did not attend this church, but bible school was thought to be for anyone. plus her parents thought, hey, free babysitting and a week of peace without the kid!

so her mother dropped her off outside the side door of the trinity lutheran church, and despite her being quite small and never having been there before, just sent the child in without accompanying her. the child has a very clear memory of the crunch of the wheels of the stationwagon driving away on that little gravel road beside the church and how daunting that unknown door seemed. said child wandered in and some people talked to her, inevitably asking her her name. feeling a bit shy and out of place and perhaps even abandoned out in the woods as well as having a healthy imagination, she informed them that she was called snow white.

she was pretty steadfast about the snow white thing and it took those people 'til mid-week to figure out who she really was. i guess someone finally spotted her mother, who didn't appear to be accompanied by seven dwarves, picking her up.

and they all lived happily ever after, but she still really hates going in alone to a new place full of people who already know each other. and roger eastman teased her about it for years afterwards, as he apparently found it such an amusing story. she got so she hated to run into him.

a new blog to visit

sabin is involved in a new blog. it's a modern day penpal story and it's also a bit inspired by the Flat Stanley book. she and a girl in minnesota, who is also 8, also in the second grade and also a twin who lost her twin are (with a little help from their moms) blogging and learning about how it is to be 8 and in the second grade on two different continents.  pretty cool stuff. come and check it out by clicking here.

does anyone know?

i have this throw rug in my hallway that used to be grandma kate's:

do any of you know whether she might have actually made it herself? i have no recollection of her doing any craft-type things, but did she sew or make such things? can someone tell me a story?

kitchen love

just had to share this link to a feature about our kitchen on the design website apartment therapy!  i'm so excited to have been asked to do this!!  i had posted pictures on the photo website flickr and one of the editors found them there and asked if they could feature my pictures! after i stopped jumping up and down ecstatically, i said, "yes, please!"

go and check it out! apartment therapy is awesome, so be careful you don't get addicted. i've had it as a daily read for ages!

have you ever seen?

...a pheasant up a tree?

taken just minutes ago in our neighbor's back yard:

since when do pheasants fly up into trees? maybe he's just a confused danish pheasant.