Fun with relatives!!

1.  My niece Mary and her husband, Alan, sent me a plane ticket to Minneapolis for the first 4 days of April.  Mary is the 4th of my brother Paul's seven children:  Susan, Cindy, Mark, Mary (!), Paula, Lisa, and Tom.  I was a new teenager when Mary was born, and she and her siblings were the first babies I'd ever met. I babysat for them occasionally, and entertained them when Paul and his beautiful wife, Gertrude, brought everyone over for Sunday dinner with Mom, Dad, brother Gene, and I.  After the meal, Gene or I'd do the dishes, and the adults would play a few games of bridge.

2.  My plane arrived late Tuesday night, and Mary picked me up at the airport.  I was surprised to wake up at 8 a.m. to sun shining in the window. At home, my room faces west, so it's always kinda dark when I get up.  Everyone else was gone to work, so Mary and I went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, and then took a LONG walk along their road while the neighborhood school kids arrived home on their big yellow buses. Supper was a delicious creamed chicken casserole and salad. We all had seconds, and there was enough left over for the next day. 

3.  On Thursday morning, I mainly stayed out of the way of Mary's friend who came to clean their big rattan table, which gathers an unbelievable amount of dust in the crevices, and I also worked crossword puzzles, which Mary and Alan generously shared from the three major US dailies to which they subscribe.  At noon, Mary, her friend, and I drove to NE Minneapolis to meet Al for lunch at Kramarczuks, the renowned Polish butcher shop and deli on East Hennepin. I had split pea with ham soup, half of which went home with me in a little tub,  but I regret not having Kramarczuk's famous cabbage rolls with the tangy red cabbage on the side.  Al said his mom used to make cabbage rolls every weekend, varying the composition and flavoring for fun. We all passed up K's famous Easter sausage--a main component of which is ground ham.  It's pretty much a sin not to have cabbage rolls when you are at Kramarczuk's.  I was just a bit shellshocked to find the renovated Deli at the old butcher store I remember.  It's been a long time since I lived and dined in NE Minneapolis.

4.  After lunch, Mary and her friend took the leftovers home, and Al offered to take me museum hopping.  My first stop was author Louise Erdrich's Birchbark Books over by Lake of the Isles. Erdrich runs the store with several of her daughters and her sister, poet Heid E. Erdrich.  Birchbark Books is not like any other bookstore I've ever been in, except maybe for Politics and Prose in this town, but Politics and Prose does not have a real confessional in it, and the workers are not owned by dogs, as they are at Birchbark.

To be continued.....(photos to come, too, after I figure out how to get them off my iPad)