Doing Things Differently | Redhead Ranting

Minnesota’s Children of the Corn

Filed under Doing Things Differently, Ex Husbands, Ex#2, Kids, Things I Really Like by Jen on October 11, 2011 at 8:37 pm {12 comments}

Ex#2 and I took the daughter to the Shafer Corn Maze this weekend. It seemed like a fun, family outing when I suggested it and obviously the others agreed because they were game to go.

Normally this time of year, I am gearing up to start complaining about the cold. Not this year. This year in Minnesota the weather has been so lovely I’ve completely confused the seasons. It’s been in the 80s this past week in Minnesota.I am sure it is really spring and summer is just about to begin.

Usually by mid October the less sturdy of us have already given in and turned on the heat at night. This past weekend I was bitching at myself for taking out the window air conditioning units too soon.

I’m loving this weather. It’s ruining my blogging and my relationships but I am totally loving this weather. I walk around with a smile on my face, I have nothing to complain about and most importantly Xcel Energy can suck it because I get at least one more energy bill this season where I won’t have to sell a kidney to pay for my heat!!

So I was all jazzed about going to the corn maze for an afternoon of adventure.

The deal with the Shafer Corn Maze is that you go through one of the mazes (they have three) and try to figure out the whodunit they created.

Basically it’s like Clue. At least that’s what the woman in the little ticket stand said as she passed me three cards that needed to be hole punched at each check point.

It seemed like an easy enough thing to do – find 6 check points, mark the card with the hole punch at each one and then figure who did what.

The whole who did what aspect of the maze was lost on me and my daughter. Ex#2 didn’t even bother to understand it. He spent most of the time walking through the maze telling me that what was missing was motivation. You see, he wasn’t motivated to find all six check points because he knew there wouldn’t be beer at the end. Now if they had a keg at each check point, he said, things would be different.

But we live in Minnesota and you can’t sell, or otherwise distribute, beer in the middle of a corn field. This is too bad because the Shafer Corn Maze is pretty cool. It’s a huge maze, cut well and they have a bunch of activities outside of the cornfield.

The Shafer Corn Maze is also just a stone’s throw from the Wisconsin border and I am pretty sure the corn mazes there offered beer.

Even without beer we pressed on for two of the check points. No one had a clue who did what to whom and no one cared. Both the ex and the daughter were bored and wanted out of the maze.

I tried to convince both of them, but especially the daughter, that this was a lot of fun and when we were through the maze we could say we accomplished something for the day. Of course the whole time they were complaining I was wondering how we were going to find our way out of the maze. I had my phone so I was pretty sure if we got lost in the corn maze the police or whoever finds idiots who can’t find their way out of a corn maze, could track me, I mean us. Thankfully, I was not that woman who got lost in the corn maze. However, I totally understand how it could happen.

Neither of them cared about accomplishing anything but getting out of the maze. Normally I would have pressed both of them to finish the damn maze. It cost $21 for the three of us to walk 2 miles through the stupid maze and dammit we were going to have a good time doing it.

Normally that’s what I would have done. After seeing this, I thought better of it.

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Let’s Get Back To Work America

Filed under Doing Things Differently, People, politics by Jen on September 7, 2011 at 7:27 pm {7 comments}

Tomorrow night President Obama will address the American people and a joint session of Congress. He is going to present his jobs plan to the American people and the politicos on both sides of the aisle.

Why are we looking for the President to make a speech about jobs? Why are we waiting for him to create more jobs or at the very least, create favorable conditions to create jobs?

The only job the President can save is his own and I’m not even sure that is possible any more.

My issues are not with the President. My issues are with the American people who are waiting, like lemmings, for someone to put them back to work.

There was a time, not too long ago, when we were proud to be Americans. We made things, we built things, we invented things. We did great things and we were the envy of the modern and not so modern worlds.

Now we aren’t envied, we are hated.

And, we seem to hate ourselves.

Currently there are about 14 million people out of work who want to be working. That’s 14 million people collecting unemployment and looking for work.

Remember when we were innovative? Some of the best inventions came from Americans. We have created things that have changed the world. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs weren’t waiting around for the president to tell them how to find work, they went out and created jobs for themselves.

Along the way they changed the world.

What are we waiting for?

We have the internet, the great equalizer, why aren’t we creating all kinds of jobs?

It isn’t easy working for yourself but it is rewarding and you have job security. Of course, if you don’t make work for yourself the government isn’t going to send you a check. Those checks are for people who don’t have an entrepreneurial spirit.

If you have an internet connection you can sell all kinds of things.

The great thing about Americans is that we buy all kinds of needless shit.

Have you lost some weight recently? Write a book. The weight loss industry is not faltering at all during this downturn in the economy and Americans always…ALWAYS, want the easy fix.

Nothing has really changed in the weight loss industry – eat less, exercise more. That’s it and yet hundreds if not thousands of books are published each year about how to do it.

And we gobble them up.

14 million people ought to be able to come up with some new, innovative thing that starts the next revolution. You don’t need a college degree to come up with one of these beauties, in fact, some of our most innovative people didn’t have college degrees. On the other hand, it isn’t too late to get your college degree, you might just learn a new skill that could change the world.

Remember the Pet Rock?

It was a rock for crying out loud but it made some industrious man a millionaire. And he didn’t even have the internet to market with.

There is nothing we can’t do and yet we are waiting around for someone to tell us what to do.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Find your inner baseball diamond and built it. If you don’t know what I am talking about go to Netflix first (another awesome American invention) and rent Field of Dreams. Then, sit down and figure out what it is you can do and do it.

Take a risk.

How bad can it be to fail? Trust me, some will fail. But it is through that failure that we find great success.

Come on America, let’s stop waiting around for the government to find us jobs, let’s create our own.

It’s time to be proud to be American again.

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I’m Getting a Makeover, and You Get To Watch Live!

Filed under Blogging, Doing Things Differently by Jen on August 17, 2011 at 7:43 pm {15 comments}

So it was high time I had a makeover on this blog and since we are doing them on Tribal Blogs it made perfect sense to do one here. And you get to watch live as I change my mind fifteen billion times and drive the design team batty in the process.

The first Extreme Blog Makeover happened on June’s blog The Neurosis Files (you can see June’s Extreme Blog Makeover here), next we did Lauren’s blog – Think Spin (though she hasn’t had the official unveiling yet so I will leave that to her to announce), so it made sense that if we were going to be professional blog makeover gurus we should at least have awesome blogs ourselves.

I’m not using the Royal We, there really is a we, us, ourselves, etc… Kelly is the design specialist, design maven or design ninja, not sure which should go on her business card but she is the one who makes the creative things pop. She is the one who I am driving crazy about all the little changes. Kelly is, of course, a pro so she never lets on that I can be a little persnickety. She just makes it look better, which is why I love Kelly so much.

Stay tuned for more makeover madness!

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