Author Archives: Author Julie Seedorf

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About Author Julie Seedorf

As human beings, we are always a work in progress. From birth to death we live, hurt, laugh, cry, feel, and with all of those emotions we grow as people, as family members, and as friends. I'm a dreamer and feel blessed to have the opportunity in my writing to pass those dreams on to others. I believe you are never too old to dream and to turn those dreams into a creative endeavor.” I live in rural Minnesota and am a wife, mother, and grandmother. Throughout my life I have had many careers or should I say opportunities at jobs where I have learned different skills such as working as a waitress, nursing home activities person, office manager, and finally a computer repair person eventually owning her own computer sales and repair business. Add my volunteer activities such as Sunday School Teacher and SADD advisor and more and it's been a full life. I never forgot my love of writing and quit my computer business in 2012 after signing a contract with Cozy Cat Press for Granny Hooks A Crook, the first book in my Fuchsia, Minnesota Series. I currentlyntly have written nine cozy mysteries, three children’s books, participated in three group anthologies or mysteries, and write three blogs about various subjects.

Who Cleans The Toilets

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Toilet Master

Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf from November 4 Week of Albert Lea Tribune and Courier Sentinel

I recently did an unscientific poll on Facebook. This is what I asked: “OK, ladies fess up. How many of you are the toilet bowl cleaner in the family? What would happen if you didn’t clean it? Would it stay grubby forever?”

I got many answers, all from women, none from men, but to be fair, I didn’t ask the men. I expected a few needles from the men. Here are a few of the women’s comments:

• You got that right!

• Yes, yes it would.

• Yes, it would. I was gone for a week, came home and cleaned toilets.

• Yes, I am. If I’m gone long enough, it does get cleaned.

• Eventually some new life form would emerge from mine.

• Mmmm, grubby doesn’t even describe the algae forest I found in bachelor’s pre-husband toilet.

There were more comments, but because they named names I thought it best for those names not to be broadcast to the world for the sake of world peace.

I did the poll because I wondered if toilet cleaning at home always became what used to be called “women’s work.” There were many things that were deemed women’s work when I first got married many, many years ago.

I remember being baffled the first time we had a holiday with my new spouse’s family. The men sat down to be served and the women waited until they were done to eat. That wasn’t the way it was done in my family. I was rather crabby back then, so let me tell you, that particular tradition didn’t last much longer when I was around.

In those days the women were in charge of the household. That meant, even if they worked, they were in charge of the kids, the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning and whatever else came along with the house and, of course, toilet cleaning.

When a friend of mine died of cancer, her husband had no idea how to turn on the wash machine or the oven. That is when things started changing in my household. Because I was brought up to believe in women’s work, I hadn’t educated my husband and family in the workings of a household. My husband could fix anything. He could repair anything, and that was his job. I realized that if something happened to me, his job would change and he would be like my neighbor, lost, unless of course he could call his mother.

I became stubborn and he became a better house cleaner, laundry person and cook. Although one of the challenges wasn’t him, it was me. I always micro-managed what he did because he didn’t do it like I did. I cringed when my new Colorado T-shirt now fit my 4-year-old. It was also easier at times to do it myself because I didn’t like the results. “Were you wearing your glasses when you dusted that corner?”

Many years have passed, and he washes his own clothes (now I don’t do it good enough for him), he cooks much better than I do, he does floors, but in all these years he doesn’t do toilets. He could very well survive with me, and the house would be picked up better than the way I keep it. It would be a little dustier (must be the eyes) and the toilets? I don’t want to guess.

As I watch my sons and son-in-law help their wives and take care of their houses, I don’t see the mentality of women’s work anymore except maybe when it comes to toilets. They seem to share their duties and in all fairness to their wives; occasionally they need to be reminded of certain tasks if they are trying to do the man thing with the television remote.

It is a different time in 2013 than when I and my friends were first married. There is more negotiation between couples and the chores that are needed to be done in a family. That doesn’t mean the older generation of men were lazy or not caring. It means that they lived by what society was back then and what was expected of both men and women was different.

If you are a man in 2013 and you do toilets, make it known because in my poll, toilets still seem to be women’s work. I am not sure what message that is giving to us and to our children and does it matter?

Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/sprinklednotes.

Grabatude Attitude

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Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf

Who do you hang with? No, I don’t mean hang such as hanging upside down, hanging from a bungee cord or hanging a right or a left when driving a car. Who do you spend your time with and how do they influence how you interact with others in your life?

Recently, I was put in a situation that I was unsure of. I was invited to the Women of Faith concert in St. Paul. I wasn’t unsure of going to the concert, but I was going to be going with a good friend and we would be staying with her relatives. I did not know these people.

I did have some anxiety about staying in a home of someone I did not know, and I am not a shy person, not usually anyway. This was a little of a stretch for me.

Meeting strangers isn’t a hard thing for me to do, but usually when I meet them it is for a short amount of time. That isn’t what this would be. It would be a weekend with my friend and people I did not know. Would they like me? Would I like them? Would we have the same likes and dislikes? Would it matter?

On a recent blogtalkradio interview with Amy Beth Arkawy on the Amy Bethv Arkawy show, Amy made the remark that I was a positive and inspirational person. I reminded her that I am not like that all the time, ask my husband and kids, and a few years ago I would say I was a toxic person. It was not a hard thing to be, depending on the group I was with, to find something wrong with everything.

I am very good at crabbing, and when you are with others who are very good at crabbing you have a great crabfest. Soon though, that attitude becomes part of you, and it is easier to see the glass half empty rather than half full. Pretty soon I was the head crab and would start the crab sessions. I didn’t like the way I was, and I don’t want to be that person again.

When Amy Beth and I talked about inspiration (she is also a creativity coach), I reflected later on what helps me to keep a positive attitude. It is work.

I was very lucky in my crabbiness. My inspirational and optimistic friends did not desert me. Finally after hanging with them I was able to adopt their attitude most of the time. It is hard work to get to the place where it is easier to be optimistic than to be pessimistic and yet some days the crab is back.

I found that if I surround myself with positive people, positive messages and read positive materials that I can be more optimistic in the face of the ups and downs of my life. We can choose who we spend our time with.

Back to the scary, I am having a slumber party with women I don’t know. The minute the first woman got in the car with us I knew I was going to feel at home with her. She wore sparkly cool earrings. She laughed a lot. When the next woman joined our car on the way I immediately felt at home too. She had a case of water. I knew I would not be thirsty. I do that, I drag my water along. We finally arrived at the cute house where we would rest our heads and I would meet another stranger. We were greeted with a huge meal, dessert and the best part was that she was living in my dream cottage home. It felt like home amidst these strangers.

We left for the Xcel Energy Center, and it was named right for the weekend. It was a center full of energized woman, with positive messages and smiling faces. In the midst of strangers we all seemed to be surrounded by friends.

One of the speakers asked if we were crabby Christians. Was there a time when I felt that the silverware in the kitchen needing to be lined up perfectly was more important than the way I treated the people that were lined up in the pews? Do I make the unimportant material trappings in my home and in my church more important than treating people with kindness and respect or am I that crabby Christian along with being a toxic person in a group?

I took a chance to hang with some positive strangers. Those strangers are no longer strangers but friends that I hope to spend time with in the future. If I had let my fear and kept my crabby attitude, I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet new people that would have a positive influence on my life

Take a chance. Hang with someone new that makes you feel good about yourself. It might change your world and your attitude.

A quote by Elizabeth Edwards sums it up nicely:

“A positive attitude is not going to save you. What it’s going to do is, every day, between now and the day you die, whether that’s a short time from now or a long time from now, that every day, you’re going to actually live.”

Hidden Rooms, Spooky Tunnels

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Column: Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf published in the Albert Lea Tribune on October 21, 2013

Photo courtesy of Kate Eileen Shannon

Photo courtesy of Kate Eileen Shannon

Dreams are images, sensations and emotions that occur during sleep. When I was a child I had a recurring dream that there was a secret room upstairs in my grandmother’s house. The room was at the end of the hallway, and the wall would open and expose a toy room, sparkly and colorful, full of a child’s fantasy of toys. I had the dream many, many times.

There was actually a room in the basement at my grandmother’s that I never ever knew what was lurking behind the door. As far as I knew no one ever opened that door. I either wasn’t curious enough, and I was a curious child, or I was too afraid to try the door and see what might be behind it.

It wasn’t until I was in my 50s that the room was revealed to me. It came at a time when my grandmother’s home, now my mother’s home, had to be sold, and we were clearing it out. I must admit I was still scared to open that door not sure what we might find, so I made my husband do it.

Well the ghost of many trees must have lived in that room because it was full of wood that had been there a long time but the logs were very well-preserved with no bugs or rot. Perhaps that is what started my fascination with secret rooms and underground tunnels that I write about in my books.

Recently I have had the pleasure of connecting through my writing with Kate Eileen Shannon, the author of “The Brigid Kildare Mystery Series” and writer of the blog Rantin’ Ravin’ and Reading. She likes tunnels, too, and recently a real life mystery fell into her life.

Kate’s husband is a real estate agent. Recently he listed a house for sale that was supposedly to have belonged to a bootlegger. It was rumored to have a tunnel from the basement to the garage. The basement had a room off of it that had a huge safe door on it, but the alleged tunnel (these are Kate’s words sent to me in a message) was blocked off.

Kate wanted to knock down the wall allegedly blocking the tunnel because none of the owners since 1933 had done it, but her husband wasn’t going to be the curious person who opened the wall, so the house sold without the tunnel being investigated.

Of course homes have to be inspected but even the home inspector didn’t want to knock out the wall. Now I can understand this because I had the door in my grandma’s house that I was scared to open.

Finally a brave person entered Kate Eileen Shannon’s life in the form of a termite inspector. Since my room that I finally opened was full of wood, maybe I should have called a termite inspector to get my door opened sooner.

The termite inspector, having heard the rumors, supported Kate’s curiosity and pulled down the wall and discovered a second safe door on a tunnel.

Kate Eileen Shannon is a mystery writer and came upon her own real life mystery. I thought that was pretty exciting. Behind the wall and down the tunnel was a steel-beamed room as big again as the basement. It was full of empty bottles ready to be filled. She also found an old fedora. How did they get to the garage? I will leave that mystery for you to find the answers to if you are interested by visiting Kate’s blog.

Kate is busy building a page on the web for the hidden basement find. She is busy doing research on what they think was a bootlegging operation run out of this house during the days of prohibition, right under the police chief’s nose. He lived across the street. If you want to know more about this interesting find, visit Kate Eileen Shannon’s blog at kateeileenshannon.com and click on “80-year-old time capsule” for the story and pictures.

Yes, I love mysteries. I dream up tunnels and secret rooms and secret doors and stashes. I would build a house with nooks and crannies and secret rooms. Why not? Of course there is also something very mysterious about living in a house and not knowing what is on the other side of the door. It is amazing how many pictures and images your imagination can conjure up from the unknown secret door or forbidden door.

What did I think would be behind my grandmother’s unopened basement door? Did I imagine a dead body? Did I imagine a bogey man popping out? I might have imagined that as a kid. I know I loved my dreams of the secret toy room. It was always a comforting and exciting dream. As an adult not wanting to open the unknown door, I think I was more afraid of snakes, mice and creatures that might attack me.

Kate Eileen Shannon had a much more exciting find than I did, and I am jealous. I found wood, she found history that had been sealed up ready to be discovered. What is behind your door or your bookcase or the closet? You might be surprised what is hidden in your walls.