Random bits of my so-called life.

Oh probably not.

A quilter I follow on Instagram has been doing some interesting work incorporating words into his art. I have always been interested in using words but in my small history as an amateur fiber artist working in quilt-type media. Usually what I have done is pencil words on the backing in cursive, then trace s-l-o-w-y along the lines with my sewing musheen. This guy cuts out big printed letters and tacks them down by hand or musheen or whatever. He probably uses a musheen, then uses slow-stitching to hand embroider various stitches over the finished product.

I love love love this guy’s work but I don’t think I could ever emulate it. It is too irregular for my brain. When I was a little kid, The Commander used to “complain” that I “put everything into little boxes”. I have a kind of idea about what she meant but not totally sure and I’m not really sure what’s wrong with putting things into boxes anyway. It *does* allow me to separate issues, which well, I won’t talk about work today (it wasn’t bad) but sometimes this innate “thing” came in handy when reining in people who were wandering off “scope”. But still. Never was sure exactly what my moom was talking about.

Anyway, this guy was using jungle aminal fabrics in his latest works and I found myself googling jungle aminal fabric and ended up with a bunch of fat quarters. Okay, I bought fat quarters. Now I have to wash and iron them. Problem? Complicated problem actually. I have an ironing board and an iron in the Landfill Dungeon. 1) I HATE the Landfill Dungeon. Dark, fugly, and cluttered. 2) I do NOT want the ironing board to live upstairs. So… I looked around online and found (voila) this loverly ironing cloth. I put it atop my quartz countertop and it did the job. I spent about a split second thinking about a new iron, cordless maybe? But my old, lightly used Rowenta worked like a charm. I think I’ll keep her.

What am I gonna do with this fabric? I do not know… Add it to my stash for now.

P.S. For those who are not “sewists” (which I think is a better word than “sewer”), if you are talking about making things outta fabric, a “fat quarter” is a quarter yard of fabric cut such that instead cutting a yard of fabric into four long skinny strips, the yard is cut lengthwise and crosswise into four. If that explanation doesn’t make sense (and you are interested enough), google it🐲

Apparently today was the day. What day? The day to pull everything outta the She Shed, CLEAN the She Shed, and put it all back in. Hopefully SOME items got put in the trash or set aside for recycle or donation. I stayed outta that particular fray.

The She Shed is not that old (shortly pre-covid). She is deeee-luxe and even has lucky-shucky. And a back door and windows with screens. It’s almost like being in a small cabin. She replaced a crappy old tin shed that, when we bought this place, the previous owner told he used to catch elementary school boys P-ing off the roof into the woods. Those guys are probably politicians now🤣 A tree fell on that shed and we knew it was time.

It was a perfect day for this. You can see how sunny it was but it wasn’t all that warm, so a good day for working outside.

I worked inside, cleaning up what dishes were left from last night and prepping food for tonight. If I were following Fly Lady to the letter, I would not be leaving any dishes undone before I retire for the night. But I ran out of real estate last night. I mean, everything that goes in the dishwasher WENT in the dishwasher but things that drip dry require a few rounds. I don’t usually dry dishes with a towel, also there were a few beer cans and I always let them drip dry. I have a lot more of the kind of energy doing dishes requires in the morning so I made pretty short work of what was left.

BTW, Fly Lady is AWESOME!!! You couldn’t call The Landfill a hoarder house but Fly Lady helped me out majorly a number of years ago when I was struggling a bit with clutter control. Her strategies involve breaking things up into small manageble tasks and ultimately I got the place under control enough that I didn’t really have to follow the rules to the letter because I never really get too far behind any more. (Disclaimer: I never really have gotten behind on things like dishes and laundry and cleaning the bathroom.) As my old boss the LSCHP aka The Benevolent Despot would often say about a HUGE renovation project that took us 15 years, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Or maybe it was “byte” given the industry I work for🤣

P.S. Fly Lady has an iPhone app now! I may have to check that out! Cheers to Fly Lady and cheers to y’all.

A beach urchin texted on Monday to ask if she could come over for dinner on Tuesday. I said sure even though I didn’t really have anything in the hopper for Tuesday. So I suggested steak because it’s really easy. But then we decided to postpone until Saturday (today) and darn it all, I decided I felt like BUILDING something, not just throwing pieces of beast on a grill.

I offered lasagna or enchiladas. Both beach urchins indicated that they would just enjoy having someone else cook but one of them zeroed in on lasagna. Yes! I have not made lasagna since last summer at the moomincabin and I have two partial boxes of noodles that are crying to be used up.

So that is what I’ve been doing today. Here is my “recipe”. I put “recipe” in quotes because it’s really more of a *plan* than an exact recipe. I have a basic tomato sauce recipe in my head but your sauce would also be fine or even something like Ragu. I don’t usually buy prepared pasta sauce but when a jar of Ragu was left at the moomin a while back, I used it. Don’t remember if it was for lasagna or something else but it was fine.

I usually make lasagna with meat (sweet Italian sausage) but I can make it veggie too and I vary the veggies I use in it. I always use spinach, even when I make it with sausage. Beyond that, carrots (grated or thinly sliced) work well and patty-pan squash is wonderful. Can’t wait for that season by the way. Broccoli, green beans and a lot of other things don’t seem like they would be a good fit but whatever.

For quite a while, there were a number of vegetarians in my circle of friends and family. Most folks are omnivorous now but I still try to accommodate the veggies. It’s pretty easy to make two smaller lasagnas, one with meat and one without.

DON’T PRE-COOK THE NOODLES! DON’T PRE-COOK THE NOODLES! DON’T PRE-COOK THE NOODLES! There is no need to. Just layer the dry ones with everything else. All that sauce and stuff will cook them just fine. That is, if you USE dry noodles. Fresh noodles are fine too. I don’t buy them frequently only because they are perishable.

I think the first time I made lasagna (by myself), I used the recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook, which is definitely veggie. So that was my original source but over more years than I am strong enough to count, it has morphed all over the place, taking little hints from The Commander and Radical Betty along the way.

This is also my go-to dish for potlucks. One of my favorite lasagna memories is that once on the day of the cFam xmas party, I was recovering from a vomiting virus from hell. I was over the acute phase but had NO appetite and not enough energy to get up off the old Green Couch for anything more than visiting the Blue and Only Terlet (to P, not to vomit thank you very much). My mouse stepped up and took directions from me to make the lasagna herself. I actually recovered enough to make it to the party although I sat in the same chair the whole night. I think we also had an ice storm that night. Yes, we do know how to have fun😵‍💫

Anyway, I had a fun day making lasagna (and no it didn’t take anywhere near all day). Garlic bread and salad are also on the menu.

The pic is to show that the flowers I posted yesterday are not large. I’m not sure what kind of bush this is but in a very short window of time, it blooms and at a certain time of day, it casts a pretty shadow on the She-Shed. I didn’t catch this today even though it was very sunny. This is from a couple years ago.

Our pottery daughter and her guild had a show this evening. I wanted to go but in the end I didn’t. Tomorrow is the annual spring Umich football game and I knew it would be a mess downtown, especially in the area of the Potter’s Guild. So I sent the GG (npJane also attended) and chilled out here making salmon piccata for dinner.

I continue to struggle to explain my position on “Christianity” and its current place in American politics. Again. I am NOT religious. I did have a religious upbringing and I learned about Jesus, who I believe is a mythological figure of sorts. What I learned has nothing to do with the politicians who are invoking him nowadays. Whether or not you believe in Jesus and/or participate in a Christian religion, Jesus’s “teachings” on love and kindness for people in less than fortunate circumstances have nothing to do with our current political culture. Again, our country was founded on a principle of separation of church and state. Let’s keep it that way but let’s also follow Jesus’s teachings on caring for others whether or not we participate in a Christian religion. I do not. Sorry but it was a rough zoom night for me tonight.

Here we go again. This time it was 4:00 AM. I woke up and noticed the GG was wandering the Landfill. *What* are you doing? Unintelligible answer. Okay, I’ll go back to sleep.

Except. Chirp-chirp. And then a bit later… Chirp-chirp. Y’all know where this is going right? 4:00 AM is too early for birds. After a little bit I figured out that it was probably about a 30-second interval between chirp-chirps so I pulled up my iPhone clock app and started the stopwatch. Yup. 30 seconds on the dot. Definitely not a bird.

This was a fainter chirp-chirp than the one I heard last week and it took me a FULL 10 MINUTES to get the GG to hear it at all although I later realized it was probably what woke him up. “I thought I heard something outside.” Nope. It was the smoke/CO alarm in the dungeon. A half hour or so later, he had it disconnected and the battery out of it (it’s also wired to the lucky-shuckial system). By that time there WAS bird song outside.

So I continued my campaign for “smart” alarms and I actually sorta won! Yay! We installed one Nest alarm this afternoon and another will be delivered tomorrow. We have 3-4 other smoke (only I think) alarms but they are all on the same “system” and I *think* our Nest alarms are “motherships” so hopefully we’re good.

As much as I like the idea of running household devices via phone apps, I remain a bit skeptical. My dryer has an app (to notify me when it’s done because it’s in the dungeon) but it works sporadically. Roooomba has an app but lately it has occasional trouble connecting to wifi, after MONTHS of no problems. Cygnus has an app and it works pretty well. I mainly use it for locking and remote start. But it is still telling me my left front taaaar has an issue even though it is now well within range. So we’ll see how this one works.

I have hopes though. My entire life I have HATED sudden loud noises. I was TERRIFIED of balloons as a small child. If something is going to wake me up by shrieking at me, there better be a REAL reason. Not just “I’m low on battery” or “It’s time to replace me” (which WAS the issue).

Twitter play

The GG (in the middle of the night): I don’t understand why they always go off in the middle of the night.
Kayak Woman (banging head against wall): Because they are too “stupid” to know it’s the middle of the night.

I mean, theoretically, if there is ever an issue while we are out of town, I will be notified and can call the faaaar department from afar.

Hopefully this is the last time I will post about this issue for a while. Fingers crossed.

The Pensioner came at me with a calendar today. What did I want to do this summer. Mainly he means when do you want to take PTO from work.

Sigh… Again… It is always best if *I* work around other people’s schedules. I have the MOST vacation time of anyone (except The Pensioner) and I don’t have a centralized bricks-and-mortar office to go to so as long as I’m at the stand-up meeting on days I’m scheduled to work, nobody cares where I am.

Last summer I pretty much hit the sweet spot in terms of schedule. We had two groups visiting the yooperland for approximately a week each. They came at different times, which was good but we would’ve figgered it out if they came simultaneously. What worked out was I had great fun spending vacay time with them while they were here. Then, since I didn’t have to hustle back to The Planet Ann Arbor to work at Cubelandia (which has been empty for a few years now), I could take the next week to reset the moomincabin refrigerator and laundry and whatever. I had to work but since I didn’t have to commute (except to walk out to the Lyme Lounge), I had plenty of time to get things done.

The Comm and Grandroobly’s house was 15-20 minutes away from the moominbeach. They moved to the cabin for the whole summer. When I was a kid, we moved the day after school ended and came back on Labor Day. I was issued a bushel basket to pack my clothes and stuff in. In my adult life, I am happy that my parents were able to pass this property on to us. But I have spent my adult life on The Planet Ann Arbor and I like to spend at least some of the summer down here. I cannot miss pea shelling season at the farmers market for one thing.

Because of that I manage things differently at the moomincabin than The Comm did. (My kids are totally tired of hearing about this.) I leave non-perishable food items on the shelves and things like condiments and butter in the refrigerator throughout the summer. Usually there are a few things in the freezer. Anything else, we use or pack up to take downstate. Or toss if I don’t feel like it’s something worth keeping. We don’t compost up there because bears. At the end of the summer, everything goes. Downstate or in the garbage, which also goes downstate.

Linens? I make a more-or-less weekly run to the Up North laundromat for linens and clothing. I stopped using sheets up there after The Comm died (or maybe even before). I have a VERY comfortable (and ancient) cotton LLBean sleeping bag and we have TONS of blankets and comforters if it gets cold. Much easier to schlep a sleeping bag up there than muck around with sheets. DISCLAIMER! I don’t expect anyone else to schlep a sleeping bag up there. I am happy for people to use sheets and I am happy to launder them 🧡🧡🧡 I want people to be as comfortable as possible in our semi-rustic cabin.

I have a harder time dealing with my company about vacay time. Oh my boss doesn’t care when I take vacay. He is very accommodating. The issue is that the company likes people to schedule their time well in advance. I know there are corporate accounting reasons for this and I am not complaining even though I don’t totally understand them. I have been a bean counter in my day albeit not for a global corporation like the one I work for. But I get it. Still it’s hard to schedule vacation when you are traveling to your own vacation property and not taking a cruise or something.

My bean counting happened back in the Jurassic Age when I was well known as a good and honest treasurer for parent/teacher organizations in town. I think my favorite memory is when I came home from a middle school “fun night” event with gallon ziplock bags of [mostly] small bills. Those bags were sitting on my kitchen counter when a friend (see previous post) unexpectedly came by for whine and said something like “looks like you’re dealing drugs” 🤣 By the next morning that mess was sorted and counted and ready to take to the bank. Where I was well known for depositing perfectly counted money. Those were the days. I miss them sometimes.

This morning was “zoom” coffee with MMCB. We’ve now migrated to Tuesday mornings. It doesn’t really matter to me what morning. I can get online just about any old morning.

MMCB are Jewish so as you might imagine, the topics of late very often touch on Israel. And Palestine. And Gaza. And Hamas. Aaaaaand now Iran. I follow along as well as I can but don’t really understand all of the issues. I do know that they are so overwhelmingly complicated that I am not the person to try to untangle them. I will say that my personal Jewish friends are humanitarian mensches first and foremost and wish for everyone to get along together. We also talk about local politics…

After a bit we happily threw our hands up in the air and got on to our middle school days. I mean our kids’ middle school days. That is when our coffee clatch started down at Cafe Zola. Most of the folks we met with then have moved on (we are still friendly with them) but somehow we have stuck together, moving to Barry Bagels and then “zoom” with COVID. I am thinking we may venture back to Barry’s in the not too distant future. One of us (not me) has had a string of respiratory viruses including a second COVID case and we want to protect her.

So purple. One of our original Cafe Zola moms and a LONG time neighborhood friend of mine came up in the conversation. Vicky is ALWAYS over-the-top. Once another friend called her “the woman who never has a bad day”. Well, I knew that was not true but most people would never know it the way she cheerfully brute-forces her way through life.

This morning I recounted the day she painted her living room royal purple. I had been up and down her street numerous times that day. It was a Saturday and her husband and their two boys were off on a Boy Scout junket. I felt like something was going on but not sure what it was. At the end of the day I was walking by and she came out on her porch DRESSED HEAD TO TOE IN PURPLE and said, “Get in here!”

SHE HAD PAINTED ALL OF THE WALLS IN HER LIVING ROOM PURPLE! I walked by there again the next day and her husband, returned from the Boy Scout trip, was sitting on the porch looking straight into space. A neighbor (who was probably also on the Boy Scout trip) down the street was yelling, “Got purple walls John?”

My purple friend, after struggling for years to find a *lucrative* career ended up in real estate and she is successful at that, which doesn’t surprise me. She divorced and remarried but her then husband hangs out with her and the new husband and whoever.

We were really close when our kids were in grade school and middle school but we have both kinda moved on now. She doesn’t live in the neighborhood any more (although her then husband does). Not that we are not friends. We occasionally connect on Linked In and Facebook. But we have moved on and that is okay.

You can still see through “our” woods to the schoolyard. I can see buses lining up to drop off/pick up kids through the woods. There is a lot of green on our bushes but the big trees in the woods (oaks I think mostly) have yet to sprout anything I can see. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t sprouting.

So what do we do when we belong to families with divided political opinions. I mean when we are together and people insist on talking about politicians and issues we ABHOR (Orange Baboon, etc.). At the Hoton Lake group home (a long time ago when the Orange Baboon was new and shiny fugly and baggy), I was hanging out in the Lyme Lounge one evening and one of my loverly sister-out-laws texted me from the Mother Cabin with something like how do I stop the talk? I didn’t know how to stop the talk so I think I invited her to visit me in the Lyme Lounge. You can have some whine out here with a kindred spirit.

This out-law once labeled me “the family liberal”. The story that led to that label is NSFW but cracked me up because, well, I have ALWAYS been liberal about social issues. Fer kee-reist, live and let live. But I am kind of a fiscal conservative. Except that I DO NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM agree with the MEANness that the MAGAts have brought on. My republican-voting parents would not have liked it either. “Welfare queens” are few and far between. Most poor people just don’t have any goddamn bootstraps to pull themselves up with. Kudos to those who do and those folks should hand some of their damn bootstraps down to someone else. As we all should. My bootstraps are several generations old. And I strongly believe that most people are not trying to game the system.

Okay, I don’t know how I got off on that tangent.

Tax Day. Hahaha. A few people at the morning standup were sounding a little panicked. Our taxes were done a while back and the refund is in the bank. Yes it’s a refund this year. That isn’t always true…

Not the most exciting day. Refrigerator reset. EVERYTHING out of the fridge, shelves and crispers cleaned and expired things thrown out.

Mayo? Yes. One (of two) expired. Horseradish? 2021 anyone? A couple of bottles of hot sauce that expired long ago and I don’t know when they ever even get used. A can of Zing Zang. I’m not sure if that was expired or not but I have been schlepping it back and forth to the moomincabin for multiple summers now and I was just done done done. If somebody wants Zing Zang there is a Meijer store 15 minutes away from the moomin on uncrowded roads, no less. So I emptied it and put the rinsed-out can in the recycle. And some little bottle of neon orange zero-something drink. I am sick sick sick of moving it in and out of the fridge whenever I clean it so I dumped it and recycled the plastic bottle.

I am not complaining about anyone or anything with that little diatribe. I also threw out a few things *I* bought that didn’t get used before they expired or turned into slime — like some lettuce I didn’t use up.

After that and a few other chores, I took Cygnus out and am happy to report that her left front tire was just fine today. Of course I drove with the tire display on the dash watchfully watching when each tire went a wee bit up or down. I like that we get so much information with modern cars but…

I was all set to eat a prepared chicken something or other, breaded and flattened when a beach urchin usurped my plan with some pizza. We did not order a pizza. She brought the ingredients over and baked it here. Okay then. It was spinach and artichokes and some lemon and I dunno what all else but it was good.

And so good night.

My daughter gave me this little painting for xmas a few years ago during covid. It took us FOREVER to get it framed, dodging various waves of covid, etc. and then just forgetfulness.

We finally took it over to the frame shop in February and made our choices, including “museum quality glass”, not that you care. Just that we were mindful about this and had paid a decent amount of money… I told them I wasn’t in a rush for it to be done… A couple weeks ago I was kinda wondering why we hadn’t heard about it. I figgered I had probably not noticed a call from them because I have my phone set to ignore all calls that aren’t in my contacts.

Finally today I LOOKED at the receipt. The order was in my daughter’s name and had her phone number on it. She checked her phone history and yes, she had a number that could have been the frame shop. She ignored it because she was being spammed by 734 numbers in general. Anyway, I schlepped over there today and yes they had it and I apologized for the phone confusion.

I love how it turned out.

The frame shop parking lot is essentially the Plum Market parking lot. It was the second time I drove over there today. This time my driver’s side front taaaar pressure was 26, not 25.

The *first* time I drove over there today, I went into the Plum and humbly beseeched my mouse to come over after work and put a wee bit of air in my taaar (I bought grocks too). 33 is recommended for my front taars. My mouse is a wizard at dealing with car maintenance and she managed it with aplomb. I really need to do this kind of thing myself but I don’t think the analog device she was using would work for me. “Moom, I remember this thing from when I was a kid.” So we have plans for me to buy a MODERN tire pump and for her to teach me how to use it. Sorry but I don’t do well with man-splainin’.

…or not. Why not? Because c-c-c-c-old and windy. It’s okay, he’s parked behind the moomingarage. The Betty Mobile having been moved since the last time the GG graced the moomin with his presence.

We are happy to let the Grinchie park there when we’re not around but it became evident that the GG would need a sheltered place to park for tonight and behind the garage is it. So we’re lucky the Betty Mobile was not there because it can be a challenge to get hold of the Grinch at any random time.

The Lyme Lounge does have heat (and a CO alarm🤣). The last couple winters the GG was doing a lot of winter hiking and camping and he has managed to insulate it quite a bit. Between that and various sleeping bags and blankets and things he should be fine. He probably won’t even need to go inside the moomincabin to grab some of the NUMEROUS blankets and comforters there. When you live on the shores of Gitchee Gumee, even if you are there mostly in the summer, you have blankets!

At the end of today I took a Brain Break and drove Cygnus out into the county a bit, mainly to the north in the area of the country mouse. Wouldn’t you know, the taaaaar light came on. In Cygnus, the little tire icon doesn’t just come on. A big yellow message lights up the dashboard. Alarming as this is, I kept cool. Often this means a change in temperature or whatever is behind the issue, especially when you have tires that are still pretty damn new.

Still. Cygnus has a dash display that shows all four tires and what pressure they are at. Could I get to that screen? No I could not. At least not while driving. I made it home successfully, then sat in my driveway for a few minutes and figured out how to get that display on. I also opened my Subie phone app, which tells me all about my tires..

I think it’s probably not a leak but I will be keeping an eye on it now that I have the display front and center.

My beloved Ninja (2008 Honda Civic SI) was the first car we owned that had a tire light. The first time it went on I was like what the heck is that little yellow symbol. And. This is a brand new car! Those tires were always sensitive and that light came on umpteen bazillion times while I owned it. I got kinda cavalier about it because it was always temperature sensitivity or whatever. Until. It went on one day on my way to Cubelandia. Oh la-di-dah, I thought. I made it there just fine but when I went out to the parking lot after work a tire was totally flat.

Another memory just came to mind. Radical Betty was talking about a time she and The Commander were going to take my granddaddy’s car (RB’s dad, The Comm’s father-in-law) out on some kind of junket. I think this was when they were young married women but didn’t have children yet. Before lending them his car, my granddaddy carefully demonstrated how to change a tire. And wouldn’t you know, according to Radical Betty, they had to change a tire during their outing. No Triple A in those days. I’ve always guessed that granddaddy knew there was a bad tire before they left. No tire lights in those days.

Kim Jong Un completes this trio but he is not visible in the pic. He’s behind them facing the other direction. Oh maybe you can kind of see him, in the shadow of the OB’s face. Is that an ear?

And it’s an old pic from the 2018 Festifools Parade. I can’t find a good link to Festifools. It seems they don’t have a website and I’m not gonna link to their facebook page. But there are third-party news articles and things out there so google it if you’re interested in a parade featuring larger-than-life puppets like the ones in the pic.

We used to go to Festifools and its companion event Fool Moon every year. One year the GG wore his ghillie suit, which is tricked out with huge googly eyes. He was very popular that year and a bunch of women hugged him. I on the other hand was wearing basically business casual 🐽 Playing the straight woman. We would usually leave before the parade was over so we could stop at the Oscar Tango for a wee cocktail before the crowds hit.

Of course the parade was canceled in 2020 and although there have been some smaller events in subsequent years (I think), this year is (I think) the first year it has returned in full force. We did not attend this year. The GG was down in O-haaaa-o for the eclipse and it wasn’t really on my radar screen. I have not fully regained my ability to tolerate large crowds, indoor or out. I never have been all that crazy about crowds, although maybe a bit more so in my mis-spent youth. Friendly introvert here. Need an easily accessible freak-out chamber.

I was awakened at 0-skunk-30 by the dreaded chirp of a smoke alarm running out of battery. Actually it didn’t wake me up. It wasn’t all that long before I was gonna *get* up so I was already awake but I was still pretty p*ssed off when I heard that damn chirp.

I notified the GG of the issue. I don’t actually think he *hears* those things chirp, at least not when he’s asleep. It ALMOST makes me wish it had done the SHRIEKING thing it did the last time this happened so he could experience it. Like a woodpecker pecking incessantly on a metal chimney, it WOULD have woken him up.

Anyway. I got into the shower and I could hear him fumbling around as the chirping continued. For one thing, FOUR of our smoke alarms are situated within a circle of about eight feet in diameter. In other words, it’s pretty hard to tell which one is chirping. This was mandated by city code after a tree fell on our house.

In the end it turns out it was the CO alarm that chirped, not a smoke alarm. The issue was complicated but it if does it again, I now know WHERE IT IS and HOW TO TURN IT OFF. I *did* know we had one. Not that I am cavalier about the protections a CO alarm offers. But this is an older house (1959 ticky-tacky). It is probably drafty as all get-out and at this time of year we start turning off the furnace and opening the windows. Like last night when “someone” (not moi) left the back slider open all night. He changed the batteries in ALL the smoke alarms today, which I greatly appreciated.

I have always been freaked out about smoke alarms. I know how important they are. When I had my baby girls, we had them in our house (not four within a small radius though) and I made a special effort to ensure they were in both Hoton Lake and the moomincabin, which were rustic northern cabins.

I continue to lust after smart smoke/CO alarms. They check themselves for battery strength something like 400 times a day. They notify you via a phone app when the battery is getting low instead of waking you up with chirps or shrieks. They can tell the difference between steam and smoke. And more. When Hurricane Ike dragged a finger across southeast Michigan, the moisture he generated set off our smoke alarms.

Brain Day? I had a very productive work day today but I’m sure Mr. Bear will find ways to poke holes in my temporarily inflated ego 🤣

So Himself returned from his eclipse junket this afternoon after a late breakfast of porterization in Wakaponeta. He spent the rest of the afternoon debugging the Lyme Lounge from its latest adventure and when I came in to the kitchen to get dinner in the hopper, I could not find my dishcloth!

This is not just ANY dishcloth. It’s one I KNITTED. Turns out I really like dishcloths made out of cotton yarn and I have a few now. But I do NOT want them used to clean whatever needed cleaning in the Lyme Lounge. Plus I don’t like wondering where the hell the one I hung over the faucet just a couple hours ago IS!

So. Things that are used in the kitchen are NOT to be removed from the kitchen. If you need something from the kitchen, ask! I don’t care if it’s a cloth or a pan or whatever. And please do NOT take one of my “10 bowls” set! Years ago, The Commander was down here one time and the GG had taken some sort of cloth or towel outta the kitchen and used it in an automotive fashion. NO NO NO NO! The Comm did NOT get involved in her children’s stupid marital arguments but she subsequently obtained some nice red cloths from an automotive store and quietly presented them to him. Maybe I need to take a note.

I finished “I Cheerfully Refuse” and I am still processing it but yes yes yes. Dystopian near-future novel set on Lake Superior. And yes, mostly ON Superior. The protagonist spends most of his time traveling ON the lake piloting an inherited sailboat. I won’t say enough to give away any spoilers but what intrigued me the most was that a lot of the action takes place on Michipicoten Island and the Slate Islands. These islands are Canadian. Michipicoten is seasonally inhabited by a *few* people with summer “camps”. I doubt they have electricity or cell service and since it isn’t all that close to the “mainland”, they would have to schlep a LOT of grocks (and beer) out there for whatever the planned duration. The Slate Islands are inhabited by animals, including caribou.

I did not travel to the path of totality. I weighed that option but for several reasons chose to stay put. 1) The GG took the Lyme Lounge. It has running water but no bathroom and bathroom facilities in Ohio parks are not yet open for the season. I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT go even one day without a shower. 2) I could easily have taken a vacation day but prefer to take those in the summer and I knew there would be some w-a-i-t-i-n-g around. Not my strong suit. 3) The Planet Ann Arbor was not all that far away from totality and I caught a decent show from my back yard plus it was a beautiful sunny 70 degree day. Our mouse and racc also traveled to Ohio but they were in a different location from the GG and theirs was a day trip.

In the end it was a GORGEOUS day and I actually played hooky watching for pretty much the whole duration from my back yard. And no, I did not stare at the sun in my eclipse glasses the whole time. I donned them on and off for quick peeks. I have never seen totality but I’ve seen a few that were close, like this one was. Yes, it really does get colder when it starts getting darker.

I have experienced this a few times, notably in 2017 (where I watched at work – big party!) but also once when I was a kid skiing at Mission Hill. That also wasn’t totality but it was snowing all day and during the time the sun went into shadow, I was coming down Number 1 and I remember it got extra dark, colder, and was snowing a LOT harder for the duration. I THINK that’s a real memory but not sure. And I wanna say my backyard birds (today) shifted from daytime song to early morning or evening sound but I am no expert.

Actually I kinda played hooky from work for most of the afternoon. I couldn’t quite muster up the right energy to get back to work afterwards. It didn’t sound like anyone else had plans for major productivity either.

I did not take these pics. I didn’t really have the technology or the guzzinto to take pics. The GG sent me these from O-haaa-o. The first one COULD be an iPhone but more likely an SLR. In the second one, the telescope is involved and I’m not sure which camera. He also has solar filters so not sure how they fit in. I’ve lost track of what cameras we/he own/s. I’ve been using my iPhone exclusively for many years.

My daughter came to visit today for a utility beer (and to pick up some eclipse glasses). I had gotten ahead of the game and ordered a couple of eclipse “kits”, each of which had a few pairs of glasses. How did I figure out that these glasses were safe? They were made by Celestron and we have owned a Celestron telescope forever. We viewed Halley’s Comet through it in Florida in 1986. We (probably) have some leftover eclipse glasses from the 2017 eclipse. I’m sure Frooogy has a pair squirreled away somewhere. I ordered new ones anyway because I didn’t want the GG to turn the house upside down looking for the old ones. Two eclipse kits do not break the bank and the house needs to be turned upside down but I’d rather it happen in a more organized fashion.

It was fun to have my daughter over here for a while, just me and her. We had thought we might sit outside. Alas. I did that earlier in the afternoon and it was very warm and I had to wear a sun hat. But then, the wind picked up, clouds came in, and the temperature dropped so by the time she got here (she had pottery stuff to do this afternoon), we decided to sit inside. But still, without the GG, we can talk about polly-ticks and complain about all the stupid stuff people post on facebook, etc. Michelle Obama has said over and over that she does not WANT to be president so why do people think the “Democrats” will somehow “get rid” of Biden and “replace” him with Michelle Obama. Or whatever. I wish for a different set of candidates but that’s just CRAY-ZEE! Again, I will vote for Biden any day over the orange baboon.

In more mundane fun, this squoil was highly entertaining! It went through all kinds of gyrations to get from the roof to the bird feeder and was sometimes successful. Squirrels can do a lot of things that (most) humans can’t. I think one of the reasons they can is because they have such a significant TAIL. The tail (not to mention a lot of other anatomical differences) has to provide a different center of balance than most humans have but I don’t really know how all that works. I do know that I cannot jump from a flimsy tree branch up onto a roof and then down to a bird feeder.

What I do know is that the GG has been battling with squoils (and sometimes chipmunks) around here forever. On the Easter holiday, our daughters’ partners apparently had a wonderful time watching the GG battle the squoils. I knew there was a battle going on but I wasn’t really watching it because it’s been going on forever. He talks about Squirrel Electrification but I dunno… He’s tried that before and the squoils don’t seem to be deterred. I am glad he was entertaining.

Three books.

1) The Last Chairlift. I have read maybe five of this acclaimed author’s books and have an on-and-off relationship with him. I enjoyed a lot about this long family saga. Problem? It was too long? 1000 pages on my phone. Although I can mostly say I never got totally bored, I wished for more editing. This novel deals with a “non-traditional” family (and ghosts) and I loved the family (and most of the ghosts) but sometimes it just went on and on. I was intrigued to read it because I was a downhill skier as a kid (decent amateur). The skiing references rang true. Blue runs and black diamonds. I could manage black diamond runs albeit not elegantly but I was really more of a blue run skier. And the chairlifts… “Number 1” totally reminded me of the one and only 2-seater chairlift at Mission Hill. Clankity-clank. Stem Christie anyone?

2) Of Women and Salt. To contrast to The Last Chairlift, this family saga could be expanded into a much larger book. I’m not sure how to even describe this book. Cuba, El Salvador, immigration… 1800s through the Trumpian Bombasty although the Orange Baboon is never mentioned by name. I did like the book and think the author wrote sparingly for reasons. I just wanted more.

3) I Cheerfully Refuse. Lake Superior. Yes yes yes. My home lake! Plus I love this author. Set in a semi-dystopian version of the shores of Gitchee-Gumee. I think. I’m not very far into the book and still figuring that out. That’s me and some friends frolicking in some big waves Gitchee-Gumee threw at us when we were kids. (Photo from the Sherman Archives.)

Music. It’s Saturday evening and I sooooo miss the locally produced Cuban Fantasy NPR show that used to run at this time. But they have replaced it with some decent jazz and folksy type stuff. Tonight something interesting came on that took me a bit of time to process. Disclaimer: YouTube links ahead that may come with ads. It turned out to be Neil Young and Crazy Horse playing Oh Susanna. At first I didn’t get that it was Neil Young even though I probably listened to the original Harvest album umpteen bazillion times when I was an angsty young college student. But. It also sounded like this Shocking Blue song. I’m not sure if Neil Young was “quoting” this song or not but they sound a lot alike to my ears. And yes, “quoting” other people’s music compositions is a *thing* although I don’t think I can begin to describe it.

Today was fraught with all kinds of frenetic activity around here. The good news was the GG took a whole bunch of crapola off to a donation center and they took it ALL! YIPPEE YI-OH KI-YAY!

Earthquake in New York and/or New Jersey today? We didn’t feel it here although we occasionally feel earthquakes. The one I remember the most is when my first beach urchin was a baby. Glass things in the Landfill were rattling/vibrating and at first I thought a big truck was going by on Maple. But the rattling/vibrating kept on going. Eventually I figured out it was an earthquake.

When I was 10, Radical Betty was living in Alaska with her family including my beloved cousins UKW and the Grinch. Their dad (Duke) was stationed there in the Air Force. I got up one Saturday morning and turned on the TV to watch the Saturday morning cartoons, like I did every Saturday morning at 8:00 AM. Instead of cartoons, the screen lit up with “Anchorage is a sea of fire!” I started screaming, which got my parents outta bed pretty dern quick.

Well of course Anchorage was not a “sea of fire” but that was a serious earthquake. My cousins and their parents survived the earthquake unscathed but if I have it right did not have running water, etc., for a while. The Grinch was in the horsepittle with a broken leg (skiing maybe?) when the earthquake happened and Duke (who was in his room at the time of the earthquake) recalled his bed “taxi-ing” around the room. Duke was a career Air Force pilot.

I am done for tonight. Love y’all. KW.

P.S. I am done but other people are still frenetic…

Look how much this man loves his granddaughters. He has four granddaughters in all but these are the ones I pushed out of my own personal uterus. Sorry if that’s TMI.

Can you believe this guy once gave his daughter (meeee) a roll of pennies to play poker on the band bus? Yes. He did.

I was in junior high (7th grade) when I joined the Sault Ste. Siberia high school band. Our only public junior high was joined to our only public high school by a long hall. There was a “manual arts” (think shop and automotive stuff) wing off the middle of that hallway. I was “invited” to join the high school band because I was too “good” for the rudimentary music lessons taught in the junior high “band”. Both bands were “directed” by the same person. Music teachers were scarce in my public school system in those days. I was actually *really* good but that is a whole ‘nother story (and I’m NOT bragging).

Being in the high school band meant that I got to travel to band festivals. On a bus! A school bus but whatever. We took two buses. One for us nutso junior high kiddos who were extremely excited about being on a bus WITHOUT parental supervision. And therefore CRAY-ZEE and NOISY. Later on when I was in high school and played first flute, I was happy to be on the high school bus where most folks were a bit more sane and some people even fell asleep. Senior year I would look forward to meeting up with my then boyfriend for a beer when I got home. The drinking age was 18 then and he was in college. (I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.)

The first time I went on the band bus to a festival, my dad gave me a roll of pennies so I could play poker. I knew how to play poker from playing it with cousins and friends at the moominbeach and I wasn’t all that bad at it although I sure can’t remember much about it now. My dad was in the band when he was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia. He played the trombone and I guess he knew all about the penny poker games.

I don’t remember if I won or lost poker games on that bus but I had fun. The next year our long-time band director took a new job “downstate” and his replacement didn’t allow penny poker on the band bus. Or maybe it was the school district that didn’t. I dunno. I LOVED the band director’s replacement and it was under her encouragement that I challenged my way up to 3rd chair flute in the high school band when I was in 8th grade.

Well where we were? Mr. Bear totally whupped my *ss in a spec review this morning. As usual, he was right. I wasn’t exactly wrong but I had neglected to include some important context. Live and learn and I’m taking my licks.

The GG? The phone crapola from hell continued ALL DAY. That included a 120-mile round trip drive and he is STILL working on it now. No resolution.

I’m not gonna talk about this situation online but it reminds me of a time The Commander had a twisted issue with her cable TV service. Someone had talked her into changing her service plan or whatever. Well fine. Except that after the change, whenever she changed the channel, it took something like SEVEN seconds for the channel to change. I’m not sure whether this bothered her all that much but when I was up there, IT DROVE ME CRAY-ZEE!!!

The GG tried to take care of it on a visit. He got along famously with my mom and was of great help to her – and me – in her last few years. So he went out to the cable company and asked them to change the service plan back to what it was before. Oh, no. We can’t do that. It isn’t under her name. It’s under Mr. FinFam’s name (aka my dad). After quite some back and forth, the GG said, “Well, Mr. FinFam has been DEAD for five(?) years!” That got them moving. Fortunately I don’t think they asked for a death certificate. I mean, we certainly had them but the GG did not have one in hand at that moment.

All of this stuff is in the name of security and protecting people from fraud. But we’re talking about phones and cable TV, not financial accounts. If The Comm was a fraud victim, it was the cable company itself that was the perpetrator because they talked her into changing her service. I know that there are plenty of ways to defraud people via phone and cable services but there has GOT to be a better way to handle these things especially when people are trying to help vulnerable friends and relatives navigate complicated tech “support” systems.

I love this pic of The Comm. I can’t remember what I had said but this knife was her response 🤣🤣🤣 I love you moom wherever you are.

P.S. On the radio… Cows and a couple people have come down with bird flu. Listening to the story, I am not terrified about this but in case it mutates into something disastrous, we do NOT need the orange baboon back in office. He did a TERRIBLE job with the last “plague”. Don’t bring him back.