Random bits of my so-called life.

A long day ending in a trip to Daytwa Metro to pick up some beloved travelers after a trip to San Francisco and thereabouts.

Texting from a loooong line of cars, I was thinking, “Do I have to P?” Naw, I’m okay. But it reminded me of my uncle Duke telling about when he was stationed in England some time after WWII and he and Radical Betty were driving around on some back roads in the middle of the night (I think) and she had to P. Nobody was around when she started that process. Alas, before she could finish P-ing, a bus pulled up out of nowhere and stopped. She could not stop P-ing to save her life so a whole busload of people got to watch. Much gnoffing accompanied the story from both Betty and Duke.

When you grow up in the yooperland, sometimes if you have to P you have to P. I remember being totally embarrassed when I was eight or so and my family and I were on a Sunday drive somewhere out in the tootlies. The Commander chirped, “We’re having a bathroom party. Do you want to join?” Yikes! Nope. Nobody could see us (there was nobody else around) but…

I have done woodsP, drivewayP, urbanP, and any number of other Ps but I always make sure there’s no way a bus full of people (or ANYONE) can see me.

At any rate, we retrieved our travelers successfully. I know airline travel is safe but I am always happy to get that “landed” text.

The contents of the refrigimatator had gotten into the usual state of disarray that they get into after a few weeks (or maybe a month or two in this case). My refrigimatator is particularly hard to keep up with because the GG is forever filling it up with extra stuff for his boondoggles or to supply FlaMan. I AM NOT COMPLAINING (although it does drive me nuts). But this is just part of the life I chose. I support the boondoggles (even cook lasagna for them sometimes) and I am a HUGE FlaMan fan.

Anyway, my main target today was the veggie crisper drawers and due to a design flaw when we redid The Landfill Chitchen, you have to pull the fridge out of its “nook” a bit so you can open the doors enough to pull the drawers out. This is a pain in the *ss but usually I can slowly trundle it out. Today? Wouldn’t budge. Did somebody put a ton of bricks in it? I did not know. I am not mechanically inclined at all and so was not equal to this task but I knew who was. My personal mechanical engineer. (Actually he is NOT an engineer, he’s a computer scientist, but I think he inherited a lot of his engineer dad’s DNA.)

After quite some assessment of the problem, it was determined that the wheels had deteriorated to the point of failure. I was standing at the sink watching, wondering how the hell do we fix that? Envisioning my refrigerator tipped on its side somehow? The two of us even with our kids aren’t strong enough to handle a job like that. Would we have to actually hire a repair person? Now. I am not averse to hiring such a person but the GG definitely is.

The next thing he did was pull a little package of plastic thingies off the top of the fridge. Whut? “Oh, I ordered these wheels a while back.” New fridge wheels. Again. Whut? He then began telling me about methods for LIFTING the fridge up *in place*. Or at least pulled out of its nook.

BTW: The fridge is *in* that nook because it was the only place it would fit. This is not a large kitchen but, unlike at the moomincabin, I do not usually find myself butt dancing with other people. Unless they are deliberately trying to butt dance with me. TMI? At the moomincabin, I was usually butt dancing with The Commander. Not deliberately.

The Lyme Lounge got sprung from its winter berth today and has made its way back to the Planet Ann Arbor awaiting a summer of adventures all over the place. Looks like a nice spot to camp, right? It’s actually the UU’s garage in Gaylord and I doubt the GG slept in it the couple nights he was there. But who knows.

So, how did the Lyme Lounge get its name? Back in 2013, the GG ordered a Scamp trailer and he and our daughter mouse drove over to Minnesota to pick it up. They encountered Stormy Kromer along the way.

After they picked up the Scamp trailer, they made their way outta Minnesota, through northern Wisconsin and across Michigan’s upper peninsula. They did a lot of hiking along the way and they picked up dozens of ticks. Yick. One of the best ways to get rid of ticks on your body is to take a SHOWER but although the Lyme Lounge has running water (cold and hot), it does not have bathroom facilities. This is a tick. There were other suggestions for naming the Lyme Lounge but it was named after Lyme Disease.

After the GG and mouse arrived at the moomincabin, the GG didn’t feel all that well for a couple days. At one point, I suggested the urgent care (as much as I hate those things). He refused. In the end, we *think* he was bitten by black flies (there were all kinds of buggies out there besides ticks). Black fly bites make me feverish, as they did to Radical Betty.

So the Lyme Lounge is now here at the Landfill for the duration.

I’m getting great photos texted to me from a couple of exotic places, San Fransisco, and Naomikong Point. I love them all but I will limit myself to sharing one from the Naomikong area for now.

Naomikong Point is a place in the yooperland I have known my entire life. It is about 30 miles west of the moominbeach. When I was a child, getting there involved the crappiest of crappy dirt/gravel roads and took forever. My parents liked to drive old two-track roads but but they didn’t do this one frequently, especially with young children.

Fast forward into whenever “they” built the Curley Lewis “highway”. A nice paved road over to US123, which leads to Paradise and Tahquamenon Falls. It used to take three hours to get from our beach to Tahq. Now it’s more like an hour or so. Whoosh! My parents had issues with Curley Lewis and perhaps they weren’t alone because I note that the road is called something else now.

I reconnected with this area when my brother and the GG took some of the beach urchins and my brother’s young rescue dog Sam out there many years ago. Part of the trail is along the beach and I remember that my brother went a little ballistic when when Sam rolled in poop and my brother threw him in the lake. (It is shallow there like at the moominbeach and Sam was fine.)

Naomikong is where I first encountered a TICK! Uber Kayak Woman and Radical Betty and I were hiking the trail there and Radical Betty encountered a “bug” she couldn’t identify. We took the “bug” into the Chippewa County Health Department and it WAS a tick.

The pic is the suspension bridge crossing whatever creek is coming through at this point. It’s not Ankodosh. There are multiple creeks in this area.

P.S. A lot of people (including the GG) mispronounce Naomikong. The “a” IS pronoucned as a long a. Na-om-i-kong. Not Nom-i-kong. Of course I do not know how the natives pronounce it. It might be totally different…

I drove out to the Jackson Road Meijer this morning in a goddamn DELUGE. A frickin’ chilly deluge, thank you very much for Cygnus’s pre-heater starting her at 85 degrees, as she does unless I change her pre-heat temp, which I didn’t do this morning. I needed that heat this morning as well as the high-heat “bush-warmer”. I dunno when it’ll get significantly warmer again (I don’t think tomorrow…) but it did dry up quite a bit later.

We’re at the point of actually connecting with when folks might be at the moominbeach this summer. An email missive today reminded me that Memorial Day is May 25 this year. After a double-take on the date, YES, we will be at the moomincabin! Cocktails on the deck are in order. Unless it is 54 degrees and SLEETING like it was a few years ago when I arrived there. Still. It’s like we sit through this long fugly winter and all of a sudden, summer is a-coming and we are not really planned for it.

This photoooo is from July 16, 2016 at 7:34 in the morning. Before Trump grabbed our country. And yes, that’s exactly what he did. Reading/listening to the book Lucky Loser. Credit to one of my sisters-in-law.

I have only been following the Artemis mission whenever the GG has been following. Hopefully I’ll be able to find it tonight because I think I want to watch it land.

When I woke up today I fully expected the GG to head north to his ugly brother’s house and then to the yooperland. That was what the plan was yesterday, at least. This morning? I think I’ll postpone until tomorrow. Okay. That’s okay but… If you wanna eat, you have to let me know when you’re gonna beeee here. Luckily I had made an impulse two-pork chop purchase the other day so I pulled those outta the freezer. But also, our city and even our neighborhood are far from being a food desert. Plum Market and Aldi and numerous restaurants are easily accessible.

So today was a work day instead. Yes, he is running the snowblower. I have other pics of him raking and filling compost carts for weekly pickup, which only happens in the “warm” months. I’m being facetious here. Today was a pretty warm day but it’s been a cold spring.

At some point, mouse posted a rather inscrutable photo and the GG could not process it.

“Is that mouse’s bike?” he asked. “Zoom in on the bottle,” I replied. “Degreaser and cleanser” and there is a bike chain there. Yes it’s her bike. What did he think?

The next thing I knew, he had retrieved his e-Bike from the Landfill Dungeon. The NEXT thing I knew, I had a phone call from one of his brothers. Brother had called the GG’s phone but the GG hadn’t answered his phone (because he was riding his e-Bike) so somehow it got routed to me. I had a GREAT time talking to his brother. We don’t see him all that often. We all have adult children and this brother has grandchildren scattered around the country. The talk veered to politics and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to someone about our hatred of Trump despite what some of our relatives might think. Make no mistake. Every branch of every family I belong to has people who don’t agree with me. And people who do. How do we still get along? I do not know but we do. It’s moments like this afternoon’s phone call that help. You are not alone.

The GG decided to walk to Ypsilanti today and suggested we meet up at the Sidetrack Bar and Grill for lunch. Okay!

Problem. Where the hell IS the Sidetrack? Don’t get me wrong, I have been to the Sidetrack more than a few times. We used to have work luncheons there and while my last MacMu uncle was still alive, his kids would fly in to town and we’d meet up with all of them there. Good times!

COVID hit and my uncle died and my work went totally remote. My uncle and his wife died OF COVID but they were living in a skilled nursing facility and had many health problems by that time (they were 90-something). It was the early days of COVID and things were very chaotic everywhere. Still I am sorry they had to go that way. (The GG disputes that they died *of* COVID and he may be right. I may be misremembering. They did HAVE it though.)

That’s a long way of saying I haven’t been to the Sidetrack in a looooong time and I had a few panicky moments of “where IS the Sidetrack?” before I left. I know how to get TO Ypsi (which is 11 miles away by freeway) and I could clearly *visualize* the Sidetrack but…

I (wisely) looked it up on GooMaps on my phone, then plugged my phone into Cygnus and let it direct me through the trip. I hadn’t wanted to take the I94 Clogway but at that time of day, after ONE traffic light, I realized right quick that it was the best way to go. GooMaps was fine but I tried to turn off the *radio* at one point and GooMaps stopped talking too. I had to turn into a gas station and stop to get GooMaps talking again. One more little hiccup (my error, not GooMaps) and voila! there was the Sidetrack right in front of me, just like I remembered it. Of course, by that time, the GG had already texted me wondering where I was. I was two minutes late, fer kee-reist! (But learn how to use your car, KW!)

We sat at the bar and I kept thinking I was looking out a window and across the street. Until I noticed the GG gawping at me in one of his signature hats. I was looking into a huge mirror LOL!

The GG was ecstatic to score two actual business cards today. One for a business that deals with old coins and stuff (we’re selling, not buying) and one from the guy sitting next to him. I couldn’t hear the whole convo but I think he fixes OLD cars or something. Anyway they were gabbling away about auto assembly plants (the GG put himself through college by working at Hamtramck Assembly and others) and stuff that happened in Royal Oak in the late 60s, where the GG worked the night shift at a gas station on a busy intersection and was robbed at gunpoint a couple times.

P.S. The first syllable of Ypsilanti is pronounced “ip” (short i), not “yip”. If you say it with “yip”, my mother WILL HURL LIGHTNING BOLTS AT YOU. She spent her first year of college there at what was then (I think) called the “normal school” (but now Eastern Mich) before transferring to Michigan State (where she met Radical Betty and Betty’s brother aka my dad). You’ve been warned!

Something like that. I think we were having the convo at the moomincabin. [Psst: KW, where the hell are you gonna go with this? I do not know. Some of it might be snarky.]

An NPR show (1A?) had a segment about trad wives today. My ears perked up although I didn’t really listen to all of it that closely. I think it was mostly about the sort of wives that don’t work outside the home but somehow have the cash to take care of whatever “million” kids they have and keep house and still have time to make Instagram posts showing off their beautiful lives. And maybe a camera crew and some professional chefs, etc. Hey, I said I might be snarky.

Okay. Growing up, my mom was a “trad mom” at first. Sorta. In a shabby little bungalow in the eastern yooperland. She had worked (retail at Monkey Wards) before I was born but my parents decided she needed to stop to raise me and a few years later, my brother.

We never lacked for ANYTHING but there weren’t many luxuries.

When I got to be 10, mom got a teeny tiny teaching job. I was trusted to take care of my brother (and the dog) one afternoon a week. That job led to a master’s degree in education and a full-time job with benefits at the high school. We could actually afford some luxuries at that point. Although my parents were ALWAYS frugal. Thank you mom and dad. We’re trying to emulate you.

A [beloved] relative (doctor’s wife) at one point asked mom why she wanted to go back to work. Mom said something like, “I’m tired of being poor.”

So as an adult, I mostly fell into jobs. I had a childhood tech career and then a second career as a stay-at-home mom, volunteer, and lowly paid youth theatre guild administrator.

Here’s the “kicker”. At a time I didn’t think I would ever work for pay again, the LSCHP hired me into my adult tech career. It turned out to be a job that paid me well. Who’da thunk it?

Do I look like a trad wife in this pic? I do know that my dad’s childhood friend Otto McNaughton Jr. took a fantastic pic of me but I don’t think I look much like a trad wife. Ann Arbor hippie maybe. I also look like my dad here.

One of the things about the GG that I like is how he geeks out about all kinds of things. Vende Globe sailboat race? Yes. Right now it’s the current moon shot. In the pic is a spreadsheet he has been keeping for at least 30 years.

When did Neil Armstrong walk on the moon? It was 1969. I was 15. My parents had an ancient Zenith black and white TV at the moomincabin and they watched it there but I, being a TEENAGER, went over to the Piedmont cabin to watch it on their color TV. It was MUCH cooler to watch TV at the Piedmont cabin, which was the coolest place to be in our teenage years. There was no place at the moomincabin to hang out. The living room was essentially my parents’ bedroom.

Problem with the moonwalk? I was sick as a dog when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I wasn’t throwing up, “just” fever and maybe sore throat but I can’t remember. Go home, KW. I can’t. I have to try to be cool. I have a bit of a history of being sick during space things. In second grade, when John Glenn orbited the earth, I threw up all over my desk.

I’m not really watching this moon trip. It’s on in the background and the GG has been a bit grumpy about the pictures, given that back in 1969, camera technology was nothing at all like it is now and he thought they should be better. Apparently the astronauts are taking iPhone pics and that’s what I’d be doing if I was on the Artemis II mission. I can barely stand to board an airliner so you won’t find me on a space mission.

Today was difficult for me. I got myself over caffeinated and the GG got into a HUGE rummaging rampage throughout the afternoon. I was going absolutely nutso.

At the end of the afternoon, I came out of the Water Closet and Cygnus’s car alarm was going off. I reached for my key fob but it wasn’t on the table next to me. Um, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I asked the GG. He was changing the batteries in my fob. The problem was that he somehow set off the alarm. HE COULD NOT HEAR IT. What would we do without my super ears, super nose, or super brain…

That is, if this photo was indeed taken on Easter. For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly which Easter it was but there WAS an Easter when we were solo (no kids were home) and it was 90 degrees so we grabbed some juice and loaded Cheerios into baggies and schlepped kayaks down to the river. I *think* it was pretty soon after we got our first iPhones in 2007, early adopters that we are.

This year Little Cat Z was feeling rueful that she was “abandoning” us to visit friends in SanFran. Abandoned? For Easter? I don’t expect my kids to come home for *any* holiday but they have traditionally come home for xmas except when they were on study abroad and Thanksgiving if they are within driving distance and the weather isn’t treacherous. Easter? Not an important holiday for us. LCZ’s best friend since middle school just had her second child. Go go go. Be with her and meet their baby. I have to admit, I knew she was going out to the left coast soon but I didn’t hang on to *when* so I was a little surprised when she said she had to be at Metro at 5 AM this morning (LOL).

Whenever this pic is from, there *was* an Easter when it was so hot we headed down to the river and breakfasted on Cheerios out of baggies. Oh, we always have an Easter type dinner. If there are enough people I try to do some kind of ham. That can be a challenge because a little ham goes a very long way. I never did come across quite the right ham form factor this year. I like the spiral cut ones but a whole ham??? I couldn’t find a *small* (like quarter) ham so nope. Too late, I wondered if checking out Harry & David might have been an option.

Anyway, we’re having mini-filet mignon and friends and GARLIC BREAD (Plum Market this morning: Mom, will there be garlic bread? Yes I made it yesterday.) Garlic bread is apparently the “star” of the meal although some people said they wouldn’t turn down grilled filet. Friends? Mashed potatoes (big gorgeous Yukon Golds), broccoli, and salad. Would have done asparagus but it’s too early for local. Right around the corner though.

Mouse and the racc are on their way over so there’ll be four of us and the weather is only suitable for die-hard kayakers today. 40 degrees and windy as all getout.

P.S. Please don’t tell me “he is risen.” [Delete long rant – you’re welcome.]

No that’s not my age, although it is the age I joined FacePlant and the age I learned to HIDE MY BIRTHDAY. I mean. Happy birthday is a wonderful sentiment but I don’t need to get it from people I haven’t seen in umpteen bazillion years who probably never did know when my birthday was. Nope. I don’t need birthday greetings at all but if I get them, I would rather they come from people who actually care about me.

That said, my childhood friend The Beautiful Mimi always remembers that her birthday is the same day as my dad’s birthday. My brain remembers weird stuff like that too and I love that she remembers that.

People (the GG) are always asking what I am doing. I think they want me to forge ahead into I dunno what. What did I do today? One thing I did was decrease the number of pairs of tights I own from 56 to 34 (canned laughter is appropriate here). The 22 pairs I am getting rid of are bagged for a donation dumpster. They are all clean with no runs or holes and some of them have never been worn. In any case, tights might be squicky for some people to accept from a donation site but whoever gets these is free to throw them out. Or maybe someone will be ecstatic? “I have a new job but I can’t afford stockings/tights.”

Without getting too much into the details, I kept some colors that I wear all the time. Black, raspberry, green (a few shades), blue, and a few others. I also kept my Halloween skull and bat tights. And three pairs of Ukrainian duo tights, one leg yellow, one leg blue. I don’t really wear those nowadays but I fervently support Ukraine so I can’t get rid of them.

Almost all of these tights were purchased from Snag Tights. I’m promoting Snag here but they do make COMFORTABLE tights for all kinds of sizes. No constantly tugging them back up over your butt. I became “addicted” to Snag when I was still driving to an office most days. That office space is now a church and my then tech boss (also a rabbi) is probably laughing his *ss off about that.

We have flood warnings for tonight but they will probably not do anything much to our property. We’re on pretty high ground here. The pic is from Hoton Lake many years ago. I sent it to DogMomster back then, suggesting that she could maybe start a business with a pontoon lawn mower. She was doing her own lawn mowing and I sent that as a joke but I got a chilly response. Things worsened after that and we haven’t communicated in over ten years. Not because of that though…

I went out to Dexter to eat (at restaurants) TWICE today.

I met my mouse and the racc for lunch (they biked out there) at Raterman’s and we, uh, SAT OUTSIDE! Great restaurant but complicated enough that I don’t think we’ll be doing it for Friday night porterization. You have to walk inside to order your food (and pay for it) and then you have to go back in to pick it up when it’s ready. If you want a beer/whine, you go next door (in the same building) to order that. It was fine and the food was VERY good and they sell HALF SANDWICHES! So I didn’t have to take half my BLT home and eat it later (or not). The brewery and restaurant are separate businesses but they successfully work together.

Today the GG arrived home again (jiggety jig) from his Ohio junket so we had made a reservation at Dexter’s Pub for dinner of porterization. It was kind of pandemonium in there tonight. It took a looooong time for our drink order to arrive. I *think* that was related to a big smashing of glass. Was that our drinks falling off the tray? Yeah, probably.

The pic is of one of the GG’s hiking partners fording a small river on the trail. Remember when you were in grade school reading novels about soldiers and pioneers fording rivers atop their horses? No? Well, fording means you are crossing a river without a bridge, not even a “log” bridge. Ask the GG about slipping off log bridges into a river. Three times.

That’s enough for tonight. G’night. KW.

This is one the main places we used to ski when we were kids. The big hill with the tree in the middle was number 4. I did number 4 a few times but I did it carefully. I didn’t bomb it straight down from top to bottom.

Number 3 was below the clankity old chairlift. Expert skiers (like not me) only occasionally used it as a ski run.

Number 2 (to the right outta the pic) was not the easiest run for someone like me but I managed it pretty well.

Number 1 was the one I skied on the most. You got off the chairlift and skied down the top “leg” of number one. Halfway down there was a dogleg and a lot of people stopped at that point to chat or whatever. Once my childhood friend Helen’s older sister Grace Anne missed the stop and went flying over the side of the hill and we made up a song about it. “Off she goes into the wild blue yonder, sailing up over the side of the hill”. She was not hurt and how could we be so cruel to a person we loved?

She had probably driven us there that day, in their family’s ANCIENT Buick. We were in junior high and we were awful to our siblings sometimes.

The “intermediate hill” with its rope tow merged with the bottom of Number 1 and then over to the side was the bunny hill where I taught 8-year-olds how to ski a few xmas vacations.

Check out those old cars.

Okay, I listen to NPR a lot. 1) NPR does NOT just talk about politics. 2) I don’t get my political opinions from NPR. I get them from the golden rule. Even though I don’t practice Christianity or any religion, it’s a good rule. Trump (and Hegseth and whoever), take a note.

NPR has lately been running shows about LooksMax. I am kinda (horribly) fascinated with the idea that young men (teenagers and twenty-somethings) are actually doing things like hitting themselves in the face with hammers to do something to make their bone structure, uh what? More handsome? There are other things like making yourself taller. I’m not sure that is easy to make happen.

I get it. My bugaboo in junior high/high school was acne. It was pretty bad. Creams and crap like that, prescribed by my doctor/uncle if anything made it worse. Finally he gave me a mild antibiotic (that my family probably didn’t pay for) that I could use and refill when needed. That did the trick until age took over and dried me out a bit, only a few years later.

When I saw something today about “rib remodeling” (for women) fly by I didn’t even want to look at it. Does that mean you are taking a hammer to your rib cage to make yourself skinnier? I do not know and I did not look.

P.S. Having your uncle as a doc? It was not creepy at all. He just did little kid things and the acne thing and once a horrible ear infection. Git in the car, we’re goin’ to town, where he blew the wax outta my ear and gave me an antibiotic (that my family probably didn’t pay for). He didn’t get involved in examining female relatives’ woman parts.

Oh, no it’s not. The only pic I have of the real AirBnB is the one with Chief Tecumseh on the porch.

One of the things I can count on the GG to do when I ask him to take pictures is to take random pics that I didn’t necessarily ask for no matter how specific I am. So I got this, which is not of the AirBnB but from something on their hike. I’ve learned to just roll with whatever pics I get and try to make my own story.

I have been in Chillicothe once in my life. The GG and I drove down for a weekend and stayed with my brother and his wife. None of us had any children yet and I *think* that’s where we met his new golden retriever puppy Laker but not sure. It could’ve been Oakridge, Tennesee.

My brother was a mechanical engineer and I don’t remember what he did in Chillicothe. After that they moved to Oakridge and he did something in the nuclear industry. Eventually he snagged a job in his preferred auto industry and moved back to Michigan where he worked for GM until he died. As a side note, my brother the GM auto engineer was who suggested we buy our first Honda.

P.S. The AirBnB is fine and has adequate kitchen and bathroom facilities.

The GG is “doing Ohio” which means he is hiking with friends down there. His friends had scheduled an AirBnB and when he arrived at the address, this is what was there…

I’m like where are the flushy toilets and showers and where are you gonna cook a lasagna and a bunch of filet mignon in there. Is there a stove? It spent my childhood summers in rustic conditions with outhouses and cold running water from my next door uncle’s well through a garden hose so I can deal with that kind of stuff. But this was a little more rustic than my childhood cabin. He didn’t provide an explanation. To be fair, internet service was iffy.

Turns out this shack was at the address but was not the actual BnB. To get to that you had to snake your way around the shack and down a little road to the REAL AirBnb, where Chief Tecumseh stands guard.

There was a substantial No Kings protest in downtown Ann Arbor yesterday and maybe at Vet’s Park, which is near The Landfill.

I did not attend. I abhor Trump and MAGA, etc. I think Trump IS trying to become a “king” or dictator or whatever. Born in the USA well past WWII, I did not have to live through a dictatorship. Thanks to my dad and a few uncles and my father-in-law (and many others) who went to war.

Oh, and the f*cking SAVE act. None of this makes any sense to me, who grew up in an era when women almost always adopted their husband’s name. I did not take my husband’s name. No hyphens, no nothing. I am a Finlayson and that’s my name. I let my daughters take the GG’s name. No problem. My mom had a bit of an issue with me keeping my birth name and always put The GG’s last name on legal documents. This caused problems after mom died and I was being slammed by the most incompetent pettifoggers on earth. But my own lawyer fixed all of that.

I’d like to think my mom would be proud of me today, given the times, for insisting on keeping my name. Thinking back, I’m not sure my dad cared whose surname I used. He never said anything and maybe he was even silently rooting for me. I don’t really know.

The GG has taken a couple quick trips in the last six months or so. Otherwise we have had a LOT of togetherness lately. He was dead set to go to the yooperland a few weeks ago and then the yoop had a bomb cyclone event featuring snow. I actually said, “DON’T GO!” He didn’t. He did drive (on dry roads) west a bit to help build an elevated walkway aka bridge. That was a day trip albeit a FUN one.

So I am left here with Webster. Will he keep me warm at night? Actually it’s always been me who keeps other people warm at night. I didn’t have hot flashes much (TMI?), just that I run a little hot in general. Most of the time. It turned out that one of the beach urchins needed a Webster and we had TWO. So she took one of them.

Somebody got a GREAT pic of the racc (in cool sunglasses) with me in the background looking old and baggy but not terribly fugly. I’m not gonna post it because the only living people I post pics of are the GG and sometimes his ugly brother (i.e., ID twin). I mean, I do sometimes post OLD pics of living people.

So, what did you do today, KW? I I went to the grock store and did a couple other small errands and worked on de-cluttering the Landfill Chitchen. I took Cygnus out in the country…

…and I maybe broke a law. I took Miller to get home. I hung a louie off Miller into the neighborhood so I could get across to Dexter (don’t ask if you are not from The Planet Ann Arbor). In the process, I crossed the new (this summer) dedicated bike lanes to make my turn. There were bikes coming toward me from the other direction. The were much slower than I was and so I turned in front of them. Afterwards, I had second thoughts about that. Should I have waited (with my turn signal on) for them to continue? Probably. When I’m trying to make a left turn and there are automotive vee-hickles coming toward me, I gauge their speed and cross when it seems safe.

I am all for safe bike lanes. In this part of town, bike riders could take neighborhood streets to get downtown (a friend of mine did that for decades) but that’s a whole ‘nother story. I think next time this happens I will be more aware and wait for the bikes to go by before I cross. But this is all new and there are there are all kinds of new “things” in the street (speed bumps and yellow sticks) that drivers who have been traversing Miller since forever might not be able to process immediately. I will figure it out. The folks here on The Planet who are still able to drive but aging out of it probably won’t be able to manage it. The Commander wouldn’t have been able to. Although kudos to her for figuring out the bus system to get downtown when she was here visiting and helping us with her young granddaughters.

Friday is a somewhat unusual night for a Landfill Dinner. Usually we are porterized somewhere but the GG is heading to Ohiiio to hike for a week so we did it anyway.

My morning did not start auspiciously. I went to Meijer (for an aluminum foil lasagna pan for the GG’s upcoming trip and then the plum for an amazingly complicated list of stir-fry ingredients. I kept getting lost in the list and I needed mouse’s help finding a few of the ingredients. She doesn’t usually work on Friday but hey mom, let’s take a field trip.

On the way home from the plum, I did the most stupid thing on earth. I took the grocks out to Cygnus, put them in the back, returned the grokkery cart to the corral, FORGOT to close Cygnus’s rear gate, and drove home with the gate open, high in the air. I did not notice this situation until I started backing into the Landfill driveway and the backup cam was looking into the sky! Thankfully, it was a short slow drive. Nothing fell out and there were no cops around to notice. Jeebus.

Other than that, it was a good kind of work day. The beach urchins both worked today and I decided I needed to do most of the stir-fry prep. After Meijer and Plum I went to White Lotus Farms to get flavored goat cheese spread. First up was sorting out all of the sauce, etc. ingredients I had (and had bought).

Next, I sorted out the veggies I obtained. I had choices about those. I couldn’t find a bag of matchstick carrots but the racc is an expert about cutting those up from big carrots and he rose to the occasion.

I made the “sauce” that “marinated” (or whatever) the chicken and the Szechuan sauce. The recipe was pretty wonky about which ingredients went into which “sauce”. An editor was sorely needed but I figured it out.

Finally I chopped up veggies for the stir-fry. I left the chicken chopping and cooking to Little Cat Z, who was pretty tired from her long work week. I felt guilty about that but hopefully I helped by all the prep work I did. I had fun doing it.

The end result was okay but waaaay too salty. Too much tamari, I think. I might not ever do this recipe again. I mean there are a bazillion stir-fry recipes out there including some in my vintage Sunset cookbooks. Then again, maybe I just need to adjust the sauce. The veggies were fine.

P.S. I also made a lasagna today.

Thinking about church a bit this week. So many of us were brought up going to church. I certainly was.

My childhood church was not terrible. It was a mainstream Methodist church and although some ministers were better than others (like some presidents are better than others [snort]), it wasn’t a bad place to be. I loved the singing and the Sunday School activities. Still. Early on, I figgered out that there was a lot of crapola going on.

There was the time that my poor beleaguered mother, trying hard to fit in at the church, was helping set up the coffee hour that happened after church. Me (five) and my brother (two) were running around creating havoc in the church kitchen, which was underneath the nave or whatever it is (xword word). Leatha, an old biddy busybody tried to defuse the situation by gathering me and my brother together and telling us that Jesus was watching us. I don’t think my brother understood a word of it. I just thought it wasn’t true. Jesus (if he existed), didn’t give a crap about us, couldn’t see us, and wasn’t watching us mix it up in the Sault Ste. Siberia Methodist church kitchen. My mom needed help down in that f*ckin’ kitchen and Leatha was not help.

Years and years later when I was an adult, I mentioned Leatha’s name to a bunch of my mom’s friends and they guffawed. They had no more respect for her than I did. I know why people don’t tell 5-year-olds stuff like that but still. Why don’t they tell 5-year-olds stuff like that? There are ways to do it politely.

So what is your church? I think the GG’s church is the North Country Trail, even though he is Catholic by birth and upbringing. Mine I guess is the moominbeach.

When I searched for “church” in photos, this pic came up. Does it look like a church to you? It doesn’t look like a church to me.

P.S. I did learn about the golden rule in Sunday School. I believe in it and try to live by it. But it shouldn’t just be for “Christians”. It should be for EVERYONE on the Planet. Trump, take a note.