Random bits of my so-called life.

Disclaimer 1: This is just a funny rock on the moomincabin deck. It has holes in it and somebody at some point dropped “eyeball” pebbles into those holes. So do not freak out.

Disclaimer 2: We are experiencing technical difficulties with email today (those few of you who ever email me might want to know that). I knew about this stuff because The Guru emailed me and all of his other rag-taggers that there might be issues with email as we get migrated to a newer and faster server. Me? I thought, “Fine! Most of my email is spam anyway…” Er, actually it is *not* “mostly” any more, maybe 50/50, but I delete most of it *anyway*. Floot Loop group? I read if I’m interested or if MMCB₂‘s daughter posts. Birders? Sometimes, sometimes not. New Yorker and Wapo? If I don’t read any New Yorker or Wapo articles by end of the day, I delete those emails.

If I really need to talk to a friend or family member, with a few exceptions, I text them and vice versa.

So. I didn’t really care if my email worked for 24 hours or not. When I got home from my current Queen of Error Messages job, the GG was going through all kinds of gyrations trying to figure out how to get his email from his phone. I had failed to send him the Guru’s message. I do not know how many hours he spent trying to figger this thing out. I guess it kept him busy. In the end, I *think* he decided to chill out and wait for things to settle out. That’s what I’m doing. If you email me and it bounces, text me or do a facebook direct message. If you email me and I don’t reply right away, I’ll get it eventually.

G’night, Kayak Woman 🧡

PS. Being the Queen of Error Messages is a lot more fun than you might think. If the LSCHP were still around, I’d probably get an award for doing this thankless (but oddly interesting 🐸) task. He would probably also be trying to design the error messages… We are professionals who have moved on but I still channel the LSCHP 🧡

Lizard Breath posted a lovely instagram from last weekend of all members of the FinFam g4 generation who belong to the Old Cabin and the moomincabin plus our new in-law, The Beautiful Becca. That inspired me to dredge through my old photo albums looking for these photos. My photos are deficient because they do not include our family bridegroom and his sister and certainly not TBB because we didn’t know of her existence back in those days. I thought it might be worth posting them anyway.

In these pics, we have two sets of sisters, my daughters and my brother’s daughters. That makes them first cousins. The two boys are brothers and they are my cousin’s boys, meaning they are second cousins to the girls. The bridegroom and his sister are first cousins to the boys in the pic and second cousins to the girls. (My two are the one on the left and the one wearing the Water Spider costume. I’ll let you figure out which one that is 🐸)

When I talk to Planet Ann Arbor friends (MMCB₂ and FZ at work), I struggle to make the stories from the weekend make sense. Cousins and cousins’ kids and elderly parents and who lives where and who flew where and how I ended up driving my cousin’s vee-hickle (with the fob and the start button) down the I75 SUV Speedway on Sunday and WAIT! was it her kid who got married? No, it was her sister’s kid. But they do “get it” because they are also rational people who belong to large, complicated families with wee bits of drama around the edges.

The cuzzints are posing in front of the Old Cabin faaaarplace. One o’ these days, I’ll post a pic of that faaarplace and hearth without a bunch of people in front of it and try to muster up some stories of my early childhood spending summers in the Old Cabin with my [first] cuzzints and their families and with any luck I might dredge a few words outta my soupy brain about why we are still close to each other after all these years. 🧡🧡🧡

I don’t have much to say tonight so this is just boring filler. I took this pic last week when I was telecommuting from the Lyme Lounge, which was hanging out immediately outside the moomincabin. I wasn’t initially crazy about its location but we needed to keep the parking area clear for potential wedding activities and I warmed up to the situation, especially when I needed to visit the moomincabin Water Closet in the middle of the night. Yes, we were also sleeping in my office.

All throughout the wedding weekend I was going around saying stuff like, “There was a gorilla mask at my wedding, where is it now?” Well. It turns out that it was a CAT MASK, *not* a gorilla mask. If I had remembered about the mask in time to obtain a similar one, I’d’ve probably have worn one myself, although probably not that one, which, if it still exists, is no doubt buried under piles of cosmic debris down in the Great Grey-Green Greasy Limpopo Landfill Freak-out Chamber.

This was the only photo I could find of the Cat Who Came to My Wedding and darn it all, I had to crop the HECK out of it! Why? Because off to the right, big as life, was a person some of us refer to as Jive David. He is part of ancient history but he does not belong on my blahg. I will say that he played a role in the set of circumstances surrounding why I have a set of caribou antlers in my house despite never having visited caribou country.

I left My Dear Uncle Harry in the photoooo. I have to say that I am not sure he was all that crazy about me when I was a little kid. That’s okay. I was a bratty little thing who could be unkind to other kids and I deserved his skepticism. As we all grow older, I now find myself inadvertently emulating him in many ways, even though we are not blood relatives. A good guy and I love him. For the life of me, I do not know who the little kid is. A couple of our cFam nephews were at the wedding and were about that age but it doesn’t really look like one of them. Hmm… Maybe it is a Piedy? I didn’t do formal invites so I don’t remember who-all showed up.

Bearss was also at my wedding but I’ll post him some other day.

Jeebus, there is a weird noise going on in my house. I sure hope it’s coming from the radio!

Well, maybe not so much. I hate snow driving for one thing. But I drive a LOT and today I felt like a warrior! I drove tandem with my two beach urchins. I’m not sure they were really interested in sticking around with me on the road all day. I think I heard somebody say that I might not go 75 (which is the speed limit for most of the way down). In the end, they tolerated me. “Moom, do you want road company because you’re driving an unfamiliar car?” Yes.

The Southbound I75 SUV Speedway is almost always a challenge on a Sunday. If that Sunday happens to follow the 4th of July holiday, you KNOW there will be slowdowns. Our first was at the Big Mac Bridge tollbooths. I have seen worse and we got through them pretty quickly but then there was an unusual slowdown AFTER the tollbooths. Disabled vee-hickle? Yes. Once we got around that, the bridge was fine. The Bridge Authority folks were out there with an arrow to indicate the lane was closed and they are pretty darn quick about helping people out with problems on the bridge. Not a place you generally want traffic to be backed up. No stopping. Move along please. We’ll fix your taaaar or tow you away or whatever.

I won’t document all of the (minor) slowdowns we experienced. We stopped at the 4-Mile Road exit south of Grayling to get gas and I checked the traffic from there and we all agreed that we would take the Cheese Route in order to avoid what looked like a monstrous mess in the Standish area. (Mouse, if you are reading this, did Squeaky see the Cheese Mouse???) We got back onto the I75 SUV Speedway down by the Mordor area and things were pretty okay for a while except for a bit of a slowdown across the Zilwaukee Bridge.

And then. We got north of Flint (yes, *that* Flint) and I didn’t thoroughly process what the highway sign said but it was something about, “if you are going to Detroit, take the 475 bypass.” One of the beach urchins was indeed going to Detroit and actually the bypass works for Ann Arborites too, it’s just a wee bit out of the way. So. I can’t really use my phone while driving (plus it’s illegal, at least to text) but I was in the lead at that point and I took a great leap of faith and put my right turn signal on, intending to lead us *all* off of I75 proper onto the 475 bypass.

It worked. Both Honda Civics followed me, Ruby and then Daisy. Whew! I knew that Ruby’s driver understood what we were doing but I couldn’t remember if Daisy’s driver had ever used this route so eventually I, with GREAT DIFFICULTY, CALLED Ruby and asked her to pass me so that Daisy would (hopefully) get the hint to follow me, since following Ruby would take Daisy to Detroit, where she did NOT want to go, at least not today. And it worked! And we are all home safe now.

Note to self: next vee-hickle MUST have a better way to communicate with family driving other vee-hickles without having to use a physical phone.

Oh yeah, unfamiliar vee-hickle? Yes, I was driving npJane’s LOVERLY blue VW Gulf! Some people are nervous about driving stick (I am not) but this vee-hickle is an automatic. I was nervous about new vocabulary (to me) like “fob” and “start button”. As it turned out, it was a fine little vee-hickle to drive, zippy when I needed it to be. I love driving the Ninja but I felt less taaared driving this cute little car and it hit me that, as much as I love to drive stick, it is probably more tiring on a five hour drive with multiple rounds of stop-and-go traffic than an automatic. And I now have it “parked in” in the Landfill Driveway and maybe I will hide the fob so npJane will have to fight me to get her vee-hickle back 😉

Why was I driving my cuzzint’s vee-hickle? Without going into too much detail, this wedding happened by force of the love between two people but it was helped along by various Herculean efforts to make sure people who needed to be at the wedding got there. npJane was planning to pick up her niece and significant other at Metro and drive them to the wedding. She picked them up at Metro but then loaned them her car and took a FLIGHT to Seattle to take care of the bridegroom’s dad (recovering from successful surgery) so that the bridegroom’s MOM (npJane’s sister) could fly out to our family beach to be at the wedding. The niece/SO who drove the car up are flying out from Cananananada so weren’t able to drive the VW back to The Planet Ann Arbor. (don’t even ask about rental vee-hickles.) Enter KW. I will drive your car back home. 🧡🧡🧡

I have turned into a Wedding Crier. I even do it at weddings where I don’t know the people very well. I didn’t end up crying at yesterday’s wedding but I did tear up a bit today, driving down through the back roads of the yooperland, listening to 60s music on npJane’s Satty-lite radio, thinking about what a good family I was born into. But then I got onto the dern freeway, heading back down to the Planet Ann Arbor and my job and my parched impatiens and I took on my Road Warrior persona and left my tears behind. For now.

I can’t remember when we had this many male folks on the moomincabin deck. Usually it’s the GG and cBear and a buncha women. Our bridegroom used our cabin to get dressed (and I didn’t even recognize our bridegroom after he emerged from the depths in his suit). All of these guys congregated on our deck at this point and when they discovered that we had a Beer Refrigerator set up on the deck, they stayed around until the wedding started. It was soooo much fun.

And then, at one point, I was hanging out in the Lyme Lounge looking for a gorilla on my MacBook Pro and I heard somebody say, “Hey, there’s wifi here!” And I yelled out “Yes!” And then, “and it’s unsecured!” and I said, “YES! Use it!” The Lyme Lounge is my office but I SHARE! Anyway. I eventually changed outta the gray skirt I’ve been wearing all week into “wedding guest” clothing. I wasn’t wearing fancy clothing but I knew it would be okay given that one o’ my fave cuzzints was wearing his blue jean overhauls and, y’know, my attire was fine. And so this is what a Beach Wedding looks like as people are gathering.

And here are various bare feet and you can’t really tell from the pic but the person to the immediate left of me is KNITTING at the wedding and using my The Commander’s basket to hold her yarn ball.

And here is our family bridegroom and his beautiful bride exchanging poems and readings and vows. I love the color of her dress. And a gratuitous shot of Pooh’s hat.

I could’ve worked today but I succumbed to domestic duties. It was all okay. I needed that kind of activity today. Grokkery store in the morning and various kitchen chores thereafter with lunch at Pickles in between it all. This is about all I have for today. I also like when my adult kids and niece help cook but today I needed to be in the chichen alone. It’s late and I am pretty taaaared. Love y’all, KW.

There is a Florida Man twitter handle, you know, “Florida Man Loses Arm In Explosion While Making Homemade Faaaaarworks” or “Naked Florida Man Gets Stuck On Top of Open Drawbridge”. We have our own version of Florida Man in the fam, although his activities are less flamboyant than hanging naked at the top of a drawbridge. But y’know, every state has its own version of Florida Man. I am currently reading a book of short stories by E. Annie Proulx and they are set in Wyoming and I don’t think Wyoming Man is a twitter handle yet but…

We have Michigan Man here, and here he is electrifying moe-skee-toes outta the Lyme Lounge at whatever the heck time we retaaaarrred for the night last night. It was later than my usual bedtime but not terribly late, like 10:30-ish. It was a little crazy because… 1) He was counting the carcasses as he dropped them into the sink (they are still there), and 2) we were not all that quiet so the Beach Urchins were shushing us, even though I don’t think *anyone* in the immediate vicinity was bothered by our 10 minutes of noise. After which I CRASHED OUT!

Yesterday some of the younger generation of folks staying at the Old Cabin were wondering where to get sparklers. Multiple people said, “Go over and ask Bill.” Yes, the GG would have sparklers if anyone did. And yes, he did. Multiple packages of them and some snakes and, uh, some stuff we won’t talk about.

So the younger generation did sparklers down on the beach and we watched some of the faaarworks over in Bay Mills and the moe-skee-toes just about ate us alive before we finally gave it up.

It’s late so I’ll do a re-run of an old photoooo. This is me and seven of my Fin grandparents’ 11 grandchildren assembling behind the Old Cabin garage for a 4th of July parade up and down the Cabin Road. The original plan was for us to parade on the beach but that particular 4th of July was too cold and windy to be on the beach much, although I would bet cold hard cash that some of us cuzzints went swimming *anyway*.

I am the kid freezing in the hula outfit. I think The Commander tried to talk me out of that costume. It’s too cold… What about this other costume… yada yada… I was not to be deterred. My MacMu grandparents had picked up my lei and grass skirt in Hawaii on their trip around the world. That costume was one of my prized possessions and I yearned to be a beautiful hula dancer.

So, this is eight of us 11 cousins. Missing are the Beautiful Jan, who was probably busy with other things, npJane, who was not yet born, and my little brother Jim… Now, Jim had a wondrous costume — a paper bag car. Unfortunately, The Commander had somehow screwed up the tail lights. The costume was a no-go and he was too unhappy to participate in the parade or the picture.

After a couple years’ of missing it, we were able to attend the annual Piedy 4th of July party/potluck over at Dashie’s. It was another scorcher of a day and we drove lasagne over there in the Motor Bote. The Motor Bote runs just fine now that the GG has figgered out that small engines don’t run very well on gas with ethanol in it. Who knew? And he used to work at the EPA…

Okay, gooooood niiiiight. Our two beach urchins are here with us and walking the beach. All but one of the second cousins are next door and we are expecting Pengo and cBear tomorrow. And now I am being called down to the beach. Seeya in the next episode.

What did we do today? I telecommuted to my job. The GG went out in the county and played with implements of too much fun. Last night we were yelling at each other. Tonight we were singing.

We made a steak dinner and then we took an evening bote ride and here we are after that hanging around in the sunset with cousins. That is pretty much all I need. Love y’all, KW.

At least not in terms of this pic.

Oh man… When we moved The Commander into assisted living, she wanted a rocking chair. I mean one that fit into her small apartment. The GG swung into action and I fergit where we found this one but it used to be white.

I’m not sure how much The Comm actually used the chair. I think it is more a fave of the GG. It has sat out on the moomincabin deck for many years now and the last time I saw it the (white) paint was peeling like crazy.

Today… While I was hanging out in the Lyme Lounge telecommuting, the GG was scraping and painting like crazy (and there were big trucks going up and down our two-track road, which I hope is not a harbinger of something awful to come but I was working and trying not to pay attention).

So, the GG painted both sets of steps up to the moomincabin deck and then he painted this chair and here it is “baking” in the sun at the end of the day. I think it looks pretty dern good. This looks like a sentimental pic but it really isn’t.

I worked in the Lyme Lounge all day. It was loverly albeit a bit hot later on in the day. FZ ran our daily stand-up meeting and I had a great discussion with Amazon Woman during our weekly base-touching meeting. At the end of the day, I walked down to the beach and hung out on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench with our family bridegroom for a while. I dunno what we do in our family, at least I’m not sure what I have done, but somehow we raise some good kiddos.

A year ago or so I was up here at the moominbeach telecommuting from the Lyme Lounge wearing smartwool socks and polar tech gear with a space heater blowing out warm air. Not to mention that it was raining cold cats and dogs for hours.

Before we headed north to the moomincabin today, we spent a lovely couple of days at Houghton lake with some of the GG’s beloved cFam members. It was hot there but a strong onshore breeze was blowing upon us most of the time, which helped to mitigate the heat situation. We headed off to the Yooperland at around 1:00 this afternoon, Lyme Lounge in tow. I think it was about 90 at Houghton Lake and I didn’t look at the Frog Hopper’s temperature readout for a long time. When I did, it was 98 degrees. What? We are in Michigan’s northern lower peninsula and every time we cross a freeway bridge, a sign warns us that bridges ice over. Yes, they do ice over, but not today. Because 98 degrees.

The temperature moderated to 80 as we crossed the Mackinac Bridge and then it headed up again. It was 90-something when we got to the moomincabin. Froggy and I went inside DIRECTLY to open all of the windows and put the screens in the doors and turn on the fans upstairs and down. We usually don’t have to do that kind of thing. It’s more frequent that the GG faaaaars up the propane stove… Last year when I was telecommuting during an equivalent week, I was wearing socks and polar tech stuff and had a space heater going in the Lyme Lounge. This year? Not so much. Distracted? Yes! Wanna make something of it?🐽 (I will be telecommuting though).

To my BELOVED cFam sisters-in-law: I LOVE YOU so much! During the whole weekend at Houghton Lake, I did not do one bit of cooking. I love to cook but given that I was focused on the next week at my own family’s place, it was wonderful to be able to sit back a bit. 🧡🧡🧡

I knew that my old dog friend Ernie was nearing the end of his life and today is the day he was put down. He is the little black (technically brindle) puppy in this pic. The big yellow dog was Sam, who was nearing the end of his life, as was my brother, at the time Ernie was adopted. If you embiggen the pic, you may be able to see that Sam was tolerating a snuggle with Ernie but not necessarily all that happy about it. Nevertheless, he trained Ernie to use the backyard to crap (as my dad would’ve said) and other important life lessons.

My brother has been gone for 13 years and I have not seen Ernie in five but he and I were good buddies once, along with his annoying little “brother” Alfred (who was put down a year or two ago).

Once when Dogmomster and her kids went on a band trip to China, I offered to pick Ernie and Alfred up from the boarding kennel and drive them up to the Moomincabin. I was a little nervous about this because I had very limited experience with driving dogs anywhere and I expected that they would whine the whole way and want to get out to dogP every five minutes. As it turned out, they were uber-excited to see meeeee at the kennel and once we got into the car, after Ernie grabbed my arm with his paw (a Dog Hug, i.e., THANK YOU!), they went to sleep. They slept until the Mackinac Bridge (with one potty stop). They perked up for the crossing, then slept the rest of the way to the moomincabin.

Ernie was certainly not perfect (who is? I am not) but he was fiercely protective of his family and a very intelligent dog to boot. Our first night at the moomincabin during my dog-sitting gig they slept downstairs and when I came down in the morning, Alfred had left a little puddle. The Commander ALWAYS freaked out about any kind of liquid on the floor but calmed down when I swabbed it with a wet paper towel, then disinfected the area with a couple of Clorox wipes. Before I went to bed that night, I talked earnestly to Ernie, telling him that if Alfred had to go, he should wake me up. He did not wake me up and we had no more such incidents.

The second pic is one of my fave pics of all time. It was my 50th birthday and we were at Houghton Lake and I received this photo from my brother. Just about the best gift ever.

Godspeed Ernie! 🧡🧡🧡

And it was one heckuva looooong day. I woke up with the usual trepidation that faces me before the kind of odyssey we are now on, weekend with the cFam at Hoton Lake, then a week at the moomincabin. Lemme see. Pack food, put the garbage/recycle out, minor cleaning chores, errand at Meijer, Cuuuuuuubelandia for a half day, then on the road with all the other 4th of July Holiday Warriors. I can’t call ’em Weekend Warriors because the 4th is on Wednesday this year, which means it’s a whole week of partying “up north”. I love when I overhear our newer Indian workers talk about going “up north”. It is such a Great Lake State thing.

I wanted to get to Cubelandia earlier than usual today so I only walked the woods this morning. Then I decided I needed a wee bit of zen before I got busy so I sat on a bench in the schoolyard, watching Mr. Golden Sun rise above the trees and listening to the Neighborhood Rooster. I’m gonna miss that guy. I sat there for maybe 15 minutes and then I stood tall and marched back to The Landfill, ready to face the day and the odyssey.

Wouldn’t you know, we were about a third of the way to Hoton Lake and we were pulling the cFam Trash Trailer and there was a slowdown and somebody in another car honked to get our attention and when we rolled down the window, he shouted that the Trash Trailer had a flat taaaaar… And no, it is not an old taaaar, in fact, it is a new taaaar, and I’ll spare you the details about what went wrong, valve and rim and whatever. I didn’t really understand it but fortunately, the GG is an expert Taaaar Wrangler but we didn’t really want to change the taaaar on the freeway shoulder because there were big lorries and whatnot barreling along right next to us and we needed to get a whole bunch of crapola outta the back of the Frog Hopper to get at the jack. The next exit was a mile and a half away and we stopped on the shoulder THREE times to pump up the taaaar enough to move us along just a wee bit more. Finally we were off the freeway and RIGHT THERE was an empty parking lot and 15 minutes later we were back on the road.

No further incidents but boy oh boy am I glad to be here at Hoton Lake. And yes, I am having a glass of whine. Er, actually it is a plastic cup. The blue one. There used to be red, pink, and olive drab versions of this cup too. For years, the Beach Urchins would fight over who got to use the pink cup. Just about when I thought I would go crazy if I had to referee another pink cup fight, they aged out of “pink is a girl color” and started fighting over who got the olive drab cup. I am Mooom. I cannot win.

I did not get a pic of the flat taaaaaar. It’s too bad because it was pretty much destroyed in a spectacular manner but I didn’t want to hang out on the freeway shoulder risking life and limb and by the time we got OFF the freeway, I was preoccupied with trying to dredge out the Black Phone Charging Cable, the one I rummage for EVERY time I get into the Frog Hopper. I found the cable but it turned out it WASN’T PLUGGED IN! So here’s a pic of my whine glass cup instead. Hoton Lake is a Group Home so you never know exactly whatchyer gonna find when you get here. The next time, the blue cup could be gone. Of course, on the flip side of that, the red, pink, and olive drab cups could potentially resurface some day.

Yes, these are first world problems! Cue the Beverly Hillbillies theme song [youtube link]. Y’all come back now!

Where is Mr. Flood when we need him? He might even be a better president than Mickey Mouse, who is my usual go-to preference for prez when I break down and badmouth (usually awkwardly) the Orange Baboon and someone asks me if I would prefer Hillary in the White House.

Mr. Flood’s Party is a long-gone barrooom on the Planet Ann Arbor. It used to be next door to our fave Oscar Tango. Nowadays an upscale kind of place occupies Mr. Flood’s old space. I bet it has a better bathroom than Mr. Flood’s Party had, which was a dirty one-terlet affair that you had to close with a hook like an old outhouse — but not MY family’s old outhouse because my parents were too cheap to put a door on that one 💩

DISCLAIMER: Arguably non-G-rated content ahead. I had an odd bathroom encounter with a high school acquaintenance acquaintance at Mr. Flood’s once. In the first place it is really odd for me to run into someone from high school here on The Planet Ann Arbor since I can’t think of another person around my age from Sault Ste. Siberia who lives here and this woman did not in fact live on The Planet. The GG and I had returned to town from a weekend somewhere and went downtown to Mr. Flood’s. Some band was playing there but we weren’t really there for the band. I went to use the bathroom and my acquaintenance acquaintance [TWICE, jeebus] was in there with a woman. She said she guessed that I didn’t really want to know what was going on in the bathroom and I agreed. Frankly, I don’t really EVER want to know much about what ANYONE is doing in the bathroom. Up until that time, I had had no clue about her preferences for partners so I can’t say it wasn’t a little surprising but what the heck? Apparently the band was a favorite with the lesbian community so I guess she was probably curious about my preferences but I was there randomly that night with my male husband. I for one am happy that we are now able to discuss this kind of issue more openly than we could when I had that ancient encounter at Mr. Flood’s. I hope we continue that trend.

Mr. Flood closed his party by posting a sign on the door saying, “It’s been surreal.”

Despite my reference to the orange baboon, this is not really a polly-tickle post although I grow more and more dismayed by our current president and his administration with each ham-fisted tweet. I am NOT a democrat and my issues are NOT about Hillary losing. I yearn for elected officials who will sit down and ANALYZE the requirements necessary to make policy and THINK THROUGH some of the unintended consequences their policies might have on living, breathing, often suffering human beings. I am a humanitarian (even if I don’t give money to every single blasted panhandler who lunges at me in the Plum Market parking lot) and I want something better than what we’ve got.

In other news, the Ninja was intermittently *rattling* whenever I had to idle on the way to work today and that was a lot because of all the stop lights. As it turns out it’s just the heat shield on the catalytic converter. Yay and good night!

Since we are anticipating heading to the moominbeach for a week in the near future, I have been trying to use up every single blasted bit of food I possibly can so that I don’t have to return to rotting food. About face! Guests? Yes. I do like to make sure there is enough food for a decent dinner for guests. The Commander was better about that than I am but I think I rose to the occasion. I do have to say that it involved a stop at the Plum Market after a rather oogly commute along the Zen Route (the freeway was hosed), which is not always all that Zen on the homeward commute.

And it wasn’t Zen today but the Plum was fine and I got a whole salmon filet for tonight and a small piece of salmon filet to freeze and take up north for the few days the GG and I will be there along alone. And collard greens and rice and sesame oil (to cook the collards in). And I cooked the peas I shelled last Saturday. The GG grilled the salmon and Mouse engineered the collards and I think it all turned out relatively well.

And so we are once again strategizing how to get people from various places to the moominbeach. You can fly into the Chippewa County International Airport but it isn’t always that easy and it can be expensive. You can fly into Detroit Metro and rent a vee-hickle to drive the five hours to the moominbeach but…

We think we have figgered out how to schlep far-flung folks from Metro to the moominbeach and back and we will figure out how to loop the far-flung folks who may not be able to get there via Skype or whatever.

We are not using a spreadsheet… Yet… 🧡🧡🧡

But I can identify with the beach urchin who, at the age of five, came down for breakfast and said her brain was going around and around so fast she couldn’t stop it. Because mine is doing that today. In the beach urchin’s case, five minutes or so later, after all of the adults had gone on to other topics, the beach urchin said: “My brain just stopped. It stopped on salami.” And so her Grandmoom indulgently provided some salami for her breakfast.

My brain is not gonna stop today. I don’t think. Which means I either don’t write a blahg entry or you have to put up with a certain amount of Word Salad. Sorry. I know The Commander is reading this from somewhere, so I have to keep at it.

My main story today is that I actually bagged Cubelandia for a while and went OUT TO LUNCH! The GG and I met up with some of my MacMu fam over in Ypsilanti at the Sidetrack. Uncle Don and cousins Neil and Maija. My cousins both live out on the left coast and Maija is my doppelganger. She is maybe the cousin I knew the least as a child. She is two years younger and I flew with my mom from Sault Ste. Siberia to Ann Arbor when she was born so mom could help out but I have almost no memories of that trip besides that there were round windows on the airplane we took down and square windows on the return trip. And though we saw those cousins when we visited our grandparents as kids, I guess I gravitated to her brothers and other cousins who were closer to my age. So now we are making up for lost time🧡🧡🧡

We had so much fun at the Sidetrack and then I had to go back to Cubelandia, where I had a HUGE Sinking Spell. Yes I had some whine at lunch but not THAT much. But [nevertheless] I persisted and I got all the way through the “services” error messages today. A big chunk! How the heck did anyone ever get anything done back in the days of Three Martini Lunches? Should I try to watch Mad Men again? We tried Mad Men for a few episodes and I liked it but it doesn’t “work” for joint watching by me and the GG so maybe I need to binge-watch it by myself. My dad was an executive back in those days (albeit a small-town “suit”) and I’m sure there were boozy lunches from time to time but he took his job too seriously to do a three-drink lunch on anything approaching a regular basis. (Actually he ate homemade PBJ sandwiches more often than not, or just bread and butter.)

Alert! Alert! Alert! Is it raining? It is raining. Getcher MacBook inside NOW, KW!

Okay, my brain just stopped. It did NOT stop on salami.

Me, to the postal delivery person this afternoon (except I didn’t say anything about the carpenter ants). Yes. I got home and things were crazy around here. The garbage/recycle/compost bins were all over the driveway and I had to move one of them out of my way to get me and my work crapola (laptop, lunch bag, etc.) into the Landfill. And there were so many ladders around, for a minute I thought I was in Ladderlandia (aka Drywall Bucketlandia). And a sleeping bag was drying, draped across a chair in the back room. And I dunno what else. And then. No one had made the bed. The GG ALWAYS makes the bed, a long story I will tell some other day. So I was wondering, “Where the HELL?”

This is where it gets a little weird in a 21st century way. I grabbed my iPhone and called the GG. Where the heck *are* you? Well. He was in the one place I did not look, which was the back yard! He was right there in plain sight. Jeebus.

I never know what I might find when I get home from Cubelandia. Apparently today was a Work Day. I dunno what-all he did today but when I got home he was painting a couple of benches he snagged from a former neighbor. And then he was back up on a ladder dealing with rotten wood and carpenter ants. It was apparently a busy day and I don’t really care if he didn’t make the bed, I just couldn’t figger out what was going on.

Me, I continue to take a Deep Dive into error messages. It is more interesting than it sounds but really, you do not want to know.

Relatively lazy Sunday although I did motivate over to the Jackson Rd. Meijer to stock up on a few things to prepare for our upcoming week at the moomincabin. Utility beer (two 12-packs of Bell’s Two-Hearted) and canned tomatoes/sauce to pre-make lasagne and enchilada sauce. I’m not sure if we’ll use any of that stuff (except for the beer) but I am trying to have “emergency” food, etc., available at the moomincabin for the week, i.e., “it is a BEACH DAY and nobody wants to think about what to eat for dinner, let alone schlep out to a grokkery store, but we have these chicken thighs/steaks here and we can just throw ’em on the grill.”

Back in the day, there was a cute little meat/candy market in a re-purposed garage up on 6-Mile Road (where the “Aunt Jane’s What a Pickle” sign still is). We often did Community Dinners at the Old Cabin in those days and after a day of beach-sitting, our Moms (The Commander, Radical Betty, Bubs, and Esther Sherman if the Sherman Encampment was in residence) would schlep up there and get steak or ground beef for burgers. My granddaddy often helped complete our meals by showing up with a bushel of fresh corn from the local farmers he knew and/or a couple gallons of A&W root beer. We used to ask our parents if we could walk up to the Pickle-sign store. Oh c’mon mom, it’s only a mile and a half. No way Jose and knowing how much I hate to walk along highways now, they were right!

Okay, by the time I got back from Meijer, the GG was up and moving. He is fine, he was just slow this morning and that’s okay. It was a slow kind of day. He made a wee brek and then after the Sunday Morning song came on, we did a River Ride Plus, meaning after we were done with the river, we drove out to Chelsea and then down to Manchester and then through Bridgewater to Saline and up Wagner Road to home. I needed that today. I love the Moominbeach in the summer but I also love The Planet Ann Arbor area and I am torn between them.

When I took the flower photoooo, I did not notice ANY insects. If you embiggen it once or twice, you will see that there are MULTIPLE insects. I love when my camera sees things that I do not.

Love, KW

Actually I shelled a sniggly bit of peas last weekend. It turned out they were mostly sugar snap peas, which supposedly don’t have to be shelled. I actually asked and the vendor said they were also shell-able. Well, sorta. I ended up with a few decent sized peas which I put raw into salads. I am really not all that crazy about sugar snap peas. I find them a bit stringy. But I think there were probably shelling peas last Saturday and I missed them and went to the wrong vendor.

Today? I *deliberately* looked for “shelling peas” and I hit the jackpot! Thick pods with big beautiful peas inside. I spent some good zen time shelling them here in the Landfill Backyard with the Neighborhood Rooster crowing in the background. I mean a real rooster, not ‘hicken there in the pic. *Look* at my “Mother’s Day” impatiens! I’m not sure you can see the water droplets on these petals even if you embiggen a couple of times but they are there. I can’t remember the last time I have had to water these flowers. Green green [youtube link].

Alas, shelling peas have a very short season around here and today was probably my only chance to get them. We will not be at our farmers market for the next two weeks and when we get there again there won’t be any peas. Of course, there *may* be corn! And *maybe* even some freshly shelled lima beans so there’s that. (I would pay *gold* for fresh shelled lima beans if I had to but probably $5 for a pint box is what I actually pay.)