Random bits of my so-called life.

Man, when I wrote that title, I realized that Beth would be 60. The truth is that I don’t remember when her birthday is, exactly, but she was always four years older than me when I was a kid and so she must still be four years older than me. After years and years and years of fighting off a recurrent brain tumor and all of the stuff surrounding that, she has finally succumbed to it. It happened a couple weeks ago and tonight was the first I heard about it. And that’s okay.

Beth is the daughter of one of my dad’s best friends, Pete Sherman, and when we were kids in the 60s, the whole five-kid Sherman family would truck over to Fin Family Moominbeach every summer in their VW Bus. They would park the bus and set up their pop-up camper and share our kitchen and outhouse with us for a couple of weeks. Community dinner? Yeah!!! Beth was the oldest in that family and the only girl. Being four years younger than Beth, I was always totally in awe of her. And probably trying to tag along to the point that I drove her nuts. Well, except for the fact that one of her younger brothers was my first boyfriend.

Oh man. Miss you Beth. Miss the old days. Miss the outhouse and all the days we swam in big nor’wester-type waves. And the times our dads took multitudes of kids in one canoe over into Mosquito Bay. And the trips to Spectacle Lake and Pendill’s Creek and all over in that old VW bus with all the stickers on the windows.

See you on the other side some day.

So, who’s watching the Superbowl? I do not know who is playing or what time it is on or anything. Well, I think it starts at about 7:00 PM EST or thereabouts. The GG has the TV on and I will guess that he will watch it and I will fall asleep. Maybe he will fall asleep too. We’ll see.

I am not a football fan in general. It is what it is and I’m not much of a sports fan from the get-go anyway. But football has been a small part of my history and I’m not about to rant and rave about how awful it is. Because it’s not. I loved going to high school football games with my dad and granddaddy (the few they took me to) when I was a little kid and my cousin was on the team in Sault Ste. Siberia. Friday night games there with all those bright lights and popcorn from the snack bar of course. My dream when I was small was to be a cheerleader but that didn’t quite work out. It required a rather different talent than I had. The talent I did have got me into the marching band, and we’ll leave the bits and pieces I remember about that for some other blahg post, maybe in about 100 years. But I did go to football games and the mixers afterwards, and in those days, my college-student boyfriend could attend those with me without harassment from the “authorities”. Note that I was a senior by the time I had a college-age boyfriend.

My family also drove down to the Planet Ann Arbor (yeah, the same planet I’ve owned a house on for most of the 30 years I’ve lived here) to watch a football game every fall when I was a kid. We stayed with our cousins here and that was always fun. And so was the game in a way, which probably means that it was exciting for a Yooper Kid to actually be inside the Michigan Stadium. Back in those days, the Big House did not always fill up on football Saturdays. We could buy cheap tickets at the gate and sit in the end zone, which was not totally jammed with people. I was probably more excited by stopping at Allmendinger Park with my cousins on the long walk home.

I have not been to a football game in about a billion years. The last time I actually remember anything about the Superbowl was four whole years ago when my dad was in Henry Ford Hospital and the Superbowl was there in DayTwa. My dad was in the ICU at the time and one of my favorite residents, Doc G was talking about renting out his apartment to Superbowl folks for big bucks. I hope that happened. We encountered good and bad doctors and nurses there and Doc G was one of the good ones. He understood that my dad was a person with a history and not just some confused old man with a pulverized pelvis. My dad did die, but it was in his hometown amongst friends and family, not at Henry Ford.

I’m sorry that I’m not really a football (or sports) fan. Or maybe I’m not sorry. I am not against football. I just get tired of our culture of celebrity worship. Football stars are people and they are fallible, just like the rest of us. They are talented but so are the rest of us and we are all important in the grand scheme of things.

Snow? Not here. At least not today. This is a relatively typical winter on the Planet Ann Arbor here in the Great Lake State. It is cold but we are not getting a whole lot of snow. We are in the southeast part of the state and are therefore not subject to that loverly phenomenon known as Lake Effect Snow. The western side of the state gets a lot more snow than we do because they are right in the line of fire of the snowmaking machine known as Lake Michigan. Da Yoop and the Northern Lower? Lakes everywhere, large and small. Snow? Yes, usually. Us? Not so much. We do get big dumps of snow sometimes if a well-organized storm heads our way but Lake Effect Snow usually peters out long before it gets over here.

The beach urchins in the photooo are illustrating the results of a Lake Effect Snowstorm (or ten or twenty) on Fin Family Moominbeach (aka Lake Superior). I was searching my old film albums for a photo of Mouse at about five wearing a sundress on our front porch in front of a big outdoor thermometer that showed the temperature as being around zero. Fahrenheit, that is. Never could get that kid to wear warm clothing. She’s a nuclear reactor. But whenever I am looking for a specific photo I can NEVER find it and I couldn’t find that one. Among others, I found this one. I had labeled it “winter 1992″ when I originally put it in the album. That would make Mouse (on the snowbank) almost five and Lizard Breath (in front) seven. You can see the Old Cabin peeking out from behind the snowbank.

We were able to get to the cabin on Fin Family Moominbeach for that winter picture largely because we could drive in on the one-lane gravel road to our beach and park at Radical Betty’s house a couple doors down. When I was a kid, that wasn’t possible because nobody lived out there year-round. In those early days, we had to park in front of Lewie’s house up on the county road. From there, there was no way to get down to the beach cabins besides skis or snowshoes. If you had little kids and you wanted to take them out there for your Sunday dinner (which we actually had at noon back in those days), you had to pull them behind you on a sled or toboggan or something. We did that twice after we first built our little cabin on the moominbeach. I was in first grade and The Engineer was three and I remember that the first time was really fun. Our parents pulled us and the groceries (I’m guessing because I don’t have full memories, maybe The Commander can help with this) down the road to the cabin. They built a fire in the old wood stove and I think we had a chicken dinner. I’m sure it was cooked before we got there and heated up somehow on top of the wood stove but I do not remember. This experiment was repeated a second time and all I remember about that was that I was freezing the whole time and probably both The Engineer and I cried. He probably cried because I cried.

You all out in the East, take care. Hope you have plenty of firewood and whine stashed up.

No, not waterboarding. Or snowboarding. This is whiteboarding and the reason it looks so sloppy is because I did it with my finger on my iPhone screen using a little whiteboarding app.

I am about to engineer a small bit of home improvement and this little whiteboard shows the dimensions I am working with. The Blue and Only Bathroom is not a big, fancy bathroom but it is big enough for us, I guess. There is a tub, a sink, and the Blue and Only Toilet. There is enough room that a medium-sized person can actually manage to get dressed without bumping into things or dropping their sweater into the Blue and Only Toilet. There is also a linen closet. At the moment it is overloaded and overdue for a good cleaning out and sorting and getting rid of things.

On the floor of the linen closet is *my* closet. Not the closet where I keep all the crap that I somehow manage to pass off as business casual for my job. This is my Real Closet. It has a couple of nightgowns in it and many pairs of underwear and other items that change and morph a bit with whatever I need to walk, depending upon the season. Socks, tights, shorts, tank tops, tshirts, turtlenecks, leggings, polartech vest/jacket, whatever. Layer up, layer down. This stuff is stored in a big dish pan. I keep it there because, for probably more than half the year, I get dressed in the dark, while the GG is still getting his beauty sleep. This system is better than groping around through dresser drawers at 0-dark-30 in the morning, trying to find exactly the right articles of clothing to put together to create the right layered (or not) outfit that I need to take my morning walk.

It’s not a perfect system. Depending on who has “folded” (if you want to call it that) the last load of laundry, my stuff doesn’t always get put into my Real Closet. It might be on the bookshelf in the “master bedroom” (if you want to call it that) or maybe even on the floor somewhere in there. I wish I could blame the GG for this but all too often, I am the culprit. This leaves me scrambling around in the dark “master bedroom” trying to find stuff by touch without waking up the GG. My system has been failing more often than ever this year and I got to the end of my rope when I couldn’t find one of my Smartwool socks the other day. I only have three pairs of those socks and I’ve been wearing them to work. Yes, they are biz-cazable. I proclaim that. They are expensive and I was ticked off to say the least. This afternoon I dragged the dish pan outta there and took it into my bedroom and sorted out the whole tangle of clothes. I found the missing sock nestled up to a pair of underwear. (Note to self: get a bunch more pairs of Smartwool socks when you visit the Commander next weekend.)

And then I grabbed a tape measure and figured out the dimensions of that space and put them into my iPhone. I am going to replace my stupid dishpan clothes closet with some sort of small shelving unit. Heck, I may even have something around here that’ll work already. It seems like I used to buy plastic shelving stuff with wild abandon many years ago. Hope I haven’t pitched it all.

Do I want to go to Houghton Lake this weekend? Yes. But. Alas. I am not psychically ready for the process of going to Houghton Lake this weekend. I am not ready to do all of the packing that is required for a trip to Houghton Lake in the winter and the dark and probably snow driving it’ll take to get there. It practically takes two great big duffle bags to take just the clothing I might need at Houghton Lake. I flew to San Francisco for five days in October with all I needed in a small carry-on bag. The Great White North is a whole different story. Snowpants? Maybe or maybe not. Balaclava? Probably but maybe not. Inner and outer ski jacket. Ski band and mad bomber hat. A bunch of those magic gloves which is just about all I ever wear in the winter any more. Boots. And then there’s all that other stuff. Ski gear. Snow shoes. Sleeping bags. Food. I don’t even want to think about food. Technology-related gear. How many computers? Three? I forget how many cameras. Phones. Power cords, memory card readers, blah-de-blah-de-blah. Reading material? Unfinished prodjects intentionally misspelled. FROGGY and friends. grok grok grook grodko! And I do not know what is in all those bags that the GG travels with. He did manage to fly to California without them.

Blarg. Then there’s the whole thing about how it takes three blasted hours to get to Houghton Lake. I want to go to Houghton Lake but I have to work tomorrow and we are going to The Commander’s house next weekend and, after this week of viruses and whatnot, I am not ready for a weekend trip. I bet people won’t miss me much because, especially after this week, I will no doubt be more likely than ever to hide grumpily behind my laptop computer.

I will not be going to Houghton Lake this weekend but the GG will and that is all okay. Heck, he’ll fix the webcam. What I wish I could do this weekend is take a smaller, less-encumbered road trip. Like the trips we took to Kalamazoo while our kids attended college at K. I loved having my kids at college in Kalamazoo. At 100 miles from us, it was both close and far away. Mouse’s last couple of years in college, we frequently drove over there on Sundays to watch plays she acted in or directed. We would leave the Landfill around 7:00 AM and hit the Zeeb Road McD’s for coffee. We would call just before our exit to say we were just outside of Kalamazoo and then call again before our turn onto Westnedge. We would pick up Mouse for breakfast at the Crow’s Nest and then we would hang around her wonderful little apartment. We would take a walk around the neighborhood if we had time and/or the GG would take a nap. At some point, Mouse would have to be at the theatre and we would usually walk around the campus a bit or hang out in the library coffee shop, using the wireless. After the show, in the late afternoon, we would roll home in time for a cocktail and dinner.

I miss those days and I sometimes can’t believe we don’t have a child in college any more. We can still see Mouse act, since she is acting here and there on the Planet Ann Arbor. You could even say it’s easier that we just have to drive down to the Lydia Mendelssohn or over to the Riverside Theatre. But I miss those days of rolling clunking along on the rickety-rackety I94 18-Wheel Slogway over to Kalamazoo.

Anyway, it is Garbage Night here on the Planet Ann Arbor. I wish Garbage Night was still Monday.

Good night,
Garbage Woman

Hopefully not, since the only place I’ve been to in the last few days is work, which is an underutilized building with sizable cubes. And my boss probably already had/has the dern virus but he didn’t get it from me. Yes. A day of feeling chilled followed by a night of low-grade fever (and the corresponding lack of sleep). Fever broke in the middle of the night and I did finally get a little bit of sleep. I know that because I remember dreaming that people were downhill skiing behind the Moominbeach cabin. And I mean *right* behind the cabin, where in real life there is no hill. A winter version of shoreline dreams, I guess. Woke up and assessed myself. No sore throat. No fever. Not even very much congestion. Tired? Ummmm-hmmmm. I gave myself a pass on walking this morning and draagggged into work. After an hour or so of tinking around trying to remember what I do for a living, I woke up with a start, in imminent danger of capsizing my chair. Okay. Coffee is in order I guess. Suddenly (waa waa waa) an email from my favo-rite developer. Oops. Yes, I bet I did put those files in the wrong place. And so me and my froggy brain were off on a long slow slog of putting what turned out to be a jigsaw puzzle back together, my recent error being only the most obvious symptom. Actually, the kind of detail work I did today is my favorite kind of work if my brain is having a froggy day and everybody’s not running around with their hair on fire trying to meet a deadline. And after all the head-banging I did today, I figgered something, which was *why* my favo-rite developer wants those files in what seems to us designers to be the wrong place. There *is* a reason and y’all do not want to know it but I do owe him an apology.

And then suddenly, after a whole day of dragging around, I was at a meeting and, at the last minute, I decided I needed something back at my cube. I found myself *running* back to my cube. Whoa! I am Virus Woman. Where did all this energy come from? And so, I am still very tired but it seems that I am not going to be deathly ill with this virus although I have to admit I am kind of wondering if there is another shoe out there waiting to drop.

Blech. I don’t normally pay much attention to Groundhog Day. It is winter and I live in Michigan and it’s either cold or it’s not and if it’s not, you can be darn sure it’ll get cold again before the equinox and there will be snow in the woods at the moominbeach in May and last year I think I was wearing my ski jacket to walk the moominbeach on Memorial Day weekend. It is what it is and I’ve been dealing with it for 50-something years and I just slodge on, usually quite vigorously. Today? Enh. Mainly I couldn’t quiiiiiite stay warm all day, even in my silk sweater and wool vest and skirt. And a big wool scarf. That is unusual for me, even in the winter. It snowed all day. Not big snow. Just little wispy snow. When I looked outside, it almost looked foggy. It was in the upper 20s, which is warmer than it has been in a few days but it felt bone-chillingly cold. And is there just the teeniest little wee bit of congestion floating around in my upper respiratory tract (or wherever)?

I hope not. Because the GG has had the cold virus from hell since last week. Including an ear infection and what they have stopped short of calling conjunctivitis but gave him some drops for anyway, just in case. “Do you have any small children in your house?” he was asked. N. O. No. Yes, I have washed the towels and pillowcases in hot water. I don’t want to get it. I *knew* I should’ve slept on the Green Couch last week when he came home with a sore throat and low-grade fever…

While we’re on random stuff, I am getting a huge kick out of the fact that people on Facebook keep trying to friend my cousin. Except that my cousin is not on Facebook and I am the recipient of these friend requests. I think folks are getting confused because my first name is the same as her middle name but spelled a bit differently. Alas, I am not her. She is a bit older than me, just enough that I don’t recognize any of these names. She left high school a couple years before I entered it. She was POPULAR! A homecoming queen? Or at least on the court. Me? Not so much. Although this cousin is a beautiful woman, I think she was popular for her personality as much as anything. I haven’t cared for about a billion years whether I was popular or not. Actually, the few periods in my life when I have been perceived as popular have left me kind of wondering something like, “You talkin’ to *me*?” I am who I am and I’ve more or less made peace with that but that would be a whole series of blahg entries and you guys have much better things to do, believe me. My cousin and I have children who are not terribly different in age and, when they were young, we spent many an hour watching them swim on the Moominbeach. I’ll never forget her dad (my uncle Don) sitting there on the beach wearing his wife’s (my aunt Katie) sunhat and forcefully proclaiming that he was NOT A TAURUS! Even though his birthday was May 11th. Of course, we were laughing hysterically. Anyway, even though these would-be friends seem like anything but serial killers, I have been hanging out on the web for a very long time and my policy is to not give out contact information for someone else without their permission. So this is an interesting phenomenon but they ain’t gonna get much outta me.

I thought I had more blather earlier but I can’t remember it now and y’all are breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Happy Groundhog Day and Good Night,
Kayak Woman

This is one of *those* days. You know. Those days when I don’t really have anything to talk about so I just blather uncontrollably. But then I got on to Facebook and Captain Hobbs had posted a video so my whole direction changed. I went to high school with Captain Hobbs and, unlike yer favo-rite blahgger, he has actually done something with his life, which is to become the captain of the S. S. Badger, the car ferry that takes people across Lake Michigan. It used to take trains too but I’m too lazy to research whether it does that any more. This video is from 1949. It is relatively long (8:50) but it is worth it if you grew up in the Great Lake State.

For the second year in a row, the Sunday after the Ann Arbor Folk Festival has been a serendipitously good day. For me anyway. The GG may disagree. He has a monstrous cold virus and slugged around looking like death warmed over all day. I don’t go to the folk festival myself. I cannot sit in Hill Auditorium for that many hours. I am sorry. But the GG is a regular. Last year we spent the day after the folk festival driving Sam (archaeologist, not dog) from our house to her parents’ house in the Lansing area. It was a gorgeously warm but windy winter day and we wound our way along the back roads in the Ninja. We had a wonderfull visit with her parents and then swooshed back to the Planet Ann Arbor. It was a serendipitously beautiful day that I will always remember.

Very coincidentally, that same Sam blasted through here this weekend. There was no joyride this time. At least not for us. They began their journey back down south toward their home in Hotlanta yesterday. And that was okay. Sam and I have learned not to plan things too carefully because we know that things can change rather radically in pretty short order. We have been friends for many many years and we just adapt to stuff like that. Like what? Well, like a few years ago when my dad died a few days before we were scheduled to meet. But back to today. Wow, I got a lot of stuff done. Just mundane housekeeping stuff like laundry and some light cleaning and a few groceries and some cooking and yes, I did make pasta salad. Want some? I got twice my minimum daily requirement of outdoor exercise in and I did some productive work on two (count ‘em) unfinished prodjects (intentionally misspelled). It was a stress-free day of tinking away upon this and that and a few other things.

Of course, in between all of this other activity, I was checking in on them thar toobs. Other people’s blahgs, twitter, facebook, et al. Early this afternoon, I got a Twitter direct message from our northern correspondent Paulette, my friend and neighbor on Fin Family Moominbeach. One of the people that she has been following since whenever she joined Twitter wrote a Tweet that referenced one of his relatives, one who is also a friend of my daughter. I don’t know why this blew me away so much. This is a family that probably wouldn’t be anywhere near my radar screen if my kid didn’t move to the left coast and, well, you know, meet people that didn’t come from the Planet Ann Arbor. But yet, a friend of mine has already found a member of that family. The mind boggles.

Today is January 31st. Tomorrow is February and after that we go roly poly pell mell into summer and our little cabin on Gitchee Gumee will be open for business. Gin and tonics, anyone? Salty Dogs? Manhattans? Okay. I know that we aren’t going to exactly go roly poly pell mell into summer here in the Great Lake State.

Love y’all,
Kayak Woman

The next Star Trek movie? Maybe not… Actually, yer favo-rite blahgger inadvertently made a joke today! 20 years ago or so, it would have been beyond my wildest dreams that I would one day utter the words “remote data concentrator” and get a laugh out of the audience. Of course, the audience today consisted of the tech genius Doc Burns, Sam of Archaeofacts, and the GG. And the laughter would be best interpreted as something like, “what the HECK is a remote data concentrator?” The GG did not laugh at first, probably in part because he remembers the remote data concentrator all too well.

The remote data concentrator was a large part of my work life many years ago. It had something to do with connecting our office computer terminals and printers to the University of Michigan’s mainframe computer, on which we rented space and computing power. Dealing with the remote data concentrator involved sticking your upper body into a closet and plugging/unplugging a virtual snake pit of waaarrrrs. I noticed it mostly when it went down. As long as it was working, I largely ignored it. My poor long-suffering (and now dead, sigh) boss Byron back in those days got stuck dealing with the remote data concentrator. Me? It was beyond my pretty little head to deal with such a beast. I hated doing network stuff then and I hate it now. Just a couple weeks ago, when my loverly old MacBook laptop could not find the Landfill printer after an OS upgrade, I tossed my pretty little head and asked whined for help.

Anyway, poor old long-suffering Byron spent HOURS hanging out in that old remote data concentrator snake pit. If the darn remote data concentrator went down, nobody in the facility could access the Internet mainframe. Hanging out in the snakepit was a thankless job and I was glad to let my boss do it.

And so today, we were talking about Teddy, aka the unfortunately named iPad, and personal technological trends in general. I was telling a story and I used the words “remote data concentrator” and our friends just cracked up. And then we did too. I was laughing at my 20 years younger self, telling people who couldn’t get online log in to the mainframe that Byron was in the snake pit trying to fix the problem.

There’s this kid. He’s a middle school kid. I see him hanging around the elementary school waiting for the middle school bus in the morning. He’s a BIG kid. Quite a bit bigger than me. He is not shy around adults. He sucks up to the dog people. They all seem to eat it up. “Such a good kid. Loves our nice doggies.”

Nice kid? Not so much. At least not in my not-so-humble opinion. Maybe if I had a ferociously growling nice doggy, I’d feel differently. But I don’t. I think he’s trouble. His swagger and aloof manner make me nervous. One morning as I walked into the schoolyard, he was in the process of tipping a sign over (like the sign in the photo). He had it about halfway tipped and then, looking me straight in the eye, he slowly pulled it back upright. Would he have tipped it all the way over if I hadn’t walked up? I don’t know. It would have been a petty act of vandalism but his demeanor bothered me.

Yesterday. A bunch of kids were inside the elementary school lobby waiting for the middle school bus. As I walked by, the big kid suddenly got up and ran across the room and out the door. He was pursued by a girl about a third his size who was yelling something like, “Give it back!” I was just past the school entrance. I stopped and turned around. I said, “If you have something of hers, give it back!” They both stopped. He looked at me like I was from Mars. How dare that old bag in the pink ski jacket and the goofy mad bomber hat interrupt me from ruling my petty little fiefdom.

I don’t know if he gave the girl whatever it was back. Actually, I don’t even know if he had taken anything from her. I’m just sick of all the middle school BS that goes on. “We have a zero tolerance policy on bullying, yada yada yada.” No they don’t. I know what happens. One kid torments another kid over and and over and when either 1) the victim finally flips out and whacks the bully a good one or 2) the victim’s parents have finally had enough and call the principal, what happens? BOTH kids get in trouble! Zero tolerance, right? Not.

This morning. The big bully was inside the school again when I walked by. He was messing around with a white board that was set up in the lobby. I don’t know what he was doing with it, Erasing or writing something. But heck, if you set up a whiteboard in the lobby of an elementary school and you allow middle school students to wait for the bus in there, you are asking for them to play with it. I walked past the school lobby. Our hero apparently saw me do that because Whomp! he ran out the door after me. He yelled something. I didn’t hear what. My ears are good but I was wearing my balaclava this morning, since the temperature was near zero. It sounded like he was challenging me! No. I am not going to go there. I turned around and stared him down for a few moments and then I continued on. Frankly, I was a little scared. This kid is big. He sucks up to adults but he doesn’t seem to respect them. I don’t know what will happen the next time I encounter this kid. As much as he creeps me out, I will call him out if I see him misbehaving. I think…

Middle schools are what they are, large chaotic jungles. There’s always all this lip service about how all forms of diversity are celebrated, blah blah blah. And yet somehow the same old run of the mill culture seems to dominate where it’s “cool” to get disciplinary referrals and the “popular” kids suck up to the teachers and bullies are allowed to torment other children at the bus stop. The teachers have to teach up to 100 children a day. Only a few of those teachers have the wherewithal to get to know what makes each kid tick.

I don’t know who this bully is. He was undoubtedly wearing diapers when my kids went to middle school. I don’t know what issues he has. And I’m sure he does have issues. Learning disability(ies)? Parents on crack facebook? Why is this all my problem? Because this kid does not seem to behave when he’s alone in public. And that’s his fault and his parents’ fault for not training him (no matter what the heck his issues are). His teachers can only do so much. They have to have some raw material to work with. I believe that if he is tormenting other children, he should be kicked off the school bus and his parent[s] should be driving him to school. Politically incorrect? Yes. Sorry.

This little video (from 2006?!?) is not what I’d call work safe.

Disclaimer: I was reeeeeaaaalllly slow on the uptake regarding the name of Apple’s newest product. My opinions? No time now. Maybe later. Or not.

Okay. You have come home early. You have a sore throat. Dinner is not ready yet. I’m getting there. I do not want your sore throat. I do not have any sick time at the moment. I know that I could take some sick time if I did get your sore throat. My boss would not want me there. He would boom out, “GO HOME!” and we’d figger out the time somehow. Mergers can suck the air out of the room even when you don’t lose your job. And I didn’t. yet. yay. But I do not want to get sick. I think somebody should sleep on the Green Couch tonight. Maybe it’ll be me…

That photooo is one that my trusty then-new powershot (this was 2007) took as I was trying to frame some wonderful view of downtown San Francisco and suddenly I was grabbed and dragged over to the curb. Apparently, I was just about to get run over and my beloved Lizard Breath dragged me to safety.

Hmmm. Tap tap tap. Do I still have a blahg? Yeah, okay. I didn’t cook bacon and beans tonight. I can’t think when I have cooked those two things together. Tonight I cooked a “hot pot” recipe from our loverly online newspaper. It was pretty good. I might do it again.

And so, I am old and my kids have to keep track of me. When the little lizard was a walking baby and I was young, we left her once with a friend of ours, Master Woodring (aka Doug), for an evening. It was winter and he basically let our baby do almost whatever she wanted to do. Oh, he also gave her a beautiful blow-up globe as a gift. A wonderful gift. We left and after Lizard Breath orchestrated various indoor activities with Doug (who possessed a phd, by the way, which doesn’t mean anything except that he was a more interesting baby-sitter than most), she directed him to take her on a mission. The mission was titled “Find Mommy”. She decided that they were going to drive my 1979 Ford Fiesta (aka Mommy’s Little Gold Car). She handed our friend a pair of gloves and my car keys. They went outside to the car and got in. She pointed at the keys and then at the ignition. Doug stopped at that. He wasn’t going to drive my car anywhere. So they went back inside. Lizard Breath directed Doug to pack up her beautiful new globe into a paper grocery bag and off they went again. On foot this time. When they got to the end of the block, she stopped. The 15 month old walking baby knew not to step off the curb into the street without someone helping her watch for cars. Smart? You betcha. They stood there for quite a while and eventually, they managed to continue their walk and they ran into a drunk guy with a dog and I forget what else.

Kids? They do grow up and if you are lucky, they will be taking care of you, even if you don’t really need it yet. Not sure what I did right… And yes, this is really random and boring and I do NOT want to get a sore throat.

Er. Look right. Look left. Look over shoulder. Where’s Frooggy? I dunno. Sleeping it off in his “londry baskit”, I hope. Whew! I can actually blahg about kitchens again without Frooggy taking over my blahg with some ridiculous moooovie.

It is a rather fuzzy photo (you can click — as [almost] always — to get a larger version but it’s still a bit fuzzy). I guess that’s because there’s so much visual information clutter in it that my loverly little powershot couldn’t decide what to focus on. This kitchen, the Moomincabin Kitchen, was installed in 1960. I was six years old. It has been largely unchanged since then. I mean, the original refrigerator and stove have been replaced. The Commander has instituted other smaller changes, as she does every 2-3 years. It is a very small kitchen and, no, there are not any doors on the cabinets. I *think* this was partly to save money and maybe because this is a *summer* cabin on the Shores of Gitchee Gumee and shutting things up might invite humidity. The Commander will have to comment about this because I was six years old and the last thing I wanted to be involved in at that age was kitchen design decisions.

My earliest memories of this kitchen involve sitting in a child-sized chair in the back corner of the room washing my feet so that after a day of running barefoot on the sand, I wouldn’t get sand in my bed. I wonder if that’s why I *still* wash my feet at the end of most days. I would look up at the two-by-fours that met in the corner of the kitchen, holding up the roof. No there is no insulation in the place. Or central heating. And if it gets hot in the summer, you grab a screwdriver and remove the glass insets from the doors and replace them with screen insets. And yes, it gets hot on the shores of Gitchee Gumee in the summer (sometimes).

Again, it is a small kitchen. One great gray-green greasy limpopo Sunday when the Beach Urchins were young and the weather had been awful for days and there were no cousins around to play with, The Commander and I were getting dinner ready and someone yelled “Boat!” That meant that a lake freighter had come into view. Even though lake freighters constantly go up and down in front of Fin Family Moominbeach, the Commander and I got so excited to see *which* freighter was out there that we were bumping butts trying to get out of that kitchen quickly.

I love the Moomincabin kitchen. I love when we open it up in the spring and I hate when we have to close it up in the fall. Fin Family Moomincabin has a small but workable kitchen and my family has served any number of people out of that kitchen at various parties over the years. When we renovate the Landfill Chitchen, we will not have open cupboards and, at least at the beginning, we will not have cosmic debris but we all know that stuff creeps in no matter how hard we try to beat it back. So, I will have my fancy cabinets and my granite countertops and all that stuff and it will be beautiful and I will love it. But my dream kitchen happens in the summer in a tiny kitchen on Fin Family Moominbeach, where there is a grandmoom who once allowed all *four* of her granddaughters (count ‘em) to climb up on stools and “help” her cook.

Oh, and you can’t see it but I see an old ski hat of mine from the 60s and I will have to remember that I don’t need to tote my ski band up there next Memorial Day because I can wear *that* hat!

It isn’t Blue Monday. Blue Monday was last week. Google it. January 18th. So why is it that everyone I encountered today just about anywhere was kvetching about having to go to work? Me. My co-workers. My boss. The clerk at Whole Foods. Mouse. In reality, it was a pretty good day. For me, anyway. Except that, by the end of the day, I had just a leetle beet of a teeny tiny headache. I don’t get headaches very often. I think the last one I had was a couple years ago. I could look it up on my blahg but I don’t want to be bothered. Being in the great outdoors almost always chases headaches away for me and so I am fine now.

I think that the reason people were more “depressed” today than they were a week ago on the actual date of Blue Monday is because this year Blue Monday fell on Martin Luther King Day. Lots of folks had the day off and a long weekend to boot (not me though). This weekend, almost nobody had a long weekend and here in A2 we had a January Thaw and so everything was rainy and ugly and now that we are back to work, the sky is spitting snow. It’s okay. Yes, the folks I work with were kvetching but we were all laughing too.

I would like to describe the mound in the photo but I am not sure I can do it tonight.

I mean I know the difference between the *trees*. Apparently I did not catch that the grain of the wood was different. Duh. The subtle complexities behind this confusion are beyond description as is today’s light bulb moment that finally cleared [some of] that confusion up. I have a few pieces of oak furniture around here (bookcases and bedroom furniture) and I have a beauteous teak dining table/chairs purchased long ago in a moment of financial insanity. I think I am going to go with maple (as opposed to oak) for cabinets. I like its more subtle grain. Color? I *think* that I am going to go with a honey-ish kind of color. Yes, I know that I kvetched about beige not too long ago and I also railed against our old favorite, harvest gold (like the ugly upper cabinets shown in the blurry iPhone photo). A honey-ish stained maple looks suspiciously beige and not too far from harvest gold. I don’t care. A very dark wood would (wood would? woodchuck chuck?) be oppressive in this north-facing room and I’m just not going to go with white even though I actually kind of like it in other people’s kitchens. And the really light wood stains are just not turning me on. Style? When I was a kid, I fantasized about having “modern” furniture and fixtures. As an adult, I have always lived with a combination of Early Inlaw, Student Ghetto, and Former Owner decor (beauteous teak table excepted). I think I lost my sense of style during all those years. I am back to “modern” (contemporary, if you will) now. Simple and clean, not a whole lot of extra lines or folderol.

So. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. THANK YOU, genevievedidit and family!!! Genevievedidit is the twitter handle for my sister-in-law Kathy. She is a busy mom of five and grandma (!) of eight six (I can’t count)! Six! Grandma? She is only a few years older than me and she is a grandma. A wonderfully active one. It always astounds me that people that are basically my age and often younger are grandparents already. I expect someday I will have grandchildren and, when I do, I will love them and spoil the heck out of them. But grandchildren are not imminent in my life and I don’t actually feel ready for them, whatever that really means. But then I had my first *child* at 30 and that was right for me. Maybe my bio-clock is just different.

Anyway, we drove up to visit genevievedidit and her family today. They do not do household kitchen renovations but they have a business that outfits schools and labs and offices and you name it. They know the cabinet business inside out and they were willing to try to beat the information into my brain that finally led to the above-mentioned light bulb moment. Not to mention that genevievedidit fed us a wonderful brunch of french toast and bacon (note to self: Why the heck don’t you make french toast anymore? Slacker!) And we got to check out the newest grandchild and talk family stuff and I love that I have somehow landed into this wonderful large family.

Thanks, you guys! I know I acted a little panicky at times but I really appreciated your input today. Love you. Kayak Woman.

I was really dragging you-know-what by the end of today. I am just about at the point in the cycle of my work where the brain work (hey, quit laughing!) required for one project starts tapering off and I am left with updating ancillary documents and stuff until my next project gets going. That is okay. My brain needs a bit of a rest sometimes and this gives it a chance to catch up a bit. (Hey you guys, I said to quit laughing!) Anyway. Friday afternoon can be a long, soggy, slodge when I am in this mode. And so it was. Morning was all right and then I met my Mousey for lunch. And then by about 2:00, I could hardly keep my chin from hitting my laptop keyboard. And so, against my better judgment, I went and got some coffee. And then I got another half cup. I did wake up. I wasn’t exactly jittery but I got into a kind of foggy neverland where I couldn’t focus on my work. As it turned out, everybody else on my team including the boss was in a similar mode and we ended up kibbitzing for a half hour or so in the aisle between the cubes and not too long after that, it was pretty much time to pack up and hit the trail. I was still feeling kind of nitzy when I got home and I realized that I am not getting quite enough fresh air and exercise. My hour of walking early in the morning is just not quite enough. And so, I walked after work today. As the dark began to fall. I am doing a little better now. We are about to walk over to Knight’s to meet our friends for dinner. And it is the weekend. Tomorrow will be a day of adventure and maybe Sunday will allow me some time for artistic creativity. I will definitely fit in some more time to walk in the great outdoors. I need it. Woops, we’re off to Knight’s. We have a reservation.

G’night,
Kayak Woman

Isa wrote, “Why *did* we bring that computer with us?” That would be the computer in the picture, which is now in a dark gray-green greasy Limpopo corner of the Landfill Dungeon. Isa is one of my five or so readers and she is also my daughter and therefore was on that trip to Floriduh. At the grand old age of seven. She was sharply observant then and I certainly don’t get a break now (that she is 25, yikes) and that’s okay. How did *I* raise someone that wonderful. I dunno. And my sister-in-law Kathy says things well (in the comments). We schlepped computers around then because we were who we were.

Before we had children, we bought an even older computer. It was the Apple II+ and we hooked it up to our then new and fancy 1980 Sony Trinitron TV so the GG could play Space Eggs or run his probability machine. Or we could play around with the BASIC programming language (and yes I did, “Hello world”). I remember one weekend when we drove to Houghton Lake in one of our loverly Ford Fiestas. It was Friday night and there was no one there and there was a *lot* of snow, so we couldn’t just drive in. We parked in the road and started schlepping stuff in (and shoveling). Clothes. Food. Skis. Computer. Sony Trinitron TV. Calculus books. I kid you not. We were nuts. Or were we? I mean, we *were* nuts but maybe we actually *were* just a bit ahead of the times somehow. I take my MacBook laptop almost everywhere I go nowadays. I am not the only person who does this kind of thing although I was a relatively early adopter. (Hmmm, a fly just flew by, odd occurrence on this otherwise typical Meesheegan January evening.) Except that now I am kind of moving ahead a bit and sometimes I just take my iPhone with me because it does just about whatever my laptop does except that I don’t have a full-fledged keyboard.

Now, taking that MacPlus computer (in the photo) to Florida and forgetting to include the keyboard that went with it? That was pretty stupid. On another tangent, I also used to use that Sony Trinitron to watch things like The Love Boat and Dallas. Who shot JR? (-;

In other words, it will not look like this. I hope. If it does, whoever ends up being our floor installer when we renovate the Landfill Kitchen will find himself fighting off a crazy woman riding a Roomba!

This is the result of the last time we installed a new floor in the Landfill Kitchen. It was a DIY job. Lemme see, I think the beach urchins were about six and four but I couldn’t tell you for sure. The only thing I remember about it was that the DIY-er finished the DIY job while the rest of us were at Fin Family Moominbeach. We arrived home after one of those long, hard days of driving down the I75 SUV Speedway with two vee-hickles, with a stop at Houghton Lake midway. I think that was the trip that the Marquis hitched a ride on. If I remember correctly, that trip featured a flat tire in our old Jetta at Houghton Lake and then the Gumper testing the range of his CB radio by calling us continually as we drove on down south of Houghton Lake. Mouse spent the last hour in an exhausted sleep, lying across the middle seat over a bunch of crap that we felt compelled to travel with. She was wearing a tie-dyed dress and, yes, she had a seatbelt on. The Marquis escaped whatever ensued at the Landfill that night by catching a flight out of Metro back to St. Louis.

I think that do-it-yourself household prodjects intentionally misspelled are fine. But this one had taken a little too long. We spent at least a few weeks at the beginning of that summer with no flooring in the kitchen at all. I like to go barefoot in the summer and let’s just say walking on the sub-flooring or whatever you want to call it was not fun. And I did not want linoleum. There was linoleum in here when we moved in. I viewed our mini-reno as a chance to get rid of that stuff. At *that* time (not now!!!!!) I wanted ceramic tile. Everybody and his 3rd cousin seven times removed shouted me down! Unfortunately, I listened. We bought linoleum. From a snake-oil salesman. It was okay for a couple years. After that, the glue that we were sold to hold the crappy linoleum down began to react with the heat from that register. The floor started to develop orange spots. Over the years, the orange spots spread further and further out and the area near the heat register got darker and darker.

I’m not getting linoleum again. I am not going to get ceramic tile either. I haven’t decided what I’ll be buying yet but I’m going for natural materials. I’m not sure what yet. I know about bamboo and cork, et al. We’ll just have to see what I decide. But it’ll be my decision (and the GG’s). And if my new floor starts to turn orange over there by the heat register, heads are gonna roll. Make no mistake.

The new Landfill Kitchen will not be fancy. But it will be beautiful. Because that’s how I roll. That is all.