Random bits of my so-called life.

We have cyclonic storms here in the Great Lake State. I don’t know if we’ve ever had anything approaching an F5 tornado a couple miles wide and packing 200 mph winds (or whatever it was). But we do get some killers and, therefore, I can be a ninny about them. The GG? Naw. Let’s go outside and watch…

I have been through an actual tornado and lived to tell the story. It was 1997 and we were heading north on the I75 SUV Speedway one hot, humid July day. The sky turned black, we bailed into a rest area, I wanted to go and hide under a toilet (if you know me IRL, you *know* how much I hate public toilets), the GG made me park on the entrance ramp *back* to the freeway and… There was the tornado, coming straight at us. It flipped one or two cars over but in the end, we didn’t get a direct hit. We were rocked around a bit but came through unscathed, except for the sand-blasting my loverly old POC endured, the beauteous lemonish vee-hickle in the photoooo. That tornado was nowhere near an F5 but it was a killer — one person in a mobile home, if I remember accurately. One is more than enough.

That photoooo is of the POC but it wasn’t taken on the tornado day. It was taken in the loverly Landfill Driveway in 2000. No, a tornado did not come through that time. It was 3:00 AM and a bit of wind woke us up. The GG said something about how nice it was that a storm was blowing in because that would make sleeping so much better. Roight… So a little wind and some thunder and lightning. And then! Swoooooooosh! HUGE WIND! More REALLY LOUD THUNDER! Except not. That was the sound of a tree falling on our house. We jumped out of bed and so did the then teenaged children. Thank the gods no one was hurt (including Izzy the rat, guinea pig [many names (Toilet Brush?)] and whatever anoles [not named that I know of] may have been left by that time).

I’m a mom and when severe weather is predicted, I worry freak out. What is the safest place in my house to throw my body over my childrens’ bodies in case worse comes to worse? Under the dungeon stairs, I think… What if we’re not home or I’m separated from my children or THEY ARE OUT DRIVING SOMEWHERE ALL ON THEIR OWN! Because licensed teenagers and adults doooooo that kind of thing… I can’t imagine living in Tornado Alley. I need the green of the Great Lake State and the big water of Gitchee Gumee. I’m not sure there is any place that is safe enough to survive an F5 tornado besides an underground shelter like the one Dorothy didn’t quite make it into when she went to Oz.

And then there was the day when we were all home at the Landfill and the sky looked a little threatening and the tornado sirens blew. And total chaos erupted. The beach urchins freaked out and threw every last blasted stuffed aminal down the Landfill Dungeon stairs. Workers across the street were noisily chipping up some old branches or whatever and did *not* stop because of the dern tornado siren. The GG? Well, he was outside! Where else? A couple of cecropia moths were mating in a crack between sidewalk panes and he and our late [beloved] neighbor Hans were out there watching them. And taking photos, which are around somewhere but I couldn’t find them in iPhoto so you get the POC instead. No tornado came anywhere near us that night but whenever I think of that evening, I imagine a beautiful zaftig soprano trilling an aria throughout all the activity. That’s about all that was missing.

Lemme see… I lost a minor design skirmish at work today. I suspect the issue will return in the not-too-distant future but I decided to cut my losses for now and let it ride. I do know how to pick my battles [grin]. Er, let it ride. These guys are so cool. Bachman Turner Overdrive. From my youth. They are still going. Love it!

Then there was the homeward commute. Oh. My. God! My commute is almost exactly eight miles. I can use the I94 18-Wheel Slogway for five of those miles. Or not. Today, I left work and got to the stoplight at the entrance to Avis Farms Business Park and S. State Street and it was impossible to make the left turn I needed to make to get to the Slogway. Why? Because traffic was backed up all the way from Ellsworth and it seemed like only one or two vee-hickles were getting out per traffic light cycle. I bailed out and hung a right and went alllll the way down to Textile and over to Lohr and back up to Ellsworth. The next few traffic lights were kind of okay but then I got to that mess by the Westgate Kroger and traffic was backed up so badly I had to wait something like four lights to make a left turn there. Eventually I got home, schlepped over to @PlumMarket, which had tweeted that they had Copper River salmon (okay, be right there), home for a few chores and am *finally* settling down to the business of deciding which leftovers to heat up for dinner.

My commute is about to get precipitously worse. A new construction sign appeared yesterday afternoon. Alas, it did not say “Velociraptors afoot”. It said “Road construction begins June 3″. Sigh… That road construction is the replacement of the ridiculously busy S. State/Ellsworth intersection with a big traffic circle (among other things). Traffic circles seem to be all the rage around here these days. I don’t have a coherent opinion about them. I *get* that they are supposed to allow traffic to flow more smoothly and eliminate t-bone style accidents. I also think that a lot of people don’t know how to use them (and/or are yapping on their cell phones). I am always extra wary. We’ll see if this one is an improvement. The construction process will definitely be a nightmare. I can work from home but I can’t do that all summer (and don’t want to)!

So now, here I am, watching warily as a stinging insect (hornet? wasp? I dunno) tries to figure out how to get OUT(OUTOUTOUT) of The Landfill via the screen in the Chitchen window. No buddy, that is not gonna work. I don’t want to kill him but I’m not sure how to direct him outside without getting stung, which I really don’t want to deal with tonight (and no, I am NOT allergic so no advice needed on that topic). I have left the side back slider open for him (for now) but with much trepidation because: 1) I do not want any OTHER stinging insects (or moe-skee-toes) in my house and 2) I do not want any SHIRRELS/SIRKERS/SQUIRRELS/SCREEEEECH in my house!

Some people are probably toasting me with ‘hattans at the Green Cabin up in the yooperland. Skoal to you guys too. I miss you. And the Beautiful Green Cabin. I’m going to the yooperland myself in a few days. Right now? I haven’t even left for the yooperland and I’m already feeling that “behind” kind of feeling that I get whenever I get *back* from the yooperland or Houghton Lake or wherever. I neeeeeed an apparation app!

Photo credit to the GG, who found this beautiful egg on the bank at the moominbeach.

Update: The Oklahoma death tolls are starting to roll in and I have to say that having a pontoon boat get blown upside down is *nothing* like losing the child you sent to school in the morning… … …

Earlier today we owned a boat. A loverly pontoon boat. One that could drive boatloads of folks to the tiki bar or the corner with the grokkery and liqwire stores or wherever. It’s not all that easy to see the beauteousness of this boat in this webcam photooo but there it is.

*Something* rolled through. Was it “one of those things that spiral and create great devastation” (oh, sigh, as the death tolls from Oklahoma start to roll in…) or just a big old straight-line wind? I’ll guess the latter. But I wasn’t there. And where is the boat?

Oh, there’s the boat!

The good news? No one was there (a neighbor took the last photo) and no one was harmed, including the neighbors, who were no doubt hunkering down during the storm.

Disclaimer: The GG and I do not own this boat alone. We own it jointly with a bunch of his siblings. And of course, despite what happened today, we all still own it…

I managed to change out the glass insert in our front storm door for a screen today. All. By. Myself. (Full disclosure, it required a couple of text messages to the Great Still-a-wee-bit-white North.) Why did I think this would be so dern hard? It’s really similar to changing out the windows for the screens and vice versa at the moomincabin and I’ve been known to accomplish that task multiple times per day. Different tool required, that’s all. That tool (pliers) is now in one of my Chitchen Drawers. Where I can find it again! The hardest part was getting the *heavy* glass insert down the stairs to its summer home in the Landfill Dungeon without breaking it or dropping it on my foot or something. Somehow I made it. Slow as she goes…

I was a bit apprehensive about being spacified this weekend. When I was a “kid”, being alone with my babies for a weekend could be daunting. The GG was always very interactive with the beach urchins, a guy who, despite working a full time job, probably changed more diapers than I did. He *certainly* provided them with more adventures than I. As the beach urchins grew into schoolchildren and then teenagers, the pendulum swung a bit. I was less apprehensive and more likely to say, “Go play with your brother” (aka The Uncly Uncle / identical twin). Team Estrogen would be just fine alone and there was usually something going on with YAG or school or friends to keep us busy.

The space-time continuum shifted again when the kids left home, the older generation grew frail and started dying and I sold my soul back to a very welcoming corporate America. Those years? I *needed* space. You want to go camping? Go! Come back in a couple months! Sometimes it was meeee who took off. One summer before I went back to work, I swung back and forth between the yooperland and The Planet Ann Arbor 10 days there, 10 days here. All summer. A couple years ago, when The Commander started to need our help for real, we were both working and we had to tag-team a lot. One of us in the yooperland, the other on The Planet Ann Arbor. I began staying out at the moomincabin after Memorial Day that year and, as much as I loved being there, I was lonely (and it was COLD but that’s a whole ‘nother story). I mean I was busy during the day telecommuting to work from the long term care rehab facility and hanging out with The Commander. At the end of the day, I would be back out at our beloved cabin. But missing having the GG around to hang out with, watching the shipping traffic traverse the upper St. Marys, cocktail in hand with the grill going. Since that time, when I have spent weekends alone, I have appreciated the space but there’s this creeping sense of loneliness…

This weekend? Perfection. It turned out I had plenty of spacification. And I needed that because there is soooo much to do around here. Cleaning, flinging, organizing and reorganizing, gardening (what? me?), packing for next weekend. Loneliness? Not. No chance for that, thanks to the beach urchins. Friday afternoon and evening with Mouse. Gardening “with” Mouse every day (i.e., Mouse gardens, KW rakes and weeds and pulls out poison ivy and waters things when asked). And my quick green lizard made the trek over here from megalopolis today for a belated mother’s day dinner. No I did not wear my best lavender pantsuit and we did not eat at a restaurant. We walked over to the Plum Market to buy ingredients for veggie tacos and she cooked them here in the Landfill Chitchen. And made me a loverly “summer cooler” cocktail. I keep a bottle of gin around for just such occasions. We ate in the actually quite loverly back yard gossiping (shh!) and reminiscing and watching mama birds feed their families.

Am I glad I stayed on the planet this weekend? Yes. Although a video on the C Fam facebook page of people at Houghton Lake heading over to the tiki bar in the pontoon boat gave me pause… Did I get a lot done this weekend? Yes. Did I get *everything* done that I wanted to? Of course not. If only I could just tinkle-tinkle-tink my nose like B-Witch used to do, it would all be done.

My beautiful but not fancy neighborhood is now as green as summer and this post was not in any way a “hint” to the beach urchins to come over and entertain their moom every time she spends a weekend alone. As I said in my Mother’s Day post, the greatest gift I could receive from my children is that they are independent adults who do their best to make positive contributions to society. And this post is really not all that “deep”. I’m just navel-gazing again. Isn’t that what blahgs are for?

Love y’all,
Kayak Woman

Blue gloves anyone? Maybe if I get sick of being a systems analyst, I can get a job at the TSA? I wore about five pairs of blue glubs today before I was through. This morning. Continuation of the current round of Landfill Dungeon rodent turd eradication. This is not a recent invasion, these turds are old. Not that they aren’t infected with hantavirus…

The first time I heard about the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome was in 1993. I was sitting at an old desktop computer over at That Darn EPA not feeling particularly well and thinking, “Am I sick? Or not?” I am so rarely sick that I can’t always tell right away. That day, a mysterious virus was on the news. My [beloved] then-boss walked in and said (dramatically, in his lovely Spanish-accented English), “Deed you hear about thees theeng? Eet eez coming from thee west.” Indeed. Well, yes I had. I had been comparing those symptoms to mine. Respiratory? Not. But still. I love you buddy and thank you very much for reminding me that healthy young people in Arizona have died quickly of an unknown disease and I don’t feel all that hot today so hopefully I don’t have it…

And of course I didn’t have that disease, which turned out to be a virus borne by mice. Not that we don’t have mice here (sheesh!) but there are zero Michigan hantavirus deaths. I think that’s *ever*. I ended up taking a couple sick days. I had a garden-variety three-day diarrhea bug (sorry) that half of the Haisley Mafia had already recovered from (“oh, I had that last week, yada yada, hee hee hee)”. To add insult to injury, I realized that I had lice. Yes. I. Had. Lice. Me. The fanatic who washes her hair at least once a day! One of the more inglorious moments of my life as a parent was sitting in the Blue Bathtub with Nix in my hair and, well, let’s just say that the Blue And Only Toilet was maybe two feet away just in case…

Today, I got [most of] the rodent crap cleaned up and cleared the decks to run Rooooomba around down in the Dungeon for a while and then Mouse came over to do some gardening and I took a little walk to the back of the yard and… Yikes! Poison ivy was encroaching upon my back “garden”. It actually grows in the woods behind the Landfill but sneaks through the chainlink fence into our “loverly” [heavy sarcasm] garden. I suppose I could harass the school district to get in there and get rid of it but there really isn’t all that much of it and one of the things I do *not* want to be known as is the cranky old broad in the neighborhood.

Anyway, I won’t even try to describe the condition of the back of our yard but it took some doing to even get *at* the PI back there. For a while, I actually went into the woods and pulled out some PI on *school* property. As well as some other plants and junk vines that were impeding access to the PI IN MY YARD!!! Like, “Hey Mouse, will you throw some clippers over the fence?” I *think* I got all of the PI out. I think. I was working on the junk vines and as I was pulling some of them off a utility pole guy waaaarrrr, I looked up and there was a saggy utility waaaarrr. Was it a lucky-shuckial waaaarrr (yikes!) or a phone waaarrr. And did *I* do that or…

If it’s a lucky-shuckial waaarrrr, it isn’t affecting the Landfill because our power is on. If it is a phone waaarrrr, it *certainly* isn’t affecting the Landfill, since we don’t have a landline any more. At any rate, I decided not to mess with the vines and retreated back into Rodent City aka the Landfill Dungeon.

I don’t usually do poison ivy eradication. I usually whine until the GG does it. I am different this year. I don’t know why (but don’t cross me because I have *very* little patience.). I suited up to do my own damn battle with PI. So far, so good. I have been known to get a teensy tinesy PI lesion by standing next to a specimen plant in a botanical garden. Today there is no evidence of PI anywhere on my skin. Knock on wood!

Just about everyone in the world was off work today. I mean in my cube-farm, of course. My supervisor sent out a humorous “BA status” email the other day that she and my co-worker would be out Friday (today) and *I* would be “in charge”. It’s almost impossible to describe my job or work situation but there is almost *never* a need to leave someone on my team “in charge” of anything. So I replied that I would be happy to be in charge of the red winged blackbird. The one that fights with (and poops on) the Ninja all spring, to the great amusement of my co-workers.

As it turned out, the Long Suffering Cat Herding Person (uber-boss) *did* show up today. He had been out all week at a corporate junket on the mother ship. FZ and a few QA-type people (but I’m not sure who because they all look alike [untranslatable inside joke]) were in this morning but FZ drifted out after lunch and then the LSCHP intercepted me as I was heading back to my cube from wherever and suggested that if I wanted to sneak out early this afternoon, “no one” would notice. In part, this was a genuinely nice gesture but I also suspect he wanted the place to himself.

Boy oh boy, I needed that. To make a long story short, I scampered over to Mouse’s place and we walked to a nearby woods where there are huge fields of trillium. I do not think I have ever seen so many trillium in one place *ever*. I did once abet The Commander The Trillium Bandit on a little trillium digging expotition in the yooperland. Yes, The Commander, a woman who did NOT break laws. But that’s a story for another day. This was a serendipitous day. The unexpected gift of a few badly needed hours of free time and a walk in an unfamiliar woods blanketed with spring wildflowers.

After that, we both headed to the Landfill where Mouse worked in the garden and baked bread and I cleaned up rodent crap in the Dungeon (yes, again, different room) and we both did laundry. The day culminated in a walk over to Zingerman’s Roadhouse for a cocktail and dinner and now I am going to quit while I’m ahead because I’m about ready to fall face first into my laptop. 9 miles today? Yes, that’s about right. Plus some hard labor. Sleep and then back into the Landfill Dungeon tomorrow.

Good night,
KW

Reading that tweet from a fellow Ann Arborite this afternoon did nothing to improve my mood. (And no, she didn’t spell “mosquito” like I did. That was how moi baby pronounced it when she was first exploring how to say the word for those pesky little buggers.) My mood? It was okay, it isn’t wasn’t *exactly* a woe-is-me kind of mood. More like an okay-I’ve-parked-at-work-but-I-do-not-wanna-get-outta-the-car kind of mood. Why? Because it was an absolutely GORGEOUS day. I mean, I *did* want to get out of the car, I just wanted to *stay* outside. Walking from the Ninja to my loverly once dog-poopy cube was not enough time outside. It has been a loooonnnnnnng winter and even just a few days ago, I had to suit up in glubs and ski-band, etc. to take my 0-skunk-30 powerwalk. Again. Today? Sigh.

To make matters worse, the long-hard-working and currently sequestered GG (I’ll take that down if you want me to, buddy) headed up to the Great White(?) North this afternoon. I cannot join him until about a week from now. But man-oh-man, did I want to be heading north today. Or anywhere, really. Actually, I’d kind of like to travel somewhere different than northern Michigan for a change. As long as it doesn’t involve the damn TSA, that is… I just want to get in a car and go…

Everybody else at work seemed to be suffering the same sort of ennui that I was but we made it through and despite a snails-pace commute home, I felt more like my usual self once I got there. A special package of dahlia tubers on my front porch helped with that (thanks UKW!) and then I kind of swung into multi-tasking action… Water the front lawn, coil up that annoying 100-foot hose, begin the task of switching out winter bizcaz for summer bizcaz, filling up a big trash bag with donations in the process. Fling-a-ding! Good mood? Yes! I hope I can propel that mood throughout the weekend.

I have not encountered moe-skee-toes yet this year but I’m sure I will soon. Hopefully there won’t be any damn gallynippers. One of the last times I remember The Commander reading my blahg was summer 2011 when we had gallynippers in the area. She called me specifically to ask me what were those gallynipper things? At that time, I was hoping that she would settle in to her beautiful assisted living apartment at Freighter View and read my blahg for a few more years but it was not to be. I am not sad about this. It was what it was…

This weekend? I have a lot of things on my list. As much as I wish I could be up in the north country, I am buzzing with prodjects here at the Landfill and maybe I will actually make minor inroads in getting some of them done.

I titled this old photooo “pulp log fort” and when I searched for “fort”, there it was, out of 30K photos. There’s something to be said for the old film camera form factor…

Our beach is on the Upper St. Mary’s River, a few miles west of Sault Ste. Siberia. It doesn’t really look much like a river at that point. We have a long, wide sand beach on a bay with a lot of water and you “can’t see the other side”. I remember when I was a 20-something, it seemed like I was constantly explaining the great lakes to people who had never seen them. Noooo, you cannot see the other side. Having seen the Pacific Ocean a few times, I now “get” that Gitchee Gumee is not the same but still…

When I was a kid, there were active pulp mills upstream from our beach and pulp logs would often get loose and float onto the beach. That provided all kinds of entertainment in the form of building materials, including the logs that we used to make this loverly fort. This was a small fort. I remember my older cuzzints (and me, later) building huge log forts that towered over me. Pulp logs were involved in building many structures on the beach, including “totem poles” and loverly cocktail tables.

That’s yer fav-o-rite blahgger there in the front on the blue-striped towel (loooooved that towel and part of it may still exist as a cleaning rag (and maaan did I hate that short short haircut!)). Pooh is on the right front. Jay behind me. Aaaaannnnd… the other blonde. A visitor to be sure. Was her name Jenny? Yes, I think it was. Her parents were great friends with mine and they rented the Yellow Cabin that then belonged to the Stevens but now belongs to Our Northern Correspondent.

Jenny and I were friends but she could be annoying. She was younger than me but was promoted into my grade for being “super-smart” and boy oh boy, did she know it. I know that we mostly had fun playing together but I will never forget the time she insisted that the proper pronunciation of Fort Michilimackinac was Fort Michimilimack. Alas, the parents sided with Jenny when we interrupted their cocktail hour to ask for a ruling. Yeee heee heee ha ha haaaaa Jenny is right! Isn’t she smart? (And cute.) Yeee heee heee, pour me another. KW seethed for quite some time after that and gave her parents HELL later that night. (Er, just so you know, KW googled the spelling of Michilimackinac just now. Just to make sure she had it right… … …) (Errr… Upon reflection… The blonde kid could also have been Becky Springer. But Jenny makes a better story…)

Not to end on a sour note but Michigan school update: Buena Vista schools will be funded through the end of the year and the students will not have to endure hastily thrown-together summer “skills camps”. But Albion Schools voted to close their high school after this year. After 140 years, they will educate only K-8 and bus high school students to Marshall, 10-15 miles away. This does not seem like a good thing to me but I am also wondering if a for-profit charter school might try to step in to pick up the “slack”. This is purely conjecture on my part of course. If you are a Michigan voter, please please please please, at least try to educate yourself about our governor’s policies on education (and other issues). He will likely be running again and I do not want him to win another 4-year term. You can disagree with me if you want but please try to understand the issues. If our current model for funding schools is not working, it needs to be changed — without hurting the CHILDREN! And for-profit charter schools are NOT the answer but I don’t have the chops to write about that tonight.

This morning, things looked bleak for the Buena Vista School district. No plan seemed to be in sight for the schools to re-open, instead, federally funded optional summer “skills camps” were in the works. This sounded awful to me. Who would be the teachers and how much training and experience would they have? What about the curriculum? Would it be delivered over an iPad (or more likely, a bunch of battered old desktops from the Jurassic Age)? Would the kids get any time for art, music, theatre, recess, daydreaming, etc., etc., etc. By the end of the day, it seems possible that the school district *may* be able to re-open to finish the school year after all.

I hope this works out. I remain astounded at the state of public education in this state. Who is to blame? Not in any particular order but… 1) School boards and administrations for not being fiscally responsible (and sometimes downright corrupt). 2) VOTERS (people like you and me) who vote incompetent and/or corrupt school board members into office. 3) Our state government. Yes. Governor Snyder shares the blame. He has raided the school aid fund to provide a tax break for businesses. I am sure that businesses *need* tax breaks but I think raiding the school aid fund was the wrong way to fund those breaks. Many school districts are struggling, including the affluent Planet Ann Arbor Schools. We are not likely to close in the near future but we need to cut 8.67 million for next year (that links to a very competent, honest A2 school board member who I would vote for again in a heartbeat (p.s. she has no idea who I am…)). So, why do I care about Buena Vista? Please see title… The citizens of our state (and others — hello Louisiana) need to push back against efforts to defund education to the point where public schools have to close their doors. We as taxpaying citizens have a responsibility to VOTE for competent, honest representatives at all levels of government, starting with the school board. Those we vote for have a responsibility to ensure that our children have decent public schools to attend.

Enough of that. I have had an intense, lifelong interest in education, my own, my kids’, pre-school through whatever level you get to. If I could have my druthers, I would dictate that we do *not* decimate public education. I would decree that we *enrich* public education, pay our teachers (who are *professionals*) what they deserve. I would make sure that children receive rigorous education in the basics aka reading, writing (!), math, science, social studies and the arts. Yes, to me *art* is basic. Also, physical education and team sports are important but I would argue for more recess time where kids can explore and play whatever impromptu games they dream up.

Summer? Kids should *not* have to be subjected to drill and kill during the summer. I am not categorically against drill and kill. I actually *loved* drill and kill when I was a kid. Don’t ask (I am a nerd…) but I do think it has its place. Still, I wish that every kid had the childhood that I had. Every year, the day after school got out in June, we moved out to our cabin, seven miles or so up the river. I packed my stuff in a bushel basket. My dad could drive to town to his bank job every day and we could run pretty much wild. The caveats were that we did not go swimming without getting an adult to watch us (which we almost always could, even though they might have to put a winter jacket on to watch us) and we did not THROW SAND!!! Every single blasted kid who grew up spending summers on that beach has been told DON’T THROW SAND!

I wish that all kids could have the kind of summer opportunities that I had (and make no mistake, we were NOT ANYWHERE NEAR the 1%. In those days, we were probably somewhere down in the lower reaches of the god-forsaken, unwashed 47%). Still, I never had any trouble recovering academic skills when school started in the fall. In fact, I was annoyed that we always had to review stuff from the last year. Partly that was just meeee but partly it was because my brother and my cousins and I had a whole summer to run free, swim, play, do acrobatics, read library books (on windy days in the top bunk), create castles or even whole cities in the sand, dig to China, *bury* each other in the sand, go on field trips with our moms laughing uproariously in the front seat. I know that most kids don’t get these kinds of opportunities in the summer but I don’t think that any “skills camp” could ever replace them.

One thing that I did not do yesterday (Mother’s Day yada yada) was “plant” a bunch of impatiens. One of the few things my black thumb manages to succeed at is to throw a whole ton of impatiens into a big pot. If I remember to water them occasionally (when I’m home), they seem to thrive throughout the summer and I usually end up throwing them in the compost in late September. I got this idea from The Commander although her thumb was a lot greener than mine is.

For the last few years, the GG’s mother’s day gift to me has involved buying a bunch of impatiens for me to put in pots and setting up a wheelbarrow full of soil from our compost and whatever. Last year I potted my impatiens on Mother’s Day. They were beautiful. I probably took photos. So much fun. Alas. Within a couple of weeks they seemed to be dying. What was happening? We thought that Henry the rabbit was eating them. Why had he never eaten our flowers before? I couldn’t figure that out.

This spring, the GG went over to one of our fave plant places. Where were the impatiens? Nowhere. He asked. Guess what? A *mold* has infected impatiens plants, at least in this area. There are a few plants available but people are reluctant to sell them. “Buy them at your own risk!”, proclaimed the not-very-friendly gal we talked to.

I have to guess that the impatiens we bought last year died because of the mold, not because Henry ate them!

I did not buy any impatiens this year. I have not purchased any annuals this year. Mouse has a vegetable garden going, the GG planted some sunflower seeds yesterday, and I am looking forward to a certain package to arrive this week. Me? I am still hand-raking the yard five minutes at a time, trying to work myself into the zen of gardening, possibly under the steerage of someone over on the other side.

Goooood night,
KW

What did I *not* do today? I did not get my hair done and put on my best pastel outfit and sit through an interminable Mother’s Day brunch at some restaurant somewhere. If you did a version of that (perhaps in basic black with turquoise-streaked hair or maybe a tie-dyed t-shirt), either to honor your mom or as the guest of honor, I hope you had a wonderful time. That’s not snark. I mean that! A few years ago, I happened to be in Sault Ste. Siberia on Mother’s Day and we (me, the GG, The Grinch, and Froggy) took Radical Betty and The Commander to the Hotel Ojibway for brunch (NpJane, you were there on a different, equally cool occasion). It was wondrous. The food was fantastic with a beautiful buffet including a chef who would cook an omelet to order on the spot. The seats are always comfortable and the view of the Soo Locks cannot be beat. (I think RB was happier about Froggy’s presence than The Comm…)

I don’t really know how to explain this. I don’t really miss my mother. I miss the life and times I experienced with her. Well, most of them. The Book Cadillac jeans argument (yesterday) is probably not one of them [grin]. I don’t miss the struggles we both went through the last ten months of her otherwise long happy life. The 10 months when her health slid downhill and she was *forced* to accept help from me and many others were not fun. I believe that her death was a relief for both of us and I have had only a few of those moments that the bereaved often report that they wished they could call their mom or whoever.

All that said, as I think I have said before in this space, I seem to be *channeling* The Commander! I think of her as I continue hand-raking old dead oak leaves and clipping off dead branches on our ugly hedges and commanding “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, do you have a saw” to cut off some particularly thick branches. Oh, not to mention buying just the right garden tools. For me. Like small rakes and two of those fancy pocket hoses that people who watch TV see on TV. A woman at Stadium Hardware was all excited that they had been “upvoted” on some show on TV. Maybe I should watch more TV… Oh yeah… I made cookies today. I. Made. Cookies. Today. Just regular chocolate chip. The Comm *always* made cookies. Me? I know how. But not so much. Gertrude worked double time to get them baked with her two ovens. Love to Gertrude. The Comm would’ve loved her too — one of the few times I have wanted to call my mom was when I bought Gertrude!

I am certainly not upset that my children were not with me today. They both know what I think about this Hallmark-type holiday (I know that it didn’t really begin as a greeting card holiday). I love my children from here to eternity but I am happy that they have their own lives. I have spent many a Mother’s Day (and other more significant holidays) away from my beach urchins and I am accustomed to that (and so was my mother). One of the best Mother’s Day gifts I could ever receive is the knowledge that those children are off living their own successful lives and not feeling obligated to thank me for giving birth to them.

It’s all about meeeeeee tonight. You’ve been warned and are free to move along.

We went Downtown tonight. Not downtown Planet Ann Arbor, downtown Dee-troit. We had a wonderful dinner sitting at the bar in the Green Dot Stables restaurant, and then we went to an art opening at MOCAD. We do not usually go to art openings. We walked in and I made a beeline for the whine table for a cab. Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t chug whine all night. I had two over the course of a couple hours. But man oh man, I was standing there amongst all of these sophisticated-looking, discerning art lovers and thinking something like, “boy oh boy, am I a country bumpkin or what?” Just about then, the GG said something like, “You look like you fit right in here.” Yes, I almost dropped my cab. Ka-splash.

Back in the Jurassic Age, despite the fact that I grew up in the rugged northern outpost of Sault Ste. Siberia, The Commander (who grew up near Detroit) tried her darndest to bring me up “properly”. You know, so I didn’t say things like, “I ain’t got none”, (at least not within her earshot) and so that I could dress for things like church (yes) and concerts. And art openings… Not that we ever had art openings up in Siberia in those days.

And then there were all the trips we took to Detroit, where we had to dress up just to go shopping downtown. I got excited about that as a little kid but when I was 13 or so, we were going to stay at the Book Cadillac Hotel instead of my grandparents house on Mark Twain and boy oh boy was there a row up there on Superior Street the night before we left. I wanted to wear jeans! At the Book Cadillac? It was a “fancy” hotel and The Commander wouldn’t hear of it! I forget who won that battle. I suspect that I didn’t get to wear jeans but probably managed to get away with loading up on eye makeup instead.

Nowadays, I try for style but if it is not *comfortable* I do not wear it. I am ruthless about this. I spent about 30 seconds thinking about what I would wear tonight and I got dressed in about five minutes. Cute little red skirt, black wool-silk turtleneck, black Chico’s Traveler’s jacket, black tights, and cute little red suede Jambu shoes with *hiking* soles. I chose well because I spent absolutely *no* time thinking about what I was wearing the entire time. (I did wash my face and re-apply my makeup, which is pretty much the same make up I probably wore at the Book Cadillac, downsized by about 90%.)

And I wasn’t really intimidated by what other people were wearing because it was all over the map (like I thought it would be). It was their demeanor that I couldn’t fathom. And then. During the presentation… Doop doodle-doo-doo-doo-do-doodle-do-doop. Yikes. I forgot to turn off my iPhone! Who is calling me! But it wasn’t my phone ringing. It belonged to the sophisticated looking guy next to me. I looked at him and whispered, “I thought it was mine!” Somehow that did the trick. For me anyway. He didn’t really react. But after that, I relaxed (after I double-checked that *my* phone’s sound was off!). I didn’t have deep conversations with anyone but I was my typical shy but friendly self.

Oh yeah, not to mention that there was valet parking at this event and there is my loverly Ninja in the photo big as life and festooned with a sh*tload of redwing blackbird poop on and below the mirror. The Young Turk who parked the car prob’ly didn’t even notice it. “Hey, can you drive a stick?” “Yes!” We can only hope he didn’t take a detour over onto one of the freeways on the way to the parking lot!

.

…the LSCHP went missing and was replaced by a giant hobbit. And the day began with everyone dancing in the aisles to this loverly little ditty playing on myyyy iPhone. You know you want to click…

Hanging out in the Landfill back room after a walk downtown to the Oscar Tango for cocktails and dinner. Contemplating an early morning start to a Work Weekend (and maybe an actual bit of shopping).

Good night,
KW

Most weekdays (except for Friday, when the GG doesn’t usually work), I leave the Landfill in the morning and, when I get home in the afternoon, everything is pretty much like I left it, running the gamut from clean and de-cluttered to a pig sty and just about everything in between. You can guess which end of the gamut is the usual trend.

Today. I got home. Daisy was parked in the street. Some sort of grass-growing substance was sprinkled over all the bare spots on the “lawn”. One of the GG’s umpteen-gazillion briefcase-type bags was on the dining table. The place smelled like baking bread. The dryer was running. Someone was in the back yard. Oh, okay. Mouse was: 1) doing laundry, 2) baking bread, 3) digging around in her garden, 4) planting a praying mantis egg sac. Yes. See photo… Apparently praying mantises (plural, anyone?) eat bad bugs. I asked, “Do they eat moe-skee-toes?” Probably not…

So, the GG was home sometime during the day to meet some folks who measured our horribly ugly old doorwalls for replacement. It is time. (It is 30 years past time.) Will this relatively small prodject jumpstart me into the remodel that we need? I hope so. Oh, and he was outside sprinkling the grass-growing stuff last night. I knew he went outside but figgered he was ‘mokin’ a ‘gar or whatever. And didn’t notice anything on the grass this morning.

Rant coda! The Buena Vista school district, a small, struggling district in the god-forsaken Great Lake State closed its doors this week and fired all of the teachers — Teacher Appreciation Week? You are wondering something like, “It’s May! What about the rest of the school year?” Yes… The state does not (so far) seem willing to help, even though our state constitution supposedly mandates that the state will provide a K12 education for all students. Alas. Our wondrous gubner aka #onetermnerd (I can only hope!) is spouting the usual crap about how everyone needs to work together to find a solution. I don’t have a comprehensive working knowledge of the god-forsaken GLS’s budget and tax structure but this gubner has been hitting at public education left and right. The kids in this poor and largely *black* (yes, sorry) school district have no place to go to school. The seniors will not be able to graduate. How does this kind of situation contribute to the kind of thriving economy that we neeeeeeed in our state (or country)? We are keeping young children from getting an education and we are surely keeping their parents from going to their (most likely) marginal, low-paying jobs. Because they have to stay home and take care of their children! Who can’t go to school because there is no school… Yes, I know that the Buena Vista school district was mis-managing funds. That’s bad and that is why we all have to nominate and VOTE for people who know what they are doing. But right now? Why are we hurting these students and their teachers? These are people without power…

Back in the Jurassic Age, when I was wearing a PTO treasurer hat or two, my role in the celebration of Teacher Appreciation week was to write a generic letter (“make it warm – warm”, one obnoxiously sentimental PTO prez once said), print it out on “pretty” paper, write a check out to *each* teacher in the school, stuff the letter and checks into envelopes and shove them into each teacher’s mailbox. The amount of the checks? Maybe $20 or $25? I can’t really remember but it was a small token. A pittance. How many boxes of Kleenex will $20 buy? What about books for the classroom library? It was a pitifully small gesture but at least we tried.

I loved the treasury business but I had senioritis when Mouse graduated from high school and I did a cartwheel (oh, not really) when I handed the Commie High PTSO treasury over, even though it was to a person who didn’t seem to be a good candidate for that particular job. I was done done done and I dunno what happened after that.

So I haven’t thought much about Teacher Appreciation Week until this year. I can’t write coherently about the whole “education reform” movement. The one where big corporations will apparently provide a better education to our children than the public education system we have spent 100 or more years (?) building. Our system needs change but it doesn’t need the kind of change that a lot of politicians are crowing about. Our teachers are on the front lines here. They need support. They need more money. They need to teach SMALL NUMBERS OF STUDENTS!!!! And we as a society need to figure out how to pay people who have a marginal (or no) education a living wage so that they don’t have to be dependent on welfare (or pimps or drug dealers) and can provide for their children and send them to school. I will darn betcha that those girls stuck in that house of sin and horror in Cleveland for 10 years were missing their schools and some of their teachers…

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week. Don’t go out and hug a teacher unless that’s all you can afford to do and you are damn sure that teacher *wants* a hug!. Buy a damn year’s worth of Kleenex for his/her classroom, or school supplies for the kids who can’t afford their own, or a significant number of books if you can afford that. VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE! Vote for school board members who know what the HELL they are doing. Vote for politicians who have actually spent SIGNIFICANT time hanging around schools and are not listening to the likes of Bill Gates…

Good night,
Kayak Woman on a rant

Yes, the Houghton Lake webcam. The dust is settling on Old Abby’s* recent dark phase and I just approved a comment on a post waaaayyyy last week from a fellow Houghton Lake property owner. Thanks for the comment and, yes, the webcam seems to not be updating. Not sure what’s going on… The GG may not be able to fix it until the weekend after this coming weekend. I know that many C Fam folks watch it, as well as some others. But we will fix it.

I reeeeeallly need a vacation, although I am not going to get much of one for a while. I am still working on something stultifyingly boring at work (but it needs to be done) and I actually daydream about the boooorrrring prodject I’m engaged in at The Landfill, which is hand-raking every last old dead stick, oak leaf, and acorn outta my yard (five minutes at a time). I greeted my neighbor and her dog from behind the bushes this afternoon and the dog went nuts. Neighbor was embarrassed about the dog but I knew what was going on and told her about the Floating Head Syndrome.

I am not aiming to have one of those perfectly manicured yards like the ones in the McMansion development where I often take my lunch walk. I like a bit more disorder than that and I’m also sure those folks have one o’ them thar nayberhood assoceeashuns and have to keep up with the McGillicuddys or whoever. YUCK!!! I don’t know when, how, or if we’ll get to the point of transforming the Landfill yard into what I want it to be (as if I *knew* what I wanted it to be). For the moment, I think I am channeling the derned Commander with all of this yard clean-up stuff.

The Indian in the Cupboard photoooo? If I had been able to access my boring old blahg last Friday night, this would be what I would’ve posted. Liz’s Lounge at the Riviera Resort in Prudenville. We had cocktails and dinner there with the Lord and Lady of Linden (who were 10 miles or so behind us on the I75 SUV Freeway). A perfect destination where we watched the sun set. A much different trip to the Great White North than the one we took three weekends before when we drove through an ice/sleet/snow storm that began around Pinconning or thereabouts and continued until we got off at the UU’s near Gaylord. 45 mph was the rule and snow fell in the north throughout that weekend.

* Old Abby? I’ve been porterized, I think. I like that name for my blahg… Old Baggy’s Old Abby.

Yes, I did go dark for a few days. It’s a long story and I don’t know all the details (or even want to know them). Let me just say that my “web guy” is the best and I had every confidence that ababsurdo would be back — without me having to email / call / whatever and threaten doom and gloom to some corporate flunky. And so, once I realized that this would likely be a multi-day outage, I decided to sit back and enjoy the ride.

It was kind of a relief! We went to Houghton Lake and I read a book. I. Read. A. Book. A book abook bookbookbook boooooooook. (On my iPhone. Yes, that counts!) Cloud Atlas. What did I think of it? I haven’t totally processed it yet. I loved the stories. Especially the sci-fi-ish parts. I used to *looooovve* sci-fi and read a lot of it for quite a while. I *think* I grokked some of what the author was trying to say. But not sure I got it all. A second reading might get me there but I think I’ll move on. If you have read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

When I was a freshman in college, I took an English lit class. I had a rather cadaverous-looking old prof who delighted in freaking out his young students by discussing some of the morbid aspects of those authors’ writings and tying them to contemporary tragedies. I know now (and even then) that he was trying to shake up his sheltered “upper-middle-class” (or whatever we were) students but I was processing some scary incidents in which kids my age had died suddenly via weird heart problems, car crashes, or drowning in Gitchee Gumee, etc. Yikes. So I was scared. But…

I got along with that prof even though he freaked me out. I loved the novels he taught (the poetry not so much but that’s just me). We had to write papers and, based on my writing, he once told me I would be welcome as an English major if I ever decided to switch majors. I didn’t… *IIIIII* was gonna play my flute. Sigh [big-grin]. Nowadays, after I have seen death as many times as I have*, I think I would get along with that old prof but I’m sure he’s long dead. Alas. In that class, I usually sat next to a young woman who spent her time in class making elaborate lists (with circles for dots, etc.) of things like “albums I can bring” — i.e., Teaser and the Firecat, etc., etc. I don’t remember her name now. I’m not sure I ever knew it. Who knows where she is or how much death she’s seen…

And so, this morning, I was walking. I was back at Haisley at the end of my walk and… Doodle-oop! Text message from the GG! abab was back! I stopped in my tracks and posted “Good morning ababsurdo” from my phone, right there in front of Haisley School!

I figured I would write a succinct post about the whole blahg outage. Turns out I’m back to my regular old random blather. I wish I could remember that cadaverous old teacher’s name. Maybe he would like to know that I ended up okay and that he has somehow emerged out of the fog of my youth as a favorite teacher.

Good night!
Kayak Woman (and ababsurdo)

* I have not seen death as many times as some of my [five] readers. Just saying.

Oof! Knock down, drag out fight with MS Word today culminating in good old Word turning most of my list numbers into little black boxes!!! !!! !!! What???

I *know* MS Word! My experience with word/text processing programs goes back to the early 1980s. I probably shouldn’t admit that I have used a Wang word processor (remember those?) but I did. (Why do I feel compelled to say that I was not a secretary?) I cut my techie teeth on *FORMAT and “WRITER”. WRITER was a CSC “inside job” if I remember accurately. Eventually we gave up on those and got WordPerfect and finally MS Word came along. And I have been using it for YEARS!!! I know what styles are and I know how to manipulate them, etc. Today? Black boxes appeared and I was totally flummoxed.

Yes, I am editing our user guides again. Documents that were dragged out of another loverly Microsoft product called Framemaker around the time I started working where I do now. Problem? These documents are muuuuuuch better suited to what Framemaker can do than Word. I won’t explain why. List numbering seems to suffer the most. List numbering needs to re-a-start (at 1!) about a gazillion times throughout this document. You would think that would be an easy thing to do and you can even navigate to an option to “restart numbering” if you want. Does it work? Sometimes. Yes, that’s what I said — “sometimes”. All those *other* times? The number starts over on some random number. Or it restarts at “1″ but the next number in the list becomes “5″ or whatever.

This is the first time I have had all of the list numbers turn into little black boxes. And no they are not bullets. Contrary to popular belief I am not [usually] quiiiite that dumb. I think that I have pushed MS Word over the edge.

I know… “Why don’t you use [insert-my-fave-text-processing-program-here] instead? You can just download it from the cloud! Easy as pie!” Not so fast. This is the online banking industry here. MS Word is industry standard and downloading? Not on my work laptop. Totally locked down. Actually, you are happy about that!

I think that this particularly offensive document is broken beyond easy repair. There are waaaayyy too many styles in it and it’s dangereuse to try to modify a style. Who knows what unintended consequences might ensue, not easily undone? Probably the best thing to do would be to actually re-type it. Yes. Create a new document, re-type all of the text and then insert the quizillion screenshots. Alas, it is 300 pages and I do not have time to re-create a 300 page document right now. So tomorrow, I will be back at the task of eradicating the little black boxes a few at a time and probably making a worse mess than I already have.

Good night,
KW

I don’t check the Houghton Lake webcam very often. Actually, I’m embarrassed to post that link because it is sooooo out of date. That is, the photos are up to date but the rest of the page sucks and that statement about one of the webcams being up on the St. Mary’s is just plain wrong. I do not know where we found that web designer or why we hired her. I hope we aren’t paying her anything [wink].

Other folks in the C-Fam watch the cam more often and this afternoon Gr8tgrty posted a note in the C-Fam facebook group: look at the webcam! And I did and here is what is going on in the front yard at the cabin. This isn’t exactly a new thing although it’s quite spectacular. Somewhere in the huge mishmash of photos here in the Landfill, I have photos of me walking around the Houghton Lake yard barefoot carrying my 1-year-old child through a flood something like this.

Back in those days, flooding in the yard usually meant flooding in the cabin. Nothing like sloshing around in a half-foot of [dirty] water in front of the sink. And stove, although I refused to cook at the cabin when it was like that. Probably the most memorable moment in Houghton Lake flooding history was the time that we met the UU up there for the weekend. We got there before the UU on a Friday night. The kitchen was partially flooded. Lizard Breath was very young and we were upstairs settling down to sleep at around 11 or so when the UU arrived. We heard “Splash! Shit!” from downstairs. He had walked through the kitchen and dropped his pillow in the water.

Flooding was a frequent occurrence and the place wasn’t exactly what you’d call clean, although most everyone tried. We all complained about it and some people avoided going there. It was Grandpa Garth’s cabin and that’s how it was there. He bought the place back in the 1960s and it provided his 10 kids, their cousins, and various Royal Joke neighborhood friends a place to escape to in the summer. I wish more kids had that kind of opportunity (I certainly did, in spades!). Although Garth sometimes entertained ideas about fixing the cabin or even replacing it with a more viable structure, I think he liked that place the way it was.

Grandpa Garth died in 2001 and after a few years of settling his estate and thinking carefully through what to do with the cabin, the C-Fam had the old place razed and a built a beautiful new chalet in its place. Some people were reluctant about this, even some of us out-laws (well, meeee). Lots of memories in that old place, even for an out-law like meeeee who didn’t hang around the place until 1980. (I could not have asked for a better father-in-law.)

The new place? It is wonderful! We can keep the heat on throughout the winter and just flip on the water heater, etc., when we get there. No more pumping water outside in the snow and hauling it in with buckets. No more flushing the toilets with buckets in the winter. No more heating water on the stove and pouring it into a rubber camping shower to get clean. Those were good times but… Now there are year-round flushy toilets and a washer and dryer and a dishwasher (that I don’t always use but appreciate) and and and… Always so many fun family members to hang out and have fun with.

The most important thing? The first floor of the new cabin is far enough off the ground I don’t think we could *ever* have water in the kitchen! Hopefully it will not seep in to the “basement”, which is a half-height area underneath the rest of the cabin…

But still, this view of the Houghton Lake yard is spectacular.