Dear God, it’s supposedly your country, so can you please make the UP just a little closer to my planet?
I mean without any major geological upheavals and the associated “collateral damage”, that is. Maybe the Great White North is so beautiful because it takes so blasted long to get there and back. We are back and we were almost home when I decided to check outta the freeway at North Territorial Road and take the backroads home. Whitmore Lake and Joy and N. Maple. It takes longer to get home that way and today it took particularly long because Joy and N. Maple are gravel/dirt roads and there was about a six inch layer of ice on both of those and TRENORMOUS potholes. And then, when I was turning onto N. Maple from Joy, I almost totally lost control of the Dogha, which is just about the most stable vee-hickle I have ever owned. As the GG says, you couldn’t do a donut with this vee-hickle if you tried! Well, I dunno about donuts but I almost landed us in the drink. At the last minute, the Dogha gripped back onto the old dirt/gravel road and we made it home. Yaknow, I was only going about five miles per hour…
It is wonderful but hard to live in two (or more) places. But now, I am home in my other house, the real house, where I live some of the days. It’s here on the blasted planet, and I am home… G’night.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
¡papeles picados de san francisco!
February 15th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Are those square multicolored snowflakes hanging by your fireplace? They are so cool! It was worth the long drive home to have that nice fire and look at the snowflakes – even if they are square.
By the way, I’ve been thinking about “nun” stories for Mouse. Most of the stories I can remember are not so nice. Only a couple of nuns were nice to me. I wish my mom was around because she went to High School at one of those all girl convent schools in Minnesota. Saint Claire Accademy. There were only a dozen or so in her Graduating class. She loved the Sisters (St. Joseph if I remember corrrectly.) Shrine had the Sisters of Charity and they marched to a different drummer. GG should remember. He was there, but maybe they knocked the twins heads together a few times and now he doesn’t remember. Anyhow, what type of story is she looking for? Maybe I can come up with something. GG should have some stories too – however I have noticed that he still has his ears. Maybe his stories aren’t so bad.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Mouse, I have Grandma Sally’s yearbooks. Grandpa Garths too, with is ROTC pics. I should put them at the cottage so the family can ponder through them.
I got in trouble in grade school for punching nuns, threatening to punch nuns, and punching Mr.Kelly too. Jim Courtois punched Piglet right over her desk. She was trying to pull his hair out. Mom was there. They hurt me first, and I just wasn’t going to take it anymore. They smacked around a lot of kids, locked them in closets, wouldn’t let them go to the bathroom, drag kids around by their ears, and all kinds of other ridiculous stuff. I remember my mom telling me that the twins had scratch marks on their scalps from the nuns trying to grab their hair. Piglet ( the principal at Shrine ) had a paddle that was an inch thick with holes in it. It was huge. She told me to bend over and grab my ankles. I told her no, and if she touched me with it, I would take it from her and use it on her. She didn’t try it. She sent me home, which was cool, because that’s where I was going to go anyway. A lot of those nuns did not have college educations, and were teaching classes. Some were too old to be teaching at all. If Mouse wants stories, the Courtois’ all have stories.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I am not very good in the ice–so way to go handling yourself in it. I get shaky even thinking about it; we don’t get it very much around here and when we do it’s a BIG DEAL. Glad you’re home safe with such a lovely fire!
February 15th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
It is wonderful and hard; enjoy dreaming about the memories of the U.P. tonight. 🙂
BTW-Nun the better-I (Di) was in the 4th grade. It was English class–diagramming sentences (noun, verb, adj, adv, prep phrases, etc.). We recited row by row. Each person in the row took one sentence, explained the diagramming of the sentence, and then sat down as the person in back of them took the next sentence. It came to the row that I sat in. (We were all arranged alphabetically btw.) The row consisted of seven students, I was in the second seat from the front. Joyce (who sat in the first seat) did her sentence. I felt sick and wanted to throw up but was too afraid to ask to use the bathroom because we had just came back from the bathroom and I was sure that to go to the bathroom within minutes of just having come back from the bathroom was grounds for going to hel-. So I did not ask to go to the bathroom. It was my turn to recite. Joyce had just finished her sentence and sat down. I started to open my mouth to recite the next sentence, and vomited all over the floor in front of me. Sister Mary _____ got mad because I didn’t ask to use the bathroom.
Mother Superior—We (J&D) were in the U.P. Having drank in excess the night before, we decided to go to the Reservation Catholic Church on Sunday at 11:00 a.m. mass. The priest introduced three visiting nuns from Domino’s Farms Convent. We were delighted that these visiting nuns in the U.P. were from A2 like us. We decided to introduce our delightful selves to the visiting nuns after services. Two nuns were novices (around 21 years old) and one nun was obviously older, and in charge — perhaps the Mother Superior. (Mother Superior meets Lake Superior). We (the J of we) asked about some local restaurants on Main Street in A2. The young nuns smiled sweetly and explained that they did not get out much. It wasn’t until “The Ark” was mentioned that they understood that we were naming places from A2 from which all of us were from. The Mother Superior never smiled throughout the whole interchange. She, instead, stood coldly, sternly and ended it all with “nice to meet you.” That was the end of exchange. We left immediately feeling this was the wish of the Mother Superior….