Louie Louiiii
Okay, you can have a blasted snow pic. This isn’t our first snow for the year but it was quite persistent. I don’t think the roads were bad today. The sidewalks were fine this morning, just wet, but then it was just starting up when I walked. Tomorrow will probably be different but I have Yax strapped onto an alternate pair of Keen sandals and Kahtoolas strapped onto a pair of boots but I don’t think I’ll need the boots tomorrow. But we’ll see.
I shouldn’t have been annoyed by this snow. After all, I do not have to schlep over to Cubelandia any more so whaddoo I care if it snows? I think it’s because being a permanent telecommuter in the COVID age brings forth some mixed emotions. I can’t even begin to put those into comprehensible words today…
My global fintech company still owns leases the little backwater building on The Planet Ann Arbor that I schlepped into forever and there is still a small group working in it. They need high-speed printers. I don’t really need a printer at all for the most part. Anyway, Amazon Woman and Building Mom are off-loading equipment that the company doesn’t care about to local pandemic home-schooling families. Whiteboards and the old Demon Drop chairs and things. Amazon Woman ended up inadvertently taking the whiteboard from my old cube, presumably for her middle schooler to use. I hardly ever used it and she recognized her hand-writing on it. From something like six years ago. Good luck cleaning that thing off.
The title is also a bit of a work reference. At the end of the day when we switched from NPR to Satty-lite radio, Louie Louie was the first song I heard. I love that song and I so miss my old colleague Lewie-Lewiiii. He lost his job in one of the waves of RIFs that happened the last five years or so. His boss was more upset (at least visibly) than he was.
The other Lewie who was a part of my life was my parents’ old Veteran Greenhorns friend. He never married or had kids and my earliest memories of him come from the days we spent summers in the Old Cabin. There was a potty set up behind the Big Door between the kitchen and the main room and if you opened that door all the way, no one could see the potty (I don’t think, I could be wrong 🐸). That door was always open and there were lots of coats hung on the back side of it (think the Narnia wardrobe). That was where those of us who were terlet training but too young to use the [stinky] outhouse by ourselves did our business.
When I was three, my parents were trying to get me to use the [stinky] outhouse and one day The Comm said, “You can’t use the potty when there are MEN in the living room.” I looked around the living room and all the usual MEN (dad and uncles) were there. BUT. Lewie was also there. I was not a stupid kid so I figgered that they didn’t want me to P in front of Lewie. I’m sure I kicked up a big 3-year-old fuss that day but I did eventually come to terms with using the [stinky] outhouse. In fact, I occasionally use that old outhouse nowadays. That happens in the event that the moomincabin water is out (because we’re opening or closing the cabin) or we have a LOT of guests around and they are serial showering or whatever. I always contribute terlet paper to that edifice. Of course, I am also an inveterate woodsP-er.
December 1st, 2020 at 9:01 am
Lewie, Lewii makes me think of “vegetarian utensils”. I don’t remember the potty behind the door at the cabin, but your early memories are stronger than mine. I do remember Bubs changing in that same corner when there were MEN in the living room. I think I was an easily embarrassed teen-ager at the time! (And they were probably her brothers.)
December 1st, 2020 at 12:31 pm
I am not good at outdoor peeing and often manage to splash myself. Not enough practice? I think many people, including both my daughters, have mixed feelings about remote work. The younger one misses going in to the office and wishes that she could do so a couple days a week at least. But her company might be getting rid of the building. (cheaper)