• Walked downtown to see Dr. Ralph Stanley at The Ark on Friday night. I didn’t realize I liked bluegrass music but it was great and I only started nodding off about ten minutes before the end, even though I had to sit in a seat for two hours with no computer or beadwork or anything. Dr. Stanley did the music for the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, which I enjoyed watching (until I fell asleep) once this winter at Houghton Lake.
• I admit that I have thought more than once in the last year, “oh brother where art thou.”
• I suppose since I am a musician, I should do a music post one of these days. But not today.
• Migrated some entries to my “new” blahg.
• VACUUMED the front and back living rooms, even moved some of the furniture and vacuumed BEHIND it. I HATE to vacuum, especially when I have to move a bunch of cosmic debris to find the floor.
• Cleaned the kitchen floor for what little that is worth.
• Started sorting out my fiber arts stuff and making a traveling stash. My fiber arts stuff is still a trenormous rat’s nest of flotsam and jetsam. And, yes, cosmic debris.
• Lemme see. Did I go to the Westgate Kroger uscan or not? I went today but I can’t remember if I went yesterday. grok grok grok. You old bag.
• Had a hilarious telephonic conversation with Lizard Breath about dynamite and guns and anthropology and sightings and octowomen and I forget what else. Life, death, the universe, and everything, I guess. I needed that, kiddo.
• Walked downtown with Jane (not cousin) and Ken and Vicki and Paul and ate on Palio’s roof. Just when we got done eating, it started to *pour*! So we retreated down to the bar for a nightcap.
• I needed female conversation this weekend and I did get some. I don’t always get enough.
• There are advantages to having friends of both genders but lately I tend to prefer female companionship. Probably because I seem to need to talk more than usual. Coffee anyone?
• Planned an all-out assault on the so-called lawn, a mass of moss, dandelions and other weeds. Actually everything but grass. It’s so bad that Chemlawn came to the door one day and asked if I needed help with my lawn “issues.” Yeah, probably, but not from Chemlawn.
• Weeded the “garden” in front of the house with a few close encounters of the poison ivy kind. At least I hope they were close encounters. No rash yet.
• We saddled up the jeep and trailer and braved the roads with dysfunctional tail-lights to obtain some more mulch. I love garden stores. Too bad I kill plants.

“This place is humid!” That’s what Wyle said before he installed central air in the Landfill yesterday. I said, “yeah, this place is a swamp!” This is the first time I have ever lived in a place with air conditioning. Am I using it? No. Or at least not yet. I have mixed feelings about it. I do not like to be hot and sweaty unless I am doing something active enough to make me hot and sweaty. On the other hand, I don’t like to have the doors and windows closed. I like to be able to hear the birds, insects, mammals, and amphibians that inhabit my yard. I feel shut in when everything is all closed up tight.

Some summers are hotter than others here in southeast Michigan. Most summers have at least a few days when I feel like crawling into the freezer. But my favorite way of cooling off is in cold water. When I am on the Shores of Gitchee Gumee, I can just walk into the water until it’s up to my neck. As an added bonus, hanging around in Gitchee Gumee also makes you feel clean. I suppose some might say it freezes all the dirt and sweat until it cracks off your body. Here on the Planet Ann Arbor, I don’t have easy access to such a large body of clean, cold water. I used to use the kids as an excuse to truck over to KMart and pick up one of those little plastic kiddie pools. I would put a canoe chair in it or just hang my feet over the edge. Nowadays, I just suffer in the swampy landfill.

One summer back in the day, the Twinz of Terror took Lizard Breath and her identical cousin, The Beautiful Renée, off on a road trip to the Badlands and other points of interest. While they were enduring death marches and buffalos in the road and tornados dropping trees on their tent, Mouse and I were stuck here on the Planet in 90-100 degree heat. One night it was particularly hot and sticky and I decided there was just no point in either of us even trying to go to bed until we were so dead tired that we couldn’t keep our eyes open any more.

We filled up the kiddie pool and I sat there with my feet in the pool watching vigilantly for skunks. Mouse had a tricycle parked so that its front wheel was *in* the pool. I’m not sure why she was riding a tricycle because, at seven or so, she had long graduated from those beasts. But we never throw anything out, so she found one and was riding it around the yard. Froggy had learned to drive the Little Tykes Coupe that day, another long-outgrown vee-hickle. He was careering and careening wildly all over the yard and I guess that was the beginning of his descent into delinquency. Naw, actually, he has always been trouble. grok grok. Whaddya mean, you old bag? Anyway, I think we finally went inside and crashed on the fold-out couch in the back room.

I suppose there will be times when I do turn the a/c on here in the Landfill. I have to admit that when Wyle was testing it yesterday, I was sitting at my powerbook and the feeling of *cold* air coming out of the vent next to my feet was pretty darn nice. Actually, the heat that usually comes out of that vent has turned a large area of my ugly kitchen floor into a horrible orange and black mess. I wonder if having cool air coming outta there will reverse that. Hmmmm.

All parties must come to an end and usually I know the party is over when I find myself back in the Westgate Kroger again. Today we landed back on the Planet Ann Arbor and found that the cupboard was definitely bare, so I navigated a gauntlet of stop lights until I got to the WK parking lot. Btw, Houghton Lake folk, I think I left a few perishable items in the refrigerator up there. I hope you either ate ’em or threw ’em out. I don’t care either way. I love y’all and I apologize for leaving extra food 🙂

Anyway, I am not sure who designed the WK parking lot but it had to be an engineer who was walking around at about 100. And I do not mean 100 degrees although it felt about that hot in the WK parking lot today. I think this because just about the entire lot slopes almost indiscernably down from the store entrance to South Maple Road. And, of course, that means that when people who are walking around at about 100 have forgetten grok grok. Who is walking around at about 100? grok grok. You can’t even spell. grokGROK! Okay, forgotten. Anyway, when people mindlessly abandon their grocery carts in the middle of the parking lot, they have a tendency to start rolling down the slope and smash into whatever is in the way. I mean the carts do the rolling, not the people. I have not actually seen anyone’s children roll down in a cart but once I saw a guy’s wallet head down the hill. He was screaming bloody murder and swearing like a drunken sailor about someone stealing his wallet until I pointed out that it was in his cart, which was down at the end of the parking lot smashed into somebody’s vee-hickle. Not mine though because I park strategically.

So I parked strategically and sprinted into the store. I was about to grab a cart, swing it around, and push it into the store. I can do that in about one motion as long as the carts are not all tangled up with each other. Except today there were NO CARTS! Where were the carts? This was the full-tilt-boogie twilight zone. Yeah, I know. I was in the full-tilt-boogie twilight zone for a while yesterday too. After a few minutes of standing there gaping dumbly at the empty space where they keep the carts, I managed to get a grip and walked outside to search one out. Grocery shopping tip: *always* get a grocery cart. Even if you think you are only going in there to purchase one small item.

First I was nearly mowed down by two people who were driving vee-hickles around at about 100 (and I do NOT mean 100 mph) and almost crashed into each other. And me. Somehow I managed to make it to the cart corral intact and extract a cart. It was just about as bad inside as it was outside. It was almost like a Thursday morning when the bus people get dropped off to do their shopping. 100 appeared to be about the average and I do not mean 100 years old. People were dawdling around blocking just about every aisle I tried to go down and we will not even talk about the people attempting to check out via the uscan. Fortunately, the WK management was smart enough to schedule Elsie to run the uscan today. I’d have been ready to jump out of my skin if that goofy guy had been there. Hmmm, come to think of it, I haven’t seen him around lately. So maybe he’s not around anymore. Uh, this is a different guy than the Tourette’s guy I blahgged about a few weeks ago.

I made it home and we aren’t gonna starve tonight and I’ll prob’ly be back over there tomorrow. Grok grok. You WILL be back over there tomorrow because we are out of frog juice! grokgrokgrokGROK!! And, kids, I know you hate when I talk about the 100s. But I didn’t want to leave Houghton Lake this morning and it is hot here on the planet and it smells a little funky and it’s messy and that means I have to clean and I am a little crabby. And it’s my blahg and I can say what I want 😛 I love you but deal. grok grok.

So, I am back on The Planet Ann Arbor again. Sigh. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Planet Ann Arbor. It’s a place where, for the most part, you can be just about whoever you want to be and it’s a great place to raise kids. Others may differ on that last but they can just go jump in the canal. But, I dunno, I am just restless. A chapter of my life has ended somehow and I am at a loss about how to start the next one. That leaves me with too much time to think. About life. And death. Infinity. The procession of generations. What the *heck* to cook for dinner. Real estate developers. Volcanoes. Not necessarily in that order…