I can’t ever seem to predict what’s next around here. The GG spent a HALF HOUR this afternoon looking for a baggy of moose poop he collected on a recent COVID defying trip to the Great White North woods. At one point during his frenetic poop search, he had the audacity to ask MEEEEE if I knew where it was. No, I did not. I have been vaguely aware that he possessed some moose poop. But. I have not seen it! I did not do anything with it!

What does he plan to do with the turds? Turn them into “ornaments” by covering them with some sort of “sealer” and painting a blue North Country Trail blaze on them. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried!

It was a very stressful half hour and in the end he found them in one of the Ninja’s door pockets. Sheeeeesh!

And then, because yer fav-o-rite blahgger needed to get outta Dodge, we took a nice slow backroad cruise in Mooon Yooonit. I said let’s go south and west and so we did, down south of Saline, then a beautiful forever west on (I think it was) Hack Road. Eventually we turned north again, still sticking to back roads and here we are on (I think it was) Haab Road. Not a very long road but a very pretty one.

Good night and may you never lose track of your moose poop! 🧡 KW

Before the world went nutso back in March, the GG took one last trip north (this one was to the northern lower) and snagged the Lyme Lounge from the UU’s gargantuan garatchkey. At that time we were (I was) nervous about the coronavirus but we didn’t really have any idea how soon our lives would be pretty much upended so it turned out that he snagged it just in the nick of time. Because our subsequent Sunday afternoon plans turned into pulling the Lyme Lounge out to area state and metro parks, parking, and having a snack and a sip or two of liquid courage. Here is the day the Lyme Lounge returned to the Landfill last March.

By the very next weekend, we decided our typical Planet Ann Arbor weekend activities were over for the duration. No Oscar Tango for dinner on Friday night. No Grizzly Peak lunch with our fave bartender on Saturday. What could we do? Well. We could trailer the Lyme Lounge over to… So I think this is our first experiment with that. We ended up at Silver Lake, in the Dexter Pinckney Rec Area parking lot.

Some of our fave pandemic snacks were peppered salami and cranberry goat cheese, with or without rice thin crackers. I *think* that this particular trip was on Lake Erie down in Monroe. The wind was strong enough to rock the Lyme Lounge around a bit. For some reason that eased the constant low-level anxiety I had been experiencing for weeks. There was crafting going on too, by the GG.

We did Lyme Lounge “afternoon camping” throughout the spring. I didn’t think I would be able to go to the moomincabin this summer and actually wrote a couple of impassioned FB posts about that, which I kind of regret doing now, even though I got a lot of positive comments, even from folks who don’t agree with my polly-ticks.

Eventually we decided we could manage trips to our yooperland cabin. For me, the planning was stressful because I wasn’t sure about whether I could get curbside pickup. It turned out that the answer was yes and no. I could get curbside but it wasn’t as solid a service as I get here on the Planet Ann Arbor. I schlepped uncountable groceries up there in case I could NOT get curbside. And that was stressful. I so missed the days (just last summer) when I could schlep in to Meijer or even to the park store for just that one lemon or whatever. But we managed to get to the moominbeach for some good times.

The moomincabin is now closed for the winter but we still have the Lyme Lounge down here at the Landfill. Today we hauled it out to Silver Lake and repeated our spring routine with various pandemic snacks and a wee bit of liquid courage.

Love y’all and be safe, KW

Life at the Landfill:

1) This bag of Trenary toast potatoes has been hanging around for a couple months now, both here and at the moomincabin. I am not a fan of Trenary toast. It is dried out mini-toasts flavored with cinnamon or whatever. This is NOT to dis the company that makes this stuff. A LOT of people really like it, including the GG. It is just not my cuppa. Actually it’s probably good for dunking but I am not a dunker.

So yesterday the GG came out with the Trenary toast potato bag with some potatoes in hand asking, “Are these potatoes any good?” They had great big eyes on them and were starting to get soft. Apparently he had put some potatoes into an empty Trenary toast bag… I told him to put the bag back inside and I would evaluate the Trenary potatoes tomorrow.

2) So then I had scheduled a Plum Market curbside for this morning. The GG took the Ninja on a 10 day trip and after I parked and clicked the link to notify the Plum that I was there, I COULD NOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME pop the trunk from inside the vee-hickle. Turns out it has a lock that the GG LOCKED at some point. Who knew? I probably knew at some point but it’s a 12-year-old vee-hickle and I have NEVER locked the trunk popper.

So I got outside and popped the trunk and… Yiiiiiy! A case or two of empty beer cans were rolling around in there. There are occasionally weird things in my trunk when I do curbside pickups. I removed a couple of old rifles one time but if there’s a chainsaw I just leave it there. I was puzzled about all those beer cans. For one thing, the GG was on a hiking trip with a Karen-ish woman who is a total teetotaler to the point of shaming other people for having a beer (don’t worry, he had a wee bit of sippin’ bourbon for when she wasn’t around). For another thing, the Utility Beer around here in recent years is Bell’s Two Hearted, NOT Budweiser.

Well. Of course. Duh. The GG stopped at FlaMan’s apartment on the way down to the Planet Ann Arbor and picked up all of FlaMan’s empty Bud cans from his apartment and THAT was what was in my trunk. At least it wasn’t chainsaws or rifles and my curbside gal said she had seen all kinds of things and we both laughed through our masks 🧡🧡🧡

I was skeptical when the GG was in the Duluth area hiking the North Country Trail in Wisconsin last week and sent me this pic of his AirBnB. My first thought (after my usual COVID cowardice) was that he was staying in that trailer. Then I thought something like, “He’d probably LIKE to stay in the trailer.” As it turned out it was NOT the trailer, it was a decent place, and he had two or three nights there. Alone and no shared bathroom, although I don’t think “we” are all that worried about toilet plumes.

And home to technical difficulties. Yesterday morning, I was two minutes away from a meeting that I had to RUN when my normally fast and stable wifi suddenly quit and I couldn’t get connected again. Panic? Yes! Do I remember how to set up a hotspot on my phone? Haven’t done it since two years ago when we were on our LSD trip to Florida and my work laptop wouldn’t connect to the hotel wifi.

The GG said, “Did you try DoubleOaked?” Whut? I have been seeing DoubleOaked in the router (correct word?) list forever but I didn’t know it was US! I had been using trusty old Ratfink, thinking DoubleOaked was a neighbor. I shouldda known better than that since I have taken a Bourbon Trail tour at Woodford Reserve! So back on (after a little more futzing around).

But he has a new computer. iMac I think? Big one. I only use laptops these days, MacBook Pro and Dell something or other. Mac OS, IOS, Windows, MTS? An OS is an OS is an OS. But the old iMac wouldn’t back up. After a couple days of futzing with that problem, the diagnosis was that we needed a new backup drive, so over to Staples and I THINK he is more or less back in business or getting there. And it sounds like the backup drive played some kind of role in my problem with Ratfink but who knows. I am of NO help in these kinds of situations. I have terrible karma with hardware. Crappy software I can usually bludgeon my way through. If I LOOK at hardware, it disintegrates or melts or blows up or whatever.

Alas, I am probably next for a replacement. My MacBook Pro is a 2013 model and I’m pretty sure it can’t handle the latest and greatest OS. I’m not sure about Photoshop either. I have CS3 which I bought on student discount when I took classes at WCC and that was like 15 years ago. Onward.

P.S. Bad Orange Man, you did not “save” college football and I do not want your stupid signed Trump-Pence football. Jeebus!

Setting: Landfill front room, Planet Ann Arbor

Cast: Kayak Woman, the GG

Act 1

GG: Going to the hardware store.

KW [naggingly]: Mask?

GG: [walks out door in silence]

Act 2 [10 minutes later, not near enough time for a trip to the hardware store]

[GG pulls in the driveway and comes back inside]

KW: ???

GG: Need a mask.

KW: 😳

P.S. In all fairness, he probably walked out the door in silence because he didn’t HEAR me because he’s been wearing earphones lately. I was initially annoyed but now I’m thinking it has its advantages…

I’ll letchy’all guess which color 🐽🐽🐽

As a COVID Coward, I’m gonna let Mr. Mxyzptlk be first on November 3rd this year. Not even gonna fight him for it.

A while back, I thought I saw news that the Planet Ann Arbor was going to install extra ballot collection boxes throughout the city. I kept checking back and checking back and checking back. There were links that supposedly led to lists of ballot box locations. I would click them and see… nothing.

The only ones I knew about were one *inside* city hall and one at a satellite office in the UM Art Museum. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to navigate downtown Planet Ann Arbor right now? Construction city with streets closed for outdoor dining, etc. <kidding>I guess it’s legal for the GG to drop it off for me but I didn’t feel I could quiiiite be sure it would make it to its destination 🐽</kidding>

Yesterday! I got a message with a link to new ballot box locations and GUESS WHAT? Vet’s Park parking lot! That’s an easy walk from here! Although I drove over in Mooon Yooonit. My morning was filled with meetings and stuff and I had already done Dark Walk.

I miss the walk to Haisley and all the people and the sticker and walking through the woods after and even the line but I don’t miss it that much.

Anyway it’s done and now we nervously wait. I sure hope I filled my ballot out without mistakes!

P.S. As a child, I can remember The Commander enthusiastically saying she was gonna vote a straight Republican ticket. As the GOP careened (or is it careered?) farther and farther to the right, she changed her tune and in the end became an enthusiastic Obama voter.

P.P.S. Upon re-reading this, I am WELL AWARE that my voting experience in this annus horribilis was light-years away from so many other people in this country. I drove up next to a ballot box in an empty parking lot and put my ballot in the slot. And drove home. I didn’t even wear my mask…

Once upon a time in the Jurassic Age, some sort of Senate “hearings” pre-empted all day-time TV. All I remember about it was a whole bunch of “Ah don’t recollect” from various old fossils. Kee-reist.

I fergit when this was but it was pre-kids for me. I think. I fergit what the hearing was about. We didn’t have computers then, at least not computers that could connect to the intertubes and pull down news (and Senate hearings). We MAY have had an Apple II+ by then? Was I even hanging out with the GG then? Ah don’t recollect. If I needed background noise, I used the TV.

What I dooooo remember is reading a newspaper article in which some poor taaaarrred old mom of a pre-schooler was lamenting that the Senate hearing pre-empted Sesame Street. She turned on the TV and her kid’s response to some old fossil “not recollecting” was, “He not Cookie Monster.” Indeed. My kids had mixed feelings about Sesame Street and one of them derisively dismissed Bert and Ernie as “those silly guys.” But that’s beside the point.

I felt like that kid when I flipped on NPR this morning. I am getting bored with the programming on my preferred station because they seem to play the same jazz every weekday but I haven’t gotten around to finding a replacement system and I do like to hear a bit of news from time to time and the traffic report even though it doesn’t affect me any more. This morning. OMG. Do I want to listen to Amy Coney Barret’s confirmation hearings? I’m pretty sure I do not. She doesn’t look like an old fossil but She not Cookie Monster (or even EMU jazz).

I am not an ACB fan but some of you probably know that. I may (or may not) go into this in more detail some other day. Today I turned the volume way down. I had meetings anyway. The next few weeks are gonna be rough…

I wish I was clever enough to come up with things like this but I am not and I do not know who did.

It’s Sunday and so I followed my childhood family’s tradition of taking a drive out into the country. “Country” is a bit different in 2020 Washtenaw County than it was in 1960s Chippewa County. Then we would drive for miles and miles along paved (or not) two (or sometimes one) lane roads lined with trees and rarely encountering any signs of civilization. I liked and disliked these drives. I’m sure we had books and art supplies for when we got bored with all of the treeeeees. I do remember sitting in the back seat looking at the map. Fibre, Raber, Stalwart, De Tour, Eckerman, Strongs. I would get excited when I knew we were approaching one of these little burgs, expecting to find a candy store and maybe some trinkets. Alas, if there did happen to be candy/trinket stores in these places, we rarely stopped. My parents liked to ramble along the yooperland back roads and that’s what we did. After Sunday School and church, that is. None of us were religious at all (I knew that for myself at a VERY early age) but if you wanted to be successful in the small town that you grew up in, you went to church. We were mainstream Methodist, not some speaking-in-tongues cult.

As bored as I would get on a lot of those drives, I grew up to enjoy back road rambling. I fortunately married a guy who shares that with me and we have spent a lot of time driving along through miles of trees.

Back road rambling in Washtenaw County is not the same as it was (and still is) in Chippewa County but there are plenty of deserted roads and our beach urchins grew up riding in the back seat as weeee navigated those roads. No need to wait until after Sunday School and church because we don’t do that stuff. There are plenty of “candy/trinket” stores out in Washtenaw County and we would occasionally stop at one but not all that often.

Today I took myself out into Washtenaw County in Mooon Yooonit. I drove a kind of square. I drove down to Liberty and took it until it dead-ends on the eastern side of Mill Creek and you have to make a right onto Dancer. I took Dancer up until it meets Island Lake, then went through Dexter (extremely busy!), then took Joy over to Stein and Tubbs down to Huron River Drive over to N. Maple and home.

I was sorta looking for fall color. There is plenty of it but everything is pretty dry and I didn’t get any photo ops. I didn’t set out to look for polly-tickle signs but as I drove, I started noticing all of the Biden/Harris signs and then I saw a ByeDon sign. I didn’t think to get a pic at the time and then regretted it. Turns out our next door neighbors have this sign, so here it is. I did not see ONE Trump sign. Four years ago we took a drive out in the county and there were Trump signs everywhere.

This is one little county in Michigan and this county’s largest city (Ann Arbor) is largely “liberal”. I am still very nervous about the upcoming election. Trump has been a terrible president and I want him out. And do NOT tell me “you are a smart ‘girl’, do your research”. You do your OWN damn research. Stop drinkin’ the Kool-Aid.

I posted the ash tray photo on Instagram and a friend was wondering why it included the line about the Federal Reserve. I don’t know but I do remember my dad traveling at least once to the Federal Reserve bank in Minneapolis. During his visit, he had the opportunity to hold $1,000,000 in cash in his hand. I remember us kids were soooo amazed by the idea of a million dollars. And then the Michigan Miracle Mile? It’s the Soo Locks, as you can see by yesterday’s comments. The only “mile” I could think of was the I-500 snowmobile track but I think this ashtray pre-dates that and there are certainly other race-tracks in Michigan.

I’ll blahg about my dad’s journey into his career as a Successful Failure and my abandonment at the I-500 snowmobile race by Bad Boyfriend some other day.

I planned to do a whole bunch of sorting/flinging today. I didn’t. Part of it is that I’m struggling to muster the psychological energy to make progress with this prodject (intentionally misspelled). Partly it’s because it’s probably one of the last summer-like days of annus horribilis and I wanted to hang out in the back yard.

So what did I do today? I walked in the pitch black pre-dawn hours (I LOVE walking in the dark). A couple of curbside pickups (Plum and Whine Castle). Vacuuming chores with Rooooooomba and our purple Dyson cordless (so far unnamed but GREAT vac!). Other cleaning chores and opening a couple packages that arrived during the week that I didn’t open before because I didn’t need them immediately. 1) Colorful t-shirt fabric from the UK via Etsy to aid in Visible Mending some beloved cotton/whatever knit maxi-skirts (another prodject I’ve been procrastinating about). 2) CLOROX WIPES that didn’t cost an arm and a leg. I rolled the Amazon dice and got lucky. I ration those like crazy, mainly one a day to wipe Eco Terlet’s rim. TMI? In the COVID beginning I had to “rescue” a canister of wipes from outside where the GG was using them to clean tools! NO NO NO NO NO!

And then. After lunch, I hung out in the back yard reading and savoring our Indian Summer. Aaaaahhhhh…

Met a new grand-nephew baby tonight. Wait. What do you call your 1st cousin once removed’s child? The baby is my 1st cousin *twice* removed but NOT any kind of nephew. My cousins are almost like siblings to me and I get confused sometimes. Anyway, the baby’s grandparents (my cousin and her husband) hosted a socially distanced pizza party across town on the deck at Chez Harry (her dad’s house). Does your brain hurt from all the begats? There’s a quiz at the end 🐽

Right at the beginning of the COVID era, we lost my aunt Bubs. She was my dad’s much younger sister and the last of the four siblings in that generation. She did not die *of* COVID. A broken bone sent her to a rehab facility where she could not have visitors, including her husband (because of COVID). She was quite fragile and my uninformed opinion is that being surrounded by strangers is a major factor in what did her in.

She left behind My Dear Uncle Harry, whose house we met at tonight. Fortunately we had summer-like weather today so we could all be outside. Even though all of these people have been isolating forever, I remain nervous about indoor gatherings. You have to take your mask off to eat! The grandparents, who flew from the left coast, did the responsible thing and isolated in an AirBnB, then got a COVID test before moving to Chez Harry for the remainder of their visit.

Some flinging has taken place and I came home with this loverly door prize! And yes, it actually means something to me. It is an ashtray from when my dad and granddaddy ran the bank. Small-town bankers. I already have a couple-three of these around so I will happily add it to the collection. I collect very few things these days but this artifact makes the cut. I have no clue what Michigan’s Miracle Mile is.

This will not be a polly-tickle post. I managed to find the debate on TV last night and I started to watch it and then… Oh hang it all… Why bother? I knew I could get any information I wanted this morning via the internet. I loved Kamala saying, “I am SPEAKING!” Yes! You go girl. The fly? I have no words except maybe 👀. But I switched over to Green Acres reruns PDQ and didn’t see the fly until this morning.

So this is about my recent total failure to port photos from my iPhone to my MacBook in a reasonable way. For a long time there was some sort of free “cloud” thingy (that I never understood) that ported my photos over automatically every day. I think it deleted them when there were 1000 or something? Like I said, I never understood it. All of a sudden it stopped doing that.

I am capable of bludgeoning my way through tech issues, like today I was dealing with a series of gnarly UNCOMMENTED old-skool javascript functions that I think my previous (beloved) boss wrote something like 10 years ago. I got what I needed out of them for today’s project and decided a complete exhumation was not a productive use of my time.

So did I try to figger out why my photos stopped porting over? Naw. I came up with a workaround, which was emailing pics to myself. That is a major pain in the you-know-what but it worked and it worked for a couple years. Until about last Friday when the host service started bouncing them.

Dum-de-dum. I hate bothering The Guru (he’s a friend, NOT my husband) when he is on “vacation” but I forwarded one of the bounces and said something like, “I don’t understand all of this gibberish but it looks like they are complaining about meeee sending things to meeee”. And I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. I ‘splained (sheepishly) about emailing myself photoooos to get them from one device to another and I think I can still hear the sound of him banging his head against the wall!

Airdrop? Duh? Airdrop? Jeebus. It took me a while to figger out how to use Airdrop. My main problem was that I couldn’t find the photos once they landed on my MacBook. But I finally mastered it and yes it is a lot easier and more efficient than emailing photos from one device to another.

The pic is from over a week ago at the moomincabin when the GG closed it.

P.S. Oh man, we won’t even talk about the thwarted plot to kidnap/kill? our state’s governor. This shouldn’t be a PS but I am struggling to process it. Stop it stop it stop it!

A few things…

Again!

I do NOT form my opinions by listening to NPR. NPR does rumble along through the background of my life. It was background noise on my Zen Commute. It became my background noise when I moved to TeleCubelandia. There are certain things I perk up at when they come on. Like the Sunday morning puzzle and jazz shows. I’m getting a little taaarred of the weekday jazz because it gets repetitive. But I’m not really actively listening to any of it because it’s in the chitchen, at a low volume, and my super ears don’t really hear most of it.

Today I had to say that if my opinions sounded the same as NPR’s opinions, it was because NPR must be getting their opinions from me! That is not really true of course. None of the NPR reporters have any clue who I am or what my opinions are.

When it comes to Trump (who was the main topic of conversation), I follow his Twitter feed and listen to what he says. From there I form my own opinions. I have NEVER been a Trump fan. That goes back to well before he ran for prez. He has always come across to me as a narcissistic con man and I could never see what other people saw in him. So I was horrified when he WON the presidency and I STILL don’t understand now why he has so many supporters. If NPR sounds like me it’s because they have come to the same conclusions I have.

Socialism? Communism? What “ism” will we descend into if Trump is not elected? In my opinion, the only “ism” Trump is interested in is Trumpism. Vote for Republican candidates if you really believe that Joe Biden will magically turn the USA (a large and VERY complicated country) into some kind of unrecognizable socialistic or communist society. But please don’t vote for Trump. He does NOT have your best interests in mind. He cares only about himself. Well, maybe Ivanka…

But (you say) Biden is not a saint. NOBODY is a saint. Biden has made mistakes and will continue to make them. We all do. But you and I and Biden do not deliberately try to hurt other people by our actions or policies. You can argue whether Trump is deliberate or just does his own thing and damn the consequences for other people. I guess I would go with the second.

I am undecided about watching tonight’s debate. I’m not sure I can even find it on TV. I’m lucky if I can find Green Acres reruns. I hope Harris CREAMS Pence. I hope she doesn’t get COVID19 from him. I know he has tested negative but with White House virus protocols, who really knows? And I don’t trust the plexiglass.

GO KAMALA!

P.S. Apparently it was a very Karen-ish morning on the Wisconsin section of the North Country Trail and that may be why I had to deal with all of this afternoon’s polly-tickle crapola🐽

I did not wake up to any kind of earth-shaking news this morning. I woke up to the same old same old Trumpian crapola. I’m “home” and I’ve beaten the virus. But he has not (although he certainly may (but remember Herman Cain)) and he ripped his mask off for a balcony moment. Despite his “schooling” or whatever it was he said, I don’t think he yet understands COVID’s rules. Epidemiologists are still working to understand those rules. Sigh.

I do not have depression issues but man oh man I was dern grumpy this morning. Nevertheless, I persisted. I dredged myself outta the rack and took a dark walk and when I finally faaarrred up my work laptop, there was iDeep pinging me from India. Yes yes yes, call me! And he did and then there was the morning standup and a meeting with dev that I crashed. This all helped me cope with my temporary mood crapola.

My Mouse/Racoon and I were planning an afternoon whine meeting here in the Landfill backyard today. We were thinking about getting takeout from Knights but that didn’t exactly work out for various reasons, mainly because the Frog Hopper needed a taaaar repair. The whine meeting turned into a ‘hattan meeting while they were waiting for the Frog Hopper’s tire repairs to be finished.

We were talking (among other things) about Ayn Rand books… Mainly The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I think I need to read those again. I read them as a teenager/young adult and I liked them for a while… …until I didn’t. I can’t put my issues about them into words so maybe I will read them again… We’ll see.

The pic? It is a “volunteer” impatiens plant that somehow established itself in the brickwork underneath the hoses.

P.S. Godspeed Eddie Van Halen.

This was probably my fave of the Orange Baboon’s nutso tweets this morning. I mean really? Euphoria drugs anyone? I loved when @lakesuperior later tweeted “ROCKS AND WATER. VOTE!” I still don’t understand what the space force is. I’ll vote for blue water and rocks over bad orange crapola any day.

Yetch. Other than that, I do not really have any words for today’s stream of craziness out of Washington, DC. So I’ll talk about Softy Beanbag instead. See her there flopping outta the GG’s backpack?

The GG is in demand by various women as a hiking companion. Many women do not like to hike alone and are even nervous in small groups. I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND although there are places I am not afraid, like down by Barton Pond. The GG is one of the few men that most women are not afraid to hike with, so he is off for a week or whatever with a couple groups of women including the “softies”. They call themselves that because they do NOT backpack (I don’t either). I always like to say I need a shower in the morning and whine in the evening.

Anyway, I told him if he was gonna hike with the softies, he HAD to take Softy Beanbag. She belongs to one of the beach urchins and has a long history with our family. Early on we were at the moomincabin one summer and the GG was not and Softy’s urchin was going through a wee period of telephonic anxiety and didn’t really want to talk to the GG on the phone. Softy had stayed with the GG so “she” would talk to the urchin from the Planet Ann Arbor. “Softy Beanbag” is on the phone for you. Different kids require different tools and this was one of the tools that worked for us with that urchin. Plenty of other tools did not 🐽

Another time, the GG was conscripted to chaperone a 2nd grade field trip. He packed up Softy into a little backpack with her head peeking out. One of the teachers said to him, “I was having a really bad morning until I saw this.”

So, he was with the softies for a bit and now I think he’s with some of our regular Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore wimmen. He gets along well with all of these gals but I get the distinct impression that sometimes the conversations can be a wee bit tiring. I can be a gossip but it’s usually with my kids, my cousins, or his sisters and he can kinda tune that out. There is one woman in the group who can be a bit Karen-ish but she’s a regular and a known quantity. She’s why we call the Tahquamenon Falls Brewery “The Den of Iniquity”. We love her anyway.

Oh, okay, I have solo-driven to and from the yooperland a few times since you-know-when. Other than that, I drive to get curbside pickup, mostly at the Plum but sometimes at Sparrow and the Whine Castle. And one intrepid trip over to Cubelandia to clean out my cube.

Driving has been weird for me throughout the pandemic. As a teenager I was chomping at the bit to get my driver’s license. I got it when I was 16 but not on my birthday because there were not enough road test slots to meet the demand and I had to wait for one. I can’t remember how many months after my birthday it was that I got my license. I feel like it was early summer? My birthday is January. I remember that most of my friends had to wait even longer and were well into 17 before they could legally drive.

I have always been a defensive driver but also an assertive one (NOT aggressive, there’s a difference). I seem to be ULTRA-defensive since the pandemic. And slow? I am always aware of speed limits and try to stay within them or a wee bit above. Now? I am going slow? Well, that’s not entirely true. When I am on the freeway, I catch myself up at 80 sometimes and have to ease up a bit. I do NOT use cruise control so stuff happens.

Anyway, I HAD to get OUT somewhere today. It was raining and I took Mooon Yooonit down to the Huron River and drove her out almost to Chelsea, headed south via Dancer Road under the freeway, hung a louie onto Jerusalem, then south on Parker to Swan Corners. No visible swans today, maybe they are gone for the winter? But it was a nice little rain ride on the back roads where there was NO traffic. I could go as slow as I wanted to. Which is what I needed today. Like I was able to STOP and BACK UP to get this tree pic, flawed as it is with power lines and a rain streak on my veeendsheeeld.

Okay, I do not know what is exactly going on with Trump. Does anyone? I cannot stand the man or the fact that he is our current prez. His little COVID “victory” turn to greet his supporters cult members outside Walter Reed is annoying to me. Has he really made a miraculous recovery so quickly? I wonder. If so, cool… But… People all over Twitter are suggesting that he is infecting people by doing this. Um, probably not and what are the facts here? He isn’t infecting his supporters because he is being transported in some kind of “armored” car. And. He is PROBABLY not infecting the folks in the car with him because THEY have PROBABLY been outfitted (by Walter Reed) with medical-grade PPE to keep them safe from his infection. Alas, I doubt that equipment will keep them safe from his poisonous presidency.

I just want those of us who are anti-Trump to keep focused and not get side-tracked by gabbling about issues that we as private citizens don’t have answers to. Jeebus, I soooo miss the Sidetrack Saloon over in Ypsi… Work parties and lunches with some of my MacMu cousins and their dad Old Man MacMu, a COVID victim. Obviously I am side-tracked…

P.S. Okay, according to early morning Twitter feeds, I was wrong and a Walter Reed doc “blasted” the Orange Baboon for his cute little foray. Nov. 3? Out out out!

Every year late summer and into fall there is a booth at the farmers market that has fresh shelled lima beans. They are six dollars a quart (I *think* it’s a quart box) and every time I went down there, which was every in-town Saturday, I would buy four quarts.

I am not going in person to the farmers market this year because COVID. They have a curbside system but the process is a bit too much for my interpersonal communication comfort level because you have to communicate (in various ways) with individual vendors to buy things. I am using Argus delivery which is WONDERFUL but they don’t always have the full range of products that are at the farmers market, at least not at any given moment.

I had just about resigned myself to living without lima beans this year. They were not showing up in the Argus product list. I didn’t know if that vendor was not selling via Argus or if I was just not online when lima beans were available. Yesterday I was doing grocery orders and even though I didn’t really NEED anything from Argus I thought I would check it out. Lo and behold, THEY HAD LIMA BEANS! So now I have lima beans. And delicata squash and onions and potatoes and leaf lettuce from our fave Goetz Family Farm down in Blissfield. And some hummus that I like.

I turned on the furnace today. Oh, the furnace has been on a couple times already but it was not meeeee who turned it on. I was not cold then. Today, after a blindingly brilliant sun this morning, the afternoon turned gray and chilly and it was 56 degrees INSIDE. And I WAS a bit chilly. So I turned the thermostat up to 64 and turned on the LEDs under the kitchen cupboards and I am in fine shape.

Cheers! (and wear a goddamn mask!)

Our Friday night in-town “tradition” for *years* was that the GG would walk downtown and secure a table at the Oscar Tango. I would walk down after I got home from Cubelandia and at some point we would get porterized. In the last couple years, we branched out a bit to other restaurants, the Griz and Red Hawk and sometimes Amadeus. So here is the GG in a window seat at the Oscar Tango.

And here he is in a window seat at the Red Hawk, already porterized.

And finally, *I* am in a window seat at Amadeus and I don’t know who these people are.

I don’t think I will comment about the news of the day except to say it was literally the first thing I encountered when I woke up this morning and I hope Biden stays negative.

I was thinking earlier today about trying to list the things that I miss about actually commuting to Cubelandia vs. things I don’t miss, also the good/bad about telecommuting. I am not in any way ready to make those lists. At this moment I can’t even remember what it was that I was thinking about earlier today. The geese maybe? Anyway, some other day.

I wanted to cheer today when I heard an actual epidemiologist talking on National Petroleum Radio about the fact that CHILDREN seem to be an important COVID transmission vector. Yes yes yes yes. I mean I am not an epidemiologist but why wouldn’t the virus infect ANY human host? It has evolved to do just that. And since MOST children who are infected with the novel coronavirus are asymptomatic, it follows that they would be PERFECT transmission vectors. I realize that there is probably a lot more research that needs to be done but THIS IS VIRUS 101! Anyone with a basic knowledge of science should know this. And yet so many schools are re-opening in person. Let’s let the teachers die! Sigh.

BTW, again I have to reinforce that I do NOT form my opinions via the news or Nancy Pelosi or whoever. I have MY OWN opinions. Sometimes the news (or Nancy) reinforces them. What I do NOT do is base my opinions on Facebook memes filled with misspellings and false information.

I am now reading White Oleander. Somehow I have managed to read two books in a row that are set in Los Angeles, a city I have never visited. I am liking this one better than the last one. This one follows a teenage girl surviving a series of foster homes. A good read but also very hard so we’ll see how it turns out. She’s in a [seemingly] good place right now but a bad place has been mentioned and like Chekhov’s gun, you know the story won’t end until she encounters it.

This katydid is from one year ago. I have no good pics from today. For a period of time it was raining/sprinkling on half my yard but not the other half. I could not capture that in a photo.

And other amazing feats that no one has ever accomplished before.

Green Acres re-runs won here at the Landfill. No one talked about the debates debacle. The GG made popcorn as he occasionally does and so I was wondering for a bit whether he intended to subject himself/us to what I thought [rightly, as it turned out] would be a hot mess. But no, we ate our popcorn in the back room listening to music on Satty-lite. There is a TV back there but we hardly ever use it. Actually we hardly ever watch TV at all unless you count Green Acres re-runs.

We didn’t watch and we have not talked about the debates debacle. I’m pretty sure we would disagree, probably loudly. I have read and listened to news stories off and on all day and watched enough clips on my phone to know that we made the right [tacit] decision not to watch. The GG took off to the yooperland today. I don’t know what news he has seen/heard and I don’t really want to know.

I’m sorry. I’ve been watching in horrified fascination ever since 2016. He belittles people less “fortunate” than he, he name-calls anyone who dares to disagree with him, he grossly overstates his supposed accomplishments. Lies? Yes, he does lie. But in my opinion it’s more like he doesn’t understand whatever subject he’s addressing well enough to make coherent statements about it. I don’t think enough of us are calling it what it is and I don’t think it’s actually dementia. I just think he isn’t all that intelligent to start with but has been promoted his entire life with doting parents covering up his flaws. Sociopath? I dunno. Grifter? Yes.

I know I am not writing coherently about this. How can anyone? The whole thing makes my silly little pea-brain explode. But I will say from the standpoint of a “suburban housewife” (and I am both but also neither) the Orange Baboon’s performance at the debates debacle does not in any way sway my vote from Biden/Harris. I will be filling out and dropping off my ballot this weekend.

Oh yeah, youz guyz who rant and rail against the “antifa”, “socialism”, and “communism” can go jump in the canal. Define those words and tell me how a crazy Orange Baboon/Bad Orange Man is the right person to save us from those “evils”. BTW “antifa” stands for “anti-fascist”. Methinks a few of our fathers were anti-fascists and went to war to put some notorious fascists down. (Although to be honest, my dad kinda went to war because his dad told him to but that’s a whole ‘nother story and he served in an exemplary manner.) As much as you say you are afraid of “socialism” or “communism”, I AM AFRAID OF FASCISM. The Orange Baboon’s unhinged rants and rage tweets are giving groups already tending toward fascism license to speak out with what I believe are dangerous words.

As for bringing back football? Bringing back football is a presidential accomplishment? Really? I would note that I saw several articles fly by today about NFL(?) football players testing positive for COVID. Yeah, let’s bring back team contact sports. I am LOVING grocery store pickup/delivery but one of these days I would like to go to my fave restaurants again and have my kids over for dinner. Trump gets tested constantly and doesn’t give a f*ck about us peons.

Old photooo from the weekend of Radical Betty’s life celebration — Labor Day weekend 2009. A couple of odd meteorological type things that stick in my mind from the day of her celebration. Some of us were walking the beach that morning and all of a sudden Mr. Golden Sun made the ripples and froth on the water sparkle for a minute in a way I don’t think I have ever seen before or since. (Not this pic. We were on the sand when this happened and I was not quick enough on the draw to get my phone camera open.) And then, as the hour of her celebration approached, a cute little mini-thunderstorm rolled through. A few drops of rain and one little kiss of lightning and thunder with the sun shining brightly the entire time and barely a cloud in the sky.

I got my absentee ballot today. Yay. And an unimportant piece of mail that apparently went to someone else’s address before it came to mine. Yesterday I got a similar piece of mail for someone else. And for the two days before that, we didn’t get any mail at all. Needless to say, I will drop my ballot off at the clerk’s office or one of the drop boxes.

Power outages this morning. One very brief one and a longer one later. Next Door Neighbor was lit up with something like three threads. Fortunately it didn’t last long enough for us to have to consider plugging in our generator. It doesn’t power the whole house but we can live comfortably with what we choose to power with it. Luxury camping.

For unknown reasons, WordPress is not emailing comments to me right now. I mean I get soooo many comments, roight? Which is okay. I love comments but I write this bunch of blather mainly for myself🐸 I do remember back in the day when my host service went down for a couple days and my MOTHER finally CALLED me to see if we were okay down here😂

Will I be able to watch the debates tonight? Will I be able to watch them in the same room as the GG? Green Acres re-runs might be a safer bet?🐽 We shall see.

P.S. Oh yeah, three big garbage bags of old clothes including most (but not all) of my biz-caz from Cubelandia went to the Salvation Army today. And I didn’t even have to take them there. YAY!