We are having a string of really really good weather here on the Planet Ann Arbor. The last two (weekend) mornings, Coffee Boy has served me my coffee in the Landfill Backyard. Here is the sun coming up. Yesterday was a Football Saturday and I could hear the UMich marching band practicing as I drank my coffee. It was sooooo loverly. Hail hail Michigan, the champions of the west. And I am not even a football fan.

Football was a mixed bag this weekend. UMich won their game but the GG was unable to find it on TV so he could not watch it although he did walk downtown to mix with the 110,000 fans. The Li-ons lost today (although it ended up being quite close). He found that on TV but spent a lot of time sitting outside reading The Last of the Mohicans instead, bouncing in and out when it sounded like there might be some action.

I am frustrated about people that try to tie what they are calling “socialism” to Kamala’s “policies”. Does she have policies? I dunno but I also dunno why people keep trying to compare her “policies” to Trump’s “policies”. Trump? Policies? Whut? Infrastructure week? We never got to that during 45’s presidency (or whatever you want to call it). Over and over and over again he promised to replace Obamacare with something BETTER and we would know what it was in a couple weeks. Did that ever happen? NO IT DID NOT! And yet his “base” is still hanging on to his “policies”. Again, what policies?

The day after Kamala beat the pants off Trump in their one and only debate (because he is afraid to “debate” her again), I changed my facebook profile pic to one of me standing tall looking a weeeee bit like my dad/granddaddy and saying, “I stand with Kamala but live in a divided house”. My point was that I do not agree with my husband on the candidates but we somehow live together peacefully (well except for the usual marital crapola). Comments were respectful until today when, well, I won’t go there. Mostly. But…

Socialism was mentioned as an evil. Yes, socialism (not to mention communism and capitalism and WHAT ABOUT FASCISM?) can be evil. What other isms am I missing? But I think most of us have lost track of any precise definitions of these terms. If you want to define Kamala as a socialist, you must first define “socialism”. Then you have to connect “socialism” to anything Kamala has said or done. In a MEANINGFUL WAY. I don’t think most people can do that. I certainly can’t although I am a Kamala supporter so I am unlikely to.

Folks, you are unlikely to sway me from voting for Kamala so don’t even try. I do NOT want another term of Trump. I didn’t think he had a decent grip on reality back in 2016 and I do not think he has one now. My issue with him is not that I think he’s senile despite the word salad that he has been spouting SINCE 2016 (and probably before but I didn’t have to pay attention to him then). I think he is a narcissist and does not care about anyone but himself and therefore is not fit to lead our country.

My mouse took the pic omewhere in the Carolinas, I know not where. I have walked a bit of the Atlantic coast though. When the beach urchins were seven and almost-five, we loaded up the Exxon Tanker Valdez and took them and an older cousin to Crazy Old Florida to visit the kids’ grandparents. All three girls are beautiful blondes and when people thought they were all mine, I didn’t always correct them.

We took a slow route down, through Washington, DC, then down through Virginia but NOT on the freeway. Because we visited Asateague Island. I walked that beach a bit wearing my 1980s long puffy down coat and listening to Celtic music. Somehow. Must have been via a Walkman? I can’t remember how I accomplished. It was cold but beautiful.

On down through the Carolinas and Georgia but on the freeway at that point. We had a day when 🐭 could not stay seated. We flaunted all laws and let her out of her seat belt and she flip-flopped between the middle and back seats for quite some time. Just like I used to do before my family had cars with seat belts. I remember seeing signs for “car-train to Florida” and I so wanted that.

A penultimate stop at Disney World before landing at the grandparents. I was fantasizing about breakfasting on the lanai the next morning having a loverly breakfast. Reality? I was woken up by an almost five-year-old standing next to my bed asking, “Mom? Have I ever been here before?” Well… No… (Except for last night when we arrived.) And then there was rat poison on the lanai table and a damp towel draped over one of the chairs. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my in-laws. I have never had a desire to return to Disney World. It was fine but once was enough. I don’t like carnival rides or fake stuff.

A bit of an addendum to yesterday’s book banning post. In the heat of the original VOT discussion, I failed to remind people that Moms for Liberty (or any recent book banning groups) are not likely to be interested in banning books by old dead white men like the authors I mentioned yesterday.

The VOT discussion tonight veered toward early 20th century historical writers Kenneth Roberts and Hervey Allen. I have read books by both of these authors and enjoyed them greatly although they are rather dense books if you know what I mean.

One of the folks on the VOT call thought that these authors’ books have been banned because they are apparently not available at the local public library. I am skeptical that they have been banned. I think it’s more likely that they may have been weeded out because people are not checking them out. I don’t really know.

From what little I know about public librarians, if they are working in a library that does not currently store a book, they are pretty dern good at finding it from some other source. Public librarians serve to bring literature to ALL OF US, no matter what our political or cultural opinions might be.

The books I’m talking about portray early settlers’ views of the northeastern area of what we now call the USA and Canada. They do not portray a Native American’s view of the same era although many Native American folks are an integral part of these stories and were friends (or not) with the settlers.

A beloved young relative of mine was once looking for Native American stories told from their own viewpoint. I pointed him to Hervey Allen and Kenneth Roberts with the caveat that these were white men writing about their experiences. Most Native Americans were not able to write their stories in English in those days. That is a problem but it isn’t one I can solve…

My family is fortunate enough to still own a number of my grandfather’s OLD hardcover books by these and other authors. They reside in the moomincabin and we will not be getting rid of them.

That’s what tonight is all about. I just now (at 9 PM) got around to rolling the carts down to the curb. We ate Karl’s Cuisine stromboli tonight (traditional Italian) and then we watched either the first episode of Gomer Pyle or it might’ve been an episode of Andy Griffith in which Gomer left for the Marines. We weren’t sure. And then we watched an Andy Griffith episode in which Opie decided he had a crush on his teacher Helen Crump and with the help of a lady’s store proprietor (who had no clue) selected nylon stockings as a gift for her. An inappropriate gift for your teacher to be sure. That was all of the vintage TV re-runs I could handle because they all come with several minute commercial breaks and I cannot handle those.

Remember nylon stockings? I sure do. They were AWFUL! Wearing a garter belt with a mini-skirt? And they were forever getting runs. I remember when I was young enough to be on the cusp of wearing nylon stockings. I was at my aunt’s house one day (in what I remember as a HUGE kitchen) and she was instructing her youngest daughter (older cousin of mine) about buying nylon stockings. Every time you buy stockings, you need to buy two pairs. Or even three, four, or five. Little pitchers have big ears and overhearing this conversation I was wondering how the heck I would ever have enough money to go into a store and buy five pairs of nylon stockings.

This was well before women were allowed to have their own plastic cards. When I got one at about the age of 21, I couldn’t have passed a credit check (no income) so my dad told his bank employees that he guaranteed it would get paid (by him if necessary) and my mom forged my signature. There really aren’t a whole lot of perks to being a small-town banker’s daughter but that turned out to be one of them for me. I still have that card and it is still only in my name although I think the GG has managed to use it a few times without difficulty even though he has a different surname. It was originally a MasterCard but for many years it has been a VISA. Nowadays I pay the balance weekly. I have an alert set up to remind me bright and early every Monday morning.

Of course we ALL stopped wearing nylon stockings many years ago when panty hose arrived on the scene. I do NOT wear pantyhose any more either but I do wear tights in every color and then some. Nowadays there are tights that are made to FIT so you aren’t constantly tugging them up to your waist 🐽 I order them on the internet and Snag tights (google it) is my favorite vendor. They definitely make them to fit because they fit all sizes of women and proudly display them on models of all sizes. Nowadays I buy in quantity if they have something I know I will want more than a few pairs of.

So yeah babbling. G’night!

Boy did it ever feel good to watch a debate where Trump got put in his rightful place. Over and over and over again.

Talk about off the rails? When he started talking about “aborting” babies after birth? A MODERATOR shut that whole thing down with something like, “There is no state in which killing babies after they are born is legal.” THANK YOU!!!! And can we just end the crazy talk?

But apparently not, because what else did we have to endure? Immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio? Really? This almost tops the post-birth abortion and public school gender change surgeries except it is even more ludicrous. Memes about this are sprouting up all over. Dogs driving cars out of Springfield, you name it. Also, “Springfield Ohio Pet Rescue has reported a ten fold increase in donations” but I don’t know if that is a meme or TRUE. I hope it’s true because even though the pet-eating thing is total BS, pet rescues can always use money. I don’t know how all the MAGA folks can process the cognitive dissonance of their prospective “leader of the free world” spouting all of this crapola. What an ignoramus.

I thought Kamala met all of Trump’s bullcrap with poise. She didn’t let him get away with any blasted BS. She countered all of his lies with facts and threw things back at him left and right. I had intended to listen to the debates on the radio but for complicated reasons, I ended up streaming it (quietly) instead on my laptop. That turned out to be a good choice because I could see their (hilarious) facial expressions, etc.

I realize last night’s debate will not decide the election but it was a breath of fresh air to see that Kamala (and the moderators) did not let Trump get away with his usual lies, intimidation, and other crapola.

Pet-eating immigrants. What next? [Shakes head.]

I am just kidding but I want to clarify a couple things I said yesterday. Blahggy friend Margaret pointed out one of them, which was when I said that Hillary wasn’t the best candidate (in the 2016 election). Actually I believe that Hillary WAS the best candidate in that election. I hated Trump and still do (y’all know that though). I actually do think she had/has everything it takes to be our president.

What I was skeptical about at the time was running another Clinton. And that only because I am skeptical about too many people in one family as president. Of course, that was early in the race before (I think) we knew Trump would actually run or, Unknown Deities forbid, actually WIN. Once she committed to running and became the nominee, I fully supported her, even giving a small donation to her campaign (and am still getting spam from that but that’s a whole ‘nother story). Like many others, I was devastated (and surprised) when Trump WON. I think we’d be much better off if he had lost and Hillary had been 45. [Delete long boring disjointed thoughts about that.]

As I was re-reading, I noticed I also disparaged “under-educated” folks. I regret referring to the MAGA followers and anyone else as under-educated. The level of education a person has reached doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence or critical thinking skills or creativity or whatever. Nevertheless, when you see a clip of an insurrection participant who is sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s (or whoever’s) office saying something like, “Well we’re here, so let’s form a government”, you have to wonder WHAT they are thinking or if they are even CAPABLE of thinking.

Two more things. 1) It is soooo hard to edit your own writing, especially if you blather on a daily basis. I’m probably preaching to the choir on that. 2) I like to be disagreed with (respectfully) and appreciate being called out when someone does disagree. We may or may not continue to disagree and it doesn’t matter (people disagree) but I wrote particularly clumsily yesterday and this is my attempt at some clarification.

Contemplating whether to brave watching (actually listening to) tonight’s debate or hide under a rock.

If you do click over to Margaret, check out her cat’s new cousin or whatever 🤣

The pic has nothing to do with anything I wrote today. It’s a pic of the moldy old cFam Hoton Lake cabin before the cFam sibs bulldozed it and built a new modern dwelling. I posted it to the cFam FB group last night as a comment to a niece’s BEAUTIFUL sketch of the modern cabin. As many times as I have posted and/or looked at this photo, I never noticed my shadow until someone commented about it last night. Jeebus.

A while back MMCB₂ and I were talking and she (a former school board member) had been asked what a good quality for an elected official might be. I almost immediately came back with HONESTY! Wnich she agreed with (she is a MENSCH). I know that’s a little, I dunno, idealistic and maybe naive? I know that many many politicians are in it for themselves. Still, I would like to believe that they also care about their constituents. Like MMCB₂ did. But not all do.

I was busy busy busy at work today but in the mid-afternoon, I heard one of the NPR talk shows talking about Trump and the outright lies he spews and how the news media SHOULD deal with them but usually doesn’t. Two of the most egregious lies Trump spews that I can think of are 1) “Democrats” support “aborting” babies after they are born (alive) and 2) Public schools are performing surgeries on children to change their gender. The second was what the program was talking about today. Whut?

Um neither of these things are true in any way, shape, or form. Do babies die after being born alive? Yes, they do. When that kind of thing happens, it almost always means the baby was born with a medical condition incompatible with life and the parents decided to carry to term and spend a few minutes/hours/days with their child before saying good-bye. Do people (their parents) kill their own newborn babies? Alas, sometimes they do. When this happens, it almost always means mental illness or maybe a freak accident. None of this is anything that “Democrats” or anyone else supports.

Surgeries on children to change their gender? Whut? Have schools somewhere and sometime in history operated on children without their parents’ consent? Probably. Horrible things have happened (and still do) to children in schools. Surgeries? Nope. Not now. At least not in the USA. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN! It just doesn’t. What public school nurse is prepared not to mention ALLOWED to do much more than clean a small wound and bandage it? I don’t even think it’s okay for them to provide “aspirin” any more but who knows.

Where does Trump get this stoopid crapola and why does the news media let him get away with spewing it? Some of his “followers” are gonna say something like, “It’s just Trump being Trump.” Sorry, but if you think that you are stupid. I’m just gonna say it, since I have been called stupid by various family members for being anti-Trump/MAGA since the beginning. Nope. He is just a nutcase and not fit to run for president. He only won in 2016 because Hillary was not the best candidate. And I actually like Hillary but that is a true statement. And then his lies (yes, lies) took root in the under-educated MAGA folks and are we ever gonna get rid of the god damn orange idiot?

I don’t wanna let this go on too long so KAMALA, YOU GO GIRL! Beat the shit out of Trump in the debate. Don’t let him Gish Gallop you. I’M SPEAKING! Loud and clear. People are standing behind you. I am not a person of color. I am a WASPy-type Scottish-Canadian-American woman who stands in support of Kamala.

In the 40s this morning. I was toughing it out (inside) with socks and a polarfleece jacket but when the GG got up he turned on the furnace. I used to get annoyed by that but I have kind of given up. Actually when we first moved in to this place, there was a gas meter in the basement and whenever the furnace was about to start up, it would start SQUEAKING! That drove me absolutely CRAZY (as do all unnecessary noises, loud or not). Not to mention that I was much more conscious of how much money we were spending on utilities (and everything) in those days and that stupid squeak was a reminder that we were about to use more gas.

Fast forward… We are far from wealthy but we are beyond the point of worrying about how much gas we are using, especially since we both like it a little colder than most people (especially me) so we are frugal by design. And several iterations of gas meters later, no one has had to visit the basement to read the meter in many years and it is now some fancy kind of meter that can be read electronically. They installed those throughout the neighborhood during the pandemic and it was wonderful entertainment.

We had a really friendly gas meter guy way back when so I wasn’t nervous about letting him into the basement but in general, that’s a service model I’m glad has gone by the by. I’ll [re]tell y’all about the “serial killer” Comcast sent out once some other day. Me to the GG (on the phone): I am NOT going into the BASEMENT with him!

It was a little rough around here this morning. It always is when the GG goes to a Lions game, which he is at now at although it DOESN’T START UNTIL AFTER 8 PM!

The issue is taking a vee-hickle down to Dee-troit and parking it somewhere SAFE. I mean mainly from the PO-LEESE who once (years ago) came along and towed the Dogha along with every other car on the street. No meters or no parking signs. It was likely a scam. Despite reassurances from people who have LIVED in Detroit RECENTLY that that kind of thing doesn’t happen any more… Well, the morning was a frantic exercise of downloading apps to pay for parking in various lots/structures. I do not know (or want to know) the details of this. I just tried to stay outta the fray. One thing I do know is that apparently our main family banking institution has been known to CANCEL legitimate financial transactions made in Detroit. It’s not North Korea fer kee-reist.

Anyway, the Twinz of Terror are sending the usual “A -ick” (autocorrect for “chick”) pics from the stadium so apparently they have successfully parked. Never sure why these beautiful young women are willing to pose with the Twinz but here are a few ’cause I couldn’t pick just one.

I have been to the Plum Market three times since we returned to the Planet Ann Arbor. This is the first time I have seen my mouse there and the first time I have seen her in a month.

I have not been masking in stores since last spring. I debated about whether or not to mask only because I sorta expected my mouse to still be masking and I wanted to be in sympatico. I was relieved to see that she was not masked. We are not finished with covid but I am realizing more and more that with my strategic shopping habits, I am not in close contact with anyone for more than a couple seconds. Except for my daughter.

I organized a family dinner for our daughters and their partners this evening. Filet mignon, pasta salad, corn on the cob, and garlic bread. I got everything either from the Landfill Pantry or the Plum except the corn and a cucumber. These last two items were not worth a trip to the farmers market so I picked them up this afternoon at the Sweet Corn wagon down on the “corner” (in the mini-plaza with the party store and Mexican food joint behind and up the hill from the Plum Market). It was COLD today and I was talking to the lovely young woman running the wagon about the weather. I mentioned that I had just returned from a couple months on Lake Superior and had hoped for a bit more warmth this weekend. Lo and behold, her sister has a place near Brimley, which is just a few miles down the road from the moomincabin. We briefly discussed the rusticity of the seasonal cabins on the beach my grandparents bought 100 years ago, then I wished her well and told her to stay warm.

Chilly as it was, we preceded our dinner with a faaaaar in the back yard. Plenty of good discussion although the character in the pic did not contribute much except for an occasional loon call and some other random noise. At least he was not wearing a MAGA hat this time.

P.S. My daughters did the dishes tonight and one of them gave the Landfill Chitchen sink and stovetop a super cleaning. I so appreciated that. “Chitchen” is what she called the kitchen when she was an emerging talker🧡

I think these are martinis but not sure. For many years, the GG and I would walk (separately) downtown to the Oscar Tango (Old Town) and meet up with our friends of porterization for Friday night dinner.

Y’all know when that changed. We meet mostly via zoom now although we have met in person in our homes (Ann Arbor) and cabins (Birch Point Beach area). I want to meet downtown again but I’m not quite ready for the craziness of a football weekend when people are packed in to restaurants. This weekend is a football weekend. I am not a sports fan but I do love the ambience of a football Saturday in my town.

I’m not terrified of covid any more, especially since the one time I got it, my symptoms were extremely mild. Still, I don’t want to get it again and I don’t want to infect someone else. But thinking about rekindling Friday nights downtown…

1) Moomincabin laundry, towels and stuff, mostly. 2) Landfill bedsheets. 3) Random clothing and whatever from wherever. 4) Towels from the Landfill.

A friend asked me a couple days ago if I ever got Cabin Fever hanging out at the moomincabin for months. Well. No. It is my HOME! Really. Every year at the end of June when school got out, me and my brother would harass our mother to move us out to the cabin. Guess what? Our native Detroiter mom was ready to go too. She issued us both a bushel basket to pack our stuff in and off we went.

I am sort of a total blank tonight. What did I do today? I watched a recorded work meeting no fewer than three times. I will be watching it again. Then I will be asking if we could SLOW-WALK through the whole issue so that the BA (that’s meeeee) can try to understand it head to toe. I get little bits and pieces of it but then somebody interrupts and sends the whole thing into a totally different rabbit hole and I can’t catch up again.

The Landfill Chitchen is a weeeee bit less of a mess today but it has a long way to go. I think I got rid of about six empty bottles of condiments and other things by “combinding” them with stuff that was already here. Aaaarrgh! Why why why why do we have two squeeze bottles of mayo AND mustard? STOP BUYING THEM!!!! Or at least ASK if we are out of them before buying them. And I have TWO big containers of iodized salt. Why oh why does the Soo Meijer not have small salt shakers? I mean of REGULAR, iodized salt. They have every other kind of salt under the sun. Of course, as a beach urchin said, it would probably be okay to use non-iodized salt for a short time in the summer. I can’t leave salt up there for the winter because it gets all clumped together. Actually I don’t leave ANY food up there for the winter, non-perishable or not.

And on the last trip down to the Planet, I am pretty liberal about just THROWING food out. If there are a few dregs left in a bottle or whatever, I allow myself to dump it, especially if it is perishable. Half-and-half? Orange juice? I’m looking at you.

And MOE-skee-TOES? I had to come inside tonight because they were getting me a bit. At the beginning of the summer, we have them at the moominbeach but by this time, they have pretty much disappeared. But as soon as it starts getting dark on the Planet Ann Arbor, they are out.

That is about it. G’night, KW.

Or maybe bumpity clunk would be a better description although the roads were mostly not all that bad today.

We drove tandem today, meaning we were each driving a car. The GG was driving Mooon Yooonit AND he was towing the Lyme Lounge. I followed in Cygnus. It works out best that way. He drives sanely when he tows the Lyme Lounge (he *usually* drives sanely anyway) and I can see him even if we get separated like we often do when someone merges in between us. I mean, not that we have to be always exactly together when driving tandem. We have both driven this route umpteen bazillion times together and singly. But today was a pretty good drive. No rain (or tornadoes) and relatively sane traffic.

I have a MESS in the Landfill Chitchen. It took me two days to undo the moominkitchen and I had five (or six?) bags of grocks at this end of the trip. Plus… The (frozen) stromboli didn’t fit in my refrigerated bags so the the GG wrapped it up in a bunch of towels and put it in with the laundry🤣 I didn’t even know it was in there until we got home. It probably would’ve been okay without all of that but I’m glad he handled it. I “combinded” some of the stuff I brought home with stuff that was AT home and I’ll deal with the rest of it as I go. For example, bottles of tamari and sesame oil and Soy Vay, etc.

I didn’t have a good dinner plan tonight so I went over to the Plum this afternoon to get some pork chops and broccoli to eat with some mini-potatoes that have been hanging around for a while and are still fine but need to be eaten. I was welcomed back by one of my fave front of house staff (K). I’ll probably be doing grock shops over the next few days. It takes a while for me to re-integrate myself into my main kitchen.

The photo is late afternoon yesterday, our last day at the moomincabin. I’m pretty sure we weren’t Porterized at this time but we were a little bit later.

I take a lot of sunset photooos from this beach. It faces northwest so in the summer, we see the sun set. This photooo is a sunRISE photo. It is from yesterday morning and this freighter was headed upbound into Lake Superior as the sun came above the horizon behind it.

We are heading south to the Planet Ann Arbor in the morning and even though this freighter is heading in the opposite direction, I like to think of us heading off in sunshine.

I spent yesterday and today soft-closing the moominkitchen. All food is leaving in the morning and the refrigerator has been totally cleaned. I even removed some little buggies that somehow made their way in there during a hatch. Soft-closing means we aren’t shutting off the water or utilities and stuff. The GG will be back to do that.

I got off easy this year. A beach urchin was up for the last week or so and she is an uber-super cleaner. She cleaned the bathroom within an inch of its life before she left. I did clean the toilet bowl today but that’s because it gets stained via our well water. There’s only one kind of toilet bowl cleaner that gets rid of those stains and I used that today. An easy job in any case. My uber-cleaner also swept and vacuumed the whole place and organized some detritus from the upstairs that needs to go away. Like we do NOT need a printer here. I only rarely use the one on The Planet Ann Arbor.

So yesterday and today, I packed all the non-perishables. I threw out some expired things. Like mayo with a 2023 date? In my defense, I did not buy that. It came in from the Lyme Lounge. After some discussion and a mini-argument with a different beach urchin (because I got on the defensive before I figgered out where it had probably come from), we decided that the reason the GG is not dead from eating it is because it’s Kraft and probably has about a billion preservatives in it. I jettisoned it ANYWAY. I am not a huge mayo fan and tend to buy it in the smallest quantities possible. A little goes a long way for me although I occasionally need some for something. Like classic potato salad for example.

I have about two bags of perishables to fill (freezer and fridge) and probably a couple more of random stuff. I kinda hate mucking around with this stuff. I am in a bit of envy that when my parents decided to move into “town” from the moomincabin, they could take as many trips as they wanted to, even leaving a few things out here for a while if they wanted to come out for dinner with Radical Betty or whatever. It was about a 15 mile trip for them whereas mine is 350. But I knew by the time I was about 10 that I wanted to live on The Planet Ann Arbor and that is where I live, therefore I cannot complain.

When I went to bed last night, our area was under a marine warning. Storms were rolling across Whitefish Bay through Cananada and up to James Bay. We got some rain here but never any kind of severe stuff. But the WIND came UP, which is one of the main reasons the marine warning was issued.

I didn’t really sleep all that well. It happens once in a while. It was a 3P night, which is VERY RARE for me. Usually I stay asleep and don’t notice the “urge”. All of those P incidents involved going outside around the back end of the Lyme Lounge. One of them involved rain. TMI?

Anyway, the wind did come up after we went to bed, which probably contributed to my unrest. In the morning, a beach urchin who was sleeping in the moomincabin reported some kind of thud or crash in the middle of the night. We live under a canopy of HUGE pine trees here but no one could figger out if a tree had fallen or not…

That mystery had not been solved before she and npJane hit the road for The Planet Ann Arbor this morning (miss them) but as they were mustering to leave, a tree fell on the dog “kennel” in the pic. The Commander obtained this kennel when my brother’s dogs would still visit here after he died and at that point the dogs were kind of a nuisance. The dog kennel didn’t work out all that well for those dogs and they are long dead but the dog kennel is still here. To be clear, I did love my brother’s dogs and I could make them mind. They were not bad dogs. Still, I am glad we don’t have dogs here any more. I love dogs but I haven’t owned one as an adult. Again, I am a one dog woman even on a three dog night.

Just the other day, the GG and I were discussing how to get rid of the goddamn dog kennel. Sell it? Donate it? My favorite option to get rid of things is to donate. But now I guess we just have to figger out how to get it to the dump. Not the Green Bag Dump, the Real Dump. Maybe the RegenAxes can remind us where that dump is. Or the GG will just use his excellent spidey sense dump-finding skills to locate it. Of course we would have to get the cFam Trash Trailer up here to transport it. It’s okay. We’ll manage it.

A little later, the GG was out in the moomingarage building a bench for the North Country Trail and the cousin-neighbor to the east of us drove by our “ice cream/beer shop”. The crash/tinkling noise the beach urchin heard in the middle of the night was one of his doors rattling around enough in the wind such that a window pane fell out. We have the same doors here and as I watched my front door rattle around today, I hustled over to pull it totally shut.

The pic is Mr. Chainsaw. To be clear, he *is* certified as a sawyer. I still went out there to spot him albeit I was a bit late.

Weird and a bit unsettling but not nefarious.

You know how you get those “you might know this person” friendship suggestions? To be clear, these are not friend *requests*, just suggestions that maybe you might want to connect with some person. Sometimes it’s a random person that you don’t know at all. Sometimes it’s somebody you kind of know or have heard of. I almost NEVER send requests to any of those people. I have plenty of facebook friends and most of those are chosen friends and they don’t usually post anything much. Instead I get ads and MAGA-type memes.

This morning, I got a friend suggestion with the same name as Bad Boyfriend, who I “went steady” with for a while in high school. The freaky thing is that this guy looked EXACTLY like Bad Boyfriend. But. I have a suspicion that Bad Boyfriend does not use facebook so I was a bit skeptical. I looked at this profile. He went to the same high school as I did but there wasn’t a whole lot of information or posts and I felt something was a bit off

After thinking about it for the entire day, I looked at the profile pic again and I realized that what was off was his age. He was not a young man but he didn’t really look as old as Bad Boyfriend would be (a year older than me). So I ended up guessing he is Bad Boyfriend’s son. To be clear, I know that Bad Boyfriend married “early” (to a girl in my high school that he started going out with after we broke up). I know nothing about his family like how many kids they had, boys, girls, whatever. I have not kept up with him at all over the years.

Again, to be clear, this was NOT a friend request. I also did not send him a friend request. I’m almost 100% certain this man knows nothing about me and I am not about to awaken any sleeping dogs surrounding my ancient relationship with his dad, assuming I am correctly assessing the situation. Bad Boyfriend and I both moved on many years ago. I am not really freaked out about this but I have no clue why facebook’s algorithm (or whatever) decided Bad Boyfriend’s son (if that’s who he is) and I might want to connect.

Except it wasn’t really the best beach day here, at least not until the “absolute end”. We started out with rain. That was fine but the Twinz of Terror were supposed to meet with other North Country Trail folks and some young Amish men to build puncheon. Puncheon is the boardwalk you often find on trails and it eventually gets really slippery and needs to be replaced.

There were MANY miscommunications between North Country Trail folks this morning. Are we building puncheon or not? Etc. Etc. Yer fav-o-rite blahgger stayed outta the fray by sitting on the deck drinking coffee in the rain doing word puzzles and reading. It’s okay. There is a big roof over the deck and it was warm this morning and she did not get wet.

The Twinz finally decided to join the prodject and although they encountered some rain, it wasn’t overwhelming and they did not encounter electrical storms, which would’ve been a deal-breaker for me.

Me, Liz, and npJane headed to town for lunch at Penny’s Kitchen. Another EXCELLENT restaurant that pods of little old ladies congregate at for lunch. I/we used to go there with my mom and aunts and their little pod of friends and occasionally some male relatives. The GG’s claim to fame is the time he ordered their signature gumbo and insisted (even though it is already spicy) upon adding a ton of hot sauce (even though it is already spicy). Um. Suffice it to say he didn’t finish his gumbo that day.

I won’t bore you with the weather gyrations throughout the afternoon but eventually the sun came out and the beach was warm and npJane and I were sitting on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench and Lizard Breath was facing us and there we are, reflected in her sunglasses.

It *is* apparently National Beach Day. Who knew? But every day is a beach day.

Disclaimer: None of this actually adds up to an adventure in any way, shape, or form🐽

The first adventure was accompanying npJane and her smelly garbage to the Green Bag Dump. She has never been to this dump before and I was happy to show her the ropes.

Later in the afternoon, I had a two-fold mission. Figure out where the ATM musheen was in Brimley and obtain some stromboli (and hopefully broccoli) at the farmers market on the res. I needed to hit the ATM first because I wasn’t sure if the stromboli folks accepted plastic. Like a lot of farmers markets, some vendors do and others don’t.

Brimley is basically a one-horse town and I knew where the bank (actually a credit union) was because… A couple years ago I misplaced my property tax bill. I knew when it was due (and it was getting close) so I emailed the township treasurer to ask how much I owed. That got figured out and she said something like, “Just bring the check over to the ‘bank’. That’s where I work.” That worked perfectly. (In case there are tsk tsk type lurkers out there, the taxes were paid on time, I DID eventually find the bill, AND I made a friend💩).

So, okay, I have been to the bank/credit union and they MUST have an ATM, roight? Yes, they do. You park in the back and it’s in the back entrance. Imma gonna guess that’s so it’s available 24/7 because they can lock the inner door. And THAT brought back old, vague memories of the intricacies of locking the Sault Ste. Siberia 1st National Bank when I was a beach urchin and my dad was the “manager” or whatever he was when I was a kid. But I won’t bore you with those.

So on to the farmers market with plenty of cash. Broccoli? No such luck. But I did buy a woman’s last seven ears of corn. I didn’t need that many but it seemed like I might be doing her a favor so we have corn.

On to the stromboli. I bought two strombolis (Italian and pizza) and two chicken pot pies from Karl’s Cuisine at Wildwood Farm. They didn’t take plastic but they did take Venmo. I mostly use Venmo with my kids and sometimes to give cash gifts to others for weddings, etc. Boy oh boy, was I a klutz at using Venmo to pay Karl’s. Thankfully the friendly woman managing the booth was very helpful. I laughed and said, “This is embarrassing!” She tried to assuage my embarrassment by explaining how many people she has to help with Venmo. I said something like, “It’s embarrassing because I work for the online banking industry🤣“

Karl’s Cuisine used to be an EXCELLENT restaurant in Sault Ste. Siberia. I’m not sure how it succumbed but I’m gonna guess covid had a pretty good hand in it. I reminisced that I had eaten there many times with The Commander and Radical Betty and their little pod of friends. All gone now. I didn’t try to ask if they remembered my actual mother and aunt. I’m sure there were many little pods of little old ladies who lunched there. I miss the restaurant but the stromboli (I bought some earlier in the summer) is to die for so it sounds like they have successfully moved on.

Well, that sometimes happens with Eco-terlet down at the Landfill. It never happens at the moomincabin. TMI?

I was heartened to hear from a day-trip traveler to Tahquamenon Falls that there seemed to be more Harris-Walz signs than Trump-JD signs along the way. This was a totally unscientific survey but the yooperland is largely Trump country although I know plenty of people who live here who ABHOR Trump. I’m in a bit of a bubble in that way. I also know people who support Trump, which I will never understand. So I was a bit heartened to hear about that about the signs but we have a way to go until November and I am not gonna let myself get too optimistic.

I think we really need to call Trump out more. This afternoon I heard someone on NPR say that Kamala was guilty of word salad. Say what? I am not an expert on Kamala’s speeches but, um, TRUMP is the KING of word salad. I can guess that Kamala might try to over-explain various things. I do that. That is not *anything* like what Trump does which is to spew random crapola whether it makes sense or not. I noticed this in 2016 and when I tried to point it out to people they basically looked PAST me.

We need to call him out when he does idiotic, ridiculous things. Why are we normalizing his ridiculous behavior?

The pic was my fave text of the day. It’s Green Bags. We needed more of those. I asked the GG to pick some up since he was going past the tribal gas station today. He hemmed and hawed a bit but my daughter got the drift and she reminded him that they needed to stop at the tribal gas station to pick some up. We’ve had a bit of a fruit fly problem here the last few days and WE NEEDED THEM.

Today started with a minor kerfuffle. It was the middle of the night, actually 5:30 AM but who’s counting at this time of year? It was dark and a storm was gonna roll through. The GG jumped to attention and started closing various doors and windows both in the Lyme Lounge and the moomincabin. I was like, this is gonna be a plassover (although I got up and did woodsP anyway just in case). Guess what? It was a plassover. Right over Whitefish Bay (to the north of us) and into Canananada. So many storms do that. I was wishing for a big one.

And then there was the whole lamb stew/duck breast thing in the afternoon. The GG did a lot of good stuff today including two (count ’em) trips into town. After the second town trip he couldn’t really settle down. He was using his computer and calling North Country Trail folks and rummaging the refrigerator. That was driving me nuts but THEN he started to rummage the FREEZER! What is this? Is it lamb stew? He thought he remembered me asking him to buy lamb stew at Sparrow Meats in Ann Arbor to bring up here. I did NOT remember that. And. This looks like Sparrow packaging but it has SKIN on it so it doesn’t look like lamb stew. And it wasn’t. Eventually Lizard Breath came inside to finish her telecommute for the day and she reminded me that she had schlepped duck breast up from Sparrow. Yes. Skin.

The NPR station we listen to up here in the yooperland covers a very wide area via a number of sub-stations. Severe storms rolled through a whole lot of the area so ALL AFTERNOON I was hearing weather alerts from all over the state, even though none of them applied to the yooperland. But I didn’t hear anything from the Planet Ann Arbor. Then at the end of the day, our mouse texted about all of the severe storms that rolled through Ann Arbor. She couldn’t really check The Landfill because there were MANY trees down between her house and our house. I told her it was probably okay because the last time a tree fell on our house (out of two) our neighbor notified us about it.

And it *was* (probably) okay because our webcam is apparently working, which means we have power. The GG said the street looked flooded and there was debris in the driveway but it doesn’t sound like any trees fell on our house.