The GG is on a call with the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore North Country Trail Chapter. I don’t participate (much) in these calls but I like to be able to hear them from the kitchen. I am not all that involved in the details but I am interested in what they are doing. Especially the chainsaw guys.

Apparently the GG set up two computers to join this call. So they can all see him in duplicate, which would be the same as looking at identical twins, and he has one. For a moment there was a thought that I might also join from my laptop in the kitchen but naw. I did many covid type years on MS Teams calls and we did NOT show ourselves live.

This MacStack is from the 2000s. I’m sure my original 2003 12 inch screen PowerBook is in this picture but not sure if we still have it. I was the earliest adopter. The Commander bought me one (long story). It arrived a day late because snowstorm. It came with a printer and I fergit what else. The GG was in the back room when it all arrived and I unboxed it all. Eventually he came out to the front room to visit our guinea pig and that’s when he noticed my new laptop.

When I schlepped my laptop about town(s), I was met with differing reactions from people of the male persuasion. Young males would sidle up to me and offer help, which I certainly didn’t need. Older males acted like they had seen an alien. Nope, it’s just a SMART woman with a computer. Women? They didn’t really pay attention to my new computer. They were doing what women do, chores and grock shopping and laundry and schlepping children around. Computer? Whatever.

Within a couple years, this stack of Mac laptops had accumulated. Me, The Comm, daughters, nieces, and sister-in-law. I think. And a ‘hattan to top it all off.

Wow! What a good time. At the EPA retiree lunch, that is. We met at Paesano’s. It’s a really good restaurant but we don’t often go there because it’s across town and getting there is like running a gauntlet. A (late) MacMu uncle of mine lived down the street from the restaurant so usually we went when there was some kind of family event he was organizing. (But not the one where he told a bunch of us, including an aunt and uncle on the FinFam side of my family that the last time he had a party, he ate so many marijuana brownies he couldn’t remember if he had six or eight kids. Answer, six. Three from his first marriage and three stepchildren. But that party was in his back yard. My main take-away from that was “don’t eat any brownies.” I learned early on that pot makes me paranoid and I don’t touch it.)

I hadn’t seen some of these people in AGES and some of them were more familiar than others but once they reintroduced themselves, it all fell into place. Making things a bit difficult was that I was facing bright sunlight so I was seeing the folks on the other side of the table in silhouette, meaning their facial features were not very visible.

Nevertheless, I remembered EVERYONE. I worked at That Darn EPA for 15 years (or so) and got to know a lot of folks pretty well due to my presence at “The Window”. The Window was where people dropped off data sheets (hand-filled) for processing and picked up printouts from the Data 100 printer, a behemoth. Oh yeah. And COMPLAINED.

When I first worked there, it was my JOB to man The Window. I mean, I went to college for this crappy job? I think it paid something like $8,700 a year. But I am a self-starter and after a few years, I was the “technical supervisor” (something like that), teaching myself how to code FORTRAN along the way, and was receiving a more or less living salary. Various other people ran The Window by then but I was still a regular presence there, solving problems and showing people how to fill out their data sheets, or just lending a hand and hopefully some good cheer. “This is not rocket science, we will figure it out.” And we always did.

It was a smallish crowd today and that was okay with me. “Friendly Introvert” that I am, that allowed me to “ease in”. There were three women besides me and they implored me to come back again to increase their numbers. Yes. Yes, I will. I love all these people but in particular, CDP’s wife is special to me. She did not work at the EPA, she was an MSU college prof, so I didn’t meet her until much later but we hit it off PDQ. And in one of those strange twists of fate, I also know her daughter. We took community college classes together for a couple years. I left for Corporate America and I think she is free-lance but she also *taught* at the college at least for a while (she has a masters in education).

The pic is from “memories” (2025). Man was that day a mess. We hadn’t gotten a lot of snow but what we did get was CEMENT. See the branches sticking out of the snow cement on Cygnus’s veeendsheeeld? I backed her down the driveway to get some sunlight and ran her defroster at full blast seemingly forever but I can’t remember if I ever got that stuff melted or not. At least not that day.

P.S. This is kind of a higglety-pigglety stream-of-consciousness entry so I want to make clear that: 1) I did not retire from the EPA. 2) I retired from Corporate America. 3) I worked for the EPA as a contractor (Computer Sciences Corporation) and voluntarily took a layoff from that company when a new contractor took over and I decided to be a SAHM for a while. I could have probably taken a job with the new contractor or maybe even gone federal. But I didn’t.

The poorly framed photo has nothing to do with the content of this post.

I’m gonna riff off the old Sault Ste. Siberia Penney’s store (and others), since Pooh and Margaret kinda got my brain off on a tangent. J.C. Penney *was* a relatively affordable place to buy clothing if you were not a terrifically affluent family and we bought stuff there. I suppose there were also the “dime stores”. We had three. Woolworth’s, Kresge, and Scott’s. Did they even carry clothing? I can’t remember. I do remember lusting for a Barbie bridal gown, but they never had one so The Commander made a beautiful one for my Barbie. I suppose the last Barbie bridal gown got off the truck in Traverse City or some place and those yooperland kids would just have to deal with tennis outfits or whatever. (My kids are probably ROFL if they are reading this.)

The store The Commander liked the best was The Hub (womens’ clothing). Unfortunately we were only occasional customers there. A bit too expensive for us. There were a few other stores selling womens’ clothing but I suspect that the sometimes snooty Commander regarded them as “old lady” stores. And not without reason. I don’t think the inventory changed all that often (like for years) and once all of the hats in one of them had to be fumigated (or whatever) because of lice. In all fairness, The Comm’s early career was at the downtown Detroit Hudson’s, which was an elegant store when she worked there but was imploded (on purpose) a number of years later.

Nowadays, I am all about comfort and ordering online from trusted sources. Elastic-waist skirts, tights, leggings, base layer shirts. Tie-dye. Anything that’s comfortable and makes me look a little crazy.

Fun fact, my MacMu granddaddy worked in downtown Detroit (he had something to do with building contractors) and he used to see old man Kresge in the streets at lunch time or whenever. I don’t think he knew Kresge personally. He also used to meet my mother (his daughter) for lunch at places that, well, I’ll just say, by the time she moved to the yooperland with my dad, she knew the difference between pasties (long a) and pasties (short a). Don’t worry, she was of age on these lunch junkets, if barely.

So. Go or no-go. Until now, go/no-go was when my team got together before a software release to decide whether it was a “go” or maybe we had to pull it back. I don’t think we EVER didn’t decide on GO. We were that good. Tomorrow’s go/no-go is do I go to the monthly EPA retiree lunch (with the GG) or not? I have not been to one of these lunches yet. If the GG goes alone, I get to be spac-i-fied. On the other hand, I know a lot of those people because I also worked with them long ago. And I was pretty dern bored today*. If the weather permits. If I do go, I hope CDP and wife are there.

*I am okay, just haven’t cobbled together a new routine yet. I WILL GET THERE! CHEERS!

I have driven up and down Trinkle Road umpteen bazillion times. During the heyday of the pandemic, I did it frequently because it was a way to get OUT of my neighborhood, especially when the GG was gone for the weekend, or a few weeks or whatever.

Today is the first time I have ever seen this structure. It is feet (10?) from the road but when the trees are leafed out, it is invisible, at least if you are driving (and are an intensely focused driver, like me). Today I was in the passenger seat and there are no leaves and there it was! Turn around and STOP! I gotta get a pic! There were also a bunch of smaller outbuildings in various states of disrepair. Some creative dad or whatever once had fun creating a small “town” or maybe “farm” is a better word and he is no longer around to keep up with it.

I have to laugh when I mention the GG being gone for a few weeks. He occasionally is, especially when he is supporting our friend Joan in her hiking endeavors. A few years ago I was walking in the woods behind my house and Luke of Perrynet approached me. He asked the question shyly, giggling a bit, “Is the GG ever coming home?” I’m sure he had been noticing that Cygnus was the solo car in the driveway and wondering if we had separated or something. Oh, no such luck. I explained about his adventures with Joan and all was well. The GG came home the next Sunday. We don’t have a particularly unconventional marriage but we trust each other and give each other a lot of space. I’ve never been interested in having affairs with other people and neither has he.

A serious winter storm is predicted for midnight through Tuesday morning and this time I am thinking they are not lying. It is a snowier winter than we’ve had for a while and I feel it in mah bonz or more likely my intuition is telling me to hunker down.

P.S. Pooh (my cousin) asked if the building in yesterday’s pic was the old Sault Ste. Siberia J.C. Penney store. Yes. Yes it was. And yes we bought fabric there. There was a balcony between the 1st and 3rd floors that housed fabric and patterns. Nowadays I believe it holds tribal offices (the decoration feels Native American) and I thought that the River of History Museum was in the building’s basement but not totally sure. The museum entrance is a couple doors down the street. But it could be that the museum continues along under several buildings including the old Penney’s. I only did light googling on this stuff.

The filets were cooked to perfection. Beach urchins took care of all the rest of the food. We couldn’t get the music pods working the way we wanted to so the Racc started pulling out records (and we dredged some more records up from the basement) and he did a great job of DJ-ing throughout the evening.

A number of years ago I started boxing up my record collection, such as it is, as well as my parents’ records and I was about to donate the whole shebang. Not so fast, KW. Little Cat Z happened in on all this during a visit from her then home in Detroit. Not so fast, mama. She took a box of records and the rest, or some of the rest, were relegated to the basement. I think I was thinking something like digitizing the ones I wanted and donating the rest. As it turns out, I was wrong (again!) because they sure came in handy tonight. And with somebody else’s eyes to leaf through the so-called collection, the playlist was much more interesting than whatever I might’ve stumbled upon. I do NOT have anything approaching an organized record collection, which may (or may not) make DJ-ing more interesting.

The pic is one I took on my daily winter 2012 schlep to hang out with The Commander at the War Memorial Hoosegow in Sault Ste Siberia. YakTrax on, backpack filled with two laptops (work and personal), phone in one pocket, cash, cards, and keys in the other. People up there were and are ingenious with their snow removal equipment. This is just a small bit of equipment. On the other end, there is a HUGE snowplow that can lift a plow totally up in the air over a parked car if necessary.

This was a cold day but in truth, that winter was an extremely warm one overall. The I500 snowmobile race was a mud race that year and after The Comm died in late February, when we were back on The Planet Ann Arbor, March featured temperatures in the 90s, a tornado and trees that flowered two months early. Flowering trees usually don’t blossom until May here.

So, on No Politics Day (NPD), I actually didn’t listen to a lot of political news. I did veer in the direction of politics when I mentioned one of my fave causes, Planned Parenthood, but that threatened to escalate and that’s all I will say about that except we shut that discussion down PDQ.

I prefer going out to lunch (over dinner) on NPD. I do like having a Landfill dinner on NPD. So we did lunch with some beach urchins at Casey’s Tavern today. We’re being porterized tonight at the Landfill (Chinese, the food, not the Porters), and tomorrow night we’ll have a family Landfill dinner. If I were still working, I would’ve taken today off and since MLK Day is Monday, it’d be a 4-day weekend. But whatever.

I was spotted at Casey’s because of my tie-dyed skirt by a man with a tie-dyed t-shirt. I *think* we have encountered this couple in Casey’s before. The wife is in a wheelchair. This was a good encounter.

We porterized ourselves tonight with Chinese takeout. I was happy with that and there was a fake log faaaar in the faaaarplace. We are on a different “clock” than our friends of porterization but they are now on their way home to watch whatever TV shows they want until whenever they want to watch them and I am gonna crash out.

P.S. I did snow driving today and I was a champ. Regained some of the driving confidence covid took away from me.

Little Cat Z always sends me flowers on No Politics Day. This year, she sent them a day early because a lunch date on No Politics Day meant we couldn’t guarantee that anyone would be here to accept the delivery and it is frigid out there. I don’t think it got to 20 degrees but I could be wrong. And I think it might be colder tomorrow. A lovely young woman called to make sure I (or someone) would be home before delivering them. The vase was The Commander’s. It’s a bit bigger than it looks in the pic and it is HEAVY!!!

One of the first years of the No Politics Day flower tradition, we were out when the flowers arrived. We had covid and no we were not out at a restaurant, we were driving around the countryside because cabin f*cking fever. (We were not very sick but no way would we pay covid forward!) The flowers got delivered to my uber nice next door neighbors’ house and when the husband brought them around, I gave my neighbor a status update and told him to leave them on the porch and I would grab them when he was a safe distance from my virus.

My main excursion today was the Plum Market. I know, so exciting, especially since I’m usually there every other day. I was trying to make marinade for filets and didn’t have any oil besides olive oil (which I have in spades…) Olive oil doesn’t (to me anyway) go well with tamari and brown sugar and friends so I got canola. Oh, and we were flat out of dry vermouth. So I made a mini-run. As I was heading toward the door, I heard a growl behind me. Oh, don’t worry, it was a familiar growl, i.e., the GG. What the heck was HEEEEE doing in the Plum. He coerced me into a trip to Tractor Supply on the way home (he had been out walking). Tractor Supply was not actually on the way home but it was a sunny day and the roads weren’t toooo messy. So.

Happy No Politics Day to the mean old grunchie old grinchie and Our Northern Correspondent, who celebrate that holiday today, sharing it with Martin Luther King.

P.S. A little pack of Bon Bon Bon chocolates came with the flowers. They are so good and if you order them online, you get a tote bag that I think is also a cooler? I was like, oh no, another bag but the GG uses his (from Valentine’s last year) even though the colors are kinda girly and he is a “manly man” LOL, think chainsaw guy. And it’s a Detroit business.

Yeah, maybe. For many years, we shoveled our snow the old fashioned way. I did most of it for most of those years. Even the snow cement the plows left at the bottom of the driveway.

At some point in time, the GG asked for a yooperland style snowblower for xmas. By that time I was working full time at Cubelandia and he was retaaared and I bought this thing for him and I don’t really do snow shoveling any more. Today we got kind of a lot of snow and he was like, “I can’t wait to run my snowblower.” So that’s what he’s doing and NOW he is putting vee-hickles out in the street so he can blow the driveway. I have to say I am a fan.

I am not looking forward to the next freeze and thaw cycle.

Canya tell by the title what I was doing today? That’s right, I was cleaning out the refrigimitator. I am not finished yet. This seems to be a multi-day project this time. Partly because I wash all the shelves with soapy water and let them totally dry out before I put them back in.

But oh dear, it looked like the refrigerator door was even more full of condiments and stuff than it usually is and yes, yes, yes it was. Why? Well, for one thing, there were three partially full bottles of Sriracha and two partially full bottles of yellow mustard plus another mostly full one. I was able to “combind” the three partial srirachas into one and two of the yellow mustards into one.

People, that’s as far as I got, at least for today. I cannot keep up with this stuff. I don’t use sriracha at all. I rarely use yellow mustard. And there are a whole bunch of fancy mustards in there that I haven’t even looked at yet.

My day was interrupted (happily enough) by the GG calling from Dexter asking for a pickup. We decided that involved lunch at Dexter’s Pub. It was mid-afternoon already, which is a good time to go out to lunch because the bar was empty and there was plenty of parking. But after that, I was toast in terms of refrigerator cleaning and “combinding” of condiments. It’s okay, I will continue my slog again tomorrow.

“Combind/combinded/combinding”? This originates from a pretty funny story. For a long time the Twinz of Terror were regular blood donors. The GG lived here (with me) on the Planet Ann Arbor. The UU lived an hour or so away. At one point, their records got mixed up somehow. When they tried to straighten them out, the woman they were dealing with said something like, “Oh the records got combinded!” Combinded? Okay, we get it. She supposedly straightened that out but… Then… They got “combinded” again. I mean, they are ID twins but they have different names and lived/live in very different locations.

And the weird tower is somewhere near Milan – the Michigan Milan, which is pronounced with a long i, as opposed to the Italian Milan. I couldn’t do much to prettify this fugly picture but I figgered it was better than the inside of my refrigerator.

Yes, that Flint. (The pic is not from Flint. It’s from yesterday’s ICE protest in Saline.) But, yes, that Flint. The one where Michigan’s “leaders” poisoned people with crappy water from the Flint River. Flint’s population is about 80K. That’s apparently up from recent years. I’m not sure why I am suddenly obsessed with populations. When I was a kid traveling down to Ann Arbor and DayTwa from the yooperland in the back seat of my parents’ car, I always thought Flint was a bigger city than the Planet Ann Arbor. And maybe it was. Over the years, A-squared (as we like to call Ann Arbor) has grown a LOT and I think Flint has shrunk. Our populations have very different characteristics.

On those childhood trips, I would spend a lot of time in the back seat looking at the Michigan road map and following our progress. I *think* it listed at least some populations. There was a distance, hmmm, what do I call it? It was a graphic representation of how far apart many Michigan cities were. After years of writing functional specifications and designing informational graphics, I think it’s one small reason why I was good at making informational graphics. Okay, ’nuff navel gazin’ KW.

So FlaMan lives in Flint and he doesn’t drive so we (and other siblings) supply him with food, supplies, and pretty much anything he wants. I don’t exactly know how to describe FlaMan but he has some interesting wants. Light bulb cameras are a recent one. We’ll talk about the nose hair trimmer some other day. Or not. I am a HUGE fan of FlaMan and support pretty much whatever he wants as long as it doesn’t involve a telemarketer or bank fraud…

It is difficult to visit FlaMan because it’s an hour away on the freeway and when you get there, Gunsmoke reruns are on, both in the living room and his bedroom, where he usually is. But I asked the GG, “Can we take Argentine Road home?” The answer was yes (as I knew it would be) and so I accompanied him. I didn’t spend a lot of time with FlaMan, who was in the bedroom the whole time and the GG turned down Gunsmoke in the living room so I could hear myself think.

Argentine Road is a little (but paved) road and I know about it because there is a girl scout camp along it where I went for weekend trips quite a few times with a couple troops. We always had a lot of moms on those trips and once we got caught with STRICTLY VERBOTEN whine. We were not caught by a camp official. We were caught by the extremely religious mom around the corner (who was with our group) and guess what? As we were packing up to go, she giggled, “Somebody left their Chardonnay in the refrigerator.”

Or should it be ICE ICE Barbie?

As we are often wont to do, we took a drive in the country today. The Planet Ann Arbor is a medium(?) sized city (population 122K) in southeast Michigan. It has a LOT of traffic and a bazillion traffic lights. It is *not* a Detroit suburb and from our neighborhood on the western edge, it doesn’t take much time to get OUTTA town. I mean to empty tertiary highways and dirt roads. We went south today.

Because we were going south, we drove through the much smaller city of Saline (population 9K). Like Ann Arbor, Saline is not a suburb of anything. If I were to associate it with Ann Arbor, I would probably call it a “satellite” city. It is close enough to Ann Arbor that many people who live there enjoy a short commute to Ann Arbor.

So, we were approaching Saline and when we got to the main intersection, I was amazed at how many people were out there protesting ICE! I was not really aware of protests but this was a MOB. And I mean a FRIENDLY mob. I couldn’t get my phone out of my pocket fast enough our first time through the intersection so I asked the GG to go around the block and he obliged.

From Cygnus, even though I wasn’t driving, I could not get a photo that captured the numbers of people at that intersection. But as luck would have it, the light was red and I got a few pics. A couple people noticed my phone and must have ascertained that I was friendly (I was waving) because they pushed their signs out in front of Cygnus so I could get pics. In the end, this was my fave with the “peach” (derierre) and orange haired poop. “ICE storms are deadly” is also good. Because yes they certainly are although the usual meaning in the Great White North is a bit different than what happened last week in Minneapolis.

The GG noticed that it was an older crowd. I was like, so what? I’m not sure what he was trying to say and I’m not sure what to say next. Well, except this. I hesitate to say that Trump/MAGA are fascists exactly because I think they are their own damn cult and I feel like this is a little different than the Nazis. But. My dad served in WWII (as a pilot instructor, he never saw action – hey, somebody has to teach kids how to fly planes. Why not a slightly older kid?). A lot of these “older” protesters probably had parents/grandparents who also served in that war. They’ve heard about this kind of stuff and don’t want ICE thugs coming into their neighborhoods to terrorize people, not to mention shoot them dead. I don’t really know why the crowd skewed older but I’m glad they were out there.

Democracy is as messy as all get out but authoritarian rule (fascist, communist or whatever) is much much much worse. What’s going on right now is too scary.

First, I dunno if the GG will read my blahg today. He doesn’t always. I don’t think he can keep up with me. Hell, *I* can’t even keep up with me. But I’m taking a risk writing about the mini-win I had on Thursday. We are in a “mixed” marriage. MAGA vs. sanity. My viewpoint at least.

Make no mistake, the GG is a wonderful guy in all other ways. He helped me take care of my mother when she was dying and all that goes with that. After she died, he organized and trailered all of the physical objects that needed to be moved somewhere to wherever they needed to go. I was working full-tilt-boogie. He is also a wonderful father. Born in the middle of 10 siblings, he had been changing diapers for umpteen bazillion years when Little Cat Z was born. I had NEVER changed a diaper and I that continued for another couple weeks as I recovered from, uh, a rather massive amount of stitches.

Preamble outta the way. We had multiple *polite* conversations throughout Thursday about the horrendous Minnesota ICE shooting. MAGA talking points about “domestic terrorist” came through. I looked at those videos too. What I saw was it seemed like split seconds before the ICE guy (’cause I don’t think he’s a real cop) left his car, ordered Renee out of her car and when she tried to flee, he shot her. Where was the polite (but scary) guy at her door asking her polite (but scary) questions? The ones a REAL cop HOPEFULLY would ask. Ma’am can I see your license? Nope, this guy just ordered her outta the car and very quickly shot her.

I had trouble processing the videos that day and I know there are more now and I haven’t even watched all of them. All I could think of was how I would feel if were driving that car. In one that I did see, she told the ICE “cop” something like “I don’t hate you.” It sounded like multiple people were yelling and giving her maybe conflicting orders. Y’all have seen all these. I would’ve been totally freaked out and maybe a bit frozen encountering that kind of situation.

If I had been driving that car, I would have tried to get outta there ASAP. And that’s what I think she was doing. Trump was lying (lying lying lying lying because that’s what he does) when he said she ran over the ICE “cop” and he was in the hoosegow with critical injuries (or whatever). He was not injured. The ICE “cop” walked away unscathed from a minor “nudging” incident.

I want to see the ICE “cop” prosecuted. But. I also want to see ORGANIZED, PLANNED, deportation procedures where people are not randomly picked up because of their skin color or whatever and thrown onto planes to whatever country might take them, even if they have never lived in that country. This administration has even tried to deport US citizens. Yes, it has. Look it up somewhere besides MAGA slanted media.

I could go on and on about this but I will give kudos to the GG (aka Suzy Homemaker) who cleaned the hell outta the bathroom today, also the kitchen floor. I think he was partially providing silent commentary about my kinda half-assed cleaning efforts lately. (I do clean the toilet.) But I appreciated his efforts. When he starts cleaning stuff, I get outta the way. It works better that way.

The mini-win is that I heard the GG tell his ID twin that he agreed me about the shooting. I was like YES but we’re still in a marital journey through MAGA.

Twitter play:

Setting: War Memorial Hospital, Sault Ste. Siberia

The Commander: Just remember you were a *wanted* child. (Said umpteen bazillion times)
Kayak Woman: That may be true but I’m not sure I turned out like what you *wanted*.
[Nurse in the hallway raises her eyebrows.]
Kayak Woman [stage-whispering and giggling]: I was *not* the favorite child

First I have to commemorate The Commander’s birthday. This is her high school graduation pic, I think. A few years before I was a twinkle in my dad’s eye.

And it was a looooong time after that that I was born. 11 years after their marriage. I dunno if they were seriously trying at first (well sure they were KW, whether they knew it or not). But they did try for a long time. I’ve been told what the issue(s) were but I don’t remember and probably wouldn’t post it here anyway. To explain the Twitter play, I had a younger brother. They didn’t think he would live very long but he did although he succumbed at 47. Long story I don’t feel like writing about right now.

I joke that he was the favorite child. I know he wasn’t but he was fragile as a newborn and (of course) I had to take a bit of a back seat for a while.

The second pic is of The Comm threatening me with a kitchen knife at the moomincabin. Oh don’t worry, it was all in fun. We loved each other but I was a “spirited” (although often awkward) child and sometimes gave my parents grief. Like showing up on the sidewalk in front of our shabby little Superior Street bungalow in 9th grade with Bad Boyfriend in tow. Unexpectedly. “Where’d’ya find *him*?” In truth, I was as surprised as they were that he walked me home. [Delete a couple ensuing years of teenage drama.]

We are celebrating our Polish friend Diane’s birthday tonight at Amadeus, a Polish restaurant I haven’t been to since before covid. We’re having a pre-dinner ‘hattan here. Before covid, we were just training them to make ‘hattans but who knows where that knowledge has gone or who is even working there now.

And dare I mention it’s also Richard Nixon’s birthday? Given what’s going on nowadays, Tricky Dick’s presidency seems tame. At least people put the brakes on him. (Not that I am a Nixon scholar by any means.)

We had two goals for our outing today. One was to check out the huge amount of construction going on at Briarwood Mall. Basically, they have torn down the weakest (in my opinion) anchor store (Sears) and are building, uh, what? A big 2-story(?) grocery store and maybe other stores and a big “luxury” apartment building for “low income” folks, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, so maybe I misunderstood. I have read about this project but didn’t really process it. Any way, there’s a lotta construction flying around.

I have a couple of thoughts about all this. I don’t think MOST people WANT to live in apartments, especially high-rise apartments (the apartments being built are what I might call medium-rise, 5-6 stories or thereabouts). When we bought the Landfill I was looking specifically for a single-family house with a backyard. When the (small) one we bought also bordered a small adjacent woods, I was over the moon. I know that not everyone nowadays can afford such a situation, at least not in the city. We could barely afford it 40 years ago when we started our loverly little family.

My second thought is that the GG asked me when the last time I had been in Briarwood was. I could not remember. I finally ventured that it probably had something to do with the Apple Store. I know it was pre-COVID. We’ve been ordering new iPhones online since before COVID and my MacBook Pro is humming along nicely so hasn’t needed repairs (knock on wood). I had to order TWO “new” (refurbished) work PCs after COVID. Those things die like flies. At any rate I had stopped shopping in person for most things you might find at a mall long before COVID. Clothing? Hit or miss, mostly miss. Maybe an occasional trip with the beach urchins?

Since Briarwood is a couple miles up S. State from Cubelandia, I asked if we could dip down there and take a look. I am not sentimental about this place although I feel a bit of nostalgia for the good times we had when most of us worked there (at least some of the time). But we’d been outta there never to return since COVID. I had heard rumors that a church had moved in and yes! Bethesda Church (whatever that is). Who’da thunk it? I couldn’t really look inside as curious as I was.

It is a Wednesday. It is a dark gray fugly Wednesday. It’s okay, it’s January. We’re used to that. But. Today. The GG hiked to Dexter (10 miles) and I picked him up and he said, “Dooya wanna get lunch?” Well, yes. I have time for lunch. Oh, not that I couldn’t go out to lunch while I was working. It was totally okay and sometimes I did. Heck, years ago, the LSCHP went out to lunch just about every day. But mostly I did not and usually when I did, it was a work function.

And then. After lunch, I asked if the GG wanted to drive the back roads a bit. Well, sure. He was finicky about which roads, turning around on some roads that looked particularly muddy. But then again, he drove down other roads that were equally muddy. I couldn’t tell the difference. At one point I asked if he wanted to run Cygnus through the car wash. He didn’t and anyway that would have required us to deal with Wagner/Jackson Road traffic and Michigan left turns, etc. Not today. Cygnus is dirty but she’s happy.

We went east of the freeway (on a dirt road) for a few minutes until we encountered this train. Or trains. We couldn’t tell exactly what was going on but it seemed like they were connecting/disconnecting two (more more?) trains. So these train cars were not really moving at all until you heard a big BANG as a couple of trains knocked into each other somewhere down the tracks that you couldn’t see. So we turned around and wound our way home. (I dunno what “Guzzy Boys” are.)

Anyway, the point of this boring bunch of blather is that I did some things today! Nothing constructive, at least not more than the usual boring mini-chores. Changing the sheets, washing dishes, dealing with some odd online banking stuff (note to my main bank, don’t change things without providing a CLEAR explanation – you need MEEEE but don’t even think about trying to hire me). Anyway, it was a weekday and I got out and even initiated something (an after-lunch ride). One step at a time. But probably not without a lot of back-sliding.

Love y’all, KW.

This afternoon a beach urchin texted to alert us that the sidewalks were slippery, at least intermittently. Freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw.

I gave her a thumbs up for the alert but I knew that although the GG was talking about a “hike” earlier, he was now engaged in a big fugly prodject (as you can see) and wouldn’t likely be going out any time soon. And he didn’t.

He pulled a whole bunch of bags and boxes out of Moooon Yoooonit and the “coat closet”. You know the one. It’s where you store all your coats and jackets, even the ones you haven’t worn in years. And usually a vacuum cleaner or five, although this one doesn’t have any vacs. They are scattered around the Landfill. What it DOES have are TOOLS. Of every description. Multiples of most. Except chisels. There are multiple chisels but he couldn’t find any of them. Maybe they are in the Lyme Lounge? Which is in storage in the Uncly Uncle’s garage. In Gaylord. A three-four hour drive away. Oh well, he can get reunited with his chisels later.

All of this stuff was pretty disorganized. Like his dad The Gumper used to say, “I’m missing 10% of my stuff all the time. It’s just always a different 10%.”

So the GG pulled everything outta the bags and boxes, sorted it and reorganized it. This was pretty painful to watch but I think it needed to be done so I pulled out the “mantras” I use when dealing with adult children: “Go with the flow” and “stay outta the fray.”

Other than a zoom call with my only remaining MMCB this morning, it was a pretty slodgy day for me. I’ll get over it. I’ve been this way after xmas before, even during regular post-xmas periods with no “drama”. MMCB surprised me a bit (pleasantly) by asking if the GG and I would like to occasionally go out to dinner with her and her husband. She had never asked before because our other coffee buddy and her husband NEVER went out to eat. They were focused on cooking for their family and various guests. So I guess it just seemed a little awkward, which I understand. We don’t go out to eat a whole lot either and usually favor lunching but maybe this will be in my future! Maybe they’ll introduce us to Pacific Rim, which is one of their faves.

P.S. The GG says he actually uses most of these tools… I was like, if you can find them…

I am in the stage of “retirement” that I do not know what day of the week it is. The holidays have not helped with that. The GG came home from hiking trips today and took down xmas or at least most of it. The tree is out. There still seems to be a lot of clutter around but I don’t think it is exactly xmas clutter. The radio (NPR) and TV help with this situation a bit. We watch Andy Griffith on weeknights. He is not there on Saturday or Sunday.

Still. I dunno what I am doing although I may have some secret stuff up my sleeve. Other than that, it was a very boring day. I went to a grocery store and did word puzzles and did minor chores around here. The temperatures are rising and hopefully that means some of the ice in the doggamn driveway will melt. I soooo hate the freeze and thaw cycle.

I do not know what that thing is in the pic. My brain is just not processing it.

G’night. KW.

Try as I might I couldn’t immediately find more pictures of my childhood dog Tigger. This is a pic of Daisy (with Chloe Belle in the background), the most recent family dog to be (alas) put down. Daisy was The Beautiful Gay’s parents’ dog and TBG and the Uncly Uncle grabbed her after their deaths and cared for her until her death.

When I was a kid and had Tigger, a mutt who looked like a small golden retriever but probably had a lot of other crapola in her (no DNA testing then), I wasn’t crazy about what my family called “little yappy dogs.” I grew to know and love these little dogs, who are really not always yappy. Bichon Frises and I’m not sure what Daisy was. We were never sure what Tigger was exactly. [Delete long thoughts about my childhood with a fearless (and beautiful) mutt on the moominbeach where BEARS have been known to run.]

So Dogs I have known, in no particular order and definitely missing a lot… Fury, Tigger, Spot, Laker, Sam, Ernie, Alfred, Bandit, Chloe Belle, Daisy, Lexi, Sniffy(?), Rags (how could I fergit Rags, my grandma’s dog when I was a kid), Mia, Tippy, Buffy, Lacy, Java, Mo or Bo (can’t keep Jeep and Pan’s dogs’ names straight).

I can’t remember the name of my lifelong friend Barb’s golden retriever who knocked The Commander into the water on the beach and also grabbed Velvet the Mouse (a puppet). The Comm was fine. Velvet was a separate incident. I dived down to the beach to separate the dog’s jaws and retrieve Velvet. Barb was a beloved friend and neighbor but she couldn’t really control a big dog at that time and she pretty soon re-homed the dog.

My mouse and the racc came over to cook me dinner tonight. It was loverly. Salmon bowls with miso and rice and lots of veggies. I always have a good time talking to the racc. Hopefully I don’t talk too much. I am an introvert but I can get going. I will say that we are on the same page politically which helps with that.

I can’t say we didn’t talk politics tonight because we did but we also talked about other things including dogs. Well and horses and donkeys because his mom has owned those and she is much more of an aminal person than I am. But I did own a dog as a child. Her name was Tigger. I was terrified of dogs before we got Tigger, even my next door aunt and uncle’s dog Fury, who was not really a scary dog. I just didn’t understand dogs. Boots the cat was kinda scary but cats are cats and Boots did scratch people. Tigger was a stray puppy who landed at my dad’s banker boss’s back door one day. Pauline (boss’s wife) was a dog person and she knew we were looking for a dog and and that’s how we ended up with Tigger.

Me and a bunch of my cousins sat on the wood pile outside the Old Cabin all afternoon the day Tigger was scheduled to come home. It was a long day but eventually my dad arrived with Tigger in tow. She wasn’t named yet and I was terrified of her. She was jumping all over the place at first. Eventually she settled down and went to sleep and somehow I was able to pick her up (UKW helped with that) and I fell soooo in love with her and have never been afraid of dogs again. I wanted to name her something like Blondie (I was *five*) but my aunt Bubs suggested Tigger because she bounced. That stuck and it was a good name for my dog.

Honestly I think I have spent the last hour looking for this picture. I found it earlier tonight. Could I find it again? No I could not. Tag yer pics, KW.

I bought this loverly jacket on a family trip to downhill ski at Steamboat Springs. I rode out there in my uncle’s big something or other (license plate BGY747) with two aunts and uncles and a couple of cousins and a cousin’s wife. My dad drove out there separately with a friend and a couple other cousins met us there from Utah. It was a fun trip but I won’t go into all the details except that my cousin Grinch and I went out to the bars most nights and people really liked us and would buy us drinks and stuff. We were so much older then, we’re younger than that now. Or maybe it’s the reverse.

That ski outfit also had some matching “overalls” and I didn’t really buy it. My dad did. He also bought me a new pair of skis because the ones I took out there broke on a downhill run. Privileged? Yes, at least sorta although we aren’t anywhere near Warren Buffet. But I do try to pay whatever privilege I have forward.

This pic is quite a few years later. I was at Hoton Lake hanging out with the GG. I am not wearing the overalls here because we were x-c skiing and overalls are just too damn hot when you are x-c skiing. Clothing is so different now. I haven’t worn jeans since Calvin Klein changed the form factor. Nowadays we have merino leggings and I have a featherweight merino jacket and base layers are the new bizcaz. And I have totally embraced being a skirt gal.

P.S. My aunt Katie aka The White Tornado was never really much of a ski enthusiast and I don’t remember if she skied at all during that trip. She did clean the hell out of the broiler pan in our rental condo. Probably hadn’t been properly cleaned in years.