What kind of things do you do/get for your adult children when they don’t need one dern thing? Well, one thing we do at this time of year is carve jack-o-lanterns and bomb their houses with them.

So here is the resident Mad Scientist “performing the cloning”. With a power drill, of course. He doesn’t mess around.

A line-up in Moooon Yoooonit.

Country Mouse’s house.

City Mouse’s house.

I don’t provide a whole lot of help with this. The GG is the mastermind. He started it while I was still gainfully employed and after the first couple years, I decided I would at least like to ride along. So now it is a *thing*.

And very little of that. My own pandemonium was the result of making a meticulous grocery list, then accidentally deleting a crucial ingredient, which turned out to be chick peas. Now. I looked up the recipe on my phone (via the Plan-to-Eat app) but somehow spaced out that ingredient. So… I had to go back. We had several missions so I had the GG drop me at the Plum entrance and wait for me to run inside and grab a can of chickpeas. Kathy at front-of-house: Is that all you’re buying? Me, going through the U-scan: Well, I’ve been here once already today. We’re old friends and she got it. “Oh, okay. (hahaha)”

We ran our other errands and then the GG started loading up the purple kayak. I was like, “Good he’s going down to the river for a while.” Well, not so fast, KW. A massive amount of RUMMAGING ensued. I didn’t have the strength to ask about this but at the end of all of it he could not find a kayak PADDLE to save his life. You do NOT wanna be up a crick without a paddle, especially if you are in a kayak. He left and the next thing I knew, he had sent me the pic above, of him in the “Urine” (Huron) River in a kayak with a NEW PADDLE from Dunham’s, which is over by the Plum Market. You can never have too many kayak paddles and he likes this new one.

Oh, and I finally dropped my ballot off today but not before forgetting it and having to return to The Landfill to retrieve it. More on the mid-term elections in another post. Oh, don’t expect much of substance from me. I soooo wish I didn’t have to pay too much attention to politics. Unfortunately until Lady Liberty once again launches The Orange Baboon into wherever in a diaper slingshot (this was a 2020 cartoon), I will continue to swear at the radio.

Another trip around the sun. Don’t ask me how many years ago. I am not strong enough to count them.

The girl that was asked at a Take Your Daughters To Work thing at about eight (but looking more like about five), “What do you want to be when you grow up?” She probably thought it was a really dumb question but she answered, “paleontologist”. And therefore became remembered as the cute little kid who knew words bigger than herself. Indeed.

She didn’t end up becoming a paleontologist. Instead, she has always landed in careers that involve “making the trains run on time.” In that, she is not totally unlike her mother. This idea was likely mortifying to her as a teenager but I think nowadays she more or less embraces it or at least laughs about it. Her mother (Kayak Woman aka meeee) is a little eccentric but she *is* capable of making trains run on time, although she doesn’t really have to do that anymore, unless you count the GG. But she doesn’t have a whole lot of control over him so…

We are not with Plutonium Girl on this day. She and her sister and a couple of their friends are celebrating up at the Group Home at Hoton Lake, where it is *gorgeous* this weekend. She did not want any gifts (she has too much stuff, like most of the rest of us) but the first thing I did this morning was hop on them thar intertubes and send her some cash.

We “celebrated” with soup for lunch at The Session Room and a dinner of porterization at Dexter’s Pub.

Love you baby girl.

My mom died on a Friday (this was in February 2012 so not recent). I made the GG wait until Saturday to drive to the yooperland. The weather was bad that Friday and what was the point of rushing up there if she was already dead. So we ate at the Oscar Tango that night and took a more leisurely trip to the yooperland the next day. Well, somewhat leisurely. We rarely do leisurely trips if they involve the I75 SUV Speedway. Vrooooom.

By Monday morning — *before* her visitation that evening — we had already taken all of the clothing we didn’t want to keep (most of it) down to the Salvation Army IN A FRICKIN’ SNOWSTORM. The GG was instrumental in getting this going and after a moment or two of panic, I was on board. I did stop him when he asked me to bag up her UNDERWEAR for DONATION. Nope! She would be mortified. I threw it out. All these years later, there are organizations that accept CLEAN underwear and recycle it somehow.

Yesterday the GG went to FlaMan’s assisted living room and removed all of his clothing and I dunno what else. He apparently had more clothing than expected, most of it “new” or at least never worn. The GG mobilized pretty early this morning, sorted it all out, saved a couple things, took the rest over to Good Will and Sharehouse. He got rid of all of it. He even checked most of the pockets although I heard him say to a sibling (on the phone) that he was nervous about encountering a brown recluse spider or something. He didn’t but that’s a story for another day…

Did flinging happen too quickly? Nope. There are people there who need FlaMan’s clothing and also his room so best to keep moving on this stuff. The GG did snag a bunch of little trinkety/keepsake items from FlaMan’s various collections. Those things are more meaningful than shirts and jeans.

The GG attended last night’s Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore North Country Trail meeting in the outfit in the pic. The cowboy hat (I don’t think it is a Stetson) is FlaMan’s most recent hat. I think he has had multiple cowboy hats over the years, losing some of them when he lands in hospitals. Us Landfill inhabitants are having a minor marital disagreement about that.

I have had prescient dreams and other such moments in my life. Yesterday was not actually one of those days but I was on edge just about the entire day. Just when I thought we could relax a bit, we got the dreaded call about John.

Yesterday morning was simply non-specific anxiety for no real reason. Because I was procrastinating about doing the laundry maybe? The bright spot in the day was lunch at Captain Joe’s in Whitmore Lake with the EPA retirees. This guy greeted us at the door, the food was fine, our server was extra special, and we sat across from Jim, Ted, and his wife The Beautiful Renee. Not to be confused with our niece The Beautiful Renee although they are equal in beauty.

But all good things come to an end and after a beautiful slow ride on the dirt roads down from Whitmore Lake to The Planet Ann Arbor, the GG started in on… the taxes. The Goddamn Taxes. We’re facing down (again) a situation where we will (probably) be paying more than we want to, which is driving the GG nuts. I won’t go into it. I don’t really understand it but from what I *do* understand, I said something like, “Why can’t we just suck it up?” Like pay it and move on. But no. There followed a loooooong phone conversation between the GG and our finance guy (they are both chatty and there was a lot of pacing on this end). I could only hear half of it but I could suss out that the GG was being talked down off the ledge. When I heard him say (into the phone), “Maybe we should just suck it up,” I JUMPED out of my seat to set the record straight that *I* was the first one to offer that opinion. After about a gazillion sometimes-fraught conversations about the issue and much spreadsheeting, and a mostly sleepless night (the GG).

That’s as far as I’m gonna go with that. The next thing that happened was the phone call from The Lady of Linden (our sister and cFam matriarch) about brother John and then a flurry of calls about that, which pretty much changed the day. Last night wasn’t a sleepless night but it was a restless one (for me).

Today was productive. The GG went up to John’s assisted living apartment to begin clearing out his stuff, then he met with The Lord and Lady of Linden and various professionals to make arrangements. And then they had lunch. I was blissfully space-i-fied (albeit without a vee-hickle, long story). I did all the laundry I’ve been procrastinating about, set up a lamb stew for dinner, filled out most of my absentee ballot, and just breeeeeathed.

Thanks for those who have commented or otherwise reached out about our loss. As an outlaw, I can’t really speak for the cFam but I think people are all right. We knew it was coming. I at least was probably in a bit of denial about how soon this would happen, even though we have visited John many times over the summer.

I’ve been calling him FlaMan (Florida Man) here on ababsurdo but his real name is John. He’s on the right in his signature hat with the GG on the left. He was the GG’s bio brother (one year older and fourth out of 10 siblings) and brother of my heart, especially since we traveled to Florida a few years ago to rescue him from an untenable living situation and I got to know him better.

His health had been declining for a number of years and took a rather sharp turn during the summer. Even so, we didn’t get up this morning expecting this would be his last day.

I hope it’s okay if I say he was a little eccentric. I mean, most of us are, right? I’ll maybe tell stories related to some of his eccentricities someday but only when I have enough distance from this day to filter them a bit. It would be disrespectful to tell any today although they are a huge part of why we loved him.

I think he was grateful to us for moving him back to Michigan where all of his living siblings reside. Although we packed up his belongings and did the driving, all of those siblings played instrumental roles in relocating him to a safe place. So we can’t take all the credit by any stretch of the imagination.

In his last years, he greatly enjoyed visits from his siblings, nieces, and nephews and especially liked to get kisses from “pretty” girls. Believe it or not, this baggy old blahgger was one of those [snort].

The Happy Dozen is down another one today. I loved him and we will all miss him. Godspeed John.

That would be yesterday’s. I learned in 12th grade Honors English (via Mr. Pfeiffer, not to be pronounced “Piffer”, thank you very much) that 3-page papers (etc.) needed an introduction, a “body”, and a conclusion. I was pretty good at it in 12th grade and thereafter but blahg posts are sometimes harder to control. Maybe that’s okay for a blahg and sometimes even preferable. But yesterday’s blahg entry was a train wreck that totally got away from me.

First and foremost, a disclaimer! I was a precocious musician as a kid but not a prodigy. I was nowhere near the musician the (fictional) protagonist in Partita was. I know enough about that topic to know what I lacked. I have complicated thoughts about that I’m just now beginning to find the words to articulate but, for now, mostly to myself.

Still, I was good enough that I could’ve probably had a career of some sort in music. I wouldn’t have been another Jean-Pierre Rampal but I didn’t want to be. The main problem is that I would probably have had to teach young un-talented children and I’m sorry but I’m not good at teaching. I’m not patient enough to explain basic concepts to people. Like put these fingers on these keys to make this note and then correct their fingering when they don’t get it. Some people are good at that. I was not. In 5th grade I went through the first flute method book in one week even though I was playing the crappiest public school flute on earth. I didn’t need a teacher to figure out fingerings.

In need of a way to pay rent after college, because very random flute gigs were not gonna do it, I got hooked up with an entry level computer job (via a beloved cousin). Guess what? It took a bit of time but I *rocked* that entry level job. I didn’t get paid a lot in those days but I was respected and treated VERY well through my child bearing years and eventually I got another more lucrative job in that field. As an unexpected bonus, I get to reconnect with the best of the best of the folks I worked with back in that entry-level at a monthly EPA retiree lunch. We’re scheduled to attend one tomorrow!

Percolating in the back of my mind are unfocused thoughts I’ve been hearing all my life about how music and math “go together”. It depends. I was certainly always good at both (plus computer coding) but I think how these inborn talents are related is very complicated and I’m not sure we’ll ever know exactly what makes us tick. Why are we here? What is DNA? Was there an entity that created this whole system? The things that kept me awake at night as a child. And still do wake me up although Shoreline Dreams do it more frequently.

Okay, another runaway blahg!

That person on the right with the bedraggled hair is meeeee, summer of 1971 at the Interlochen summer camp (and yes we had showers in our camp cabins and yes I had taken one that morning). The Interlochen all-state program was two weeks a summer and pulled in kids from all over the state.

The program was coveted by most decent musicians in the rugged northern outpost of Sault Ste. Siberia. I got to go the last two summers before I graduated from Soo High. I got first “seat” (chair) in the flute section. Man oh man, I cannot remember the name of the girl next to me (second chair) but I liked her so much I think I wanted to name a daughter (eventually) after her. John was third chair. He actually got first chair on audition day but at mid-week challenges, I beat the hell out of him and kept my first chair seat at the next week’s challenges. Oh, don’t get me wrong. He was a good friend and though I haven’t interacted with him personally since then, we both belong to the internet floot loop groop. He posts. I don’t. He has a PhD. All I can say is bravo!

The thing about all of this is that I was competing against flute players from all over the state including many who had access to lessons with Umich profs and even Detroit Symphony players. I had exactly ONE year of lessons from a flute professional. I was in 8th grade when Mrs. Boland moved to town. Her husband was an Air Force officer at Kincheloe and they rented a small house across the Lincoln school yard from my shabby little Superior Street bungalow. My parents always encouraged music lessons and jumped on it to sign me up with her.

I remember being a bit reluctant at the time. Until I met Mrs. Boland. Oh man, she GOT me and she was soooo sweet to me. Like, this little girl can go somewhere with this (if she wants to). She immediately came up with a whole bunch of music for me to order, which my parents would have to pay for (of course). Guess what? They ordered it without question. Imma gonna guess all these years later that The Commander said something like, “We’ll pay for any music she needs.” I know my mom. A couple years later when I *re-started* piano lessons (on my own volition), she paid Mrs. Diabeck more than the asking price.

Mrs. Boland and her husband moved on (as Air Force folks often do) after a year and I was flute teacher-less again until I went to Interlochen and then college. Mrs. Boland had somehow given me enough flute repertoire for me to forge on without a decent teacher. And so, at Interlochen (and at college) and with a lot of practicing and love of music, a kid (meeee) from the yooperland beat out kids that had top-dollar teachers.

Partita? I finished reading it (audio book) today and there is so much to unpack between my life and the protagonist’s life and the author’s life. I may (or may not) get back to this thread some day. I *loved* the book and I have a hangover from it.

Here’s an interview transcription for Barbara Kingsolver on NPR. It may be tldr but it’s good. Dupuytren’s contracture makes an appearance in this interview. I don’t have Dupuytren’s contracture but I sure know about it.

I have seen my beach urchins a few times over the last 5-6 weeks but they have not seen much of the GG because he has been gallivanting all over the place. Oh, we are in contact via text but that’s in fits and starts, like there’ll be a whole bunch of texts for a day or so and then nothing for a few days. Little Cat Z and mouse and I text every morning to report word puzzle progress. That is LCZ and I do, mouse doesn’t really have time to do the puzzles.

Some of our texts get sent to a group that also includes our bonus daughter Pengo. Other beach urchins sometimes wonder if we are spamming Pengo. I understand that but I tend to think Pengo likes to be spammed by us, at least lightly. We love to know what she is doing and I don’t think she minds occasionally hearing about our much more mundane activities.

So Little Cat Z was texting the fam yesterday and suggesting LUNCH today. I was all in and so was the GG. Mouse had to work and Pengo is in some exotic location a couple long plane rides away from here. I mean, even her home is in an exotic location a long way and a couple plane rides from here.

So it was three of us and we ended up at Cleary’s Pub in Chelsea, which was slammed (although we easily snagged a booth). It is a beautiful weekend and it is a football Saturday on The Planet Ann Arbor so I am guessing folks who were *not* going to the game decided The Planet would be too crowded so they decided to hit up the satellite cities/villages surrounding The Planet.

P.S. I wore tights today for the first time since I dunno, late spring at the moomincabin maybe?

That’s how long the new White House press secretary lasted. I’m not surprised but I won’t go any further into it except that when you hire people, you need to do at least a minimal background check. Not just “will you vow total loyalty to me, your god-king?”

Landfill twitter play. Cast: KW (Kayak Woman) and the GG (her long-suffering husband). Setting: Landfill Chitchen.

KW: Do you know what a scarramucci is?
GG: It’s a person isn’t it?
KW: It is a person but it is also a unit of time. It is 11 days, the length of time Anthony Scarramucci held the job of White House Communications Director.
GG: [genuine giggle]
GG: What is that song? Where they sing about Scarramucci?
KW: I think it is Bohemian Rhapsody and I think it is “scaramouche” in the song.

I can’t remember why Scarramucci annoyed me so much back in 2017 but I do remember what I was doing when I received the news (on my phone) that he had been fired. After 11 days. I was photographing a moominbeach road prodject in progress. The moominbeach cabin road is a gravel two-track that requires a lot of maintenance and, on this day, four generations of the FinFam plus some friends of our family triplets helped with this.

The prodject was spearheaded by Mayor Pete (my cousin’s husband) and their son Judd (our next-door cousin) drove the truck. That guy in the suspenders is My Dear Uncle Harry. He was in his 90s at the time (still alive now at 99) and you could not keep him away from this prodject. I didn’t help. I was gainfully employed (telecommuting) at the time and walked down the beach and up to the road through Mayor Pete’s yard to take pictures.

I do remember that my opinion of Scarramucci rose exponentially when he jokingly turned his 11 days of working for Trump into a unit of time. I don’t know much about him other than that but I seem to remember that his wife filed for divorce over the whole thing and he chose her over Trump. Good on him. Not sure about the bitcoin or whatever it is he’s promoting now.

So here is a video of Bohemian Rhapsody. I certainly remember this song and Queen’s “Killer Queen” was an anthem for me as a young woman. I dunno who I thought I was but it wasn’t what I turned out to be… (LOLOLOL)

I don’t remember when Bohemian Rhapsody switched over into the classic it has become. I think I was busy with babies during that time? If you want to see a really cool version of it, here’s where Green Day is prepping a concert and their huge outdoor audience starts to sing Bohemian Rhapsody in unison.

It took me a while to process this photo, sent to me by the GG. We are looking down into the Old Cabin terlet (the one inside the cabin, not the outhouse terlet).

For many years, cousin npJane would arrive to open the Old Cabin in the spring and there would be a dead mouse or two or three in the toilet. I’m thinking she posted the mouse count on facebook for a while. She finally came up with a solution that has been working (so far). This board with a ROCK on top of it keeps mice from getting into the toilet.

The Old Cabin has a lot more trouble with rodents getting in than the moomincabin. I’m not sure why, maybe because it’s old enough that there are a lot more nooks and crannies for rodents to get in. A couple of times throughout the years, we have found dead squirrels inside the moomin. The are not invading to look for food. I remove anything remotely edible every fall. They somehow find their way down through the chimney and then can’t figure how to get back out.

At any rate, all family seasonal cabins at the moominbeach are closed for the winter. This always makes me a little sad but it is what it is and I feel very fortunate that our extended family still has the property.

I was unloading a few grocks from Cygnus today (she’s back again but she may be pressed into service again if Oriole isn’t ready for a couple more days). I turned around and looked down and whoa, FUNGUS! This tree, by the way, once fell on The Landfill, at least about the top third of it did. That’s a story for another day.

Okay, I re-read a whole bunch of Dune, the sci-fi books, sandworms and all. I had this memory of somehow getting bogged down at some point when I was reading it umpteen bazillion years ago but maybe not because I had a great time with my re-read. Although I eventually put it aside for a while (more in a minute). I also thought I had read that there was a new Dune TV series but my wimpy attempts at googling it haven’t turned up much. I’m pretty sure I remember there were movies or something quite a few years ago. I am intrigued by the idea of a TV series. I kinda like the long form, if it’s done well.

I interrupted Dune because Partita “hit the slopes” the other day. I’ve loved Kingsolver since the bean trees and have been waiting for this one. I am just starting it but it totally hits home. Long-haired blonde girl from a rural outpost has a talent for music and goes to college in a big city to study it. That’s meeeeee. Well, not exactly. Long story short, I was not a farm girl and my family totally valued education, including higher education and even pursuing “frivolous” majors like music. More on *that* some other day along with some other differences. It’s all navel gazing in the end but a lot of the stuff the protagonist talks about resonates with me..

I’m not sure I can define “partita” off the top of my head. I googled but I got AI results and… The partitas in the book are all piano pieces, mostly Bach. I can play the piano and am not terrible at it but I am nowhere near a pianist. A quick google tells me that there are pieces for flute (my main instrument) with “Partita” in the title. I’m pretty sure Bach didn’t write them.

That’s me for the moment. I have always been adamant that our little family has at least two working automotive vee-hickles at our disposal. And we usually do. In fact, we have from time to time had three or four such vee-hickles. That happens during your kids’ teenage years. I remember those days from when *I* was a teenager plus we usually had the Bank Car parked at our house. Why it was safer at the Dillon House than at the bank, I do not know.

Pam’s comment yesterday got me thinking about my brother and how I have never really “mourned” him or other close relatives. Except “mourn” is a weird word because everybody does it differently. My way was apparently to continue moving forward.

My brother was 3-1/2 years younger than me. I think there was a miscarriage between us (vague memories of staying at Grandma’s house for a couple days while mom went to the hospital). If that child had lived, I’m guessing we wouldn’t have had Jim. Instead I imagine a bratty younger sister who was more outgoing, pretty, and popular than me.

But then again, that “sister” might not have survived, as my brother almost didn’t because of rh negative incompatibilities that only a complete blood transfusion could mitigate. My uncle doctor and a visiting pediatrician scrambled a musheen that could give a newborn infant a transfusion because there wasn’t such a beast at our small town hospital.

At my early age, I had spent a week at the moominbeach while my mom gave birth. I had a great time! I was with my grandparents and aunts/uncles and cousins. But I have a clear memory of when my parents finally came out to Aunt Katie’s cabin to collect me. I asked, “Where is the baby?” They answered, “We don’t think he is coming home.”

He did come home. He put my nose out of joint big time because I had been a “princess” for 3-1/2 years. He was healthy, as far as we knew. Here he is playing the trombone in the Soo High pep band. Probably a freshman. He was a GOOD jazz ‘bone player who actually played with Woody Herman a few times. But he was also a car aficionado and his paying career was automotive engineer for General Motors. It took meeeee a lot longer to find a lucrative career than it did for him but eventually I managed it.

He, unknowingly to anyone in the era of his birth, brought home the hepatitis C virus. Who knew to test for something like that then. It eventually killed him. It took a long time and he was healthy throughout most of that time.

It’s too long a story for tonight but here I am standing next to the sign for his namesake trail, up on the Lake Superior escarpment behind the moominbeach. The Little Traverse Conservancy owns the property and created the trail, the GG helps with trail maintenance, and I (well, we) donate money. We have become friends with some people who live on the escarpment. I miss the days when my family owned all that land but we are moving onward.

P.S. I sent the pic of my brother to the family chat and my bonus daughter aka my niece and his (beautiful) daughter, sent back a picture of her making that same face.

So I started watching the new Carrie series (don’t take her to the prom) but last night I got waylaid by “Munster Go Home” on Svengoolie. An internet search tells me this is the original of SIX Munster movies. Who knew? I watched it. It was fun. I don’t think I’ll watch the other five [snort].

The Munsters… KW needs to take a deep breath to remember a time in her family history where the Munsters played a bit of a background part.

My brother died. The next morning, I launched from the Planet Ann Arbor at 0-skunk-30 to drive to the yooperland to pick up our parents to drive them down to Trollandia for his funeral.

I remember when I got up there, we decided to get lunch at Clyde’s, which is a drive-in and therefore my parents would not have to interact with people they knew who didn’t know yet that they had just lost a child. They weren’t ready to talk about that yet. It was a beautiful day in the yooperland and my dad and I went out to the moomincabin and I think I kayaked and maybe even swam. It was June, so maybe I didn’t swim.

Dad and I went back in to town to the Dillon House and, as The Commander and I were getting dinner ready, the TV was playing the Munsters over and over and over again.

A Guy Weekend P.S. The pic is from the Little Boots Diner and that is (I think) a Smokin’ Gun Quesadilla, apropos for Guy Weekend. It’s my fave although my choice of meat for this is ham.

Evidence that pumpkins were used as targets on Guy Weekend. If shooting up pumpkins squeeks you out a bit, I would remind you that when we make pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, they end up getting decimated by candles and squirrel activity and whatever and end up in the compost. The guys survived and have sent post-Saturday activity pics from a restaurant. And yes, I’m sure they had access to cee-gars although none of them are smokers (except for the occasional cigar).

On another subject, do y’all remember the old movie Carrie from Stephen King’s debut horror novel? Did you see the movie? Did you read the book? I read the book, then I saw the movie. I saw the movie *in* a theatre in Sault Ste. Siberia. Uber Kayak Woman and I drove in from the moominbeach. She was fascinated by the tagline (or whatever) “Don’t take Carrie to the prom.” Indeed.

I recently became aware that there is a new Carrie TV series set in modern times (think active shooter drills, etc.). Yes! I am gonna watch it and so I started it last night. I do not think this is a series the GG will want to watch with me but who knows. By the pictures I saw on the internet, I was not sure I would like their choice of actress for Carrie. Too “cute” and not the naive, closeted daughter of a religious fanatic. So far, I have been wrong about that. Yes, she’s “cute” but she *is* naive, etc. She’s encountering an American public high school for the first time as a sophomore. A pox on religious fanatics. I’m convinced Jeebus would not approve of them.

Carrie has another soft (or maybe weird) spot in my heart. For YEARS, people would walk up to me in the grocery store or wherever and tell me, “You look like Carrie.” Wait a minute, I am not covered with blood. Of course they meant I look[ed] like Sissy Spacek, the actress who played her. I was flattered (I guess). I never really saw the resemblance except for long blonde hair.

Here’s a random Smashing Pumpkins song I remember from the 1990s when I was carting the beach urchins and their tween/teenage friends around The Planet Ann Arbor in my old POC minivan. I miss those days (and the days when I supposedly looked like Sissy Spacek).

It’s a guy weekend at Hoton Lake. You know the kind. Where the guys get together to drink whiskey and shoot guns. So three brothers (two of them identical twins) and one twin’s adult son are up there. A grandson was tentatively scheduled to attend but apparently he has better things to do. High school freshman. I am not even being snarky! I so remember those days.

Drinkin’ whiskey and shootin’ guns. First, they are not gonna do those two things together. Second, at least one of them has a concealed carry permit (CCP) and you can’t just order them off the intertubes. You have to take training classes. The only time I have heard of the CCP person actually firing a gun except at a target was when a BEAR was (slowly) approaching him and he fired into the air, which scared the bear off. I doubt that his pistol would’ve done much to the bear except to enrage it and make it more dangerous. He knows that.

I am not either anti or pro gun. I have never shot one but I (technically) own the lion’s share of the family arsenal. Mostly rifles. Why? Because I inherited them from my dad, who I never saw shoot a gun growing up. My brother knew where they were hidden (and showed them to our cousin Jay when they were young children). I was oblivious. Guns? Whut? We have guns?

There was a hilarious story (after I was an adult with children) where my dad got so annoyed with all the Canada Geese walking on the beach (and shitting) that he was gonna load up and go shoot some. He got down to the beach with a rifle and… Stopped. 1) He was in his pajamas and 2) What are all the grand dames (like Barb Mullin) gonna think if they hear/see me shooting geese? He backed off to what I’m sure was The Commander’s GREAT RELIEF!

So I dunno what the guys will do this weekend. I’m sure they’ll tipple a wee bit of whiskey. Guns? Who knows whether they’ll get around to that or not.

Photo credit to the UU (aka the GG’s ID twin aka my brother-in-law). I stole it off facebook without permission.

I don’t often drink beer but I didn’t hang up because I knew Cleary’s Pub would have cab too. And margaritas, as I heard someone ordering in a booth behind us. (We were at our fave spot at the end of the bar.)

Since the GG is off on another junket tomorrow (albeit not a 3-week junket) I made him take me out to lunch. I was thinkin’ either Casey’s or Dexter’s but he came up with Cleary’s, which was a great idea because it was a beautiful day and would be a longer ride than usual on the back roads. Except we took the freeway out there because the GG was *hungry* and looking for hardware stores. (Don’t even try to make sense of that.)

After lunch, I made him drive me out on the little roads by the Discovery Geology Center and then we trundled home, stopping in the little burg of Dexter, where there is a hardware store. He went in there to get a key copied. I stayed in the car. It is an Ace Hardware and they always have tempting non-hardware-type things and I didn’t want to impulse buy anything. He came out with a paper bag, not needed for a key. What was his impulse purchase? A junction box. Of course.

I have been unsettled the last couple days because of the rummaging rampage that was going on here at The Landfill. It turns out that most of that rummaging wasn’t related to packing for a trip to Hoton Lake and the yooperland. HE WAS ORGANIZING STUFF TO GET RID OF IT! AND HE *DID* GET RID OF A LOT OF IT THIS MORNING! Yaaaaaay! I would *not* let him get rid of the elegant filigreed silver serving platter that Radical Betty gave us as a wedding gift. Other silver I own is not mine. I have no attachment to it and I dunno how to get rid of it aka “your children do not want your china”. But I’m not ready to get rid of that particular platter yet.

Note to self: *use* that platter the next time folks come over and you are serving them smoked salmon and crackers and fancy goat cheese and whatever…

Oh, not mine, so much. I spent some time today *finally* figgering out what was in the goddamn freezer here at the Landfill. I threw some stuff out. I don’t think it was bad exactly. I just couldn’t figger out what the heck it was.

I did find some actual whitefish in there today and cooked it tonight. I found no fewer than FIVE singly packaged chicken breasts. With just myself to feed here for quite a bit of the last month or so, I was making some sorta Greek salads for lunch with sauteed chicken breast. The problem has been that I had no clue how much chicken breast was already in the freezer so I kept buying more! So, no more chicken breast until it’s gone.

I also spent a lot of time sorting out the financial records for last year’s moomincabin expenditures. I have an affinity for bookkeeping. but I was behind. I would say it’s weird but both my dad and granddaddy were small-town bankers back in the day and I think I inherited some of whatever it is that makes my family tick. Both my daughters have that “bug” too. When they were teenagers, they kinda disparaged that but now they laugh and say stuff like,, “Yeah, I’m just like mom.” (At least in that respect.) When I hired on to my online banking career, dad and granddaddy were both dead but it wasn’t lost on me that I landed (albeit ass first) into the banking biz, even though it wasn’t anything like what my forebears did for a living.

I dunno. What else. The GG was doing a lot of rummaging again today. He’s gearing up for *two* trips to the yooperland. I cannot keep up with his schedule and neither can he. At the end of the day, he could not find his phone. He eventually found it in the passenger seat of one of our automotive vee-hickles. But sheesh.

So my blahggy friend Pam was wondering what yesterday’s photo was and how it might relate to my post. Answer: It doesn’t relate at all (LOL)! I didn’t have a related pic to post and the GG was futzing around with this thing (charging device for something) so I posted this random pic because it illustrates a little slice of life at the landfill, which is loaded with tools and various other crapola (more on that in a bit because boy oh boy was it a day around here).

I will explain today’s pic, although I can’t totally remember what was going on (and no, I don’t have dementia) it’s just that it was a looooong time ago (2008) in a refrigimatator far far away (not). It is an electrofragmathermoglobulator, at least that’s I called it. It’s just a thermometer of some odd sort. We were having issues with that fridge and the GG was monitoring the temperature. We ended up getting a new fridge, exactly the same model as that broken one because it was the only one that would fit in that spot. We still have the replacement fridge and, knock on wood, it still works.

This pic is only tangentially related to today’s post, albeit in a couple ways. First because the GG spent HOURS (or it seemed like hours) rummaging the house, cars, trailer, and shed for a missing solder gun. He thinks it was in a “bag” (I think). He has bags upon bags upon bags with tools and other crapola in them, including one of The Commander’s old purses albeit one that looks kinda like a man purse (murse?). He never did find *that* solder gun but he got *another* one *working*. How many solder guns can a guy own?

The other thing is, I have GOT to get the Landfill freezer cleaned out. I could swear I had some frozen whitefish in there. Quick dinner, right? Nope. What I pulled out was a duck breast. I didn’t figure this out until it was partially thawed. I mean, it’ll be quick to cook so that’s not the problem. The problem is there is sooooo much crapola in the freezer (fridge/freezer side-by-side) that if I don’t clean it out soon I am gonna die by big frozen blocks of things falling on my head. Or more likely my feet. Which won’t kill me but…