Because you do NOT want to know my opinions about the concept of Zero Tolerance as applied to just about anything, particularly when it is applied to families by rogue governments, I will write about Mr. Rank and Mr. Odiferous. (Pleeeeease do not start railing at me about Open Borders and George Soros and all that kind of crapola. It is fake news, much more fake than what the Orange Baboon calls fake news.)

Anyway, it was swampy hot around here the last couple days and I could have turned on the central A/C but I preferred to listen to the birds and insects and the Neighborhood Rooster! So, when I visited the Water Closet at That Batscope Hour last night, I realized my nightshirt was, hmmm, a little ripe-smelling (I hope that’s not TMI). I am a CLEAN person. I shower and wash my hair EVERY morning and I have been known to take a second shower later in the day. I do laundry frequently and have been known to purchase multiples of some of my fave articles of clothing so if something is in the laundry I have a duplicate. I am clean enough that I can usually manage to go a week without laundering my nightshirt. Somehow or other it missed the train this weekend.

I washed my nightshirt today and it is dry and clean and smells like Tide Pods, which I do not eat. Once I somehow (and it was totally accidental) got an ATOM of laundry detergent in my mouth. I did a lot of spitting to get that thing out of there. So I don’t understand Tide Pod eating.

It all got me thinking about the year Radical Betty and My Dear Uncle Duck were building their ski chalet retaaaarment home on the shores of Gitchee Gumee, just down the beach from the moomincabin. There were places to borrow showers and Radical Betty (who was also a CLEAN person) made sure she got a shower whenever she wanted one. Uncle Duck and Grinchie (his son) were building the place themselves and they went a lot longer between showers than Radical Betty. I remember one day when they called the Dillon House in Sault Ste. Siberia (aka my parents’ house) to ask if Mr. Rank and Mr. Odiferous could come into town and take showers. Yes, yes, yes! And probably some bourbon or whatever ended up being involved too. (Word Nerds: I am aware that the “proper” spelling of “odiferous” is really “odoriferous” but the word used in that situation was “odiferous” and googling around, it seems to be recognized as a variant.)

One more memory of that period of time. I was “home” at the Dillon House for some reason and was taking a shower when the frickin’ phone rang. Br-r-r-r-rrrrringgggg! This was in the days of landlines and for reasons I can’t remember, when the phone rang, people felt they needed to answer it. I grabbed a towel and as I was opening the bathroom door, Mr. Rank aka Uncle Duck was barging in the front door yelling, “I’ll get it!” Thank you! Nowadays, I have no landline and my phone is usually in the bathroom with me 🐽. If I do not know exactly who’s calling, I do not answer my phone, especially not when I am in the shower!

When I was a kid up in Sault Ste. Siberia near the Shores of Gitchee Gumee, I can remember being really annoyed when I asked my parents for something to drink, expecting Coke or 7-up or some crazy cherry-flavored pop, and they would offer me a Lake Superior Cocktail. Do you know what a Lake Superior cocktail is? It is WATER. That is all it is. I would be disappointed and they would laugh like crazy.

So, have you ever wondered what looking down into the environs of a septic tank would be like? I have… …not. Those crazy Phecal Phreaks (the GG and npJane) got two septic tanks pumped out today. As I think I said a while back, we are not sure when either of these tanks have been pumped out before, if ever. I have a vague memory that my parents got ours pumped out at some point but can’t remember when…

The Phecal Phreaks also got water test kits. We have well water from something like 110 feet down and I don’t think anything is wrong with it but why not? And the GG spent some time flushing out pipes and water heaters and cleaning up terlet pipes. Knock on wood (because man plans and God laughs, as my Jewish buddies say), the terlet is better than ever and we should have a smooth plumbing summer ahead of us, which’ll be good because we will have a few guests around from time to time. Albeit not guests that won’t be able to handle My Dear Uncle Harry’s Outhouse if absolutely necessary.

I made a small contribution today, which was to put in an order to fill our propane tank, the one that powers the gas stove that heats the cabin when we need heat. When I was a kid, we had a huge wood stove and we were constantly gathering kindling, etc., for that thing. It was fine on truly cold days, although once I was warming up next to it after swimming on a cold windy day and I managed to burn my hand on it. Then there were the days when it was FREEZING in the morning and hot as blazes later. On those days, we would start a faaaar to get through breakfast, etc., and then the place wouldn’t cool off. I don’t really like the propane stove (it’s difficult to start up at the beginning of the season) but it is efficient and doesn’t take up much space. I guess I would probably like a modern, newfangled propane stove. I know they exist. (I don’t really like the ancient fuses either but that would be a whole ‘nother story.)

So, I obtained two Father’s Day gifts. I mean they were gifts for meeeee, not the GG, although I gave him a small collection of token gifts. I received a Cocktail Clock and (another) Kentucky Derby Hat. We obtained these from the garage sale across the street at $2 a piece. Not that I really need to obtain more artifacts for myself or the Landfill but… LofPNet did a good sales job on me for the hat, “It’ll go great with your outfit!” And, I dunno, I just couldn’t get the Cocktail Clock outta my mind after I first saw it. I hope their garage sale went well. They managed to sell MY Yaffa Blocks, of mynah bird cage fame (see a couple days ago). That was fine with me. I put them out by the curb with a FREE sign on them a few years ago and LofPnet’s daughter snagged them. There was a time when I couldn’t get enough Yaffa Blocks. I still have a few but I am OVER THEM!

So where the heck did my Cocktail Clock go? Did it go to the moomincabin? As a matter of fact, yes it did. I had thought that it might be a good fit for the Landfill Chitchen, mid-century modern-ish that it is now that it has been renovated. Apparently the GG had other ideas. Oh dear, I hope I will not be accused of “hoarding” or growing a “collection” at the moomincabin again. In the early years after The Commander’s death I was either “hoarding” or getting rid of things without “permission”. Never a specific accusation of a *specific* thing that I did, just passive-aggressive crapola. Well, yeah, we did take our old gas grill up there, so now there are two grills. The other one is charcoal. The GG prefers gas. If he is the main grillmaster up there, who the f*ck cares what kind of grill he prefers? On the other hand, the kind of things I have gotten rid of at the moomincabin include a few lingering pairs of The Comm’s underwear and extraneous office supplies that we don’t need. I’m not “supposed” to talk about this stuff but jeebus kee-reist…

The reality of my life is that I work very hard not to acquire things but, as I am, you know, alive, I do indulge myself from time to time. On the flip side of that, I do NOT normally get rid of things other people might want to claim but I am pretty sure I know what was valuable to my mother.

Sorry about that rant, it is hot here and I am a wee bit cranky. On the other hand, when I finish reading a book, I often have a bit of trouble figuring out what to read next. Not today. 90-something degrees? “Florida” by one of my fave authors, Lauren Groff. It is a series of short stories and I usually shy away from those but these are not disappointing me one iota! And I have found that I have read one of them before, probably in the New Yorker.

What books have I finished? I read Blackfish City, a dystopian sci-fi type novel about an asterisk-shaped city in the north Atlantic Ocean, constructed after climate change made cities like New York uninhabitable. I enjoyed the story and the author’s creation of a viable world atop the ocean. And I found plenty of flaws. But here I am still thinking about the book a while after reading it. And then I read Pachinko, which I liked but am still processing.

I did a lot of heavy lifting in terms of grokkery-type stuff today but at the end of the day, there was stuff I forgot about or whatever.

So this is the list I sent to the Plum Market with the GG. I knew I had to be specific and, on top of that, we had further conversations about things like the particular mushrooms I wanted and the size container I wanted. And celery. Yes I want it to be already cut up. Don’t look at the price. And pimientos. Pimientos were actually optional but The Pensioner couldn’t easily find them so he asked for help and eventually they were found.

Does the Plum Market sell cocktail clocks? No, but the GG managed to come up with a cocktail clock anyway. We’ll talk about that another day. For now I am about to call it a night.

We don’t really care much about Mother’s or Father’s Day around here but since the Beach Urchins have become adults, those made-up holidays provide excuses for them to spend time with us. 🧡🧡🧡

Just so y’all know, I am alive on this beautiful Friday night. Most of the people who (occasionally) worry about my existence already know where I am because they are my kids and I have been texting with them off and on throughout the evening. Other than that? Hot night. Oscar Tango. Porterization. YAG mini-reunification. We won’t talk about how many times I had to hoorrrrrn at some other idiot driver today. That is about all for tonight.

So here is the Purple Room. Long ago it was a “guest room”, mostly for The Grandparents. When The Baby arrived, it was The Baby’s Room. Well, sorta. The Baby slept with us at first (yes, we were safe about it), so it was still available for The Grandparents. Eventually The Baby moved into her own room and EVENTUALLY, Baby #2 ended up in there with her. The Baby started to get her nose out of joint just a weeeee bit when I told her her sister would be sharing the room with her but then I said a Silly Mom thing like, “Don’t you want that little warm breather in your room with you?” Well, hmmm, yes, maybe she did.

The Grandparents were banished to the foldout couch in the Back Room at that point and the kids more or less happily shared that room until The Baby entered middle school and then we converted the “middle” room (for lack of anything better to call it) into a bedroom and they split up. I’m digressing a bit here but I will never forget the day we dropped The Baby off at college. When we got home, I had to scuttle over to a YAG rehearsal. The GG was looking a bit the worse for wear so before I left, I made him a ‘hattan and when I left, he was sitting in her bedroom sipping it. I’m digressing again but it wasn’t long before he completely rearranged that room and the first time The Baby came home for a weekend, she was LIVID that he had disturbed it. I said, “He’s at Hoton Lake. You’ll have to call him.” And she did and boy oh boy did she let him have it! (I refrained from telling him, “I told you so!”)

Eventually, we promised Baby #2 that if she cleaned and painted her room, we would buy new carpet. This process was ultimately successful but it took quite a while and a threat that Thanksgiving wouldn’t happen until all of the Stuff was out of the living room. Amongst that Stuff was a Yaffa Block (plastic storage unit). One day LofPNet came over and sheepishly admitted that his then middle-school daughter had been spying on our living room with binoculars thinking that our Yaffa Block was a cage for a mynah bird! Can I just say ROFL!?!?! (And ROFL does *not* stand for Righteous Old Farts League, although that is not a bad translation 🙃)

The Purple Room has now been turned back into a guest room albeit the usual guest is one of the Landfill kiddos spending the night for some reason or The Pensioner taking a nap. The Middle Room has turned into a Man Cave. We have at least two Man Caves now. And a Freakout Chamber, which is an Uber Man Cave. And yes, that is Marilyn Monroe on the wall there.

I think I want a perple terlet night-light. But maybe blue would go better with my bathroom, which is no longer blue but gives blue a nod via accent tiles. Maybe we could make the Moomincabin Terlet into a purple nightlight. What about you? What color do you want yer terlet nightlight to be?

P.S. I’m referring to my now (ulp) 30-something kiddos as “babies” ONLY for this historical (if not hysterical) post. We’ll talk about Klondike bars some other day.

P.P.S. The GG just turned up the sound on a fave song of mine, Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen. My best memories of this song are of riding home from evenings at the Baptist Church Camp (you probably don’t wanna know) in the Piedy Gals’ VW Bug. I swear I had never heard of Leonard Cohen until a couple years ago when the Pentatonix did his “Hallelujah”.

I think the first time the taaaaar light came on in my cute li’l Ninja was when it was a few months old. I do not like dashboard lights in general, especially on new cars, and I was a bit panicky but it turned out that the taaaar was just a weeeee bit low on air. As it turns out, the sensor on this vee-hickle seems to be ultra persnickety and the taaaaar light has come on about a billion times since then. I don’t exactly ignore the light but I have become so inured to it that I am capable of nonchalantly continuing on to Cubelandia, texting a pic of it to the GG so he can attend to it when I get home.

Today the taaaaar light was on. The taaaaar light has not come on in… Well, I can’t exactly remember the last time the taaaaar light came on. I had a kind of a premonition that this was not the usual “air is a weeeeee bit low” situation but nevertheless, I persisted. And everything was all right. I got over to Cubelandia just fine.

I spent the day noodling about accessible error messages (ours are not, yet) and other loverly little conundrums, breaking it up with my long-term-back-burner-when-I-need-a-break-from-deep-thinking re-coding prodject and the taaaaar light kinda sunk down to the extreme bottom of my brain.

I’m not exactly sure why it resurfaced but when I went out to get into the Ninja to head home, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to eyeball the taaaars. And guess what? For once, that silly little taaaaaar light actually meant something like, “You are going to have a flat taaaaar SOON!”

The Pensioner suggested that I might actually be able to figger out how to operate an air pump but I am a wimp when it comes to doing anything related to vee-hickle maintenance besides pumping gas so he schlepped over there and rescued me. We don’t know what the issue is (yet). He suspects a nail. I will be driving the Frog Hopper tomorrow (again) so he can figger it out.

Thanks for the rescue, buddy.

And it is not ‘hicken. He cannot do a good cock-a-doodle-doo to save his life or even make any sound. But when I was walking in the woods today, I heard a rooster. It sounded more like er-er-er-er-roooo than cock-a-doodle-doo though. It is legal to keep backyard chickens on The Planet Ann Arbor but I did not think roosters were legal. I don’t really care one way or the other. I liked the sound of the rooster.

So there was a minor brouhaha about “summer casual” vs. “everyday jeans” at my work. I don’t understand the details about the dress code skirmish well enough to repeat them here. Something about exchanging “everyday jeans” for “summer casual Fridays”. The person who gets cranked up about this stuff does not even work at our site. She comes in once every couple months or so from wherever she lives.

I have my own work dress code, which is Sorta BizCaz with touches of Wilderness. I wear a “uniform”. I always wear a skirt. My skirt lengths vary but just barely above the knee is the shortest I go. (Nod to my 1960s high school mini-skirt-wearing self.) I don’t dislike dresses but they don’t mix and match with “tops”, don’tcha know. Tights? Yeah, unless it is hot and if so, bare legs. Sandals – Keens or Tevas – year-round. I used to keep a pair of BizCaz-able shoes in my cube but why bother. Tops? Winter is turtleneck sweaters with a vest of some sort. Summer is a Chico’s Traveler tank top with a lightweight hip-length cardigan sweater over it.

Today I got halfway to work and felt “naked”. I had on my summer tank top but I also had my polartech vest on. I needed it for my walk this morning and despite picking out a cardigan to wear, I managed to leave the house without switching into it when I left. Naked? Naked means bare shoulders in this case. I knew I was well within dress code standards but I still had a split-second moment of “do I need to go home and change?” NOOO! Keep on goin’. Plenty of people wear bare shoulders to work and this will be okay. And it was. In fact, I don’t think anyone even noticed it…

I drove the Frog Hopper to work today. NO, IT WAS NOT SNOWING! THANK YOU MA NATCHER! I swapped vee-hickles with Mouse yesterday. Daisy lit her check engine light over the weekend. Daisy used to be “my” vee-hickle but at some point in ancient history Mouse needed a car. I mean something besides The Indefatigable, which was at last succumbing to, uh, fatigue. So we gave her Daisy and I obtained the Ninja. Anyway Mouse and I have swapped vee-hickles for a couple days and The Pensioner took Daisy in for service today, riding The Bus for at least part of the way there and back. (Daisy is fine, at least as fine as a 13-year-old vee-hickle can be. She does have a rather unhealthy appetite for oil…)

I didn’t have anything to write about today but sometimes the day-to-day trivia brings things to mind and what came to mind was the insane period during which we originally bought Daisy.

It was June 2005 and we had been kind of scouting around for a Honda Civic but for reasons I can’t remember, it seemed the particular model we were interested in would not be available for a couple weeks or whatever. In the middle of searching for Daisy, My Brother The Engineer died. He had serious health issues but his death at that time was unexpected, at least to everyone but him. There was a mad scramble. My octogenarian parents lived in the yooperland and could not make the 5-hour drive to SE Michigan for his funeral visitation unassisted. Soooo. I got up at 0-skunk-30 the morning after my brother died and drove the Dogha (AWESOME 2001 Honda Accord) up to fetch my parents.

Drove up, took them to Clyde’s for lunch, then out to the moomincabin where I SWAM (in late June), and then back to the Dillon House where I clearly remember back-to-back re-runs of “The Munsters” blaring in the living room while we yakked in the chitchen.

Of course, after the funeral, I had to drive them back. Wouldn’t you know the POC’s failing A/C completely crapped out right then! The problem is that by this time we were ALL heading up for 4th of July weekend, etc., but not all on the same day. I couldn’t take my parents up in the POC because at their ages, they needed A/C. The Indefatigable never did have A/C and it was bordering upon disintegrating although I think it did make some good trips up north after that. I’m blocking the details about all the logistical issues involved but multiple groups of people needed to travel in multiple vee-hickles on different days and the Dogha was the only truly road-worthy vee-hickle available to us. Figuring all of this out was making my brain hurt.

And then… Like magic… Or maybe it was The Engineer steering things from over on the other side… Like, “I’ve inconvenienced all these folk by dying without notice, maybe I can at least help them out with their vee-hickle.” He was a car guy his whole life and worked as an automotive engineer. Anyway, out of the blue, we got a call from Howard Cooper Honda and, miraculously, Daisy had turned up! Cute little blue Honda Civic with AIR CONDITIONING! I drove my parents in the Dogha because it was a more comfortable car for elderly passengers. The GG, Lizard, and Mouse took Daisy.

I don’t really believe that people on the other side steer our lives in any way or even have any capacity to think about relatives and friends who are still toiling on this beautiful world we call Earth. But you never know. I miss you brother. Where art thou?

I will never own a dog but I don’t mind borrowing other people’s dogs from time to time, mostly for short durations. This is Charlie. She is a girl. She is a puppy and I’m not sure if she is full grown yet or not but she is a small dog. She decided that when I was sitting in a certain place on the Group Home Couch, she liked to jump up and hang out with me.

She has toys. I found out that each of these toys play different games. Hedgie plays Fetch. Charlie allows a person to pull Hedgie out of her mouth and throw him across the room so she can fetch him. Lambie has two games up her sleeve. She either plays Tug of War or makes Charlie shake her head around wildly so she can knock anything within reach (aka meeeee) senseless.

I got up from the table yesterday and almost went flying. I had spied *something* out of the corner of my eye. I knew that Charlie was outside with her people but I had this split-second of absolute terrification that I was going to step on her. What I actually *did* step on was Hedgie, which is what I had actually spied out of the corner of my eye. I quickly regained my balance and all was well.

After playing with Hedgie or Lambie in my lap for a few minutes, Charlie usually settled down and went to sleep.

The end.

That’s what I did this morning. Just hung around letting the conversation ebb and flow around me, trying to stay out of anything potentially contentious. I mean in a family kind of way. I lucked out on in-laws on the cFam side of the family. We all get along just fine and no one hires lawyers to harass others with hostile, threatening letters (ugh).

Nevertheless, if you put a bunch of familial adults, each with their own ingrained habits, into a family cabin for a weekend, things can get interesting. We want to be together but we need our own space. We try to stay out of each other’s way but we also have to converse. And we are *all* hanging out on our screens. The GG’s habit of playing random videos LOUDLY bothered one of his siblings today as much as it bothered me and that sibling rather loudly complained, meaning I did not have to scream like a banshee. Since lunch was in the plan, a Big Brek was not in the plan but then The Beautiful Becky mobilized and drove over to Best Choice to snag some B&B (Bacon and Blueberries) and, voila, we had a wonderful pancake and bacon breakfast.

The Plan was and always had been to have Lunch at the Tiki Bar. We had hoped to take the Pontoon Bote over there but Ma Natcher did not cooperate. It wasn’t that it was too rough to take the Bote out. It just wasn’t all that warm. So instead, we drove up to Beaver Creek for a mini-hike, then landed at Paddle Hard Brewery in Grayling for lunch.

In the pic is our fav-o-rite North Country Trail Volunteer at the brewery. And a gratuitous little shot of Lizard Breath’s face. I am not much of a photographer but I think I framed that pic pretty well if I do say so myself.

I am kind of done for today. New folks are being introduced to the family in this era and we welcome them. We hope they will be tolerant of us with all of our flaws. Families are so complicated.

We have two old-fashioned Adirondack chairs here at Houghton Lake. Both of them are adorned with dead fish flies (aka may flies aka Canadian Soldiers).

I chose the one that also had a stick.

Week fly-by that is although we’ve had a helicopter fly-by and a private jet fly-over and I’m probably ignoring everything that comes outta Metro because it’s pretty high in the sky by the time it gets here. How the heck did it get to be Thursday night already?

What did I do today? I re-coded web pages. Almost all day. Except for a few excursions into tangled up css and javascript, I could’ve listened to an audio book while I was doing what I was doing. A *lot* of copy/paste/tweak was involved.

The GG planted some mini-gardens today. There’s ‘hicken and peacock guarding some cabbages planted next to my Every Day Is Mother’s Day impatiens. Out of the frame are tomatoes and more tomatoes in the front plus some tomatillos. We do not know how any of these gardening efforts will turn out. Our whole city is a garden, so we have a lot of shade in our yard. We are very reluctant to cut down trees even when they are about to fall on our house and we have had two trees fall… So I am looking forward to making green salsa with tomatillas but we’ll just have to wait and see 🐽.

And with that, I think I am done. Love y’all, KW.

P.S. The GG also eradicated a bunch of poison ivy😍😍😍.

I bought my first xmas gifts today. For 2018, that is. No I’m not gonna tell you what they are. I will say they are nothing big and fancy, just stocking stuffer kinds of things. I bought them on my phone, at work, not without some difficulty due to an imperfect UI. Because of the imperfect UI, I just barely managed to make it to the daily standup on time, which wasn’t a good thing because AW was out so me and FZ had to drive today.

Oh don’t worry, the meeting is friendly (we were collectively wishing for whine today, a good dry red) and the shopping took maybe five minutes of my day. The rest of the day was spent in an intense html/css/javascript debugging session. I work with some of gnarliest old-skool javascript you can imagine and it would NOT be a productive use of my time to make a major overhaul. A lot of business analysts don’t do any kind of coding at all. I am an exception because I maintain a high-fidelity product prototype. I pick away at the code when I need to and then the next time I encounter it I often have no clue what it does. Modus operandi? Insert “alert” statements everywhere and hit the F12 key to show the rendered source code…

It is odd for me to be buying xmas gifts this early in the year. Usually I am scrambling the last week before xmas. These items were presented to me via a promoted Instagram post. I know… I know it’s probably not a good idea to follow ads on social media platforms but if the right thing comes along, I sometimes succumb. The next challenge will be *finding* these items when the season rolls around in whatever “easy-to-find” location I hide them in, probably somewhere in the Landfill Dungeon. Will I find them in December? Will I remember them in December? Will they become “mystery gifts” a few years from now?

In which my mouse allowed me to provide her some mooooooom advice… She is taking a rocket trip to a shoreline campground somewhere on Lake Michigan and I could not stop myself from reminding her that swimming in the great lakes can be very dangerous via undertows and riptides, etc. Well, not to mention that the water is just plain COLD at this time of year. I know that Mouse knows all that (having spent a good part of all of her summers on the great lake they call Gitchee Gumee) but I can’t help thinking about what I perceive as an uptick in recent years of folks drowning in Lake Michigan. I am saddened when I read news articles about these incidents. So many of these folks have no experience with BIG WATER. They are more accustomed to our shallow inland lakes or swimming pools and when they get out into BIG WATER they are overtaken by waves or undertows or riptides or whatever. Not to say that shallow inland lakes and swimming pools are not dangerous too because they certainly are. Even coolers have been known to drown toddlers.

This is less about Mouse (who was very polite about listening to me) than a general PSA to everyone who might happen upon this paint-drying blahg. Take water safety seriously. We do at our Lake Superior family beach and we have never lost anyone although we have had some scary near-misses. As I have said before, as children, my cousins and I could always get an adult to watch us swim, even if they had to wear a winter jacket in order to sit on the beach. As an adult I spent countless hours sitting on the beach counting heads, sometimes without even being offered a bathroom break by other adults in the fam 🐽. But even that is okay (I forgive you bro’). I love sitting on the beach and I love watching kids swim 🐸

The target? It is old. It is taped (via very old tape, it looks like) between two Landfill rooms, the Chitchen and the Aquarium.

I’m talking about the book “Gone With the Wind” and I am speaking directly to the GG. When I retaaaared to the Monster Bedroom last night, the GG had flipped on the TV. As I headed to the Blue and Only Bathroom, I swear the Planet Ann Arbor mayor was on the screen. When I came back, “Gone With the Wind” was on! I am not a “Gone With the Wind” freak but what the heck, it was just starting and I actually managed to stay awake until the “intermission”. Not sure if they played the rest of it last night or if it’ll be on tonight? Or? I don’t understand TV channels any more. Growing up we went from no TV (really) to a CBC channel and eventually we also acquired TV 9&10, a CBS channel. I think I was about 13 when I came home from junior high one day and the Engineer said, “Look at the TV!” We had cable! It was still only a handful of channels.

Anyway, “Gone With the Wind” was a blast from the past. I read the book and saw the movie when I was in high school. I remember the Grand Poobah reading the book from start to finish in the Old Cabin, stopping only for meal and outhouse breaks.

I told the GG over and over ad nauseam that he should really read the book. I mean, why not? It isn’t reeeeallly all about fancy ball gowns and parties, yada yada. And, don’tcha know, he could read it on his Kindle, roight?

I’m thinking maybe I will read it again although it isn’t on my list yet. And then there’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”. When “Go Set a Watchman” was published, I thought something like, “I can’t read that until I re-read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.” Wouldn’t you know that there is a mockingbird audio book narrated by Sissy Spacek. Remember Carrie? I am not always successful at listening to audio books because the soup that rolls around inside my head makes it hard to concentrate sometimes. But I may have to check this one out. Sissy is my celebrity doppelganger. At least when we were all younger, on more than one occasion people told me I looked like her. Don’t take Carrie (or KW 😉) to the prom.

P.S. If you have never seen Carrie, look that one up too. I saw it in Sault Ste. Siberia with Uber Kayak Woman and we went to the Back Door Barrrrroooooom after it. (And I *think* there was also a book and I *think* I read it but I’m too lazy to look it up. You’re welcome.)

I’ve been hearing the terms “inbound” and “outbound” during my entire tenure at Cubelandia. I have never understood them. They are part of a vocabulary that our really long-term folks, those who have a background with our legacy system, bandy about left and right and people like me are left staring like deer in the headlights. I mean, in my Childhood Career, I worked with a legacy system over at That Darn EPA. It just isn’t the same legacy system as the one we are in the last little bits of migrating off of at Cubelandia.

Today, “inbound” and “outbound” came at me from a whole different direction and I floated one question over the wall and upon receiving the answer, the train at long last came into the station. I got visio up and running and within 15 minutes, I had three “pictures” illustrating all of this stuff. By George, I think I’ve got it!

Job Jar? Job Jar? I know that wouldn’t fly around here but I did so want the screen door to magically replace the glass door today. And then, I was hauling a huge basket of Great Grey-Green Greasy Limpopo camping clothing down to the Landfill Dungeon. The GG noticed what I was doing and asked if I needed any help. Help? It is laundry? How many loads of laundry have I done in my life? He then made noises about how *he* had planned to do that laundry today. Oh, feeling guilty are we? You snooze, you lose.

Just to keep the peace around here, I would never make a Job Jar. The GG does a lot of good work of his own volition and I know that if I want something done, USUALLY all I have to do is ask. But the Job Jar reminds me of my old work buddy Louie-Louiiiii. When I mentioned that the GG was going to retire, L-L was ALL ABOUT the concept of a Job Jar and mentioned it every time the subject came up. I miss that old boy. I hope he is doing okay.

That is about all of the random stuff I can muster up today. G’night!

It didn’t start raining until I was back from my walk and although I don’t usually mind walking in the rain I was glad to be able to sit on the Green Couch reading as I watched the rain. A beautiful warm rain with no lightning and I will not have to water my flowers for a couple days.

Picked away at various chores until after The Sunday Morning song [youtube link] and the ancient jazz that follows it. I am not “into” jazz. I am not *not* “into” jazz. I am a classically trained [inactive] musician who was “into” analyzing/parsing all kinds of classical music. I could probably analyze/parse jazz too but I prefer to let it play in the background. Late at night or Sunday morning. I don’t like *all* jazz. I probably couldn’t tell you which jazz genres I *do* like. In my youth I used to say things like, “I really need to get more ‘into’ jazz.” Huh? Well, yes and no.

And then I took the Ninja over to the Plum. Yes, I drove. For one thing, I knew I would buy more stuff than I could schlep home on my back. Also, Ninja needed gasoline so I had an additional errand that Ninja needed to be present for. I didn’t go through Joyce’s Plum line today. She was busy so I went through my Canadian friend’s line instead. I caught Joyce on my way out. Or she caught me. I her told that I couldn’t use my Plum Rewards phone app today because I didn’t have any rewards to redeem (a while back, she shamed me into learning how to use my rewards app). She told me she recognized my long gray skirt out of the corner of her eye so she knew I was there.

I am gonna try making what BFF calls a pork stack tonight. It is one of her inventions and it isn’t just a big pile of meat, it has rice and veggies – spinach, bok choy, and green onions. I’m subbing green garlic that I got at the farmers market for the onions. Since I chopped it up yesterday, it is “stinking” up my refrigerator royally 🐸.

I wrote all of this hours ago and now the gg and Mouse are home from their odyssey and I am kinda done. Food is warming in the oven and we are chilling in the back yard. And there are no bears here.

It’s been a while. What the heck has KW been reading… So, I started “The Power” back in December some time. But then I abandoned it to start the Outlander series and I read through that WHOLE 8-book and counting series. It’s almost kinda like the Duggar family although I can’t help wondering when some of those kids are gonna leave the fold and make oodles of money writing tell-alls. Like what is it like to be the 20th(?) child in that family? But I’m way off track.

I was enjoying “The Power” before I left it for Outlander but I didn’t return to it right away. I eventually did and although I liked it well enough, I thought it was a bit ambitious. I’m not sure I can ‘splain that exactly. The premise (not sure that’s the right word, wordsmiths?) is that women discover an “organ” that allows them to electrically shock people in various degrees all the way up to electrocution. Of course this upends the “world order” of males dominating women via [usually] superior strength.

I dunno. I am a woman who has encountered various sorts of harassment by men throughout my life. The idea of having a way to disable a rapist or whatever is something I have often fantasized about, I mean besides carrying a gun, which I am not “into”. This novel offered an interesting solution to those problems but, well, things went a little crazier than I wanted them too. I’d’ve liked it a lot more as a greatly truncated short story.

“News of the World” was my next book. It had been hanging around the Landfill in paperback form for a couple of years. I finally downloaded it. Love Love Love. Set in 1800s Texas. Journey to take a white girl Indian adoptee home to family. A sweet story but not without violence. It was after I finished this book that I realized exactly *how much* I liked it.

Then I read “The Luminaries”, which was about digging for gold in New Zealand back in the 1800s. I wanted to like this book but it didn’t totally grab me. After I finished it I checked out the reviews on Goodreads and realized that I was not alone. Still, it isn’t a *bad* book, just a little slow reading for me and it was framed by the zodiac, which I am not interested in. Although part of my lot in life is folks born under the sign of Taurus, can I say STUBBORN? I was thinking that knowing the zodiac might help me with the book but other people who reviewed it said nah, that isn’t all that important.

So then… I read “The Wild Birds”. It was a palate cleanser, one that I read in 24 hours and I think I needed that. Set in various places on the west coast and Arizona. I learned about this book via the birder’s list I have subscribed to via email for about a gazillion years. The book author gave some sort of presentation on The Planet Ann Arbor a while back. I did not go to the presentation but it sounded interesting enough that I put it on my Goodreads to-read list. Cryptobiotic soil? Yes but we won’t go any further with that today 🐽

I think about Amazon Woman as my (awesome) boss. I know that she has a daughter in one of our public elementary schools. I totally did NOT know that she was a PTO officer for a couple of years. She was heading off after work today to run a booth or whatever at her kid’s school tonight, hoping her kid would even be there. Don’t ask.

Most of our elementary schools had their annual end-of-year events today. At Haisley it is the ice-cream social. It was going on tonight but I didn’t really realize it until I was walking home from Knight’s and saw extra cars driving down the street and people walking. The music was just finishing up as I walked outside to sit on the patio for a bit.

We volunteered at the ice cream social every year our kids went to that school. There were all kinds of old-fashioned games the kids could play and a cake walk and bouncy-house type things and a raffle and Faz’s pizza and I fergit what else. My worst time there was helping with the cake walk. Jeebus. At the end of the night, all of the organized cakes were gone and me and the PTO prez were throwing whatever ugly conglomeration of cakes and cupcakes we could schlep onto a plate together. People were still lining up in the cake walk to “win”. I don’t get it. I like cake but I like it in VERY SMALL DOSES. Like once or twice a year when people in my building celebrate things and I snag a small piece (with lots of frosting). That does it for me.

The last few years of the beach urchins’ tenure at Haisley, I was the PTO treasurer. My main and only responsibility at the ice cream social was to keep track of the *money*. I was *good* at that and I was trusted by the principal and others enough that I had a key to the office so that I could retreat to a private place when I needed a counting house. At the end of the night, I took the money home to finish reconciling the accounting as best I could and further organize the cash and coins into a bank deposit. Yes, they trusted me to take the money home. Although the school is a quick walk behind our house, on those nights, the GG would drive the POC the mile or so around into the school parking lot to pick me up and escort me and the ice-cream social money home safely. Ya nevah know who might be lurking in the Deep Dark Scary Woods between the school and the Landfill.

So today, after some lack of communication, I porterized myself at Knight’s tonight. Somehow JP managed to get a rezz at the late time that he called and there we were. And so g’night.

On my [spam] email today, I learned that Meghan Markle’s fave mascara costs less than $10. I think mine is less than that. Maybe not. I usually order makeup on the internet these days so I may not notice the price although I would certainly notice if it was something like $20 or $30 or $50 and it is not.

In recent years, I have switched from the Maybelline mascara that I started wearing in junior high to… [I can’t remember what]. The Commander did not want me to wear make-up at all in junior high but if you have acne (and I did, pretty severely) experimenting with makeup is a natural thing to do. You can imagine how The Comm reacted when her eccentric older sister sent me FALSE EYELASHES for my 13th birthday. You can maybe also imagine what those false eyelashes looked like on me after I-e-I-e-I applied them… I still wear eye makeup most days. A wee bit of eye shadow and mascara that takes me about 15 seconds to put on. I gave up lipstick when I became a serious flute player back in 7th grade.

BTW I am not an avid fan of the British royalty or celebrities of any kind. That said, although I didn’t watch the Royal Wedding, I definitely clicked over to various articles about it. It’s plain old human interest. This stuff is fascinating. What is it like to be born into a royal family? What would it be like to marry into a family like that? How will Meghan Markle manage it? I do not know. Could I do it? Noooooo. I am Queen of the Landfill Backyard and that’s about it.

And I am *again* sitting in the backyard. I had to go inside for a bit while a rainstorm rolled through. I did NOT want my MacBook Pro to get wet and there wasn’t enough overhang out here to keep the rain from the keyboard. So I sat for a bit in my Winter Seat by the front window on the Green Couch. Alas, we still have glass in the “screen” door so it was hot there. The GG did not remember to replace the glass with screen before we left and he is still gone and I am not crazy about the idea of schlepping that big glass door up from the dungeon plus I’m not totally sure how to switch the door out. It’s easy to do that kind of thing at the moomincabin, not so much down here. I’m not complaining. If *I* had remembered to *remind* him, he would’ve taken care of it.

The photoooo is from *last evening* in the Landfill back yard. We had rainstorms then too and I had to go inside *then* *too*.