I was a nervous wreck this morning worried that my laptop would still be dead and I’d have to face ANOTHER support call. And I left the slip of paper I had written the support ticket on at the moomincabin so I didn’t even have that.

So. Procrastinate for a while. Timidly open my laptop. Take a deeeeeep breath. Hit the start button. Behavior started out the same as Friday. The Dell startup screen and then weird little messages on a black screen. A list of function keys that didn’t do anything. But then. It seemed to have a change of heart. Back to the Dell startup screen and then. Voila! Everything came back.

I took this as a sign to put my archive of specs out onto Teams. They are also backed up in other places but a lot of the ones on my hard drive have special annotations and things in them. It was time. Hoping this is over but will be nervous about booting up again tomorrow.

And yup, another sunset. I don’t have much else today.

The pandemic has definitely caused my freeway driving confidence to take a hit. I can’t exactly figger out why. I75 has always had the capability of being intimidating. Aggressive drivers galore, monster backups, ice storms in the winter, and once we were HIT BY A TORNADO.

Somehow I am more freaked out by intense traffic since the pandemic started. I’m working on that but I did take a couple of adjacent by-ways today just to get away from it all for a while. I/we do that sometimes anyway. Eventually I had to suck it up and get back onto the freeway. I made it safely and even got gas. Oh, not that I haven’t pumped gas since the pandemic but somehow I have to “psych” myself up more now. The GG just galumphs along as usual. Male/female differences? Polly-tickle differences? Lingering low-level anxiety? I’m not sure. I *think* I like the late-model vee-hickle feature that alerts you when somebody is passing you by lighting a light on the mirror? I’ve had it on two vee-hickles now.

Haven’t used a rest area yet but I think that’s only a matter of time. First thing I did after my five hour drive (even before unloading Cygnus) was sit down to slowly drink a big glass of water.

Anyway. Mini-faaaar to put out upon returning to the Landfill. A paper car insurance bill had arrived in a batch of held mail and it was OVERDUE when I opened it. This was not our regular invoice. I know when that one is scheduled to be paid and I am ON IT. This was related to some changes we made recently and I was not expecting it. I had to muddle a bit because I couldn’t pay it via the website but was able to do it by phone and I see a pending transaction so hopefully all is well. (Yay for on-line banking 🐽)

All is well here. Our flowers are doing great and 🐭 didn’t even have to water them because there was enough rain. Maybe she’ll get the chance to water flowers at the moomincabin. And it actually isn’t tooooo hot here. Today. I didn’t look at the forecast.

The pic is from sometime last week. The freighter is the Stewart Cort, first 1000-footer on the Great Lakes back in 1971.

Today was such a fun day here. I dropped off some recycle in Sault Ste. Siberia and then hit up Meijer (masked) for a few items.

And then dropped off a green bag of garbage up at the res.

Later in the day the Twinz of Terror and the UU’s son-in-law came up for dinner. Salmon, rice, corn, and asparagus. This was sooo much fun and I had a great time talking to s-i-l. I was tasked to get some corn. I didn’t really want to drive all the way into Meijer to get corn so I took a chance on the park store a couple miles down the road and I scored.

The boyz have gone back to their campsite and I am settling down for the night and contemplating my re-entry onto The Planet Ann Arbor. It is soooo hard to go back and forth.

I sure hope tomorrow’s drive doesn’t feature lots of jaffick trams or severe weather…

What a craptastic day this was. As least in terms of work…

Booted up my laptop like I do every day. Everything was all right. Got my VPN going. Opened up email. Clicked on the first spam message and hit the delete button. Spinning ball… Okay, didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes computers need to take little cat naps. Then. Dun dun dun… Blue screen of death. There was a (somewhat) encouraging message that Windows was collecting data and would restart shortly. There was a (somewhat) comforting percentage informing me of how far Windows had gotten in the process. 0%. Okay, I’ll wait. 0%. After a looooong time still 0%.

I am pretty brave about hard rrre-astarts so that’s what I did. No love.

Texted my boss to get the support TELEPHONE NUMBER. I *usually* deal with technical issues (fortunately rare) via chat. But iffya can’t boot up yer ‘puter, ya can’t chat, roight?

On the third try, I got to a PERSON without getting disconnected. (I much prefer chat.) I described the problem (I had taken a picture of the blue screen message) and provided my laptop serial number and other requested info. My support guy was great as far as it went but he couldn’t do anything about my problem, which needed to be escalated to my nearest business unit, which is Detroit. Detroit? For a nano-second that threw me for a loop even though I knew Detroit was the closest OFFICE to my telecommuting location and that WAS my location as far as support was concerned. Just odd to work in Ann Arbor for 14 years and suddenly be working in Detroit except still working in A2 or wherever… I almost said something like, “actually I’m working on the Shores of Gitchee Gumee,” but I suspected this person was in India and who knew if he was familiar with Lake Superior. So I caught myself and said, “Yes, Detroit.”

So I waited ALL DAY for a call that never came. I decided not to pursue it further today. My boss’s reaction was something like, “Hey, you get a free day!” I had a nice day reading (and swatting *moe*-skee-*toes*) in a great location but I couldn’t GO anywhere because I needed to be near my laptop when my callback came, which it didn’t. But I will be back in my primary work location on The Planet Ann Arbor on Monday and I will be DOGGING it then.

The pic is courtesy of the GG and he actually sent me a full-size pic for once so you can embiggen it (and it’s not a goddamn bear). The presence of these deer in our front yard delayed yesterday’s early morning laundromat trip for five minutes or so. The freighter behind them only adds to the pic (embiggen). There are certainly a lot of deer around here but we don’t see them all that often, I think because there is a huge forest habitat for them around here and we don’t have gardens to entice them.

We do seem to have a resident hare this year. I haven’t gotten a pic yet and not sure what to name him/her.

I. Took. A. BIG. Load. Of. Laundry. To. The. Laundromat. Today. Yay! Another step back into life. I went EARLY. It opens at 7:00 AM and I didn’t quiiiite make it that early but I was there well before eight. Woke up at 5-something, made a trip down to the Water Closet, got buzzed by a f*cking *moe*-skee-*toe* for 20 minutes or so, then fell back asleep. It was okay. Almost no one was in there. There were a couple un-maskers around (despite the fact that there is a sign on the door saying masks are required). I wore a mask. The GG did not. He also did not stay around to doooo the laundry. He had breakfast at Frank’s. With my enthusiastic blessing. I am a Washer Woman extroardinaire and I prefer to do it myself although I do miss the days when various beach urchins would accompany me to the laundromat. BTW, it was warm enough here in the yooperland this morning that I sat outside (unmasked) while my laundry did its thing.

One of the reasons I allowed the GG to come with me is because it’s been TWO YEARS since I have gone to the laundromat. I needed him to drive so I could make sure I was prepared. Laundry pods? Check. $20 bill (to get quarters)? Check. Ziplock bag to put the quarters in? Check. Do I know my NEW CAR well enough to not put my laundry into somebody else’s new car? Check. Mask? That’s not something I needed two years ago but I had one in my pocket. Check. It’s okay, I did it all just fine.

So then. The GG got on a ROLL and moved EVERYTHING in the moomincabin living area outside or at least out of the way and CLEANED from top to bottom. It doesn’t look all that different but it FEELS clean and there’s a lingering smell of Pine-Sol, his fave cleaner. There may be some who don’t like that smell. I’m just happy that it’s CLEAN here and somebody else did it (while I earned money working-from-camping-trailer-in-the-moomincabin-yard).

It is excruciatingly hard to keep the floors clean in this place (not to mention that we have ANCIENT linoleum tiles that are FUGLY as all getout). The main problem these days is pine needles and other forest floor debris. When there are little kids around, SAND is a big problem. When there are DOGS around, DOG FUR is a big problem. We don’t have dogs around here any more, at least not usually. Mia visited a few years ago for a couple days and she was fine.

When I was a kid, we had Tigger. She was a stray we adopted and whatever mix of breeds were in her resulted in the look of a small golden retriever. So long hair. The Commander was strict about where she was allowed. At the moomincabin she had a comfy box although she often slept under the cabin next to the warm chimney but she was NOT allowed on the couch. At our shabby little bungalow in town she was NOT allowed anywhere near the living room and NOT allowed on the couch. We had one of those dangereuse expandable child gates to keep her from getting to the living room and she was TERRIFIED of it. But also. One day we were gone and somebody had forgotten to put the gate up. When we got home, we caught her SHEEPISHLY getting down off the couch. Did we punish her? No we did not. We laughed. She was a wonderful wonderful VERY intelligent doggy and we loved her.

My brother had dogs and I loved them and so did my mom but she didn’t like them on the couch. Me? I was a one-dog woman and Tigger was my dog.

P.S. We adopted Tig when I was five because I was TERRIFIED of dogs as a young child. After maybe six hours of being terrified of Tigger and after a whole bunch of non-terrified cousins played with her, she fell asleep. In a box. By the next morning I was petting her and picking her up and I have never been categorically afraid of dogs since.

…and orthopedic shoes (I think) to correct a toe that pointed in. The first shoes I remember were little old navy blue lace-up Keds tennis shoes. But yeah, that particular expression mimics my dad. Other times I look more like a MacMu. “My MacMullan is showing,” is what I like to say.

When I first worked for the LSCHP, he once told me I looked scary. After a split-second I realized I was making an expression my dad used to make. It wasn’t scary to me when my dad made it because I knew it was made for fun but I could understand why someone else might think it was. It’s all kind of funny because the LSCHP is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known but he could be VERY scary when he needed to be although he didn’t exactly let his face show it. But that’s because if you need to be scary (even if you don’t want to be), you can’t let your face show it. My dad and granddaddy knew that too as small town bankers.

A minor mystery about this pic is that it is in COLOR. This was the mid-50s and I don’t think my parents owned a color camera until much later. So I’m guessing my uncle took this pic? He was an avid photographer and early adopter of various camera gear. He also excelled at getting uglies of all of us, which provided many good laughs when he presented family slide shows. I can still remember Radical Betty saying, “What was said?” every time a certain slide showed up where she, Susel, and npJane were lined up on a couch making absolutely awful faces.

I am perched on the beach bank playing with a pail and there are pulp logs visible behind me. We had tons of those on the moominbeach back in those days, escapees from big log booms floated (herded) down the St. Marys to the paper plant in Soo Ontario. They were great building material for forts and cocktail tables on the beach and play structures wherever and I think there were even some beds made from them in the Old Cabin back in the day.

There are sunsets and sunsets and sunsets. I dunno how many sunsets were captured on film by the generation above me. I do know that now that I can pull a phone/computer/camera out of my pocket and capture a high resolution COLOR image, there are tons of them. On my phone/computer/camera alone, not to mention all the other members of the moominbeach community, friends and family. This was last night’s. My cousin-neighbor Judd got a Scary Face version of this same sunset and I have seen other people’s photos posted.

Love y’all and g’night, KW

It was a nice quiet six days here alone at the moomincabin and now the GG is back and sitting around on the deck in his underwear. Green underwear no less. Grass green. What is the world coming to? At least nobody can see him unless they come over to visit and people really aren’t that much. I don’t think we’re all quiiiiite over COVID yet, especially introverts like me.

I hit up Meijer again today, just after eight. Knock on wood, I am okay with stores again. All of the employees are masked. Most of the customers are masked (including me) and I can stay away from those who are not. The ingredient I couldn’t find today was dry sherry. I have a couple recipes that I put a splash of sherry into, therefore I don’t buy it very often and it seems to be one of those things that gets moved around. I wanted to make one of those recipes tonight and there’s no sherry at the moomincabin. My gal found it today (yay). This was not a young person although probably younger than me and I always wonder when I encounter older folks working with the public if they have worked throughout COVID. I admit to feeling some guilt that I could so easily hole up for the duration. We’re all human beings and I was maybe luckier than some. I ran a cash register (an old fashioned one) as a kid and I LOVED it. Except for the pay.

And then my debit card didn’t work AGAIN. I had another card that did. I may have to order something online to make sure it hasn’t been blocked for suspected fraud or something AGAIN. Nope. It’s just me sitting on my you-know-what ordering stuff online during a pandemic.

The rest of the day was work work work and hot hot hot. It culminated in an email bout with Mr. Bear that turned my brain into Swiss cheese. And then Mr. Green Undies arrived. Hey, that reminded me of Mr. Green Jeans! I couldn’t remember what show he was on so I did the google (Captain Kangaroo) and couldn’t help but notice that at the top of the google’s “people also ask” questions was an eye-opening “Was Mr. Green Jeans Frank Zappa’s father?” No. He wasn’t.

I think I’ll stop now. Like I said, my brain is Swiss cheese 🐽

Can you tell that the aminal on the left is a bare bear? I swear the GG cannot seem to RELIABLY text me a FULL SIZE pic of anything. Embiggening this one doesn’t help much. But a bear is what it is and we (me and the beach urchins) received this pic sometime late this morning. BTW, the GG is WALKING down that road and he is walking ALONE! No harem today.

Okay, so yes it is a bare bear and he is solo hiking. I already said that. The next text was that THE BARE BEAR started WALKING TOWARD HIM! He scared it away and I will have to be a bit cryptic about how he did that on my blahg. It involved an Implement Of Too Much Fun and while I am not rabidly anti-IOTMF, I am not sure that this particular IOTMF would be very handy in the event that the bare bear was not deterred by the warning.

Okay. But then. I didn’t hear from the GG again for HOURS!!! That is normally okay but… Like… Did the bear STAY away? Did it come back? I wanted to know that he was alive. Unfortunately there is VERY spotty service in the Porcupine Mountains and I did not hear until very recently. To be honest I figgered he was okay but was still glad to hear from him. He couldda waited until the end of the day to let us know about the bear encounter and its successful outcome.

Oh, the whole bare bear thing? We do NOT have ANY BEARS in southeast lower Michigan. They do not live there. A number of years ago there were bear sightings in the village of Dexter, 10 miles west of my house the Landfill, on the far west side of the Planet Ann Arbor. Except I don’t think anyone ever actually SAW a REAL bear. Because they are NOT THERE! The cub reporter who was assigned to follow the story on mLive (our online local news source) insisted on spelling it “bare”. A bare bear? I gnoffed and gnoffed at that but only after I realized it took me most of the way through the article to notice the misspelling. None of us are perfect, are we?

Serious heat wave. I walked and hung out on the beach early this morning. By the time I was ready to head back down there again, Mr. Golden Sun was waaaaay too hot and bright for me so I hung out on the deck instead. A late afternoon breeze mitigated the heat a bit but also brought down a branch out by the garage. I haven’t investigated that yet but it didn’t sound big. It’s a wee bit early in the season for a dip in Gitchee Gumee so I’m contemplating Second Shower. I’ll try the beach again at sunset. The pic is from last night.

Back when I was a Bikini Girl (in the Jurassic Age🐽) I was a sun worshiper. I am a “blonde” but my skin tans pretty well (after burning) and back in the day I’d’ve been all Hawaiian Tropic’ed up on my striped beach towel in the sand. Before y’all get toooo judgmental about this, consider that the moominbeach is in the great lake state’s yooperland, not Fla. We have like nine months outta the year when we completely cover our skin BECAUSE WE ARE COLD! And some summers are COLD! I remember meeting Radical Betty on the beach one July day and she had a winter jacket and GLOVES on and said, “We just get a little BOX of summer!” in a disgusted tone of voice.

I stopped exposing my skin to Mr. Golden Sun a while back. I mean I stopped STUPIDLY exposing my skin. I think some exposure is good, especially in a northern clime. I do NOT wear bikinis any more (you’re welcome) and I simply don’t care about getting a tan any more. I have a bunch of GREAT sunhats from Sunday Afternoon. Three or four of them are at the moomincabin and are available for any visitors to use. I wash my hair EVERY DAY and haven’t had lice since my adult children were in elementary school. Oh man that was fun. I had a three day diarrhea bug and lice at the same time… 🐽

I almost can’t believe I took this pic 18 years ago! Holy mackerel. It is one of a series of pics showing the process my parents went through each week when they hauled their garbage up the road for pickup. For reasons I can’t adequately articulate, this process was an ORDEAL! Garbage went into big blue bags and plenty of blue language was flung about as they argued their way through the process, which happened EVERY WEEK!

DISCLAIMER: Blue language or not, these folks allowed me to photograph them doing this and even hammed it up a bit. It was a source of stress but they knew it and I think it was all part of their “routine”.

After The Commander died, I had no clue what to do with moomincabin garbage. I think the first post-Commander summer my cousin the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie took it somewhere 🧡🧡🧡

The next year I had to get serious about the garbage. I can schlep a long weekend’s garbage home to The Planet Ann Arbor. Any more than that and it’s difficult. But I didn’t want to pay for a weekly service because I wasn’t going to be here all summer. What to do…

The answer came via our friends of porterzoomation, who have a cabin a bit to the west of us. The solution was GREEN BAGS! So we have switched colors since 2003 from blue to green. But we no longer have to struggle with hauling a big can up to the top of the two-track every week. Instead… We buy our green bags at the Bay Mart gas station, fill them up, and drop them off whenever the Bay Mills Indian Community trash compactor is open.

I dropped a bag off today. Our friends of porterzoomation texted me an alert that the trash compactor has moved from its former location across the street from the casino up to a facility off Plantation Road aka the road to nowhere. We’ll talk about Plantation Road and the old dump some other day. I had a great experience taking a green bag up there today in Cygnus and the young trash compactor attendant had Cygnus’s trunk open and my green bag out before I could even put my mask on and go back there to pop the trunk.

I also went to MEIJER this morning! I masked because. I felt fine there and even asked an employee where the bread crumbs were!

My cousin-neighbors and Our Northern Correspondent know I’m here but I’m hidden from the view of the nearest Piedy cabin by the Old Cabin. So when B stopped by the Old Cabin to gift My Dear Uncle Harry with homemade bread this afternoon, I was hanging out on our deck after my work day and I think I startled her a bit when I called out, “Nobody’s there.”

I have known B my whole life. She’s the youngest of seven and almost a year older than me (but who’s counting). I didn’t see her at all last summer because you know why. So there we were standing fewer than six feet apart talking like we always have. Unmasked. Oh the awkwardness we experience as we re-enter physical social spaces. I did a little back beat and said, “BTW I am fully vaxxed.” I figured she was too and I was right. I don’t think there are many COVIDiots on this beach.

I explained my work situation (she’s been retaaarrred from teaching/counseling for a few years). I told her how Harry was doing (fine!) and about the Little Free Library habit he has developed since his wife (my dad’s baby sis) died. She died at the beginning of COVID but not FROM COVID although the [necessary] protocols established for COVID probably contributed.

I have a balaclava here with me? Yes. I have not used it since a week ago. The moomincabin was a bit chilly this morning so I wore my polartech jacket inside until I realized that it was warmer OUTSIDE than IN. That’s a common summer condition here depending on the wind direction, etc. So I put the screen in the back door and opened up some windows. It was hotter than Hades on the beach this afternoon so here I am on the deck and those are this year’s Memorial Day impatiens to commemorate The Commander aka my mother. This year I am here to water them. Hooray!

TGIF and a chore/errand day tomorrow. Cheers! KW

I am not one of those people who look for faces everywhere but last Friday night Mr. Golden Sun was almost blindingly bright and I happened to look out of one of our picture windows to see this face staring back at me on this red pine! I have never noticed the face before.

We have red pines and white pines and tamarack and birch and all kinds of other yooperland trees here. I know the difference between red and white pine because my FinFam granddaddy walked me and some cousins down the old two-track when I was a little kid and pointed out the differences between them.

Only cousins of a certain age were invited on that walk. Older cousins were busy with older cousin stuff and had probably already had this lesson. Younger cousins were not deemed ready for a nature lesson. He loved babies (I remember his gentle touch with me when I was a small child) but didn’t want to deal with them on an educational forest walk.

I worked from “home” today. Like I always do. Home can be pretty much anywhere now for people in my now defunct office and for me it was on the Shores of Gitchee Gumee. I got a lot of work done today. I also swatted a helluva lot of MOE-skee-TOES.

Thank you granddaddy for buying this beach for our family. It’s going on 100 years now and your grandchildren are keeping it going. I hope you are happy about that as well as the fact that this granddaughter (meeee) earns a good living and can do it working from the cabin her parents built on the beach you bought. You probably had no idea this kind of thing would ever happen and it kind of blows my mind too 🧡🧡🧡

First of all no, the pic has nothing to do with bears or yooperland decks. This is Cubelandia. Empty. My cube was somewhere in the vicinity of that pole. I think it was in the QA Food Cube, which was next to my cube. A couple of those doors to the right of the pole lead to the lunchroom, which I had a view of from my cube. I stole the pic from Amazon Woman who was there ALL DAY the last day and took a bunch of pics. I was always careful about posting pics of Cubelandia because it is a secure workplace and you can’t be too careful. But since we are now out for good, I think this one is okay and apologies to AW for stealing her pic (she doesn’t know about my blahg). The last pic was of her finger hitting the light switch.

So. The Daily Bear-On-Deck Report. For several days in a row Our Northern Correspondent has texted me the location (her deck, P&G’s deck, whatever) and time of bear sightings. Dog vs. bear behavior if the deck-owners also own dogs. This morning I did not get a DECK report exactly. What I got was a pic of BIG BEAR POOP on the ground in front of her house. I had a half thought of posting it but in the end decided it wasn’t really appropriate for a [mostly] G-rated blahg. I did text it to a few people and the GG replied with a question that wasn’t very polite 🐽

I have never actually seen a bear here although I have certainly seen scat, just not near the moomincabin. I think one possible reason we don’t see them is because there is nothing much on our deck that would attract attention. We stopped feeding hummingbirds many years ago (because neighbors were finding bears at their feeders) and I keep garbage securely locked up in the garage until I’m ready to take it up to the res to dump (a wonderful service!). Not that others are not doing what they can to discourage bears. At this time of year I think most people keep bird feeders empty.

Years ago, we had a rare hot night and I wanted to keep the screens in the doors all night. My old coot was adamant that we put the glass windows back in so bears wouldn’t get in. I thought he was being overly cautious but my parents did live here all summer. They “moved out” around 4th of July and returned to their house in Sault Ste. Siberia at the sight of the first snowflake. He may have known more than I did and with the Daily Bear-On-Deck Report, I am re-thinking a bit.

I would probably do something like my parents did if I lived in Sault Ste. Siberia as an adult. But. I live on The Planet Ann Arbor. I have LOVED A2 since I was a little kid visiting my cousins there and I LOVED bringing up my kids there, and I LOVE living there now. And I LOVE it in the summer. So I forever struggle with life as a hybrid yooper/annarborite, traveling back and forth.

And… Bear-On-Deck hyphens are poetically intentional 👺.

Do you want to go for a bote ride? Well, no… I wouldda had to change my clothes. I had some kitchen work to do, cooking prep and putting back together the under-sink area that I cleaned within an inch of its life today. And I was reading a really good book and wanted to finish it. I am telecommuting this week but The Mother Ship gave us a freebie day off today so my work “week” starts tomorrow. But then again (duh), I telecommute EVERY day but I am doing it from the moomincabin this week.

Anyway, I missed a beautiful trip over dead calm seas to check out the salty in the parking place. The Whistler has been there since last evening. I think it had to stop there because of some kind of problem but not sure what because usually the pilot botes are quick to assist salties through the St Marys.

I follow a pilot boat guy on Insty. He posts a lot of pics and video of climbing up and down ladders onto salties to drive them through the St. Marys River system. These are interspersed with pics of tornado chasing out in Colorado. I can’t figger out his schedule. One minute he’s piloting freighters through the Soo Locks, the next he’s chasing tornadoes (which are almost non-existent in Lake Superior). All I can say is what a job! Except I wouldn’t like those ladders… But this pilot bote guy wasn’t around to deal with Whistler or the Finnborg, which came down late this afternoon.

Dinner tonight? Beef tenderloin and sea scallop kebabs with veggie kebabs, rice, and sliced heirloom tomatoes. Plenty leftover for tomorrow night!

Another step into re-entry. BFF and The Guru schlepped over here from their cabin an hour or so to the west. They had two missions. 1) Meijer. 2) Us! We met at Clyde’s drive-in by the Sugar Island ferry, ordered our food to go, and set ourselves up at a pic-a-nic table over in the adjacent Goose Poop Park. WOLFED down our burgers, then headed out the Back Way (tee hee) to the moomincabin for the afternoon.

As we were walking the beach, this rain storm was forming. I was bound and determined it was gonna be a plassover. You are wondering what a plassover is? Does KW need a better proof-reader than the GG, who struggles to keep up with his wife’s hypergraphia? Nope, at least not in this case. Okay, soooo. A *passover* is a rainstorm that passes above the moominbeach across the mouth of the St. Marys/Whitefish Bay into Canananada without dipping down on to the moominbeach. A *plassover* is the same phenomenon after Beer Lunch on the Beach. It’s a Radical Betty-ism similar to “Oh look at the strawdaddies that Grandberry has picked”. I can’t remember if I was old enough to partake in Beer Lunch when “plassover” was coined but I remember we all gnoffed and gnoffed and gnoffed. I remember the strawdaddies/Grandberry thing but I was *definitely* not old enough to partake in whatever mischief was going on then.

I was wrong about today’s storm being a plassover. It did end up briefly dumping heavy rain on us. We need MUCH more but we’ll take what we can get. I won’t begin to try to describe the shifts in weather throughout the day. The temperature changed with the wind direction and Mr. Golden Sun’s hide and seek behavior. I will say that it was dead calm this morning, meaning MOE-skee-TOES were out in full force and although I don’t think I was actually bitten, the fact that they kept going for my ankles caused my ankles to ITCH all afternoon until I finally washed my feet. TMI?

We have seen BFF and the Guru since you know when. Last summer they stopped by our back yard on The Planet Ann Arbor on their way back to their main residence in Atlanta. We definitely distanced at that time. Today we were mostly outside but braved a bit of inside time and hugs before they left. Yes we are all vaxxed. 🧡🧡🧡

Suzy aka the GG earned his pay around here today. He scrubbed the heck out of the deck and its furniture and then he cleaned the moomincabin windows. Yesterday he got on a roll and potted the impatiens we bought for us, the Old Cabin, Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench and various other places. If I had known he was gonna go pig wild with the impatiens, I wouldda bought a fourth flat.

I am inching along on a prodject to pull EVERYTHING outta the kitchen drawers and cupboards here, WASH everything and WASH the drawers and cupboards before putting things back. I’m not sure when the last time this kind of cleaning happened.

My cuzzint npJane arrived with her dad, my Dear Uncle Harry, this afternoon. They are on a rocket trip to open up the Old Cabin for the summer and are shooting back down to the Planet Ann Arbor tomorrow. Yes they know that it’s Memorial Day and the traffic will probably be horrible. It is what it is. We hung out with npJ and Harry on the beach in the later part of the afternoon and our cousins “Jeep and Pan” joined us for a bit. Again, sooo great to get together without masks and worry of COVID.

And then we did porterzoomation and they had a bag of FRITOS right in front of the cam. It was the LAST bag of Fritos at the park store today. I have not had a Frito since I dunno, maybe sometime in 2019. I actually kinda fergot about Fritos. I was going NUTSO looking at that bag of Fritos and now they are on my list! I bet Pat’s or Meijer has them.

Actually it was 10:03 sun and the sun was down but sunset goes on for quite a while at this latitude as we approach the summer solstice. This sunset was not as spectacular as the one the night before (my cousin messaged me a pic of that one) but it made for a nice artsy (if I can apply that word here🐽) photo reflecting the moomincabin interior. This is not the first time I have taken this kind of pic…

We are inching along in terms of re-entering various “unwashed” public places. At least I am. The GG has been going INSIDE since I dunno when but always masked. NOW he is going inside UNMASKED. I am not in total agreement with that but it is CDC guidance and he is vaxxed (so am I) and in the grokkery store I accompanied into with him today, there was a mix of masked and unmasked faces. I was one of the masked and all store employees were also masked. I did not enter the hardware store. Oh yeah, I did shop at Parmer’s to get impatiens for the moomincabin but that was all outside including the cashier. This is a weird transitional time and I am masking in stores to respect those who cannot get immunized and might not know if my unmasked mug means I am vaxxed or lying about being vaxxed.

And then. The GG was about to leave to exchange an unexpectedly unwanted purchase from the grokkery store when I spied my cousins “Jeep and Pan” walking up to our cabin. They came INSIDE and I was SOOOOOOO happy to talk to them IN PERSON! And they brought homemade bread! 🧡🧡🧡

Man oh man, what a drive! The first few hours featured heavy rain, wind, and the typical holiday weekend warriors. We foresaw that this holiday weekend could potentially be extra busy so we left early in the day and therefore didn’t encounter any slowdowns. Cygnus drove like a charm. What a nice little vee-hickle! She even purrs although her purr is not quite the same as the Ninja’s. My fears that she would be over-packed with crapola ended up being unfounded. I was told I could choose an aminal co-pilot and I chose Softy Beanbag since Froooggy and Green Guy have been up here guarding the place for a couple weeks.

We had considered lunch at the Driftwood but bagged it. I am not quiiiiite ready for indoor dining and it was too cold to eat outside and Iggy and Mack were uber busy with tourists today meaning crowds. We’ll get there.

So how do you like that scenery? Looks nice and sunny right? It is but it was colder than blue blazes this afternoon. Aside from other layers of clothing, I had to layer hats. A balaclava for warmth and a sun hat to shield my face from Mr. Golden Sun. And yellow sunglasses. They shield me from glare while still allowing me to see my phone, which is where I normally read books (and check weather and marine traffic and facebook and twitter and Insty and whatever).

So below is your fugly for today, a baggy old bag dressed up for sun and cold. And there is no ice here, not that we expect ice at this time of year. I’m of course talking about cocktail ice. There are USUALLY a few bits of snow left over on Memorial Weekend but not this year.

He’s not really all that grumpy. I am probably more often a grump. I was REALLY grumpy this morning when I saw him start to pack stuff into Cygnus. I was planning on putting my clothes, grocks, and technological crapola and pretty much NOTHING else into Cygnus. Maybe Frooggy. I had thought the reason we were taking two vee-hickles (plus a camping trailer) was so I would have my own transportation while he’s off camping with his girlfriends. But nope. We are taking both vee-hickles so he can haul a whole bunch of crapola up there. Grrrrrump!

Me? I have two rolling suitcases full of clothes. I have TWO because ya nevah know whatchyer gonna have to deal with weather-wise in the yooperland. I have everything but boots and Yax. Grocks? I have FOUR bags of non-perishables lined up ready to go and will pack perishables in the morning. I always haul meat/seafood, etc. up there. It isn’t that the Sault Ste. Siberia area is anywhere near a food desert. I just have my fave markets down here plus some stuff ordered online from Luke’s Lobster. I don’t really need to haul non-perishables up there. Partly it’s a hangover from my pandemic year. But also if I haul stuff up it decreases my time spent in Meijer. I love Meijer and am sooooo glad they built a store there. For one thing, it’s located such that I don’t even have to go IN town to get there from the moomincabin. Still, Meijer trips cut into Beach Time.

Part of my grumptastic-ness was fueled by more coffee than I probably needed this particular morning. There was also an incident where I couldn’t figger out how to unlock Cygnus to drive it over for a curbside pickup. Turned out the fob in MY hand wouldn’t open the car because there was a fob INSIDE it. I vaguely remembered Jalen telling us about this when we picked it up. Welp. Yup, there was a fob INSIDE the car. Why was it NOT in the KEY BASKET? A [LOUD] driveway Twitter play ensued.

KW: Will you put that fob in the goddamn KEY BASKET?
GG: Don’t be such a bitch!
KW: Being a Crabby Bitch is part of my charm!

Okay. Now I know how to unlock Cygnus when one fob is inside and one is out. I assume Mooon Yooonit works the same way but I haven’t driven her all that much.

Tomorrow we will join the unwashed masses to drive north to the yooperland for the holiday weekend. I will be following the Lyme Lounge all the way and it sounds like it’ll be rainy at least downstate. I like and dislike tandem driving.

I did it. I went in-person shopping at my fave Plum Market this morning. I went right when it opened at eight. There was hardly anyone in there. I wore a mask and I didn’t notice anyone without but again, hardly any shoppers. I kept a good distance from everyone I saw except my mouse from whom I got a quick grocery store hug but we got vaxxed together.

I was nervous about going but once I got inside, that completely disappeared. My mouse was there and Joyce my cashier buddy was there. She has COVID hair to rival mine but hers looks a lot better 🐽 The seafood guy was waaaaay friendly and chattering up a storm. We shared stories about filling our freezers with meat and seafood back in the “beginning” when we all thought we would be eating beans and rice for the duration.

I FORGOT HOW TO USE MY DEBIT CARD! I kept swiping and swiping and it wasn’t working and then the cashier asked, “Does it have a chip?” Yes! Yes it does. I knew that! I am such an idiot. I am not ready for crowds and I’m not quitting curbside yet but that felt pretty good.

Cygnus took a trip to the dealer and they found and replaced a funky sensor in one of her taaars. I hope that takes care of the problem. It makes sense because it was very intermittent and sometimes the light turned off by itself. And the tires are fine… But fingers crossed.

And I figured out my CSV problem. All I will say is I was working with ANCIENT excel files (1997-2003 application version). You don’t wanna know anything more. Now I have to go through and convert them all to a newer version. Busy work for times when my brain is taaarrred.

Tomorrow is gonna be a three-ring circus around here as I work and pack and try to endure whatever rummaging the GG gets into. I’m already being asked what I want to do when I’m up at the moomincabin and when I want to come back. Other than work and do chores, I want to beeeeee at the moomincabin. Walk the beach, talk to my cousins and friends, pot some impatiens, sit on the bench and watch the boats go by. Come back? We’ll see. It doesn’t really matter where I am any more and I think I feel brave enough about entering stores to buy grocks, etc.