He walked into the Landfill this afternoon wearing this American flag type tank top. Okay, we are American citizens and this shirt is okay with me although it is a little sleazy in some kind of way I can’t exactly articulate.

It kinda reminds me of waaaaay back when we were kids and buying our first (and only) house. Nowadays we transfer money between financial institutions by clicking or tapping whatever we need to. We can do this in our pajamas if we want to. I mean, the last time we bought a new automotive vee-hickle, we wrote a personal check for the entire amount.

Back then, for reasons I can’t even remember, our house-buying transaction required us to take thousands of dollars of cash out of one bank and carry it across town to another bank to deposit it. Midway through the trip, I took a gander at what the GG was wearing. It was a Shaky Jake tank top. A TANK TOP! We were 30 but we looked more like 20 and he was wearing a Shaky Jake tank top. And we were carrying a bunch of cash around.

I *think* he had found some sort of a button down coverup type shirt by the time we had to drop off the cash. Jeebus, how young and idiotic we were back then, pregnant as we were not to mention gainfully employed at tech jobs.

We won’t talk about the Let’s Go Brandon t-shirt and how many times I have found myself alone with it in the Up North Laundromat and decided NOT to leave it there. The things we do for love.

This pic is through the screen in the Landfill Chitchen into the driveway and the neighbors’ back yard. But you can maybe see the blue blaze on the tree and down in the left lower corner are NCT and Little Traverse Conservancy (LTC) stickers on Mooon Yooonit. If you follow that blue blaze it’ll only lead you into the landfill back yard.

Reports from the moominbeach indicate that a bit of lopping might be in order on parts of the cabin road. Maybe I can get Chainsaw Man out there if I am nice enough to him. I don’t think he will need to chainsaw anything at this point in time. There may have been some chainsawing out there earlier in the season but loppers will probably do whatever is needed now.

This report comes via a UPS delivery person. It’s only in the last few (20?) years that UPS/FEDEX, etc. delivered stuff to the moominbeach. When I was a kid…

When I was a kid, the only delivery truck that came down the moominroad was the milkman. I can even remember when he drove down the Old Road, which is pretty much total woods nowadays. The Commander and the folks at the Old Cabin and probably the White Tornado (my aunt next door on the other side from the Old Cabin) ordered milk from the milkman in those days. My dog Tigger HATED the milkman and barked like crazy every time the milk truck came along. The milk truck only used the Old Road before we built the moomincabin. The moomincabin BLOCKED the Old Road.

We didn’t have addresses at the moominbeach back then so postal, etc. deliveries were not really possible. The milkman just knew who we were and where to go.

Nowadays, we all have addresses (and fiber optic wifi…). The addresses make it easy for UPS/FEDEX to find us when we need to order stuff online, like covid tests although we really don’t order those any more.

At least not for more than a night. I remember two individual nights in my life when I felt homeless. I don’t remember a lot of details about *why* but in one case, I think I was moving with some roommates into a new apartment in East Lansing but it wasn’t available until the next day. One roommate (I can’t even remember her name) said we could stay with a friend of hers. Uh, okay, we did stay in that friend’s rental house but I don’t think I ever met the friend. I was uncomfortable sleeping in someone else’s house and did not take a shower in the morning and we skedaddled (in my car).

Another time, I was with similar friends and we were headed north to Petoskey State Park. Problem? No reservation and got there after it was closed. We somehow drove in there — in my car, which was driving me nuts (it was the crappiest Pinto wagon on earth) and sneaked down to the beach to sleep. Again no shower in the morning and some skedaddling, not knowing what kind of law enforcement might be afoot.

That’s not how I like to live or travel and I trusted these folks to be prepared but they sure were not. They also were not the best friends I’ve ever had. I mean, they were nice enough and weren’t delinquents of any sort. I was probably more delinquent than they were, which may be why we didn’t keep in touch.

My point (if I have one) is that there are people in the United Snakes of America who are homeless for long periods of time. Who can’t call up parents/relatives who would say, “Get a hotel (and use my credit card).” Whose family has kind of given up on them, often for good reason. I haven’t ever been in that kind of situation, either having enough money to rent a room for the night or having a friend or family member to provide shelter. It’s been great that we have always been able to pay that favor forward. And now we have kids who can do the same for us, although we’ve never had to take them up on it.

The pic is a garden room mouse and the racc have built at their house.

I am getting really tired of dealing with my hacker. I logged on tonight and a whole bunch of pics had been uploaded into my blahg admin and I had to delete them individually. F*ck off and sigh.

This pic is one *I* took today. Years ago, I posted a similar one on Facebook and was called out by someone who I sorta know from high school about the huge amount of trash I had put out. Welp. Nope. The two big bins on the left are yard waste/compost. They don’t even go out every week. The next one is recycle. It is jam packed this week but that is because there is some stuff in there that shouldn’t be in there. It’s plastic but it isn’t in the form-factor that the city wants in the recycle bins (it’s broken up plastic Adirondack chairs, a no-no). I was annoyed that I wasn’t consulted about whether or not it should be disposed of in this way, I am Garbage Woman after all. But I decided to let it go. A truck with a big arm picks up the bin and dumps it. I’m sure it makes more work and some human intervention to sort the recycle somewhere down the line but I was just f*cking sick of being the Landfill Recycle Police that day so I let it go.

Finally on the right we have the actual Garbage Bin. It almost never has anything more in it than one half full kitchen bag.

The facebook person who snarked at me eventually unfriended me (or whatever). I dunno what I did if anything but she always had a bit of an edge to her and I wasn’t surprised. I am still friends with her boyfriend (another high school classmate of mine) and he has kept up his friendship with me through three profile name changes. He got hacked a couple times by someone trying to sell motorcycles and other crapola via his profile. I sometimes wonder if being associated with his girlfriend had something to do with that.

Eeny meeny miney moe, which of my cards are a go. I have a debit card and two credit cards.

For many many years, I used the debit card ALL the time because it seemed safer in terms of household budgeting to take the money immediately out of the checking account. It’s too easy to get behind by over-spending with a credit card. I did that ONCE when I was young and stupid but not stupid enough that I didn’t know better, banker’s daughter that I am.

I almost never use the debit card since it got hacked a couple years ago. It wasn’t that much money in the grand scheme of things but I did not buy $200 worth of Bombas socks and I fergit what else and I didn’t want to pay for that stuff since I didn’t buy it. The bank caught it and it wasn’t hard to get it refunded but because it was a *debit* card, I had to spend some time on the phone and file a claim (or whatever, I fergit the term.

I decided to re-jigger my personal payment system. Since that incident, I use one particular credit card for almost everything. I have an alert set up for every Monday morning at 7:00 AM to remind me to pay off my balance and I do it religiously. People have asked me why I do it weekly. Because I am not hit by the sticker shock of a monthly bill. I can afford that sticker shock but whyyyyyy? It takes maybe 30 seconds to pay the bill.

So that credit card expired on Sunday. The replacement card still hasn’t arrived. I know the bank sent it because when I looked at that account online, it gave me instructions for activating the new card. But… We were out of town and had the mail held and I think there was a snafu somewhere in there. So I reported the card lost and am now waiting for a new one.

All right, the last day my credit card was active, I was at the Plum buying [g]rocks (inside joke) and tried (for fun) to use my debit card. The u-Scan asked me if the card was debit or credit and I picked debit and it was a no-go. So I used my (still active) main credit card. Later on, I remembered that my debit card can also be used as a “credit” card (I do not understand this).

Today. I went to the Plum. I made sure my own personal shopper was there so if I couldn’t make my debit card work, I could get her to swipe her personal card and I would Venmo the money to her. As it turned out, telling the uScan I was using a *credit* card did the trick.

Later, I met the GG at the Sidetrack Bar & Grill in *Yp*silanti (not *Yip*silanti) and I tested out an alternate credit card that only gets used to autopay a newspaper subscription. I warned the bartender that it might not work while assuring her that we were good to pay our tab via other means. It worked and all was cool.

Being it was the Sidetrack, we saw Amtrak whiz by once but it happened too fast to get good pics. But then this “railtruck” came along. It rises up off its rubber tires onto “train wheels” so it can drive down the tracks to do maintenance.

Panic at the Landfill! What happened to your blahg? It was morning and Coffee Boy had just sat down with his coffee at his computer and for some reason he looked at my blahg (there are times when he doesn’t read it for days). I had no clue. I posted about last night’s dinner at a restaurant and a guy in a vintage boat shirt. I went to bed and blissful sleep. In the morning, I had been HACKED! There was a post out there about betting on something or other in Uganda. I did not write it. If you are one of my five regulars, you know I didn’t write it.

The GG was a little freaked out about it. I was not. I deleted the hacker post and changed my password. Ho-hum. It happened again later so lather, rinse, repeat. That had me a little more worried but I haven’t hit the panic button. If worse ever came to worst and my whole blahg disappeared, my database is backed up on whatever server it’s on. Also, I have downloaded it (or parts of it) before and I know how to do it. If big alien bugs invade from somewhere and we are all out there smiting them with whatever weapons we can finagle from our kitchens and garden sheds, I will be worried. That said, I should download my database weekly or so because who knows when big bugs (or orange baboons) will invade the earth.

For now, I have put a “sticky” post at the “top” of my blahg saying to ignore anything related to betting or any other weird not-KW-type topic. I will delete hacker posts as I see them.

Pic taken by my mouse.

No, I am not posting about betting or Africa or any other stupid crapola. If something like that shows up, I did not write it. I’ve apparently been hacked somehow. This post will stay at the top until my hacker goes away and I will delete all hacker posts as soon as I see them. Which might not be immediately. Hang loose.

This is the Uncly Uncle spying down from the balcony at Knight’s Steakhouse to the entry way, where there are benches for patrons to sit on if they have to wait for seats. His ID twin (out of frame to the left), the GG, is peering down in an identical pose. It’s a good place to spy on cleavage but I can’t call them out for that tonight. First, because it wasn’t really hot enough for revealing tank tops, oh not that you can’t wear a revealing tank top in any weather, you just might need a fur coat over it. Also, Knight’s was doing a good business tonight but it wasn’t crowded enough for a lot of people to be sitting on the benches. We were ushered right in and seated in the balcony.

Knight’s is our neighborhood pub and an old stomping ground of ours but, believe it or not, this is the first time I have been there since before covid. I’m thinking the GG may have been there for an EPA luncheon or two or three but not me. We used to go there all the time, sitting at the bar if we had to wait for a seat. Or standing behind other people at the bar, which is not “kosher” at most establishments, like it might even be illegal. Knight’s Twitter/X handle is @strongdrinks and that’s how they pour them, although a lot of other places have upped their game since we returned to restaurant dining after covid and I have a whole list in my head where I can get a decent ‘hattan. Besides the Landfill, that is.

How do y’all like the UU’s vintage motorboat shirt? Click a couple times to embiggen. I texted the beach urchins this pic and they were a little confused about whether it was their dad or uncle Bob. Partly because they are identical but also (I think) because it is the kind of shirt the GG (their dad) would also favor. As it turns out, the “school teachers” down the road from the Hoton Lake cabin gave it to the UU and I think the GG does in fact covet it. The school teachers (the Gumper referred to them as that although they *were* school teachers) used to collect all kinds of stuff and had frequent yard sales but I’m told their house was hoarder heaven until a fire leveled it. They rebuilt the house but nowadays only one school teacher remains and she is 90-something. No more yard sales.

It’s been a while. I’ve been a bit of a sporadic reader in the last year or so and switched to audio books last summer because I can semi-multitask with them although I have to rewind 30 seconds more often than I am strong enough to admit.

I woke up this morning with a hangover. A book hangover I mean. John of John by Douglas Stuart. Heard about it on NPR. Oprah also promoted it but I don’t follow her book club, although nothing against her or her book club. Anything to get people *reading* instead of watching crapola on TikTok et al. I also read another of his novels, Shuggie Bain, a while back.

I loved John of John. If you are not comfortable reading about gay characters, you may not. Set in Scotland with a dad and his young adult son who are both gay but neither of them know the other’s status, they struggle with their relationship to each other as well as a whole cast of characters. Gay folk (humans) don’t exist in a vacuum. They have all kinds of relatives and neighbors and friends like everybody else. There is little to no *gratuitous* sex in this book, only hints of what might be happening in private. Which is just fine with me because I don’t really want to read about that kind of detail unless it’s crucial to the story. And sometimes it is. But this book explores the emotions and complexities of human beings and their relationships with each other, male/female, gay/straight, whatever. And tells a helluva good story in the process.

BONUS! I heard the word “Caithness” and after I picked myself up off the floor, I had to rewind about three times to listen to the narrator read it again (English with a Gaelic/Celtic accent, easily understandable). Ancestry pegs my DNA as something like 75% Scottish and some of my ancestors are from a farmhouse in Caithness. Sometimes Ancestry pegs some of my DNA as Caithness, sometimes not.

I searched around for my next book today and for better or for worse, I landed on The Circle by Dave Eggers, a lot different from Scottish crofters, even modern ones. So far I am enjoying it. It’s about the internet/tech industry and was published in 2013. I was in my 6th year of an 18-year career in on-line banking then and I am curious about the author’s predictions about how the internet industry’s trajectory (in general) from that point in time parallels what’s happened in the real world. (The author has been criticized for not doing a lot of research on tech/internet industries at the time.) I am not crazy about the characters so far but we’ll see if that evolves. Also, the technology in the book is way more sexy than that of my team’s stodgy corporate banking application.

The pic is of shelling peas growing at mouse’s house. It’s getting to be the season. And a chicken coop, unused.

Oh, not that I am actively missing anyone right at this moment. I am basking in The Landfill Kitchen cooking salmon piccata and friends. Back when we all had landlines, The Commander (my mother) and I enjoyed talking on the phone, gossiping about whatever was going on in our family(ies), the moominbeach, and Sault Ste. Siberia. My brother used to call The Comm “The Birch Point Beach Telegraph.”

The Comm never had any form of dementia but her speech processing developed some issues late in her life and it could be hard to talk to her. Part of this could have been hearing but a speech pathologist friend of a beach urchin put a diagnostic name to it that I can’t remember. At any rate, it was hard to talk to her via phone or even in person the last few years, although she could certainly text with me on her iPhone.

So although there are occasionally things I would like to tell my mom, I don’t ever really feel like grabbing the phone to talk to her.

Who I do actively miss and often want to talk to is my long-time coffee friend Sari who died pretty unexpectedly last fall. We started meeting for coffee (with other people) when our kids were in middle school. That’s a long time ago. She was a mensch, a word she taught me when she called me a mensch so many years ago. Me? An American/Canadian* citizen of mainly Scottish origin with no Jewish heritage whatsoever. I have said before that I probably don’t merit the term “mensch” but I felt honored. Sari WAS a mensch and I so miss her.

*Apparently I *am* already a Canadian citizen, according to newish Canadian law (dual citizenship with American). If I pursue this, I will have to send documentation to Canada to certify my citizenship there. I’m not doing it yet but think I will. Again, I have no plans to move to Canada. After all, I can see it from the moominbeach and it’s close enough to kayak to. If I have proof of my Canadian citizenship, maybe I can even land on Point Des Chenes Beach. If I don’t get hit by a lake freighter on the way over there.

The GG asked. Well, yes, actually I did hear the knocking. With my super ears… I was trying to make it be a woodpecker but I could NOT make it sound like a woodpecker. This was kind of knock – knock – knock. Woodpeckers ratatatatat like crazy when they peck. I know what they sound like. If you are lucky they are not pecking at your metal fireplace chimney because that is loud enough to reverberate throughout the whole house.

Turns out it was a chipmunk looking for a boyfriend? I dunno, there’s a pink, shacky looking bar on a street in Bradenton Florida where you can apparently go if you are looking for a girlfriend (or boyfriend) at two in the morning. I was in the back seat when our brother pointed this out to us and the GG (driving) jumped about a mile. I’m guessing you can probably even take your dog there with you. But the chipmunk stopped knocking so I guess she must’ve found a mate without going to a bar.

I don’t wanna a pickle, just wanna ride my motor-sickle. I have never been a fan of motorcycles. There were little trail bikes (not street-worthy) at Hoton Lake when I first started hanging out up there. By the time I started going there, I think the Gumper (my father-in-law) was mainly keeping them going for The Beatiful Susie’s boyfriend Doug. The Gumper was a mechanical engineer and futzing around with engines was one of the things that kept him going. Master Mechanic on the WWII aircraft carrier Hornet? Yes, he was. He saw some action in the South Pacific but he always maintained that the tropical storms were worse, at least on the Hornet. We’ll go into what might have happened to my pilot dad if he had been sent to the South Pacific some other day. I wouldn’t exist, for one thing. I am tremendously grateful that I do exist and knew my dad and father-in-law into their old age.

I’m getting off on tangents. We met Lizard Breath down at Casey’s Tavern for lunch today and this motor cycle was across the booth from me and a bit above. I know nothing about it. At a table next to us was an old Haisley (Duncan Street) family from our kids’ elementary school days. So much fun.

The pic is from mouse. She and the racc are camping at the Rifle River Rec Area.

I have been to the Rifle River Rec Area once in my life. We left after the last day of school. It was a half day and the beach urchins were pretty young. We met the UU and had rented the Scaup Cabin (which some people call the Scump Cabin). It was rustic and being a daily morning shower person I struggled a bit with that. I remember doing something like hauling cold water down the hill to the outhouse where no one could see me and dousing myself, shampoo and everything. Note. I can definitely do outhouses so that wasn’t a problem.

On that particular trip, rain started when we arrived and it didn’t really stop until we left at the end of the weekend. We did a canoe trip and, uh, TMI, halfway through the canoe trip, my “cycle” came a bit earlier than expected and I had to use whatever paper products we had with us to, y’know. TMI? Yes. TMI. It was not fun and other people had to do without paper products for the time being. I struggled to communicate what was going on what with men and small daughters aboard. When I was asked (years earlier) about the tampons in the bathroom closet and tried (awkwardly) to explain, I was told in no uncertain terms, “Mom, you take care of your own business.” Okay then.

I think that mouse and the racc have rented the Scaup Cabin before but this time they are tent camping.

There was a log book at the Scaup Cabin and the GG used that to copy a few pages out of Jurassic Park (the novel). Everyone except maybe mouse had read the book. Mouse *had* seen the movie. She laughed all the way through it and then said, “I’m not going to watch this again.”

Down the I75 SUV Speedway back to The Planet Ann Arbor. We had a passenger today, my cousin Jay of the wicked sisters, who flew out from the PacNW last week and has to fly back tomorrow. She was gonna drive down with her wicked sister npJane yesterday but I said, “you can ride with us on Wednesday. That is if we can fit you in amongst the chainsaws and things.” A wonderful invitation, right? But she did fit (and I sat amongst a lot of the junk). She’s staying with us tonight and she took us out to Dexter’s Pub for dinner.

Growing up on The Planet Ann Arbor, this is Jay’s old stomping grounds but she didn’t really know exactly where Webster Church was, which is logical since it is very near but not ON the Planet Ann Arbor. So on the way back from Dexter’s Pub, we drove by Mouse’s house and the Black Lives Matter church across the street. If you are not religious but want to live in a house that happens to be next to a church, this is the kind of church to live next to. I will also note that the church building and adjacent graveyard are VERY OLD and I don’t really know their history

And no, we didn’t drive by Liz’s house but mainly because we were all pretty dead tired by then and wanted to sit in the Landfill back yard before it started getting dark and the MOE-skee-TOES started coming out. And they did and although I do not have any bites, my feet and ankles are itching like crazy just thinking about having biting bugs near them. Also noting that Eliz also lives across the street from a graveyard. But not a church.

Last but not least, via Jay, we got MDUH’s (My Dear Uncle Harry) opinion of the movie Arrival. “Silly” was his first word… I haven’t watched the movie (I don’t think) but I have read the novella it was purportedly based on. I’ll have to watch the movie and revisit the novella. MDUH’s taste in literary arts of all forms has always been much more refined than mine and I am always interested in what he has to say, especially now that he is (ulp) 98. I don’t think he galumphs canoes any more…

P.S. The Bedbug Saga has been resolved and that’s all y’all need to know except that there were never any bedbugs in any dwellings belonging to us or any of our family members.

When I was about 20, my older cousin Mac got married (in our hometown). All of my cousins were there and it was a pretty wild wedding. Me and my “triplet” female cousins (born the same year as me) attended the bachelor party the night before, which was at Radical Betty’s then unfinished house on the moominbeach. We parked up at Lewie’s and walked down the snowy/icy road and I remember UKW slipping and falling about a bazillion times and all of us (including UKW) laughing uproariously every time. We don’t laugh about stuff like that these days. The spiral staircases in RB’s ski chalet style house had not yet been installed and as the only way to travel between floors was ladders and there were no railings around the loft, we were lucky no one fell out.

That was Friday night and I am gonna skip over the wedding the next day to Sunday morning. A bunch of us were leaving from my parents’ house for church (yes, really), where I was scheduled to play something on my flute. In the process of putting on my down coat, I found a pair of pantyhose (the ones I wore to the wedding) in my coat sleeve and pulled them out. In front of god, my parents and a bunch of other relatives. I don’t remember this next part but I am told The Commander (my mom) made one of those, “I don’t really want to know, do I?” faces.

My memory is not perfect here (alcohol maaaay have been involved, ya think?) but in my defense, this is what I think happened… After the wedding reception, a bunch of us went out to the Ramada Inn, where a bunch of wedding people were probably staying and there was a sauna and a pool. I changed into my bathing suit, at least I’m pretty sure we were all wearing bathing suits. After a swim and sauna, when getting dressed, I decided I didn’t want to put my pantyhose back on. Why bother? It was undoubtedly something like 1:00 AM and I was going HOME and TO BED (my own bed, alone!) and I didn’t CARE how cold it was outside. The only time I ever see 1:00 AM these days is when I am making a quick trip from my bed to the water closet and back.

There are other stories from that weekend but they are not blahggable so as to protect and honor the memory of those who have moved on, including my little brother and the groom (Mac) himself. It was good times though.

P.S. The pic is the moomincabin but you have to flip the pic horizontally to get the right orientation because I am aiming the cam at the front picture window so it’s a reflection and therefore backwards.

I woke up during my usual waking up time range. And then I was lulled back to sleep by a freighter’s fog horn. At the other end of the day gobbling turkeys are lulling me into my chill out zone before sleep.

This was the first day warm enough that I needed to replace the back door window with a screen and open up some other windows. Some people spent time on the beach but I was working on dinner for us and the Old Cabin cousins and by the time I was ready for the beach, it was too hot down there. I am not complaining. I enjoyed making FinFam Steak Dinner for my cousins. They are working hard on decluttering the Old Cabin and we all enjoyed whining and dining on the BUG FREE moomindeck this evening.

I don’t normally post photos of people without their permission but I don’t think this one shows anyone in a fugly or compromised position. It does show the big fireplace in the Old Cabin and some of the other artifacts there including one of the hooked rugs. We’ve been hanging out over there on the colder evenings but no fire was needed anywhere tonight.

I like to change my facebook profile and cover pic to (sorta) match the season or sometimes whatever is going on in my life. My profile and cover pic both featured SNOW and although when we got to the moomincabin last Wednesday, there was still a mini snow pile, it was time to change. So the first pic is meeeee when I was, hmmm, about two, I think? Playing in the sand in front of the Old Cabin, which is where we spent summers until we built the moomincabin (when I was six). The second pic is oh I dunno from maybe 10-14 years ago. Those sunglasses were my one purchase in Seattle besides food and booze. We had traveled with our daughters to the PacNW for a wedding on Lopez Island but we stayed at cousin Jay’s house the night before our return flight and did dinner and a bit of walking about with Jay and a cFam nephew living in the area. Good times.

Here at the moomin? Today? I made a Meijer dash to get dry sherry and a few other things this morning. It took me no less than 10 frickin’ minutes to find dry sherry. There are people who drink sherry but it is definitely a sipping wine. I mainly use it as an ingredient in a shrimp dish that just wouldn’t be the same without it. I was about to give up and change my dinner plan when there it was! Five bottles in a sea of wine bottles. I only bought one.

When I arrived back at the moomin, the moominbeach Road Commission (in this case, the GG and next door cousin Judd) was mobilizing to do a bit of chainsawing. They did not succeed in that they did NOT do any chainsawing. That was a good thing as the job turned out to be too dangerous for the equipment they had at hand. Talking themselves down off that ledge, they reasoned that the tree was on Our Northern Correspondent’s land so they went over to talk to the landowners. Who had ALREADY arranged for a PROFESSIONAL tree service to come out. Thank you very much.

It was a chilly misty moisty kind of day and I had “soup and whine at a restaurant” on my mind. The GG was kind of iffy about that but I figgered out how to drag him out. Next door at the Old Cabin, the Wicked Sisters (three of my cousins who are sisters) went off on various cabin reorganizing missions in Sault Ste. Siberia, abandoning Le Marquis. I said something like, “I wonder if Le Marquis would like to go to Cozy Corners for lunch with us.” And yes, yes, he did. So we trundled slowly over there and back in Mooon Yooonit and had a nice cozy lunch.

Not much to talk about today. Chainsaw Man and some other *certified* chainsaw folks and swampers went out and did trail maintenance on the North Country Trail (NCT). I stayed back at the moomincabin.

Way back when, when my family made the bad decision to donate a bunch of our land to the Nature Conservancy and a local real estate developer immediately grabbed our precious land and started developing it, I was terribly aggrieved. I had vehemently argued with my parents that this was a bad idea without very specifically drawn up contracts. I was kinda pooh-poohed about this. “Oh it’ll be fine,” they said. Nope.

Kassandra of Birch Point Beach (meeee) thought differently. I had a bad feeling and I was right. My generation (my cousins and I) mobilized. My strength was to cobble together addresses (email and snail mail) and coordinate communications. My brother was *fearless* about communicating with people including the developer even as he (my brother) was facing what turned out to be a terminal illness. Others did their parts.

I don’t wanna go too far in to this tonight. The developer did manage to make a gash into our land and there are some houses there now. Another more local conservancy (Little Traverse Conservancy aka LTC) stepped in to buy a lot of the land and now that we can, we support that conservancy with donations and trail maintenance on the trail named after my brother, the Jim Finlayson Trail.

Even way back in the beginning when the first houses were being built and I was angry as all getout, I realized that the people who moved into those houses were not the enemy and I wondered when I would be friendly with some of them. It has been maybe 25 years until that happened but the GG has made friends with folks who live up there and they all went out doing NCT trail maintenance today.

A part of me still misses the old Read property that my family once owned. I used to walk to the cabin on it with my dad. But the beaver dam area is still there and the Jim Finlayson Trail passes by it. And I find myself looking forward to meeting our NCT friends who live up there. Whenever they bought their property, they couldn’t have had a clue about my family’s 100 year history in the area. They are a positive force and I find myself welcoming them. Onward.

I thought we were going on a paint delivery mission this morning (blue paint to blaze trees, etc., on the North Country Trail (NCT)). That plan fizzled and I didn’t really want to deal with whatever tourists were at Tahquamenon Falls. So we took off on a slow drive along the shores of Gitchee Gumee, checking out various entrances to the NCT for possible trail maintenance activities.

When we got to the Tahqua Trail, which runs along the mouth of the Tahquamenon River, we (he) found some chainsawing opportunities and here he is chainsawing at an NCT trail head. A swamper accompanies a chainsaw person to “spot” them and administer first aid and/or call 911 if needed. I am not a real swamper. A real swamper needs serious training, particularly in first aid. My training is being able to dial 911. Assuming there is cell service. Not too many years ago there was NOT any cell service in this area. Nowadays there is enough that I could’ve called for help if needed. Fortunately these were very simple chainsawing jobs and no help was needed but chainsawing is dangerous and Chainsaw Man takes that seriously.

When I was still employed and it was a work day, I wouldda shooed the GG off for the day. But I am (happily) not employed so I was like, okay… It is an adjustment but it is a happy adjustment.

After we got back to the moominbeach, two carloads of cousins rolled in to the Old Cabin. Pooh and Le Marquis were in one car and Jay hitched a ride up from The Planet Ann Arbor with her “little” sister (and the “baby cousin” of the fam) npJane. It was a little warmer today. The wind was not screaming in off Lake Superior. It was what my dad apparently called an undertaker’s wind (that means it comes out of the swamp). We hung out on the beach forever in the late afternoon and we drank all of the GG’s sniggly amount of beer he bought yesterday at Meijer. Six cans? Really? Nope. I am not a big beer drinker but I even had one. And we’ll be buying more.

In the small world category… My blahgger cousin Jay has met my longtime blahggy friend Margaret IN PERSON. They both live in the Seattle area. A couple days ago Margaret commented on Jay’s blahg to say hi to KW (meeee) and Jay delivered that to me today. So Hi back to Stargazer Margaret. And love from all of us at the moominbeach.

Trees are budding around the area but at the moominbeach we still don’t have a lot of leaves. That’s okay. It means we don’t have a lot of MOE-skee-TOES either. Liz at about three, “Mama! There was a MOE-skee-TOE!” Yup. We have a lot of those around here. Once the trees start budding.

I got this pic after a trip to Meijer and the hardware store. I had planned to go to Meijer by myself but the GG wanted to go too and I decided that was okay on the condition that I could trundle along with my own grockery cart by myself. Yes. So. Okay. That’s what we did and we managed it without “fighting”. LOL

It was sooooo cold last night but with my sleeping bag and a comforter I had a beautiful sleep. We hung out on Bill’s Beach Bank Bench for a while this afternoon. Watching the winds change from north to northwest to southwest to whatever.

I forever and forever and ever thank my grandparents for buying this land and helping the next generation (my dad, etc.) own land here. And for all of us in the next generation who have managed to KEEP it.

And to people like the GG who married into the FinFam not having a goddamn CLUE what the HELL they were getting into but rising to the occasion anyway.

What a long day. Food dropoff at FlaMan’s (aka Columbo’s) place. One-and-a-half hours of lawn mowing at Hoton Lake. Lunch at the Driftwood in Iggy. And then we arrived… To the description in the title and the pic below.

Oh yeah, there is also the typical Memorial Day weekend ice pile, a pretty small one this year despite today’s frigidity.

Yesterday The Planet Ann Arbor was in the upper 80s and although it was a weeeee bit cooler this morning when we left, we were nowhere near dressed appropriately for the cold we encountered when we got here. The GG is below with bare calves and my fingers were totally frozen from unloading the groceries. Don’t worry, the water heater is in fine shape and my fingers are toasty now.

Next door neighbor cousin Judd came over to welcome us. He was appropriately dressed in abominable snowman clothing and we got caught up on some of the latest news from his family. Among other things, our old buddy Cap’n*QUEEN*Leila (his niece, my first cousin twice removed) is now a high school graduate!!! We are so proud of her.

This place does not have central heat or insulation but we *will* be able to warm it up enough to sleep. I think. If all else fails, the Lyme Lounge is behind the moomingarage and it has a “furnace” or whatever. But I’m hoping to be able to sleep in my childhood bedroom tonight. Right next to the water heater. LOL!