I walked into Cubelandia this morning. It was just about the fugliest in a long string of fugly days and a vase full of TULIPS was sitting in my cube. This was courtesy of my *loverly* boss, Amazon Woman. Somehow or other at some point in time I guess I must’ve ‘fessed up to what date No Politics Day fell on for me.

No Politics Day goes back a long way. Well, in one way it goes back more years than I am strong enough to count. In another way it only goes back to, oh I dunno, maybe about 2007 or so. I don’t feel like looking it up but it was back when the Orange Baboon was a real estate “tycoon”/reality show “star” and so had nothing to do with him.

My family(ies) have widely mixed polly-tickle views and mostly we agree to disagree and talk about our kids or botes whatever. But on the day No Politics Day was established, a bunch of us were draggin’ *ss at the Group Home at Hoton Lake and some people were ranting a bit about polly-ticks. I did not agree with them. I am not exactly Lefty Lulu but I have been called The Family Liberal before, which is a long fun not-particularly-blahggable story.

I decided that I get one day outta the whole year when I can actually kind of play queen-for-a-day and so I played my card and declared, “This is No Politics Day!” The Lord of Linden looked at me like I was nuts. I said it again. This time people kind of shrugged their shoulders and heh-heh-ed a bit. And THEN they stopped talking about polly-ticks.

This No Politics Day I did my chores and went to Cubelandia like I usually do unless the date falls on a weekend or MLK Day and the GG and I are cooking filets et al for 🐭/🦝 tonight. I didn’t ask for gifts but there is one on the dining table and I can’t wait to open up my new Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner. Er, at least I *think* that’s what it is. If so, it is for the moomincabin.

Cheers! -KW

I wonder how many times I’ve used that title… Anyway, this is a loooooonnnnnng stoplight if it turns red as you are coming up to it so there was plenty of time to dredge my iPhone outta my pocket and get this crappy pic. We’ve had a LOT of dreary weather lately but very little of the S-word and what little we did get was laced with ice. Winter isn’t even half over. We’ll get more!

Yesterday’s lunch restaurant was in a shopping plaza that also has TarJay, Office Max, and Joann Fabrics. I haven’t been there in years but I used to go there ALL THE TIME! I have never been much of a TarJay shopper but I was in there fairly frequently back in the day. Joann’s? Yes yes yes, back when I was doing beadwork and quilt-type stuff. Office Max? Sometimes a couple times a day. Oh man, “running” YAG? Constantly making copies of handouts to parents or play programs or play tickets or postcards for the next audition and more. I used to have a color theme for each play. Red Balloon was red of course, Dandelion Wine? You guessed it. But others were more subtle. I am blessed with a low level of synesthesia and colors often match up with “things” for me (letters, numbers, whatever).

Disclaimer: I did not “run” YAG. Sue ran YAG. I tried to make the trains run on time. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not.

I greatly appreciated her artistic GENIUS (yes, really) at theatre and teaching young people in that art. And even adults sometimes. Like meeeee. She pulled me in to play the flute once and I rose to the occasion by beginning with an old French virtuoso solo piece I studied in college and riffing off from there. Yes, I actually improvised, not my usual talent. I have played in the Lydia Mendelssohn theatre as part of a large pit orchestra on a few occasions and being a one-person band was pretty dern cool in that familiar old pit.

Alas, working with/for an artist can also be frustrating and eventually I got to the point that I burned out. It is the only job I have ever burned out on. I was paid but it was a stipend and very very very little money although that was okay for a while. When I quit that “job” I had no idea what would be next. I was taking community college web design/development classes at the time but I did not expect that I would ever be hired at the kind of job I have now. And that first year after I quit YAG was as hard as all getout. My classes had ended and my dad and brother had died and I had no play production to keep me busy. And yet somehow, here I am…

It was kinda funny meeting up with old YAG folks for a while. They would ask what I was doing and when I told them “systems analyst/online banking biz”, they would sometimes take a step back like, really? You have a “real” job? Yes. Yes I do. I love these people ANYWAY! Really. I often feel amazed at myself that I have such a loverly little career. One that didn’t exist when I went to college. Have you ever heard of “Imposter Syndrome”? Then again, it’s an at will company and you never know when the next Black Thursday will come around and yank you.

G’night, KW

I don’t like to have toooo much tech around. At least not the personal kind of tech that I have to haul around. My iPhone is my main computer and my camera and my MacBook Pro is my computer for when I want to type something longer than a text message (although I can dooooo that on my phone). I gave my iPad away. It was just tooooo much for me to deal with three devices.

So I was a bit skeptical when I received a pitcher* frame for xmas. Will I use it? It turns out that I enjoy having it on my counter flipping through pics. There’s a whole bunch of moomincabin pics and then there’s Lizard Breath out snowshoeing and Old Weird Mac with his wife also snowshoeing and FlaMan (not snowshoeing) and… Who the heck is that doggy? He looks a lot like my old buddy Ernie except I don’t think he has eyes? Well, no this dog does not have eyes. I don’t know the dog so it took me a few cycles to process that pic. (Ernie was one of my brother’s dogs and he’s been dead of old age crapola for a few years.) I think I would love this eyeless doggie.

*Pitcher is a nod to our old Benevolent Despot aka the LSCHP. He was well educated with a masters in chemistry and whatever it takes to be a rabbi and a few other things and I’m sure he knew perfectly well how to pronounce “picture” but he enjoyed saying “pitcher” anyway.

We had a busy busy day of meetings at Cubelandia punctuated by lunch at Everest Sherpa Restaurant where you can get Indian/Nepalese/Tibetan food along with trekking tours in the Himalayas. There is a mannequin dressed up as a mountain climber in the vestibule and I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince FZ that they had imported a corpse from Everest to Ann Arbor.

Oh yeah, fob folks! FZ has the same model car as Mooon Yooonit except his is a hybrid. He has a fob and until I told him today, he did not know he could lock and unlock his doors by touching the handles. But then, until he bought his RAV4, he had been nursing a Toyota sedan that was old enough to drink until he was told it could no longer be resuscitated. He didn’t buy his RAV4 because I had one even though we bought ours before he bought his. In fact when he bought his, he was surprised that I already had one. I was at the moomincabin when the GG picked ours up and I was pretty exclusively driving the Ninja to work when we got back. And I don’t crow much about new vee-hickles. You need one, you buy one. That’s about it. If you can afford one but that’s a whole nother topic and a difficult one…

If you take the I94 18-wheel Slogway over to DayTwa, you pass right by Metro and yesterday a Delta plane of some sort was landing DIRECTLY over us and boy oh boy do I wish I’d had the presence of mind to point my iPhone up and get a pic (I was NOT driving). I could have done a burst and somewhere in there would be the perfect pic.

Did I do that? No I did not. I watched agape as it flew toward and over us on the freeway thinking, “I can almost see into the cockpit!” Instead, this is what my iPhone apparently took a picture of when I wasn’t paying attention. Nothing like a good old accidental pic. A bit of my backpack and one of my “fancy” skirts (two lacy overlays, count ’em) and some Mooon Yooonit interior stuff. What is that orange color? I don’t remember it.

I am still learning the ins and outs of Mooon Yooonit. I *finally* (a while back) figured out that if I had the key fob in my pocket, I could unlock her just by touching the door handle. Duh. It was a few WEEKS after that discovery that I figgered out (totally by accident) that I could also LOCK her by touching the door handle (in just the right place). Double Duh. Y’all who have been driving push-button vee-hickles with fobs for years are gnoffing yer you-know-whats off and I’m happy to provide you that kind of entertainment. And no, I have not read the manual. I am a muddle through it kind of gal.

Okay, today was not my blasted birthday but it seemed like a good day to meet up with our Dee-troit beach urchin so we met up with her and a friend for lunch at one our faves down there, Green Dot Stables. They have a huge menu of sliders and other small dishes and you can mix and match to your heart’s content. I usually order three sliders of various sorts and maybe steal a fry or two from somebody else. I didn’t do Mystery Meat today after our server told us it was camel. Hmm… Camel? Really? Hmm… I recently read a book that included camels who served in the USA Army and I just, uh, couldn’t… Our server wasn’t into it either.

I am not big into bday celebrations. There were years and years when the beach urchins didn’t live close enough to even think about coming home to celebrate ours and it was just the GG and meeeee and that was okay. Nowadays we all live within 20-45 minutes of each other and usually try to do *something* to get together somewhere near our birthdays. Mine is the hardest because it’s in January so who knows what Old Man Winter is gonna throw at us on any given day. Scheduling? Nope.

We had our generator ready for an ice storm last night. Well, what did we get? We did not get a full fledged ice storm but we had a light but slippery coating of snow-ice this morning. I was able to walk with YakTraks. Mr. Golden Sun was brilliant throughout the morning and I think we were hoping he would melt all of the snow but, y’know, he is still waaaaay down in the south and doesn’t quite have the strength to melt our ice. So, patches of ice persisted throughout the day. The freeways were pretty okay but a lot of Detroit sidewalks and the Green Dot’s parking lot were slippery as all getout. As were the streets in the downriver Detroit suburbs. Thick ice. Yes.

We like to drive around out in the woodsy wilderness but occasionally an urban industrial tour is in order. We are close to the Detroit River waterfront in the pic but we could not *to* the river because of all the big chain link gates with KEEP OUT signs on them. Ooooookay. There is almost NO traffic on the streets down there on a Sunday but we kept getting stopped at traffic lights when there was NO ONE coming from any direction. I’m not sure what this area is like on a week day but somehow I am guessing that there isn’t a whole lot more traffic than there was today.

The GG drove up to Flint this morning to take some lamps and things to our brother FlaMan. I was glad to get rid of the lamps. They were my mother’s floor lamps and I don’t really like floor lamps.

I didn’t really think the GG should drive up to Flint this morning because the weather seemed iffy. Actually I had a serious premonition about it. We had heavy rain here on the Planet Ann Arbor but north of here the gods were predicting ice. And so that is what the GG ran into. When he drove into FlaMan’s parking lot, it was slippery. He dropped off the lamps and told FlaMan that he had planned to visit for a bit but the roads were icy and he really needed to get back down to the Planet Ann Arbor.

So the GG was driving back down and the roads were bad and some young punk passed the GG at a high rate of speed and… Spun out… And ping-ponged back and forth across the freeway. SOMEHOW… The GG stopped something like 10 feet away from the crash and SOMEHOW the semi-truck behind him managed to stop too. The GG dialed 911 and then he called meeeee, which totally freaked me out. He was driving Mooon Yoonit, which is a brand new vee-hickle as of last summer and well…

Anyway, all is well. No one was hurt in the accident and the GG recovered via lunch at the Griz with Janel. The Griz was almost empty today, which was fun although we also enjoy it when it’s crazy.

Oh, not my bday although a bit of ridiculous unwanted drama has surrounded that upcoming anniversary 🐽. I somehow managed to start it against my own principles and better judgment 🐽 but it’s okay, we’re sorting it out.

Tonight we celebrated the birthday of one of our dear friends of porterization. Her actual birthday was yesterday (also The Commander’s bday and Richard Nixon’s while we are at it and I fergit who else’s).

We ate at Amadeus, which is a wonderful restaurant that serves Polish food. They have a great whine list but they don’t really specialize in craft cocktails, not that we are all that interested in craft cocktails. Just “Bartender, I’ll have a Manhattan”. Tonight the GG was able to get a top-notch ‘hattan there. I stuck with cabernet and the bottle of claret that Mr. Porter ordered.

I somehow arrived before anyone else and mentioned to our waiter that I had walked to the restaurant. He asked where I walked from and I said I lived near the Plum Market. Turns out that he lives in my neighborhood! The definitive statement was “I vote at Haisley School”. Yes, so do I. I didn’t say anything about all the years I hung out at Haisley schlepping my beach urchins there and doing all kinds of volunteer work. He was kind of surprised that I had walked that far and said he was a “bus guy”. I understood that. I *love* the bus and it is very easy to get downtown and back from our neighborhood.

That’s enough for now. It was a great evening but I am done done done.

Love y’all,
Kayak Woman

I didn’t exactly forget that The Commander would have been 99 today. It came into focus when her younger cousin’s birthday popped up. I have never met Julie but we connected a while back on facebook. She’s 83 and has lived in the Toronto area for her adult life if I get it. Her birthday is not today (late December I think) but it brought mom’s bday into focus. So here are a few pics. It’s so hard to pick just a few pics. I limited my criteria to pics I took in her later years, ones where she is the only one in the pic, and she is showing some aspects of her personality that I don’t much remember from when I was a bratty little kid and was constantly being told something like, “Remember who you are and act accordingly” 🐽

First up, here is the Thud Club. This club was started by The Goddess Esther and yes it has to do with alcohol. Mom was not a lush but she joined the club one night when my cousins and I were “wayward” 20-somethings. The Comm and Radical Betty had some whine while talking about us kids and then they took a beach walk. The Comm fell into the water and “couldn’t get up”. She was not in danger and they were both laughing their *sses off. At some point in time some enterprising person ordered up some Thud Club raperns* This was waaaaay pre-internet BTW so no Cafepress or whatever. Sorry for being such a wastrel, moom. (BTW, I think we *all* have Thud Club raperns* now.)

Okay, here is The Commander slowly and threateningly walking toward me with a great big chitchen knife! What did I do to deserve that? I think I had been “joshing” her about something.

Oh, bloody hell. The Comm was living at Freighter View assisted living and she tripped over her walker and then fell on it or something, I never figgered out exactly what happened. She was not mortally wounded but they put a red jacket on her and packed her off on the bus ambulance for the two block ride to the hoosegow. She got all bandaged up and before they sent her back “home”, my 90-year-old mother handed Nurse Abby her iPhone and said, “Take a picture of all this blood so I can send it to my daughter.”

Back when both the parents were alive. Okay, I guess in this pic, she’s not alone because grandroobly is photobombing.

And finally, we have The Comm in her glorious golden queen hat. After my dad died, we were at the Sault Ste. Siberia post office and a woman came out the door wearing a hat like this. Both of us dropped our jaws. Yes, I was thinking. You need one o’ those. And so I found one. It is still around but I don’t yet feel entitled to wear it.

*Rapern? I hope that is not a trigger for anyone because it has nothing to do with rape. When we were kids, the Sherman family used to park their VW bus and camper in one of our moomincabin parking spots for a couple weeks in the summer. Willy was the youngest of the five Sherman children and at three or so, he loved to hang out with The Comm and his moom in the moomincabin. At that age, he wanted to grow up to be a mother and wear a rapern. He didn’t grow up to be a mother but he did grow up to be a wonderful father (and for all I know he’s a grandfather by now). I dunno if he wears a rapern or not but I bet if he does, he calls it an apron now.

This is exactly six years ago. It marked the beginning of the 2014 Polar Vortex winter. I had never heard the term “polar vortex” before winter 2014. As a better comedian than I described it, it was like Canada got drunk, staggered down to the US and fell asleep. Something like that. I love Cananananada anyway.

I won’t go through the whole sequence of weather events that led up to this particular pic. Snow and more snow and 13 degrees below zero temps. I took this pic on a Wednesday and I had been working from home since that Monday. I didn’t go to work that Monday because we got something like nine inches of snow overnight on top of whatever was already there. I felt a bit guilty about not schlepping over there. But then I found out that the people who DID schlep over there were met with an unplowed parking lot and when the plow service finally got there, everyone had to go out and push cars around so the lot could be plowed.

The LSCHP was still our Benevolent Despot in those days and he bellowed, “If all we’re gonna do is come over here and push cars around, I think we should all work from home.” I guess back then some of us were still struggling with the kind of work ethic that requires people to put in face time (even though we have ALWAYS had remote workers). Nowadays if it snows at all, I telecommute without even thinking about it. Or sometimes just because no one else is in my house and I want to hang out there alone watching the dogz go by and the Little Brown Birds fight.

Anyway, by that Wednesday, I had been telecommuting for three days and I HAD to get outta the Landfill. So I bundled up and hoofed it over to the Plum Market. And climbed the hill back up to the Maple/Dexter intersection. That snowbank is higher than my head. When I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia, we used snowbanks like that to sled down into our perma-snow neighborhood streets. I think some of the parents even iced them to make them faster. Good old days.

This January 8th is a lot different than the Polar Vortex one. We did get a weeeee bit of snow overnight. Maybe a half inch? I strapped my Yaks onto my Keen sandals for my 0-skunk-30. Walking was fine but unfortunately, that kind of snow slicks up the roads like crazy (AND PEOPLE GO TOOOOOO FAST!!!!) so there were accidents out on the freeways and traffic was hosed in my area when I left to meet MMCB₁ at Barry’s. MMCB arrived at Barry’s naked (I mean she forgot her phone) so she was unable to text me as she waited through I dunno how many light cycles at Dexter/Wagner. I told her something like, “It’s okay that you didn’t text me. I KNEW you’d be late.”

I dunno what the weather will be like for the rest of winter but we do not seem to have persistent polar vortex conditions. Chilly today but going up into the 40s/50s the next couple days…

Or breakfast in this case. Oh man, I sooooo miss my SACRED period of morning spacification before schlepping off to Cubelandia. I would go for my 0-skunk-30 (which was SKUNKY as all getout today!), come home for a wee brek and my regular morning chore routine. Mainly make lunch, clean chitchen sink and bathroom fixtures, sometimes laundry stuff and/or empty dishwasher. I could be in and out of the Blue and Only Bathroom at will. Gotta “do” my face, roight? 🙄

I am not feeling it these days. I get home from my 0-skunk-30 and *someone* is hanging out in the Blue and Only Bathroom… And just generally in my quiet space. This cannot be. I hate to say it but after all these years, I am thinking we need a second bathroom? I mean, we raised two children in this loverly little dump, female children no less, and even during their teenage years, I don’t *ever* remember bathroom space being anything more than an occasional issue. As I always tell gals behind me in the line for the one-person Oscar Tango ladies room, I grew up using an outhouse so I am FAST! (Rumor has it that once I apparently said a version of that to Mouse’s then-boss although I had no clue she had any relationship to Mouse at all.)

I doubt that a new bathroom is in the cards for this house. I cannot figger for the life of me where the heck we’d put a second bathroom. I suppose if it is mainly for the use of my morning interloper, we could rig up a rudimentary terlet/shower area in the Landfill Dungeon? The Freakout Chamber maybe? I bet that would not increase the value of our house, not that we care all that much since we don’t plan to sell it.

We did hook up a basement shower for the duration of living in the Landfill while gutting the Blue and Only Bathroom but not a terlet. Fortunately, there was only one night that we had to do without a terlet and the back yard was just fine that particular night. Winter solstice coincided with the new moon so no one could see anything in our yard after dark and it was also 50-something degrees(!) so you didn’t freeze yer you-know-what. Not all that much different than running back to the moomincabin outhouse on a 50-something summertime yooperland day except for no terlet seat.

Okay, I think I have totally lost any train of thought I may have started out with! Am I done? I guess so and you’re welcome. 🐸 Have I accomplished anything? No. 🐽

My daughter introduced me to this untranslatable Swedish word today. Basically it means something like “to rise at dawn in order to go out and listen to the birds sing”. And that’s what I do. Actually it is well before dawn at this time of year. Rain or shine, snow or not.

Except. 1) I do not do severe weather. If there’s lightning anywhere near the area, I bag it. 2) I am more leery of slippery crapola than I used to be especially when it’s pitch black and I can’t see what I’m walking on, but I will venture out with ice cleats. 3) Dangereuse aminals… After seeing a video of a BARE BEAR galloping down the moominbeach at top speed early one morning, I have grown a little leery of walking the beach that early, at least during spring and early summer, when the bares bears are most likely to be out. But we don’t have bares bears anywhere near the Planet Ann Arbor. Coyotes? Yes yes yes. But (knock on wood) I am not afraid of them. Skunks? Yeah, I give those guys a wide berth.

At this time of year, the actual birds referred to in the definition are pretty quiet. There are plenty of birds that overwinter this far north so there is bird *noise* but there will not be bird *song* until sometime in February around the time Mr. Golden Sun asserts his presence in such a way that we can see summer in our future, even though there may be some long fugly months to endure before the summer season actually arrives.

But yes. Getting outside early? I am solo and can think about whatever I want or nothing at all. It allows me to focus (or not). And I like to be invisible. I wear dark clothing and sometimes get called out for it by people that think I’m gonna get hit by a car. Nope. There is very little traffic on the streets I traverse and I am very aware of what traffic there is. I (usually) stay on the sidewalks and I always stay away from automobiles. The don’t even know I’m there watching them from the sidewalk.

Gokotta!

I guess one-word new year’s resolutions are A Thing this year so Onward is my resolution.

I don’t doooo resolutions as a rule. I mean, like dieting-type resolutions. I don’t like junk food as a rule so I mainly shop the farmers market and/or the perimeter of the upscale grokkery and cook from scratch. My main food vice is Lay’s potato chips, plain or ruffles, and I occasionally succumb to that. And then there’s the whole join the gym thing. I get plenty of exercise, like every morning at 0-skunk-30. Gym membership? What? Why, if you can simply walk outside? I dunno? What else? I don’t (usually) spend money on frivolous luxury crapola but on the rare occasion that I want something I will buy it. Stop talking to the radio? Nope. Not until the Orange Baboon is out of the White House. Move on buddy.

About the only word that works for me is “Onward” because that’s about the only thing I can do at this point in my life. Move forward. No turning back.

So I got distracted by a cover of the Postal Service’s Such Great Heights song. I don’t know who did the cover but I will always remember a mix-CD one of my beach urchins gave me a long time ago. Such Great Heights was the first track and as I was starting my walk through the schoolyard in the dark in the fall, Ursa Major was to my left and Orion was to my right. At great heights.

P.S. This snow was just a little squall we had this afternoon. The temp was right around freezing and nothing stuck around, at least not on the roads. Seems like we’re gonna have unseasonably warm temps for the next couple weeks. Even though I know winter is just beginning, in a weird kind of way I feel like we’re almost on the back side of it. We’re not. But. I can’t put it into words and maybe you’d have to be a northern Great Lake Stater to understand it anyway. Or maybe some Great Lake Staters are ready to kill me for saying that.

Okay, I know today is not the shortest day of the year. Mr. Golden Sun began his northward swing a couple weeks ago. I guess grayest day is probably a more accurate description. Pretty dreary. It was dry when I took my 0-skunk-30 but it was also blacker than the ace of spades (which I actually like). By the time I went out to retrieve the garbage carts, it was, hmmm, let’s call it “actively misting”. Precipitation increased and turned into snow but not the pretty kind of snow, this snow melted as it hit the ground and later froze. Oh, it wasn’t slippery at all. Just droplets of ice here and there.

Or maybe boringest day would be appropriate. Fugly as it was outside, I hung around the Landfill *all* day putting xmas away. I pulled 150-plus ornaments off the tree (yes I counted), plus a bunch of stuff that didn’t get hung up. Organized it all and sorted out a bunch of crumpled up balls of tissue paper and bubble wrap and ziplock bags, etc., that we use to pack things up. What a MESS!

The tree is still standing. I’ll let the GG deal with the tree and lights. No doubt he’ll find an ornament or two that I’ve missed. It was one of those days when you don’t feel like you’re accomplishing anything much until you are done! Well, mostly done. I have a bit more to do tomorrow.

BTW, this task felt daunting to me so I picked at it Fly Lady style (bite-sized pieces) in between reading the second book in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series. I know these books used to hang around the Landfill back in the day. Why did I not read them then? Oh, yeah. Husband, octogenarian parents, teenagers, pets, YAG and other volunteer jobs.

My Man Cold is finally leaving the building! I am still coughing but the spasms are sporadic now and usually correspond to changes in activity or environment. Like getting out of bed, going outside, eating, talking a blue streak. I don’t think I used my voice all day except maybe to curse to myself. Hmmm, just tested and do NOT sound like Froggy any more! Yay!

Okay, I am not well versed in history or war or politics but I think I am still entitled to an opinion or two. A lot of people jumped to the conclusion that the latest swing of the Orange Baboon’s sledgehammer will result in another war. I’m waiting for evidence that there was an actual threat requiring the Idjit in Charge to take what seems to be a reckless action. His intelligence agencies counseled him to do this? What? He denigrates U.S. intelligence agencies at every opportunity and now he is suddenly taking their advice? I’m not optimistic. And I smell a rat. Or a baboon. But War with Iran? We’ll see…

We of the web application development world are dismayed (that word is probably a bit strong) for our own reasons. For several years, my team has been tasked with enhancing our product so that it is compliant with American Disabilities Act (ADA) standards. This is a difficult task from the get-go. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are *guidelines*. We are accustomed to working with *requirements*, which are (on a good day) very specific. Without going on and on, I’ll just say this has been quite a learning curve for us and a lot of flying in the dark.

But then… We are not getting clear direction from our corporation on when we need to implement these changes. Why? Because. They are waiting for the Department of Justice to weigh in. Hello? Hello? Department of Juuuustiiiiice? Is anyone hoooooome? Maybe the DOJ is in KTLO mode? Hmmm, I don’t see any lights on in there. Another war may not seem to have anything to do with our efforts but it will definitely detour resources from positive changes to our society. Like helping disabled people use the world wide web. Including wounded disabled soldiers returning from ridiculous, useless wars started by narcissistic sociopathic idiots.

Trump and the current DOJ may not give a flyin’ you-know-what about the ADA or WCAG. So what if a blind person can’t see something on the web? I am here to tell you that Corporate America *is* working to make our web applications more compliant, whether or not the US government cares, and on our own damn dollar. We are not perfect but we do care about our users.

Home from an evening of porterization at Knights. My Bar Buddies (before getting seated) tonight included a man who attended Forsythe Middle School in the 1980s, i.e., probably 10 years before the beach urchins. His kids also went to Forsythe and then Skyline High. If we’d had a few more minutes, I may have had the presence of mind to ask if MYA (Middle Years Alternative) existed at Forsythe when he was in attendance there… Before that happened, porterization ensued complete with terlet talk and then our table was ready.

If you have any connections to the yooperland or great lakes shipping or whatever, you know about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. As I remember just about every year on the anniversary (November 10th), my brother The Engineer was living at our parents house and attending Lake State U, which meant that he could walk across the back yard to get there. Except that he was usually schlepping a trombone so more likely he drove his old VW bug. Anyway, the night the Edmund Fitz sank, he was listening to ship traffic communications on a “multi-band” radio and heard the Arthur Andersen call to the Fitz over and over and over into the night. No response.

Anyway, when I started working at Cubelandia, one of the artifacts I took over there was this Edmund Fitzgerald mug.

It has seen better days, right? I have half-heartedly scouted around for a new one over the last few years but most of those I have encountered were a little, uh, I dunno, rococo, maybe? Plain and simple please. So this year, I belatedly tacked a request for a new Edmund Fitz mug onto my xmas wish list. And this is what Lizard Breath came up with🐸

I love it! Actually it looks a lot like the old one but I like that there’s a photo.

Now… What do I do with the old one? Faded as it is, it’s a perfectly serviceable mug…

The [Big] Mackinac Bridge, that is. This has only become a “thing” in the last few years. I’m not sure why. I have been crossing that bridge since I was three years old and I don’t remember it closing for ice or anything much else until recent years.

Or is it just that with social media I get instant notifications about closures and so am more likely to hear about them? Back in the day when I first started going across the bridge (in my parents’ car), we had two of those old black dial telephones and our first (black and white) TV with one CBC channel. Oh, yeah, of course we had radio. Anyway, closing the bridge is inconvenient for people who frequently traverse the Straits of Mackinac/(w?) but so is the aftermath of ice falling off the top of the structure onto your vee-hickle and breaking your windshield (or worse).

The huge, sweeping white pine tree in the pic was wounded in the recent snow/ice storm in the yooperland. The tree is still standing but a big branch is down. I’m not sure if it’s the one you can see in the pic (upper right) or another one. This pic that I dredged up is taken from a bit of a different angle than the one Our Northern Correspondent posted on social media but I immediately knew which tree it was.

This tree has been a beach friend for life. It grows on the bank adjacent to the “pond” at the west end of the beach. I’m trying to remember if anyone ever climbed it. My brother and Kevin? Mike and Mac? (Jack and Don? Otto?) Or am I just manufacturing memories…

Meanwhile in the yooperland… People are still without power and Cloverland’s lucky-shuckyal line workers were looking forward to help from the northern lower last I looked. Somebody on facebook shared a pic of a county snowplow dwarfed by snow/ice-encased tree branches bending down over it. I took a screenshot of this pic so I could show it to MMCB₁ tomorrow morning at Barry’s but I don’t feel comfortable posting someone else’s shot without their permission and I dunno even *how* to get to the person who posted this. An epic storm by any description.

As in “my mom went PIG WILD and read 100+ books this year” (I’m friends with my beach urchins on Goodreads). She goes on to say she doesn’t know how I did that and (sorta) neither do I. There were years during the last decade that I am not sure I read more than one or two books in a year if that. Some difficult family things happened in the 2010s but I won’t detail or dwell on them except to commemorate my mother The Commander’s death in 2012, at 91. But really, so many people had a much worse decade than I did. I have had a roof over my head in a long-ago paid-off house, food enough to feed anyone under that roof and then some, and a very good job, definitely not a given for anyone of any age and certainly not for a baggy old kayak woman like me. I try to pay it forward as much as I can.

I follow a couple of book bloggers who write “wrap-ups” of their year in reading. Best book, worst book, etc. I find that I cannot do that. I bet they actually take NOTES on what they read. I LOVE their blogs and get many ideas from them. But me? I just let Goodreads tot up what I have read. Well, I could tell you my worst book but I don’t like to “dis” authors. I know that writing a novel and getting it published is waaaaay beyond anything I will ever do or even care about doing.

Instead, I am here to say that Lake Superior State University published it’s annual New Year’s Eve banished words list. My parents lived “across the street” from LSSU and were acquainted with the (late) list originator. I actually submitted two words/phrases this year. One of them was “quid pro quo” and it made the list, not because *I* submitted it but because about a gazillion other folks also submitted it.

I also submitted “woke”, which didn’t make the list. I have complicated thoughts about this term (google it) but somehow the word annoys me although I agree with its meaning. And then there’s “OK Boomer” (which I did not submit). This one makes me laugh. How DARE we of the “don’t trust anyone over 30” generation take umbrage when young people complain about how we have handled the country/world?

The eastern yooperland has been hit by a big fugly snowstorm and many people have been without power for a day or two now. From what (beautiful) pics I’ve seen, the snow was heavy and wet and trees are cracking and falling over and the roads are bad and our local electric cooperative up there is struggling to keep up. I can’t think of a more beautiful place than the shores of Gitchee Gumee to be without power during a snowstorm but I sure hope the power company can get things working again soon while keeping their workers safe. I 🧡 Cloverland.

I took a sick day today. I cannot remember the last time I took a sick day. I have not (until today) taken any sick time in 2019 and pretty sure I didn’t take any in 2018. I couldda looked it up this morning when I cracked open my work laptop to email Amazon Woman but I did not and ain’t no way I’m gonna open up that thing again today.

Sick? Yeah. It’s a Man Cold and the main symptoms are koffig, sdeezig, ad blowig by doze. No fever or sore throat or fatigue or headache (but I never get headaches). Just seemed like a good thing to lie low for a couple days. I knew that NOBODY on my team would be at work today, in fact I’m not even sure if Amazon Woman got my email because she is OOO until January 2. Since she is also the building manager I am guessing she is occasionally sneaking into her email.

I did my usual chores today plus continued to clean up after xmas. Plus. Reorganize the spice cabinet(s)! What a frickin’ mess! How many containers of paprika do I need? Four? Really? Nooooo. How do you organize little containers of herbs and spices? Well. YEARS ago, I was lamenting this issue down on the moominbeach and the White Tornado (my Aunt Katie, busy UBER efficient doctor’s wife/mother of four of my cousins) had the obvious answer. What is it? Alphabetization of course! And I was doing that but, at the time, I was storing my herbs and spices on the crappiest lazy susan on earth. It had NO RIM so if you turned it too fast (and that wasn’t very fast), things would fall off. And things just got messy…

I love these custom drawers that the GG installed when we gutted the Landfill Chitchen. But things still get messy. It’s worse now because I try to make sure there is a basic supply of herbs/spices at the moomincabin every summer but I do NOT leave them there over the winter because I do not leave FOOD there over the winter. No matter how hard I try, duplication happens. So today, I re-alphabetized (and even “combinded” a few duplicates when possible) but I know we’ll have a mess again. I did find a small number of duplicate UNOPENED containers! Including one of the four containers of paprika! Maybe you can see those on the counter there in front of the rainbow striped thingy? Maybe Food Gatherers would like them?

Soooo, the GG approached me at my Green Couch seat this afternoon and accused me of spending the last 10 days in it. Well, not… Walking, going to grokkery stores, cooking, wrapping pkgs, etc., etc., etc. Sometimes I think my “chores” are invisible to him because I just doooo them. Dishes hand and musheen, unloading the musheen, cooking, laundry, bathroom, garbage, recycle, menu planning, running roooooomba. The GG does most of the other vacuuming although I forced myself to learn how to use the new cordless Dyson a couple weekends ago and I liked it so much I think I’m gonna get one for the moomincabin. I hate running the upright around but we do need one of those here at the Landfill.

We don’t have (and never *have* had) an official division of day-to-day household labor around here and we rarely argue about piddly little chores. I normally do the dishes because I dooooo dishes. It was fun when I was a kid, nowadays it is a chore easily dispensed with and yes, if you visit my house, keep a firm grip on any drinking glass you want to use again because I will likely snag it and wash it. Plus doing the dishes gives me a bit of spacification. I don’t mind giving this chore over to others from time to time but really, in a 2-person household, how hard can it be? I am also (you are guessing this already) particular about how they are done, like what goes in the dishwasher and what doesn’t and I sort the silverware in the dishwasher (yes really). I am particular about other chores too, like I do NOT dry various items in the dryer! And one of my alter egos is Garbage Woman. More on that some other day…

But yes today I did spend most of the day on the Green Couch reading. That was not necessarily a good thing (I mean sitting wasn’t a good thing, reading is always good!) but it was what it was. I woke up before six like always and it was raining catz and dogz. That is not enough to stop me from going outside but I have a MAN COLD so, what the heck, slugging in bed seemed like not the worst option for a weeee bit. I *was* up and showered by seven though because the sun does not rise here until after eight at this time of year and I LOVE sitting on the Green Couch in the morning dark. It continued to rain catz and dogz until about noon, then it got foggy as all getout. Rain again later? We’ll see. I will say that now that I am upright again, I am coughing less and more productively.

So this is my interior view from the Green Couch today. There is my little wastebasket filling up with used Kleenexes to catch the outflow of mucous from my Man Cold (TMI?). And my skinny little blue foot (skinny aside from the bunion I inherited from my mom’s side of the fam). And my Blue Plaid (yes, blue) Woolrich blanket/throw. Note that I wasn’t cold, it was just cozy. We aren’t exactly Hygge around here but we do have a lot of blankets.

BTW, the GG did not get Out of Bed until [drum roll] NINE AM this morning, so I’m pretty sure I am not the only person slugging. Maybe he has my Man Cold🐽🐽🐽

December 28th. It is my (late) cousin Cathy’s birthday. She was born a few weeks before me and when I was a kid I was ALWAYS green with envy that she was OLDER than me. And that she had beautiful white-blonde hair. Her hair was *naturally* white-blonde her whole life. And that she married her high-school boyfriend in her early twenties, during a time I could not find a decent boyfriend to save my life 🐽🐽🐽. And that she lived in a big city with loverly stores like the downtown J. L. Hudson’s, while I lived in the god-forsaken yooperland.

I was certainly preoccupied by being envious of people when I was a kid. So. I was a tow-head as a small child but my hair darkened into “dishwater blonde” as I grew up, which isn’t all that bad in the long run. I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t marry Bad Boyfriend. We would *certainly* be long divorced (as Cathy was…). Big city? Meh. I did love shopping at the downtown Hudson’s when we visited my Detroit grandparents but I bet in the grand scheme of things, Cathy didn’t shop at the downtown Hudson’s any more often than I did. And we all know what happened to Detroit after the era our grandparents (Cathy’s and mine) lived there. Detroit is coming back after a fashion and I love going down there but the downtown Hudson’s of my youth will never return.

Do NOT get me wrong. I LOVED Cathy and I was always excited when we were able to be together, which wasn’t often because we lived 350 miles apart. Our families did visit and Cathy’s mom was my mom’s fave sister Charlotte, also my fave aunt in the MacMu fam! I do not have words about why I was envious of Cathy (and other cousins), at least not tonight. We all have our own insecurities to deal with. I haven’t totally outgrown mine but I can laugh about most of them now.

So, back in 2004, Cathy died. She was ill but her death was not imminent when an infection grabbed her and dragged her under. When I started writing this, I was thinking she had died on her birthday but I quickly realized it was earlier in the month, on the day of that year’s cFam xmas party and I don’t remember what day that was. It was her memorial that was held on her birthday.

I am pretty sure it was my brother who called me to report Cathy’s death. I have always known and loved all of my cousins on both sides of my fam. I am one of 11 FinFam grandchildren and one of nine MacMu grandchildren and age-wise I’m in the middle on both sides. Cathy was the first grandchild on either side to die. Little did I know that my brother would be next (second of the MacMus and first of the FinFam). We haven’t lost anybody else yet and I hope we keep it that way for now.

Apocalypse tomorrow? We are supposed to get torrential rain and maybe t-storms tomorrow. This is unusual weather for the southeast Great Lake State at this time of year but not unheard of at all. But we’ll see what we get.

Happy birthday my dear cousin wherever you are.