Not to be confused with spelling bee season, as some people have🤪 I was up early and down at the farmers market when it opened at 7:00 AM. I was playing a game of chance. Will anyone be selling shelling peas? Or will it just be sugar snap peas, which I don’t really prefer. It seemed a wee bit early in June for shelling peas but I scored some! I will be back buying more for the next few weeks. I may even chance the Wednesday market.

I didn’t really need anything else today since I’m trying to empty out the refrigimatator before the summer boomeranging begins and I have no one else to feed for the next week or so. It’s a never ending battle😵‍💫

I did not go to the local No Kings Day protest even though I soooo hate Trump and his sycophants and acolytes and other random smarmy hangers-on. RFKJR anyone? I don’t really have any words for my absence. Friends and neighbors did go. I just didn’t feel like going? I don’t like large crowded events from the get-go. It was Saturday. I don’t work on Saturday and choose my activities carefully. Shelling peas was one of the things I chose to do today. Zen… Trump et al cannot be gone (again) soon enough for me but I don’t think my presence at a protest will make much of a difference.

I will NEVER NEVER NEVER understand The Orange Baboon’s appeal to all of the unwashed masses he DOES NOT CARE ABOUT. Again. Who does Trump care about? If you answered “himself”, ding ding ding, you win the booby prize. And it is the booby prize because even though you got the correct answer, you still have to live with this asshole wannabe dictator running our country.

A random memory from my childhood *before* the I75 SUV Speedway was built and we traveled from the yooperland to Detroit et al to visit relatives. We were often on two-lane highways and when the National Guard (stationed in Grayling) were on the move, we struggled to pass slow moving convoys of MANY vee-hickles, camo-clad national guard soldiers hanging out the back of the trucks, no seat belts anywhere. It became much easier to pass those convoys when I75 was completed to the yooperland.

It struck me today that the Michigan National Guard issued a statement to inform people that if they saw long convoys of military vee-hickles traveling today, it was not related to Trump’s [stupid] vanity parade. It was guardsmen being transported home from Grayling after a couple weeks of intense training sessions. Those sessions are not new. They happen every year or whatever. Just please don’t jump to conclusions when you see military convoys. Trump is awful but military exercises happen all the time, since way before Trump. Please fact check what you are seeing.

Love y’all, KW.

This is meeee in junior high. I don’t remember the occasion or the venue and neither does the photographer, The Beautiful Mimi, who took this with her Polaroid camera. It was on a photo board at a class reunion (40th maybe?) and I grabbed a pic of it with my iPhone.

I so so so wanted to be a party girl, in with the in crowd, etc. I was not. I was a nerd. I am still a nerd but I long ago learned to OWN being a nerd. I am also more popular as an adult although I am an introvert and pick my social activities carefully.
But being a nerd in junior high (7th-8th grade in an ancient rattle-trap building in a perpetually economically depressed northern outpost city) did not equate to being a popular party girl.

The gal to the right of me is Cindy. When I entered junior high, I wasn’t put into classes with the friends I had known since birth or Sunday School or grade school. I kinda didn’t know anyone. Cindy was new in town and this *new girl* befriended *meeee*, a third generation child of a prominent local family. I don’t actually remember a whole lot about our friendship but I remember how sweet and funny she was and I was sad when she moved with her family the next year. I think her dad was a pastor and probably had different postings.

My journey into whatever popularity I have as an adult began on the bottom rungs of boyfriend-ism. You’re a freshman and somebody says a cute sophomore(!) guy likes you and you are gobsmacked and he gives you his big Indian head ring (that you have to wrap with yarn to fit it onto your mini-finger). People notice you differently? Maybe? Or were they already noticing you but afraid to approach you? Maybe… Anyway, he eventually breaks up with you, which breaks your heart but you meet somebody else and somebody else yadda yadda yadda. You gain bits of confidence throughout all of this and learn how to deal with men… Eventually you hook up with the GG who gives you children and a wonderful family of in-laws and helps you take care of your mother when she is at the end of her life. My parents and family were/are wonderful but my small northern outpost city was difficult to grow up in, especially as I was always expected to be somebody who I sorta was and sorta wasn’t. It’s very complicated and I am still trying to figger it out.

I still love the Indian head ring guy but just as a memory. He has a good life and so do I and we are long over each other.

So here I am, a popular woman when I do interact with people but I don’t usually because I am also a huge introvert with social anxiety. In the end, this is all just a bunch of navel gazing🐸

My head is spinning today with all the crapola on the news. Trump has a way of mangling everything he does in such a way that many many people get hurt. And then sometimes he has to “claw” things back. Our taxes are paying for him to do all that. Do all y’all MAGAts care?

The thing (out of many) that happened today that is sticking in my mind is only indirectly related to Trump. It’s how a US senator was “taken down” to the FLOOR by security forces of some sort for wanting to ask Kristi Noem (Ice Barbie* and Dog Killer*) a question. I know it’s not quite as simple as that. I’ve seen some videos and I don’t totally know the whole story. But why is our country employing citizens to throw other citizens to the floor anyway? There’s gotta be a better way. Oh, I forgot, the Orange Toddler is in charge. If you are angry, just throw it. Throw it anywhere. Ketchup on the wall, roight?

Inside that and all the other stuff spinning in my head was the zen of writing html. html is not a *programming* language. It is a *markup* language. There’s a difference. I am “teaching” my new colleague html. I have been coding html for 30 years. I’ve been getting *paid* to code html for 18 years🤪. When I have a project that requires me to code html, I am a happy camper. Even if it’s just boring changes that happen in a bazillion places in our high fidelity product prototype aka “the demo”. That kind of work frees my mind to work on other stuff. Kinda like **LSD might except in a controlled way where you don’t jump off balconies (see Forrest Gump).

So the fun thing about today was not that I was writing/editing html. I wasn’t. I was coaching my new colleague through editing html. He has some really boring html to edit and it happens about a gazillion places in the demo. I was feeling a little worried that this would be really boring for him. But. At the end of the day I received a message saying something like, “Don’t laugh at me but I am really enjoying editing html.” OMG! As they often say in the Handmaid’s Tale, “Praise Be!”🙏 Happy html coach here and by the end of all his “boring” editing, he is going to “grok” a fundamental aspect of our product. Because he’s gonna be thinking about it the whole time he’s doing a bunch of boring edits. Been there done that. And coaching him is also zen for me because he is soooo good at picking things up and even getting ahead of me.

*I know I am name calling.

** Here is the Moody Blues singing about LSD.

I did finish the last season of the Handmaid’s Tale series last night by watching the last two episodes. They have been out for a few weeks but I held off partly because I know the GG is not interested, not even one little bit.

It isn’t a big marital argument or anything and he doesn’t care what I watch. Or what I read or listen to on the radio. The only thing that bothers me about the radio is when I get into Cygnus and the radio is tuned to MAGA radio and I have to tappity-tap it back to NPR. Which he claims is “communist” but he also *listens* to lots of stuff on NPR🤪 Oh don’t worry, that communist stuff is just a dig at me and my “social justice warrior” views, which I have decided to OWN. Yes. I do care about people who are not as privileged as I am or are “different” in some way. Although I am not really anywhere near the top of the “heap”, not by a long shot, and am plenty “different” myself but being a baggy old white somewhat intelligent working woman makes it hard for people to discriminate against me. Well, except that I am a WOMAN.

It’s just easier to watch stuff like Handmaid’s Tale when I am “Mom Alone”.

I watched the end of the series with mixed feelings, which I am still processing. I am verklempt that it is over. I also *read* the sequel (by Margaret Atwood, the original author). It was totally different than the series. She wrote it well before the series was in full swing. I liked the book. At first I thought the series might follow the same arc but it didn’t. I liked the arc it did follow although it took me a while to get there because I wanted it to end like the book sequel ended.

The end of the series… I LOVED some of the things that happened. There were some loose ends I wish were tied up and weren’t but that’s how a lot of books and shows end up. I am resolving myself to think that is okay. I think the author consulted in some way on the series. If it’s okay with her, I guess I can make it okay with me.

Is the USA heading toward a Gilead situation? No probably not. At least not exactly but I am terrified at a lot of the directions our country *is* going in.

Back on earth (from TV land), those tents are the GG’s and Joan’s on their first night hiking/mapping a part of the North Country Trail in the Adirondacks.

I was thinking my boring blahg of blather today might be what some of the National Guard and Marines that have been mustered to do whatever crazy stuff the TACO (aka Trump) wants to do in LA are thinking. And anywhere else someone wants to protest against his stupid self-aggrandizing crapola.

But I got into an interesting little tech issue with photo-processing applications on my MacBook Pro today and that sorta precluded all of my thoughts. So many many many years ago, I had photoshop on my laptop. I was taking community college classes at the time and qualified for a student discount, which cut the cost down to about 10 percent, like about $300 instead of $3,000.

It was all fine and I used it even after I got a (good) job (and stopped going to WCC, which is a wonderful community college). And then. I got a new Mac operating system that didn’t support Photoshop so I started using a free photo processing app. I have used that for quite a few years now but it isn’t really working any more. So today, as I was beginning to write my blahg of blather, I wondered if I could buy PhotoShop again and, if so, how much did it cost. Yes to all of that so I downloaded it and here I go. Like Microsoft Word/Excel/whatever these days, it is a monthly subscription and I can afford it.

So I can’t quite yet write about what tRump is doing. I do wonder what is in the heads of the National Guard and Marine personnel who have been mustered to head to Los Angeles to possibly fight against their fellow American citizens. I’m sorry. I don’t agree. This is not a war. Our country is not in any kind of an emergency. Not all immigrants are dangerous criminals. In fact, I will bet that the percentage of immigrants who are dangerous is about the same as the percentage of lifelong American citizens. I might even point out that the mass shootings our country repeatedly experiences are most often perpetrated by white American male citizens. And those immigrants? 99% of them are coming here to mow your lawn and do your nails. (I stole that from the internet a long time ago.) C’mon, let’s kick Trump out. He’s just a narcissistic asshole.

One more episode of the last season of The Handmaid’s Tale. Am I up for it? We’ll see.

During the last couple years of my uncle Duck’s air force career, after his tour in Viet Nam, he and Radical Betty were stationed in upstate New York. Radical Betty had a Dutch friend she used to bicycle with and they would ramble along the back roads stopping for a beer here and there, her Dutch friend always saying that beer is good for you.

We have a lovely house guest over for the night. One that isn’t one of our daughters or the other half of the Twinz of Terror. Meaning clean sheets were definitely in order. Oh don’t get me wrong, clean sheets are always in order for guests but if the last guest was Lizard Breath and the next guest is gonna be Lizard Breath, I don’t usually bother to change the sheets. Same with the Terror Twin.

I made the eggplant parm that I can make in my sleep (from the original Vegetarian Epicure cookbook), pasta with pesto sauce, asparagus, salad, and garlic bread.

Tomorrow morning, our house guest and the GG are going to muster and head off on a trip to the Adirondacks to do some mapping on a section (or more) of the North Country Trail. It’s been a frenetic few days living with the GG as he packs and repacks and fixes the washing musheen, and who knows what else. Although I will miss him, I know they will have a great time and I wish them the best of luck. And it’ll be quiet here, hopefully, without a whole lot of negative energy. Except when I get riled up about whatever bullshit Trump says or does.

And I’m gonna be living on leftovers for about the next week.

I don’t frequently call out bdays on my blahg but here’s a shoutout to niece Pengo. I won’t tell you how old she is. She is quite a bit older than she was in the pic. She’s on the left if you couldn’t figger out the black and white face paint. Mouse is a “blue tiger”.

Youngest of my parents four granddaughters. Four and a half years younger than their first. The first one would be my super girl Lizard Breath (not in the pic). The second was my brother’s older daughter Val (not in the pic), two years later almost to the date. Lizard met her new cousin and then had her nose put a bit out of joint because her grandparents, uh, left. I asked Liz where she thought the grandparents were going and she said, “see new baby”. Nope. They’re going to Florida to see alligators and things. “Ckowp”, she said, making an alligator chomping noise (having been to Florida where she experienced “erderators” in up close albeit controlled situations). I’m pretty sure the grandparents visited us (and her) on the way back from that trip to Fla.

At that time, I was already pregnant with my mouse (in the pic), who was born six months later than her cousin Val. Two years after that, it was Pengo’s turn to join the fam.

We had thought about zooming with Pengo today but for whatever reason it didn’t quiiite happen. The GG aka the king of cryptic text messages sent a group text, “Pengo Hoppy Birthday! Be an aggressive driver this is Pengo’s birthday OK.” Be an aggressive driver? We figured out that his phone had somehow picked up something mouse was saying about an aggressive driver and inserted it into the message. Go figger.

Shish kebab (filet mignon, mushrooms, onion, green pepper), local asparagus, wild rice, garlic bread, salad (local ingredients) and that is about all I can remember. Time to hit the sack.

It was one of our wonderful cFam niece’s baby shower today. She’s the 18th of my parents-in-law’s 19 grandchildren and she looked fantastic.

The trip was an hour northeast of us over in “Cement City”. Don’t get me wrong, The Planet Ann Arbor has plenty of cement too and the northern suburbs of Megalopolis (aka Detroit), have plenty of trees. I enlisted a “designated driver” (my daughter) to chauffeur me in Cygnus. And I navigated our route via my phone. Although we didn’t get lost or anything, I did not do an elegant job of navigating. After we got there and I realized I’d been at this venue before (for the mom-to-be’s older sister’s baby shower, 17th of the 19 grandchildren), I decided that the GooMaps route might have been the shortest but not the best for us. It’s okay. We made it and I won’t even try to describe all of that. (For context, my daughters are 12th and 13th of the 19. And first and third of my parents’ four grandchildren, all girls.)

My social anxiety always makes these events difficult to anticipate but I KNOW and LOVE all of these people and there is no way I would have missed this, especially since the beloved (to me) mom-to-be lives on the left coast and we don’t see her often. And of course, not EVERYONE in the family was there anyway, because of distance or not wanting to spread cold symptoms or whatever. Those of us who did get together made the air buzz with our gabbling.

Lizard and I were seated with my uber sister-in-law TBG, who is married to the GG’s identical twin, one of her daughters-in-law, and that mom’s daughter aka TBG’s granddaughter.

Because all members of the cFam have experienced Houghton Lake and many have even experienced the Moldy Old Cabin there, the one with frogs in the shower in the summer, a fish fly discussion came up. This photo had come up on my memories this morning so I am posting it. This is fish fly season at Houghton Lake. These flies are TOTALLY harmless. They do not bite or sting and they live around 24 hours or so. But they freak some people out, like a few other harmless insects freak MEEEE out.

Toddler food fight at that. I’m “mad” so I’m gonna throw my food on the floor. Waaaaaaah! Toddlers don’t usually throw their food AT people. They just fling it in a random direction. Trump and Musk are flinging it at each other. And later in the day Steve Bannon seemed to get involved somehow. I had no words at that point, except “I DIDN’T VOTE FOR HIM.”

This food fight doesn’t surprise me. The only thing that surprises me is that it took as long as it did for it to happen.

The Trump/Musk food fight was rumbling on the radio in the background this morning and I was like WHUT? I mean *whut* happened overnight. I hate Trump and didn’t vote for him either time. I have never thought of him as an appropriate president of our country for many many reasons. The first and foremost being that (in my opinion) he only (only only only) thinks of himself. Do y’all (especially you MAGAts) not understand that? Why not? He’s a businessman is not a good answer. He’s not a good or honest businessman.

He was gonna make the price of eggs (and other stuff) go down on his first day of office. And end the (very scary) war in Ukraine on his first day. Are those the kinds of things that compelled you to vote for him? Why? Did you actually believe his f*cking blather? Why? When have the “billionaires” Donald Trump and Elon Musk ever done anything for YOU?

In other news, the GG spent the entire day getting the email on my MacBook Pro laptop to work *again*. He bought a new MacBook for himself on Monday. He couldn’t get his email to work so he tried to duplicate the settings for *my* MacBook’s email. And so my email stopped working. He must have changed something but we don’t know what. It’s fixed now (I think) but he spent the entire day on fixing it and the Landfill atmosphere was suffused with negative energy.

At the end of the day… We had had tentative plans for dinner at Dexter’s Pub. Instead we ordered Chinese. It was the right decision and we ate it in our beautiful back yard. We listened (happily) to the neighbors partying with friends in their back yard and watched a few bird fights. No kids were next door. I’m guessing the daughter was at a friend’s house. That reminded me of the days of my kids’ sleepovers especially when Mouse and Goose (who lived around two corners) had back to back sleepovers for nights on end during the winter holidays.

Bagawk bagawk bagawk!

Not blues. I’m excited for summer. We’re planning for summer now. People will be in and out of the moominbeach. Back and forth from the Planet Ann Arbor. By plane and automotive vee-hickle. I am totally excited about seeing my cousins etc. Just trying to help think it all through. I so wish the moomincabin was big enough to accommodate more people…

Here on the planet tonight we have been engaged in the arguments that come with marital discord or whatever it is we deal with. We have argued a bit tonight but not necessarily about politics, even though we TOTALLY disagree about politics. I am soooo not orange. What an asshole.

I dunno at all how we manage this but we do. He takes care of a lot of stuff I don’t know how to do like fixing cars and mowing grass and he is the main manager at the moomincabin. I listen to whatever radio I want to and donate money to the causes I care about and he doesn’t complain about that (even if he doesn’t agree). I earn my own money.

But we’re working on summertime plans. I’ll be here re-factoring ancient old-skool javascript code plus my regular prodjects for the next couple weeks, while the GG does a wonderful boondoggle in the Adirondacks with our friend Joan. After that we’ll figger it all out.

Here we go.

Well, you can take care of the sloooooow leak in Cygnus’s left rear taaar. But.

But no, the GG is not guilty of murder on earth 1959 style and he is not going to be incarcerated on an asteroid to atone for his sin for 50 years. He is traveling to a section (or whatever) of the North Country Trail to do some mapping stuff. He is traveling with a lovely woman but she is NOT a robot, just a beloved friend he hikes and travels well with.

As we were trailing off into sleep last night, we watched the tail end of a Twilight Zone Episode. I enjoyed it so much that I decided I want to watch the whole thing and maybe a lot of the Twilight Zone series.

I was a little young for The Twilight Zone when it was on the air and my parents didn’t let me stay up to watch it. They may have even disapproved of it, at least for a young grade school kid. But. Though I didn’t stay overnight at Syl’s house all that often, a couple times when I did, I got to watch the show. Her dad was a trucker of sorts and her mom got “lonely” so on Friday nights when we had sleepovers and her dad was out of town, her mom would go “out” and Mrs. Bosley (an older woman) was hired to babysit the children (and me, as a guest). I was always amazed by Mrs. Bosley because she had a mustache. Nowadays I know that both men and women can grow facial hair. Even then I could suss that she was born a WOMAN and not trans but I had no words at the time. I also didn’t understand Syl’s parents’ relationship. Let’s not go any further into any of all that. I know that The Commander did understand it but she liked Syl’s parents and welcomed opportunities for me and Syl to have sleepovers at either of our homes.

I never felt like Syl’s house was a scary place to be and since there wasn’t the strict kind of parental supervision that I had at my house (five kids at her house for one thing, only two at mine), we were allowed (by Mrs. Bosley at least) to watch the Twilight Zone. But I only saw a few episodes here and there. So now I am thinking maybe old Twilight Zone episodes might be our next conjugal series to watch? We’ll see. He’ll have to be pardoned from his murder sentence and returned from the asteroid before we’ll have time to watch it🤪

Oh yeah, the actors in the Twilight Zone episode we watched last night kept saying what sounded like “robutt” for “robot”. Some people I know might find that familiar🤪

The negative is that I lost a bunch of files at work today and will have to manually recreate them. For the most part that won’t be bad but there is a nasty javascript file that might give me some trouble, as it did the first time. One teensy tinesy little extra comma or whatever and BLAMMO!

This happened toward the end of the day and I decided not to try to work on it in the late afternoon. Better to wait until morning when a clearer head kicks in and it isn’t hotter than Hades in my office by the westward facing front window of teleCubelandia. In the grand scheme of things, this is just business as usual and don’t even ask. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. C’est la vie.

The positive? That happened at 7:20 or so this morning. I was leaving the Jackson Rd. Meijer and as I turned right onto Jackson and started to accelerate? There was mooma duck and a bunch of small ducklings crossing the road right in front of me. Jackson road is a 45-mph boulevard at that point with “Michigan lefts” (google it) and the whole works and it is a *speedway*. I stopped. I didn’t stop tooooo fast but fast enough that I was a little worried about someone rear-ending me. As luck would have it, that did not happen and people in all three lanes were stopping to let the duck family cross. I saw them make it to the median but didn’t see if they made it across the second half of the boulevard. Fingers crossed.

He (the GG) approached me in teleCublandia this morning with a look in his eyes that meant he had something important to impart. I was in the middle of teaching my new colleague html and javascript (at the same time) and was like “whut is it?”.

I eyeballed the GG and he said, “I guess I’m going to the Apple Store.” Um, I mean, OKAY! GO to the Apple Store. If you want to replace your hand-me-down (from meeeee) 2011 model MacBook Pro with a new one, you have my blessings a hundred times over. I have told him that multiple times over the last few years. As you can maybe see by the baggy old computer case and the fancy new Apple bag, he has finally acted on it. We are not Elon Musk but we have enough cash to buy a new computer every 14 years or so. If it were meeee, I’d’ve ordered it online but he wanted to go to the store and I was happy about that because it space-i-fied me for an hour or so. This was a weird pic of the GG so I cropped it. I left the newly growing John Bolton mustachio in🤪

I will never be a teacher but I LOVE to “coach” or “mentor” people who speak my language, i.e., they are QUICK at picking things up. And my new colleague is. He is learning things he has NO prior experience at and he is able to remember stuff “we” did days before. When I say “we”, I mean he was sharing his screen and I was telling him what to do and ‘splaining things along the way. If you aren’t actually DOING something yourself, you aren’t gonna remember it. Roight? Roight. And there are times when he says something like, “Lemme figger this out and I’ll ask if I need help.” Yes YES YES!

Almost 18 years into a job I wasn’t really looking for and here I am.

Years ago I used to frequently take vee-hickles to the car wash. I would gather up a bunch of quarters – I always had quarters around from being a parent teacher org treasurer. Oh don’t worry, I didn’t steal them. I replaced them with ten dollar bills or whatever. I would pull into one of the do-it-yourself bays, stuff my quarters in, and manually wash my car.

Today, since we and our jet-setting beach urchin were all back in town (she met up with Cally-forny friends in Portland(ia) for a Rilo Kiley concert), we took her out to lunch. That means she came over here and drove us old bags over to a restaurant (The Session Room) in *our* vee-hickle (Cygnus X-1) and we paid for lunch. Not that she can’t buy her own lunch but my parents always paid for restaurant lunches when I was an adult and I feel compelled to continue that tradition. Eventually The Commander got to the point where handling that bit of business became a little too much and I happily took it off her plate. Thanks for all those years moom, I’ve got this one!

At one point in our lunch conversation the GG was grouching about how dirty Cygnus was. So when we left the restaurant, our driver hung a louie instead of a right and, as I immediately figured out, drove us into the car wash across the street. We did not wash Cygnus manually. We hooked up with the conveyor belt. Car in neutral, hands off steering wheel, don’t touch the brakes. And! Maybe most importantly, turn off the collision sensors if you have them, which Cygnus does. I don’t ever turn them off and don’t really know how because I drive like a little old lady and they don’t usually get triggered (unless I’m backing up into a big mullein plant behind the moomingarage). But we figured it out. And that place is sooooo fancy these days! In ways I can’t even begin to explain.

In other news (of the weird), the talk of the northern Great Lake State is that a *possum* was crossing the Mackinac Bridge on the “pedestrian walkway”. It was going north and was more than half way across the five mile span when it was rescued and returned to the Mackinaw City area (yes there are two ways to spell that). I found this link on Reddit. It doesn’t look like you have to pay to get to Reddit but who knows. It shows the possum traveling on the “pedestrian walkway”.

A couple of things: 1) Pedestrians are not allowed on the Big Mack except on Labor Day. This walkway is for emergency use only. 2) I have never seen or heard of a possum in the yooperland and didn’t think they lived that far north. There are plenty of them here on The Planet Ann Arbor including in “my” little woods (behind my house).

Loooong travel day. I was not looking forward to it but we needed to get back to The Planet Ann Arbor. The GG is leaving in a little over a week to the Adirondacks with his rockstar North Country Trail buddy Joan and he needs some time to get ready. And it will soon be Pea Shelling Season (not to be confused with “Spelling Bee Season”, which I don’t think exists) and I will be shelling peas in the Landfill backyard.

Okay. Our first stop was at the Uncly Uncle (UU) and the Beautiful Gay’s (TBG) home in Gaylord. Two hours south of the moominbeach. I managed to over-coffee myself and all the way to Gaylord I was kinda bouncing around up by Mooon Yooonit’s ceiling. We were promised one of TBG’s super-duper breakfasts but I was wondering if I could eat. But we arrived at their house and wouldn’t you know, TBG immediately handed me a MIMOSA. OMG! Yes it was early for drinking but that mimosa counteracted my coffee high and I was pretty chill for the rest of the trip.

Oh yeah, as we were mustering to leave, the UU and TBG rummaged their refrigimatator. They handed me this loverly mini-whine for the road (it’s okay, I kept it in Mooon Yooonit’s door pocket and didn’t drink it). And then they made a lovely little goodie bag for our brother John (who we were delivering supplies to further down the road) with little Jager bombs and candy and stuff. He loved it!

All in all, we made five stops on the way down but then, I schlepped a bunch of stuff into the Landfill and put it away and sat down on the Teal Couch to make a little grock list. And I had a text message from UKW (one of my “triplet” cousins, meaning the three of us girls who share the same birth year). “Do you have time to talk?” Yes yes yes! Can I make a Plum Dash first? I wanted to be stationary before sitting down to talk. And we did talk and it was great. It’s been a while and I had been thinking about her lately.

I had expected a kind of crappy trip today but it turned into something wonderful. I always love when friends and relations from different parts of my life intersect like they did today. As the UU and TBG took care of us today, we all have to take care of each other. I have long known that landing in the GG’s family was a good thing. Not to mention how great it was to be born into *my* family. Don’t mind me. I’m basking in the love I felt today.

This was last night and I post a version of it every year, I think. A friend commented on facebook (where I also posted it) that he loved our big screen TV🤪 We don’t have a TV here so obviously he was talking about the picture window.

This morning started on a bit of a sour note when I was asked why there was water on top of the dresser and in the drawers below. Did I spill my water? Aka the glass of water I take to bed every night. Well. No I did not. And anyway, I don’t put my water on the dresser. I put it on a small side table next to the bed. If I knocked it off, it would fall on the floor and since it’s a plastic glass, clean-up would be a small issue involving an absorbent rag or whatever.

I was annoyed at the accusation but when the mystery eventually cleared up, it was CLEAR that *I* did not cause the problem. In the end, it turned out that water was condensing on a pipe related to the water heater (which is in the bedroom) and dripping onto the dresser and into its drawers. (It’s more complicated than that but this is a high-level overview.) I kept asking if it was related to the water heater and whaddya know, I was right. We aren’t sure how long the pipe has been dripping but the GG rearranged the bedroom so there’s no longer anything under the pipe.

And then he donned his Suzy Homemaker persona and got on a roll, sweeping and vacuuming and dragging furniture all over hell and gone to sweep and vacuum under it. Mildewed linens from the dresser hung on the clothesline all afternoon and will accompany us down to the Planet Ann Arbor to be properly washed and de-mildewed. All of the activity was a bit annoying since I was working and had meetings but I was also very happy that he did all of that cleaning because this place needed it!

I shouldn’t say this on my blahg but it is much easier to keep things clean now that we don’t have my brother’s dogs here, although I miss my brother and loved his dogs. Life is complicated and so are families.

There is an audio file of a gobbling turkey (or turkeys maybe) that somehow found its way into my fam, the GG, me, and my beach urchins including niece Pengo… It’s a toss-up as to who first texts the file out to the rest of the fam on Turkey Day morning. It usually isn’t me.

This summer I am hearing that noise somewhere outside my bedroom window at 0-skunk-30 AM most mornings. I mean like at 5:00 AM. “Thomas” struts around the “neighborhood” (mainly our place and my next door cousins’ place, I think). All fluffed up Thanksgiving style, he struts his stuff and announces his presence to everyone in the neighborhood.

Good thing I like to get up early. And so I did albeit not at 5:00 AM. But I was on my way to the recycle drop-off and Meijer by a few minutes before seven and home by eight (no traffic lights!). I had a 9:30 meeting. That’s early for my team and I was a wee bit nervous about it for various reasons. One because I was in the Hot Seat (sorta), others I can’t explain in a sensible way. As it turned out it was a GREAT meeting and I got some wonderful direction for how to proceed on one of my latest projects. The rest of the day was filled with impromptu “working” meetings and random requests from all points in my work universe. I love that people still seem to value me or at least my institutional knowledge at this stage of my life. How did I get here? I do not know.

We’ll talk about Trump cogitating upon pardoning Big Gretch’s would-be kidnappers some other day. Oh, not that Trump is capable of cogitating about anything except maybe gold terlets, or maybe it’s that he cogitates while sitting ON his gold terlet. Or whatever passes for cogitating in his pea (pee?) brain. Everyone poops. Even wannabe kings.

Ah well, rambly rambly gobblety gobblety. G’night!

Have I mentioned how c-c-c-cold it is up here? When we got here, the propane tank was at something like 38 (percent, I think). We’re supposed to order more gas when it gets to about 30. The GG nonchalantly opined that I wouldn’t have to order more gas until about July.

We have been running the propane stove almost continuously since last Saturday and guess what? It is now down to 28, which means I had to order more gas today. No big deal. I *could* set it up so the gas company would automatically come when it gets low enough. BUT. And it’s a big but. It’s a seasonal place and we don’t have the driveway plowed in the winter. Because the cabin is closed and no one is here.

Not exactly cabinkeeping but the GG’s designated laptop computer is an old MacBook Pro hand-me-down from meeeee. Airdrop was not working (and not working and not working). I said maybe it’s time for a new laptop? Eventually he looked up when it was made. 2011!!! Yes. That was the spring The Commander was doing rehab in the long-term care and I was trying to work from up here. I had ordered a new MacBook for meeeee and then the wi-fi died on my rickety old work laptop and I had to order a new work laptop too. I will say that although Apple musheens eventually need to be replaced, they last a heckuva lot longer than PCs. We have discussed getting the GG a new laptop multiple times but he keeps holding out, even though I have given him my blessing multiple times. I hate having to put up with failing devices.

Finally, the GG was hoping I would post a pic of the woman (?) he saw in Siberia today. She was taking out some trash and was quite, uh, interesting looking. Also scantily dressed. Nope. Not gonna post it. A disclaimer of sorts… I hate when I hear under-educated, ignorant nincompoops state that there are only two sexes/genders, male and female. (I haven’t heard the GG say that, I’m talking about certain politicians.) Not true. At least not exactly. I believe that the vast majority of people are born either male or female. But that is not always the case. As a very simple example, I worked for many years with a guy with Klinefelter Syndrome. XXY chromosomes. I won’t say much about him. I liked him and got along well with him but that’s partly because I was a seasoned mom by the time I knew him and had empathy for people who I could tell were struggling. He may have weirded other women out. What bits and pieces I knew about his life story (mostly from other employees) were difficult. Gender is not always cut and dried and I empathize with those for whom it is not, for whatever reason. And there are about a gazillion of those reasons. Read “Middlesex”. Good book.

Anyway, a couple years ago, the GG took another “odd” picture in Sault Ste. Siberia that I *did* post. It was a BEAR approaching the Border Patrol station🤪

Back to work. I was car-less today. We only have one vee-hickle up here this trip. I figgered I could manage the eight days we are here without Cygnus X-1. I get “yippy” (is that REALLY a word) if I don’t have my own car but I did okay today. Like I was alone at the moomin all day today and although I had to keep reminding myself I couldn’t just bop down the road to the park store for whatever, I wasn’t panicky.

I did want “bread crumbs” (to coat chicken thighs with). I entreated the GG to check the park store for bread crumbs on his way back from today’s chainsaw massacre. I wasn’t sure if they would have “regular” bread crumbs so I suggested Shake’n’Bake would work in a pinch. He suggested wheat germ? He has coated chicken with it before, he said. I said, “You will more likely find Shake’n’Bake than wheat germ at the park store.” Guess who was right and what our chicken thighs are coated with tonight.

The GG was out doing trail maintenance with some other guys today, including a high school classmate of mine. A classmate that I greatly admired way back then. I admired him for his intelligence and that he did not denigrate a woman’s intelligence. I was in the throes of introverted-ness back in those days. I RARELY spoke up for myself or anyone else. My opinion was not heard.

I am still an introvert albeit a more friendly one than I used to be. I do provide my opinion from time to time but I am careful about when and how to provide it.

Love y’all, KW.

Where is my MOE-skee-TOE netting when I need it. Not that I really needed it today. The GG and I went on a North Country Trail Junket today. We hauled a trailer behind Mooon Yooonit with a couple lawnmowers in it. One was my dad’s old mower. I fergit what the other one was but it doesn’t really matter because he only used my dad’s old mower.

The GG did all the work. I don’t really do trail work. I hung out in Mooon Yooonit, reading, fending off whatever MOE-skee-TOES made their way inside the car. And they did sometimes because it was often hot enough that I had to open the door or windows. But not always, because micro-climates. Like there were some places where there were aggressive mosquitos and others where they just sorta floated around but didn’t aggressively try to bite. I have NO bites. I am a good slapper. I am also not sure why some of them don’t try to bite. I have heard many theories throughout my life. I do not know.

The goal today was to mow stuff down so people who want to hike the North Country Trail can see the *signs* indicating where it crosses roads. M-28 was the first and arguably the most important because M-28 is a major yooperland east/west highway. It was two lanes when I was a kid but as more and more traffic traverses it, more and more four-lane passing areas have been built.

That’s good but it’s still a dangerous place for pedestrians (hikers) to cross. After that there was Salt Point Road, Avery Grade Road, Forest Road 3150, Ankodosh Creek, Roxbury Creek, and Silver Creek at M123. Don’t worry if you don’t understand where any of these roads are. I doubt most Michiganders know where anything but M-28 is and it’s probably mostly yooperlanders who know M-28.

I don’t like to do trail maintenance (it’s kinda like “gardening”) so I didn’t spend a lot of time outside but I greatly enjoyed the day and at Roxbury Pond, I went down to take a picture.

I was not taught to use a lawn mower because, uh, girls didn’t run lawnmowers. But boyz do and I think my dad would be happy for his lawnmower to be used by his son-in-law to clear entrances to the North Country Trail. And this GIRL doesn’t really care about mowing her own lawn. Not because girls can’t do it, just because she doesn’t WANT mow her lawn.

The pic is from one of our stops. Roxbury Pond.