Lemme see, they have skied or snow-shoed at Forbush, Beaver Creek, the ski ranch, Hartwick Pines, and the Mason Tract. It didn’t surprise me that the Mason Tract seemed to have been the trickiest/most squirrelly. It is a narrow up and down trail and it doesn’t get groomed for skiing (they were skiing today) except maybe for an occasional volunteer groomer. It follows the south branch of the Au Sable River and has an interesting history if y’all feel like googling “Mason Tract”. One of my main memories of skiing/hiking/whatever the Mason Tract is of watching a huge porcupine scale a tree. It’s a small memory but a good one. These places are all within an easy drive of the Hoton Lake Group Home, which we are always happy to share with younger family members and their friends. The pic is Hartwick Pines, I think. Snowy ski trails all kinda look the same after a while.

I feel like my uncle Austin of RAM fame may have had some involvement in the Mason Tract but I can’t remember why except that I think it is state land, and so would have been under Austin’s purview when he headed the Michigan DNR. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He was more of an owls in the refrigerator guy than a bureaucrat.

Happy New Year! I was surprised by a text message this morning from my former work friend K, a wonderful Indian-American man and development WIZARD. I returned his kindness and assured him that I was FINE! Because I am. I don’t really expect to hear from former work friends. I know that’s not really how it all works, having been on the other side of this for many years. The survivor’s guilt can be crippling in terms of talking to laid-off former co-workers. At least it always was for me. But I really appreciated that text.

Haha, and then LinkedIn sent me some spam that PNC Bank was looking for business systems analysts. This cracked me up on so many levels. A couple of them are: 1) I have a looooong history with PNC (one that pre-dates *PNC* by many years) and it’s still my main bank of quick liquidity and 2) I am not looking for a job. Um, I was gonna retaaaar? I had something else to say but the GG just asked for a refill (he’s watching the Rose Bowl even though we don’t have a dog in this race) and it totally flew outta my head. You’re welcome!

This was a couple of new year’s eves past at Little Cat Z’s house. We were planning to do it again last year but a norovirus canceled that big time. I have been forbidden to talk about that but it *is* my blahg. This year, LCZ and friends are x-c skiing/snow-shoeing at the Hoton Lake Group Home. They seem to be having a great time and I am happy for them.

We are here on the Planet Ann Arbor and there is somebody playing football on TV (OSU maybe?) and it is what it is. We grilled some mini filets and rounded that out with leftover potatoes and gravy and frozen peas and friends. Not a lavish NYE dinner but it worked.

Apparently the Racc made some lemon pigs today so I had to post this pic.

I don’t have much else to say except Happy New Year.

Our skiers traversed Beaver Creek and the ski ranch today. Beaver Creek is “across the street” from RAM, which is a state-run conference center named after The Commander’s brother, aka my uncle “Austin”, which was his middle name and what we called him. He was the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources when I was a child/teenager and he was the father of my beloved (alas, late) cousin Teri and grandfather of her daughter Anastasia, who he never met because he died when Teri and I were barely out of our teens. There are big freeway signs pointing out the exits for this place.

He was a naturalist with a phd and The Commander often talked about how he would store OWLS and things in the family refrigerator in their grandparents’ farmhouse where they lived in Garden City when they were kids. (Last I knew there was a fast food restaurant where that house used to be.) Ralph Austin was a few years older than The Comm, Frances Carolyn (they were #2 and #3 out of five children) and I get the idea that he looked out for her, driving her around with his friends, etc., back in the day when 25 cents would fill the gas tank.

She revered him and, as luck would have it, she married a guy he (and everybody in the MacMu family) got along with (aka my dad), a flight instructor in WWII. I’m thinking Austin might have been a flight instructor too? That’s not how my parents met but I think Austin was at their bare bones wedding out in the American southwest. Mom took a train out there and that’s a good story but not tonight. My MacMu grandfather wanted to go too but it didn’t quite work out because war. F*ck war.

Austin married Helen and they had Sally and Teri and they visited the moomincabin every summer AND THEY HAD NO PROBLEM USING THE DAMN OUTHOUSE! They qualified as “cool” aunt and uncle but I had a LOT of cool aunts and uncles. I do remember that Austin witnessed my FinFam uncle Duke and a friend of his illegally fishing at the moominbeach and did NOT turn them in.

I won’t write more about the MacMullan family tonight. I’m kind of laughing because until a few days ago, I had never heard the conference center called RAM. It is his initials but RAM also matches his state government work personality when he had to deal with “difficult elected officials”. Years ago, a Detroit Free Press columnist (Bob Talbot) wondered who Ralph A. MacMullan (of freeway sign fame) was. One of the things his research turned up was that my uncle was one of the few people who could shout down (long dead) Michigan yooperland firebrand senator Joe Mack. RAM!

Photo credit to Little Cat Z.

It’s a wrap. I am out. I am fine although I can’t say it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done. “Some people” were worried that it wouldn’t be done quickly but after working for Corporate America for 18 years and seeing their systems evolve a lot, I knew it would be quick. And it was. Done.

After I did the deed, I really wanted to go for a ride out in the county again but today was a snow day. The back roads would’ve been fine (it wasn’t really a lot of snow) but getting there with all the nutso traffic would not be fun.

The pic is one Little Cat Z sent us from the Great White North on the way to an x-c ski area. She’s been staying at the Hoton Lake Group Home and yesterday it was ICE but today was more conducive to skiing as you might be able to see via the pic. There were other pics but I won’t post them because there were people in them. There is more snow there and tons of snow in the eastern yooperland, where the moomincabin is.

I think we put LCZ on skis at about the age of three. We backpacked our baby mouse on that trip – she wasn’t walking yet. At one point, LCZ was solo for a few minutes traveling between me and the GG. I remember hearing her answer a friendly stranger’s question with, “I’m with my mommy and my daddy.” A person who no doubt was wondering why a tiny child was skiing alone. I came around a corner right around that time, which put that good Samaritan’s fears at ease.

Mouse was on skis by the age of two. Tiny red rental skies. She rocked it for a couple days and then I made the mistake of saying I would take her on the “little kid loop”. Oops. Tantrum. I picked her up, skis and all, headed up to the counter in the ski ranch and told Bob, “We’re done!” Having four children of his own, he just laughed.

A few years later, I was skiing with mouse on the Manitou Trail, a 5K loop at the ski ranch. She was a great skier by then but that was probably a bit too long for a five-year-old and before it was all over, I was carrying ALL FOUR of our ski poles in my left hand and holding her hand in my right. (Note that little kids don’t really need ski poles, they just want them because everybody else has them.) We were slodging along for a while when she said (in true mouse style), “Mom, why do I think about volcanoes so much?” How does a mother answer a question like that? I didn’t really know but to be fair I used to worry about volcanoes and things when I was that age too. In fact, non-religious me even “prayed” every night that we wouldn’t get “hit” by a tornado or volcano (and a whole list of other disasters I was worried about). Anyway it was a long slodge on the Manitou Trail that day.

I don’t think it is an atmospheric river (and no one is calling it that) but man oh man did it rain today. The GG has been bugging me to get out and go for a ride in the county and although I like doing that, I haven’t really been in the mood lately. Of course, he has also wanted to go shopping at Cabela’s and I was not a fan. We’ll talk about my lifelong relationship with shopping (or not) some other day. I spend as little time as possible in bricks and mortar stores these days. Wasn’t always that way.

Anyway, he tried again to get me outta dodge today. This time shopping wasn’t mentioned and I was ready. For one thing, rain rides can be the best and this WAS a rain ride. Where’re we goin’? Manchester area (that’s southwest of the Planet Ann Arbor). Okay. I knew we would be taking back roads and we did. And here is one of them. It was very icy but navigable at a very slow speed.

We made our way from there to somewhere near Grass Lake, which is a village and a lake of the same name. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever been there before. Probably but can’t really remember. The GG suddenly backed up Cygnus X-1 and I was like, whut? Oh, because there were skeletons there. He took photos out the driver’s side window with both my phone and his. He thinks doe and fawn? Not sure but seems like the right sizes. Hope this pic is not too freaky. Growing up on Lake Superior, dead birds and aminals were always floating in and decaying (and sometimes dying slowly on the beach, which is worse). But I am used to looking at skeletons.

Eventually we turned back homeward and as I kind of expected, we ended up at Cleary’s Pub in Chelsea. It was raining SOOOO hard when we got there, that the GG dropped me off right outside the back door. I was NOT really under-dressed but 38 degrees and rain was a little bit more than my base layers and stuff could handle. I only had to go a few feet to get into Cleary’s but I was wet and freezing when I grabbed seats for us at the bar and ended up wearing his jacket for a while to warm up. I ordered a cabernet IMMEDIATELY, which helped me warm up, then a second to drink with my chili.

We heard an “explosion” a while ago. I was like, “What was that?” A couple years ago there was a propane explosion around this time of year that leveled a house 10 miles north of here and killed four people. I dunno what this was. People on the Ann Arbor Townies facebook group think it might have been thunder. I’m not sure. It’s a weird time of year for thunder but it happens and it’s rainy and actually pretty warm right now. That will change overnight.

Yesterday the GG helped our our mouse finish her 2025 100 miles of hiking on the North Country Trail. I think they did a lot of road walking because I have seen this boot before and I think it is on a roadside. I hate road walks but whatever it takes. They had to walk out to this boot and back.

They had lunch in Albion on the way home. Fun fact: my Uncle Don did undergrad at Albion College (and then med school at uMich). My daughters could have actually gotten some kind of discounted tuition at Albion because their great uncle went to school there in the Jurassic Age (go figger). They chose Kalamazoo College instead. It’s okay, With financial aid, we could afford it and it was a great college. So is Albion.

I had a slow day. I am having a slow bit of time. People seem to be worried about me but as a “Finnelson” I will phoenix outta this. It’s what Finnelsons do and I have done it a few times before. I’m just reorganizing myself. I need time and space. Please please please give that to me. It’s much less to do with job loss (a blip with a shit ton of severance pay) than friend loss (Sari). And it’s a goddamn dark fugly time of year.

One thing I am NOT gonna do is jump off the Mackinac Bridge. For the second time in a week or so, the bridge closed today because a suicidal person parked their car and stepped over the rail. Thank the gods, this person was encouraged to step back across the rail onto the bridge and was taken to safety. I cannot actually imagine jumping off the Big Mac but apparently it happens quite frequently and most people don’t hear about it.

But I am okay and cooked turkey “tetrahedron” while kitchen dancing to whatever was on the radio and then we watched Svengoolie, who was playing a nutso vintage movie about robots and the GG fell asleep during that and I sent a pic of that to the beach urchins but will not post it here. I wasn’t sure if he would wake up in a reasonable time for bed but then I heard P-ing noises coming from the bathroom. I was told that was TMI and maybe it is.

This year I asked for (and received) a little piece of the Mackinac Bridge grate. The bridge was completed in 1957 and in 2017 they started replacing the grate in the middle two lanes of the bridge bit by bit.

At first they were selling great big grate pieces like too big to fit in your house but after a while they started selling little pieces like this. The other problem was that you could only get them by going to the bridge IN PERSON and while we traverse the bridge frequently, we never seem to be there at the right time. Somehow I got it into my head to try Etsy and VOILA! Of course, enterprising people who live a bit closer to the bridge have been scooping up grate pieces when they are available and they are ALL OVER ETSY. So I bought a couple pieces for the beach urchins and put it on my own xmas list with a note to check Etsy.

This is what I was gifted with. It isn’t the best pic given our dark crappy rainy ice storm winter day but there is an atomic rabbit who arrived with the grate and some fugly landfill crapola in the background just to keep it real.

In turn, I found a cool albeit dangerous looking knife made out of retired Mackinac Bridge grate steel for the GG. It was forged by a Michigan craftsman who included a hand-written note. There was even a reference to a bible verse. Although I am not religious at all, I am always happy to support small businesses and this all just about brought me to tears. Embiggen it because it is gorgeous.

I don’t think I will make a habit of collecting retired Mackinac Bridge grate fragments or knives made out of their steel but it was important to me to own a little piece of the bridge and I knew the GG would like the knife. I have vague memories of taking ferries across the Straits of Mackinac on our trips to see our Detroit grandparents and other down-state relatives. My dad and I would walk up to the upper ferry deck and he and I would walk around in the dark with our hands in our pockets. I also remember us traveling across the bridge the first day it opened and have a little card commemorating that event. These cards were handed out blank by the toll booth personnel (they were really busy) and my mom filled ours out. Dad, Mom, me, and my 3-month-old brother. I am the only one of us left.

So another xmas is a wrap. We had six people this year. Our dining table extends enough to fit six people but the surrounding space isn’t really all that big so we hung out in the back room with football (silenced) on the TV and music in many languages on the pod. A lot of it Celtic but not all. A couple of fireplace whisperers fed the faaaaar and all was well.

This is the Solo stove the GG asked for and I provided. I’ve had my eye on these stoves for a while now. They keep flying by on facebook and they look really cool but I didn’t explore them because 1) I will not click on a facebook ad to buy ANYTHING and 2) I wasn’t really sure the GG might want one. It turns out his ID twin has one and the GG likes it. Still, I did not click on a facebook ad. I went straight to the company site in my browser and ordered it from there. I am surprised at how big it is and not sure which vee-hickle he is gonna squeeze it into. But that’s his problem, as long as the vee-hickle is not Cygnus because she is mine and I hate when she is filled up with crapola.

Oh yeah. I got a BATTERY! I am laughing about this because there is a facebook meme about how your wife never forgets the year you gifted her a MOP. Well. I have never received a MOP but the GG and I have a long history of giving each other vacuum cleaners. Happily received. Yes really. This year I asked for a Dyson cordless vac. We have two already (we have a lot of vacs) but there are battery issues with each, some of them our errors. So what did he get me? A BATTERY for a Dyson cordless. Am I happy? Yes, unless it doesn’t charge properly. If it doesn’t, a Dyson cordless will be on my bday (January) list. Unless I just get out there and order my own.

Merry merry if you celebrate xmas and cheers to a wonderful day if you don’t.

Will there be an ice storm tomorrow morning? Time will tell.

The solstice pig is at the mouse house and it’s her photo, not mine. We are a few days beyond the winter solstice. That means sunrise is still late and getting a bit later every day but sunset is also getting later. I don’t totally understand the rules. I enjoy the dark at both ends of the day but this year, I am kind of surviving. Don’t worry, I am okay. Or will be.

I am kind of phoning xmas in this year. I have gifts for people but a few of them are still not wrapped. But I’ll get there. And there might be a couple of surprise gifts. Ya nevah know.

For tomorrow, I have mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts ready to go into the hopper. And cranberries and stuffing. I was gonna make Chex Mix this afternoon but out of the bazillion bottles of condiments in the refrigimitator, Worchestershire sauce was scarce so my mouse is bringing some over tomorrow. It’s December and I am still somehow in the throes of the annual “combinding” of the moomincabin condiments with the Landfill condiments. Another topic for another day. We have a couple of chickens to grill tomorrow and I need to remind the GG that I bought some fancy little oranges that we can stuff them with. Because we don’t stuff birds with actual stuffing. That’s a separate dish.

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At some point during the cFam xmas party last night, I realized that I didn’t know where mouse and the racc were. Oh, said Little Cat Z, they said an Irish goodbye. I’d never heard that term before (even though I have a significant amount of Irish DNA) but it means they sneaked out without saying goodbye to anyone (or at least most people).

This was a-okay with me!!!! When we and our next door cousins leave the moominbeach our usual way of saying “we’re out” is to honk a master salute as we are driving out. Long goodbyes have always driven me crazy. Some (but not all) of the cFam are prone to looooong goodbyes. The GG always says trying to leave FlaMan’s place is like talkin’ to Colombo, an old TV detective, and that’s kinda what happened yesterday when we were trying to leave his apartment.

Years and years ago when my beach urchins were very young, we were trying to leave the cFam grandparents’ condo in Crazy Old Florida to return to the Great White North. We had a breakfast plan at I fergit which fast food restaurant. We were in the in-law’s driveway trying to leave and I didn’t feel like we were ever gonna get outta there. I loved my in-laws but they segued into recommendations about various restaurants we should go to instead of our fast food choice. Nope. We wanna get outta Dodge and head north. I love Florida but when it’s time to go back north, it’s time.

The funny thing was that whatever that restaurant was, I LOVED the women at the window. I HATED the food. Oh well. It did get us outta Dodge.

P.S. The pic is scarves that our lovely nephew Flec (not his real name) uses to juggle. He is a fantastic juggler among many other things and the scarves are very handy when you are working with very young children, like the ones who were at yesterday’s party, including his daughter. We have some good people in our family(ies). I always have a good time talking to Flec.

I *think* this photoooo is pretty okay to post. It shows a few people at the annual cFam xmas party but definitely not everyone who attended and those shown are not easily identifiable although my daughters and the racc are in the middle, back in the background. But I’ve got nothin’ else for a pic today.

Getting there was a bit of an odyssey though. FlaMan was missing some items in his apartment and we had to drive NORTH from where the party was to deal with that and deliver some food. We had Little Cat Z with us for that little excursion and she was of great help. Although we spent most of the time in the living room watching Gunsmoke reruns. Gunsmoke is actually not a bad show as long as the volume is down and you aren’t streaming it from someplace that inserts five minutes of ads every fifteen minutes. When we got there, FlaMan was in a deep sleep and a sweet FlaMan whisperer was in his apartment doing some cleanup chores. She was calling both him and the GG “babe” if memory is accurate. Eventually at least some of his missing items were found and LCZ heated up a frozen dinner for him. Alas, he wasn’t really in a good place to go to the party. Which was kind of a good thing because we’d’ve had to drive him home again, adding 20-30 minutes to *our* trip home. Oh don’t worry, he was okay, just not in the mood to party. After an hour and a half at his place, I was ready for some whine.

My modus operandi for these parties has become to sit at the kitchen table with the Lady of Linden (it’s at her house) and let people come around and talk to me. So that is what I did. Like many families these days, our family is a bit politically divided but after a while some of the younger folk migrated to the table and we had a meeting of minds about our current government. They know what I’m all about. I also had some good (and polite) discussions with some of those who disagree with my views. There was even some laughter about Trump/MAGA hats at some point. Throughout all of it, the little kids romped around like wild Indians, oblivious to politics. Siblings and cousins and second cousins. I didn’t manage to count how many people were there.

Posted this pic before. It is my grandaddy serving a couple of young girls at the 1st National Bank of Sault Ste. Marie children’s teller window. My granddaddy was the bank president and I was probably a toddler around this time. Grandaddy was very kind to children but I’ve been told not so much to people not paying their loans.

My dad ended up being the bank president later on so I am the daughter and granddaughter of bankers. Their small-town bank got swallowed up by various holding companies, ending in PNC, which a lot of people might know about?

The main Planet Ann Arbor PNC branch closed recently, which meant that a whole bunch of people had to close out their safe deposit boxes. I’d had to do this a couple of times already, when our neighborhood Maple Village branch closed and when the Sault Ste. Siberia bank branch closed. That was the bank that I grew up in and my late parents had a huge safe deposit box with all kinds of crazy stuff in it. When we went up there, the bank folks couldn’t even open it for a while but they finally managed that and at the end of it all, the current bank branch manager (who happened to live next door to my mother’s house) said, “There are pictures of your dad and granddaddy in the basement. Do you want them?” Of course.

So. Banker’s daughter/granddaughter. Did I grow up rich? We weren’t rich or poor. I was often told (by my mother) that we were poor but we weren’t really. Just that a banking job does not always automatically mean a huge salary. We could afford what we needed but we were also very frugal. We were in a prominent family for whatever that’s worth. I had and still have mixed feelings about that although make no mistake I LOVE my family. They are good people.

As an adult, it kinda cracks me up that… 1) I always loved to do non-profit treasury jobs. Counting and organizing big piles of cash, coins, and checks and taking it all to the bank to deposit was fun fun fun for me. 2) It cracks me up that the adult career that I FELL into (after age 50) was fintech (online banking) systems analyst. I often wonder what my dad and granddaddy would have thought about that. Granddaddy died before computer technology and dad struggled when the bank started adopting it back in the Jurassic Age. So I’ll never know.

This photo kinda reminds me of the Hundreds of Beavers movie that the GG and I watched last March or whenever. It’s kind of a cult fave. We were porterized last night at their house. I kept looking at the GG across the room in this hat with its topknot. Nobody else was wearing a hat like this. To be fair, I BOUGHT him this hat. From Eddie Bauer or someplace.

We were trying to watch Svengoolie tonight but they’ve changed Svengoolie’s format and I have not been a fan of the more recent movies. They are too long and boring. It was a vampire thing tonight and that’s okay except that it took a helluva long time to get to the crux of the matter. I mean, when I was a young teenager and we had a f*cking outhouse (without a light) at the moomincabin, I dealt with vampires out there all the time. And werewolves and something can’t remember the name of that I made up. I was NOT in a fancy house in a fancy nightgown with big curving staircases and whatever else. I started to nod off so here I am trying write a coherent blahg entry.

It was a long sorta fugly day and the The GG kept wanting to go for a ride and I was like nooo, but then then we got most of the xmas gifts sorted out and I finally said, okay let’s go and so we did and here we are. He is in the bedroom watching football and I am headed there shortly.

I kinda hate the song Have Yourself a Merry Little xmas but that’s kinda what’s in my head now. And since I can carry a tune and have a decent voice (soprano or mezzo soprano), it isn’t really all that bad.

G’night, KW.

The Grinch seems to be everywhere this year. This is my cousin’s drink last night. Her husband over at Regenaxe has a better pic and lists the ingredients. I didn’t blahg yesterday because we met up with them and npJane a bit on the late side (for us) over on the other side of town. It was really fun but I was kind of done at the end of it all.

The Grinch seems to be everywhere this year. A children’s event at the Cozy Corners in Barbeau and a friend’s doggie daycare and the JKL Bahweting School and I dunno where else. I gather that the dogs were pretty nervous about the Grinch until they realized he was one of their beloved (female) caretakers dressed up in green. Dogs have a keen sense of who people are and what they smell like. I know because my brother’s dogs definitely trusted me. I was “Anne-Mom” and The Commander was “GrrMom”.

We have been calling one of my cousins the Grinch since we were all in high school or thereabouts. We were not all in high school at the same time as there is a 20 year cousin-y age spread but the Grinch and I are three years apart and have always been close. I’m not entirely sure how that nickname got started although there a few theories. But it stuck, at least within the fam. Most people he deals with know him by his first name, which is NOT Mike, which is what I grew up calling him. Go figger.

His mom was my aunt Radical Betty and as an Air Force family they lived all over the place. When Radical Betty and Duke retired to the yooperland, down the beach from us on family land, the Grinch ended up there too. He is a bit eccentric (aren’t we all?) but he turned into a construction worker who has a successful drywall business and employs a lot of folks in the area. I won’t talk about them (these days I don’t know most of them) but if y’all ever need a drywall bucket, I can probably get you one for free. With luck, an empty one.

Skeletor on the couch below the TV is not the problem. I do not get why people like the person on the TV screen. I just do not. I don’t even think Skeletor likes him although he has at times had to endure wearing a f*cking MAGA hat. Skeletor, I feel your pain.

I have wrapping paper “upshairs” but probably have to buy more. I don’t really want to buy more wrapping paper at all but…

We are trying to figger out xmas dinner… I don’t think we are grilling duck this year. And that’s okay. Maybe we’ll do a couple of chickens instead. Well see. I’m gonna let Little Cat Z help me figger out the menu. Maybe we’ll grill some blasted duck breasts for my blasted birthday in January,

Little Cat Z ran into the GG and our friend ValJ at Kerrytown today. I was hoping they met in a No Politics Zone. I dunno if that exactly happened but they did apparently talk for 45 minutes or so, therefore it might’ve been okay. I do NOT agree with the GG when it comes to politics. I am much more aligned with ValJ and his wife, who is a longtime friend of mine. They are the parents of Mouse’s friend Lairi the Rake and own yooperland beach property although theirs is on Lake Michigan, not Superior.

That’s probably how this post will be. Why? Well, because I went to my friend Sari’s funeral today. I got to know her when our kids were in middle/high school. Little Cat Z was pretty good friends with two of her daughters and I think they were in the same alternative middle school advisory. Was it called an advisory? I think so.

Around that time, I was HONORED to be invited to meet up with some of the other middle school moms and Sari was one of them, as well as Marci, for coffee/breakfast at Cafe Zola downtown. As time went on and kids got older, our group eroded as a lot of the moms went back to work. Including me eventually although my bosses the LSCHP and then Amazon Woman always encouraged me (and others) to keep up with non-work friendships and family. Always family. But Sari and Marci and I continued to meet all these years. We did change locations to Barry Bagels and then zoom (because covid).

So this funeral was at a synagogue. Will we know anyone there? I am a Celtic pagan type person but I grew up going to Sunday School so I can navigate mainstream protestant churches and even Catholic churches. Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak anyone? My husband’s childhood church. But I rarely go into religious establishments and haven’t for years. So I had a bit of social anxiety about going to a synagogue, even though I knew people would welcome me and of course they did. The GG was maybe one of the few men that didn’t have a yarmulke on but probably there were others. I don’t think anyone probably wore a Batman yarmulke like the LSCHP used to often wear at work.

Anyway we were walking in deciding where to sit and yo-ho-ho, there was Marci and her husband and their wonderful son and Marci said, “Do you want to sit with us?” Yes yes yes. Of course we do.

And the rest of it was what it was and after the pallbearers took the casket out (I didn’t even notice the casket and don’t think it was open, thank you very much) the rest of us were allowed to leave. We got in the car and LCZ asked who was hungry. I was. So we went to Casey’s Tavern.

I am not very much inclined to decorate xmas trees in general and this holiday season has not been the easiest one. The GG came home today and he, mouse, and the racc lightly decorated the tree. I am happy that every single blasted ornament is not on the tree. Lightly decorated is good.

I am happy that the angel my great aunt Elizabeth gave me as a small child tops the tree. One of the first xmases in the landfill, the GG accidentally shot her wand off sonehow. I was really pissed off at the time but he has pretty much made sure what is left of her tops the tree ever since. There were a lot of questions about where some of the other ornaments came from. I loved my step grandmother Bolette dearly (mom’s bio mom died way before I was born). Bolette did a lot of wonderful things in her life but making xmas ornaments was not one of them. The Commander made some really cool (and simple) ornaments.

Little Cat Z cooked a wonderful chicken dinner while people were decorating the tree and I was just kind of bumbling around feeling somewhat pitiful. Don’t worry. I’ll get over that. Losing a job at this stage of life is a blip. Losing a friend is not. Losing both is challenging. But onward.

Seva is a veggie restaurant that has been around Ann Arbor forever. It was downtown forever. We went there frequently. We even got my meat eating dad to go there. We also took him to Mountain Jack’s for steaks. When he ate lunch at Seva he would eat an egg salad sandwich with a chocolate frappe.

I have so many memories from that place. One was Little Cat Z sitting in my lap. She was maybe eight months old. Radical Betty was with us and talked about LCZ’s blueberry eyes, a lot like mine. “Mama, I don’t have some sharp eyes, I have some blue ones.” Yes.

Seva moved out to the Westgate shopping center and I just didn’t go there for a long time. I don’t even know why. It just didn’t seem right that it wasn’t downtown any more. And covid. My mouse suggested it yesterday but I thought I wanted a turkey naan at Sessions. We went to Sessions but I didn’t end up getting a turkey naan. But Seva stuck into my head and so today that’s what LCZ and I did. And although I will always miss the downtown Seva, they have done a good job with this and we will be back.

First, I am not sure I should be posting this pic at all. I mean the Uncly Uncle probably doesn’t care if his mug is in the pic but he might not want his grandson in there. It’s a few years ago though so I’m guessing it might be okay now? If it isn’t, I will happily take it down. He’s still a kid in this pic. He is a heartbreaker looking teenager now.

My mouse and the racc took such good care of me today (and the racc became an uncle!}. They collected me in Oriole and took me out to lunch, moved the carts up to the top of the driveway, and cleaned up some crappy iceola in the driveway.

And then there was the news that my blahggy friend Margaret and my cousin Jay met up for lunch! They are both in the PACNW and this was so cool. Jay blogs but not as frequently as Margaret and I. But I loved this!

Okay, I think I am done for tonight.