I’m here at the moominbeach and I’m happy to be here so why did I have such a hard time dragging myself away from the Landfill this morning? I don’t think I have the words to describe that.

The moominbeach actually *is* home. Going to the moomin is actually one of my earliest memories. We would turn off (the then gravel) 6-Mile Road onto (the then gravel) Birch Point Loop. I’m not even sure that road had a name then. What I remember about this is hearing the susurration of the pine trees in the wind as we made the turn. I was lying in the back seat of the Old Black Ford (I don’t need no stinkin’ car seat). We drove out from our house in Sault Ste. Siberia. But that house (and the house the parents moved to much later) have long belonged to other people and they aren’t home for me now.

Back in those days, we stayed at the Old Cabin for the summer. It was the *only* cabin. My uncle Don’s cabin was being built that summer, I think. I also have a vague memory of a telephone ringing at the Old Cabin (hopefully I’m not crazy). He would need a telephone because he was often on call as a doc. After his cabin was finished, it was many many years before there was a phone at the Old Cabin again.

So until I was six and we built the moomincabin, my family spent summers in the Old Cabin with two families of cousins. I mostly remember the good times but The Two-Year-Old Summer apparently wasn’t much fun for our moms (The Commander, Radical Betty, and Bubs). The two-year-olds were me and the two FinFam girl cousins who were born the same year as me. Apparently it rained a LOT that summer. And during a refrigerator clean-out session, people were punching out eggs and stuff. (I think that was UKW, always the ring-leader.) There is an infamous photo of the three of us two-year-old cousins bathing in various tubs purportedly sized to our butts on the hearth in front of the faaarplace. I’ll have to look that up and post it.

After the moomincabin was built, it took a little pressure off the number of people in the Old Cabin but we all ran back and forth all the time, in and out all day. Nobody ever knocked on a door at the moominbeach in those days. You just barged on in. Often loudly. I’m pretty sure my grandmother loved all the hubbub.

So where was I? I was at The Landfill this morning and now I am here and (yay!) one of the beach urchins has arrived for the week. She is UBER busy and as of last night wasn’t sure she could make it (it’s a frickin’ five hour drive). I was feeling almost a little verklempt but here she is (and I wouldda been okay in any case). After yesterday’s hot sweaty day on the Planet Ann Arbor, today at the moominbeach it may be 60? And there’s a northwest wind. Chilly but not terrible.

Anyway. I didn’t wanna leave the Landfill this morning and I won’t wanna leave the moominbeach when it’s time to go back to the Landfill.

Thunderstorms overnight and this morning cooled us off for a while. Then, when I wasn’t paying attention, the temperature shot up into the 80s and all of that moisture evaporating from the storms left us in a sticky swamp. I hadn’t really been paying attention but at one point, the GG announced that he was going to turn the A/C on. Realizing that he was right, I did not argue. We were working on packing to leave tomorrow and needed the coooooool in order to function. I don’t know how we managed all those years without central A/C even though we don’t often turn it on now.

Did the next door neighbors bring their new baby home today? We think so but we did not see when they arrived so we did not see how many people got out of the vee-hickle. We did NOT go next door to ask or visit. Although they are very nice and friendly, about the last thing I would ever do is intrude on a pair of new parents with their two-day-old baby.

We had a bit of a happy hour in our back yard this afternoon/evening, with pizza from Anthony’s. Thankfully almost all of it was eaten, something the GG and I would never do by ourselves and I frequently have to throw out leftover pizza when I make it because it doesn’t get eaten in a timely manner.

We have robins nesting again and that reminded me that my photo memories showed me that four years ago today, I was sitting outside at the end of my workday when this baby robin fluttered down from its nest, a few feet away from me. A fledgling. I watched it “dance” with one of its parents until I lost track of them. (Don’t look at the garlic mustard.)

I begged off watching a Fargo episode tonight. I wanted to be outside in my yard watching the faaarflies. We’ll be up and out on the early side tomorrow and I will need to focus to finish packing. I don’t have a lot left to pack. I like to travel light. But still.

A higgledy-piggledy entry but that’ll have to do. G’night.

I don’t as a rule watch presidential debates [delete long complicated reasons or just go with “I get bored” or in last night’s case more like “I get disgusted”.]

I was making a Meijer run at 0-skunk-30 today (when there’s no traffic to speak of) when NPR played a clip of Biden speaking. OH MY GOD! IT’S ALL OVER! That was just about all I could think. But I also realized, this is a man with a COLD. A bad one. COVID or not, I dunno and who cares. He had lost his voice. Of course the media and various trolls jumped all over this. He is old and feeble, yada yada. I do wish we had a younger candidate. I almost bet Biden does too. But he doesn’t always sound feeble.

Back when I was a pirate (A pirate was a reading partner with elementary school children who were struggling to read and didn’t necessarily have academic support at home), there was a day when I was “sick”. I felt fine EXCEPT that I was constantly coughing, sneezing, and blowidg by doze. And I had no voice. I canceled my pirate that day. But you can’t cancel a presidential debate. Because that will make you look feeble.

Plus. You have to “debate” Trump. I put debate in quotes because Trump does not debate according to any rules except his own. I learned a new phrase, “gish gallop” today. I was not anywhere near the debate team in high school. I was TERRIFIED of speaking in public, arguing with people and all of what that stuff entails. Apparently gish gallop is an actual term? Right? It involves spewing out anything and everything you can, true or not, to bamboozle your opponent so they cannot figure out what to respond to. Something like that. Again, I am not a debater. This can discombobulate your opponent to the point of uh, uh, uh, stuttering. Even if you are NOT a life-long stutterer, like Biden is.

The thing is that Trump naturally gish gallops. He ALWAYS spews out all kinds of garbage, true or not. Mostly not. That is his modus operandi if I can grace a baboon with a Latin phrase. Mrs. Velde, my high school Latin teacher and Latvian concentration camp survivor may be cheering me on but I am sure she is not cheering for Trump, having lived through Nazi fascism in WWII.

Whatever went on in those debates, we CANNOT elect Trump again. Biden is NOT an idiot. He is a seasoned politician with a sense of humor who had a really bad day. We MUST elect him this time. After that, we can regroup. Hopefully with some younger candidates.

That was Amazon Woman (my then boss) the day I emailed her to say something like, “I am covid positive today and I’m taking a mental health day. I am fine. I have TWO symptoms, mild cough and EXTREME ANNOYANCE.” The annoyance was at the GG who ABSOLUTELY brought the virus home from an “I don’t need no stinkin’ mask” trip. One during which he hugged a hiking acquaintance he encountered on the trail who had “it’s just a cold” symptoms. In the middle of the initial omicron surge? Nope. I don’t think so.

In the end, I did not kill The GG last night. We went to sleep happy and are pretty much back to the usual silent political impasse. I was doing laundry this morning and the dryer notified me that the sheets were done while I was in a meeting. The GG happily went down to retrieve them, then made the bed. That is all modus operandi around here. When you are one of 10 siblings, doing laundry and making beds is not “women’s work”. If you want your own clothes returned to you from the laundry, you learn to do your own laundry. (Disclaimer: This is NOT to dis my mother-in-law. She raised a great family and helped many neighborhood kids out along the way. And she wasn’t bad at laundry but I doubt it was her top priority.)

I had to laugh though. My blahg was not accessible for a while today. When a blahggy friend notified me, I jokingly said that maybe my husband had sabotaged it. But not. The GG does not have the access required to do anything to my blahg. Er, I can’t remember if he has my password or not but I am not really worried about him destroying my blahg. Plus he doesn’t read it regularly so maybe he hasn’t even read yesterday’s.

Administrivia… If my blahg goes away, it will come back. One of the little perks in my life is that my blahg host is not one of the public platforms where you have to set up your own blahg (I have done that and know how painful it can be). My host is The Guru and The Guru is a friend in real life. When the server goes down (which is probably what happened today but who knows), he knows about it and if he is not somewhere he can’t access the internet, he is working on it. So I don’t have to notify some underpaid, uncaring tech support person. And I didn’t notify The Guru today because I knew he had my [blahg’s] back.

Now. If The Guru ever decides to retire from this thankless “job”, I will be in the same swamp as everybody else. Typepad? WordPress? For now though, Thank you!

Fen pic by mouse.

I am so frickin’ sick of the MAGA cult.

Back in 2016, we were at the Oscar Tango and a certain person asked us a bunch of questions. One of them was “Do you agree with open borders?” I answered no.

Mind you, this was waaaay before we ever thought Trump could or would win a presidential election. I wasn’t crazy about Hilary as a choice but jeebus. The Bad Orange Man cannot even string a sentence together without making it into chopped salad. He’s a “biznessman” and reality TV show “star” (and a frickin’ idiot) and how could he ever win… You know what happened next.

Tonight, that stoopid piece of paper was brought out once again. I STILL do not believe in open borders. But that’s where it gets complicated. First… What is the definition of “open borders”? I don’t think we actually have them in this country although I will acknowledge that many people manage to get in illegally.

So. I believe what we need are laws and rules and procedures for dealing with the folks who want to join the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. And I think we have those in place but from what I am hearing, it is very difficult to enforce them and we won’t even talk about getting these people’s cases through the court system in any kind of timely manner. Is this the fault of any one president? No president can solve these issues alone.

I have many issues with Trump’s immigration “policies” but the one that rankles me the most is the zero tolerance child separation thing. YES, I KNOW IT WAS AN OBAMA POLICY!!! Stop telling me that. Obama did NOT institute it with the intention of using it in a brute force way to separate EVERY child from their parent(s). It was intended to be used in a discretionary way when a child seemed to be in danger. TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP used it like a HAMMER. Every kid no matter what the circumstances. This is not a way to treat children and their families in any circumstances. And to those who have tried to liken it to AMERICAN children torn from their parents as they (parents) are being arrested, that is bad too but it is apples and oranges.

What bothered me most about tonight’s “conversation” or whatever it was because I ended up being angry and walking away… Was that I was not given a chance to talk. I was not given a chance to explain my 2016 answer to the question and I was not given a chance to explain why I haven’t changed my stance. I was not given a chance to talk AT ALL! Talked over every time I opened my mouth. Me, a *literate* and highly paid tech professional. Not that my pay grade matters. All people should be given a chance to talk and be heard!

As for immigration in general, I would remind people that probably an overwhelming majority of our citizens’ ancestors immigrated, if they themselves are not immigrants. I wish for more compassion for those who try to leave horrible circumstances for the “land of the free and the home of the brave” or whatever the United States of America is nowadays. We seem to have more idiots than not. Where are your ancestors from? How did they get here and what kind of travails did they endure on their journey?

And to whoever needs to hear it, STOP TRYING TO MAN ‘SPLAIN ME! JEEBUS KEE-REIST.

I was just about to go out and water my flowers this morning at 0-skunk-30. It had been a few days. They were looking fine but I knew I would need to get back into the habit if we didn’t get significant rain soon. I had no idea what the weather forecast was. Before I headed out the door, I decided to turn on the radio. They were talking about severe storms and power outages. I didn’t catch where but it sounded like a “local” weather report so somewhere in southern lower Michigan.

I looked at the sky (again). I looked at weather apps. We seemed to be at the very bottom tippy tip of rain storms although it was NOT raining. I decided to wait for a bit and see if it rained or not. I like to water flowers early in the morning. Long ago, a self-described “farm girl” I worked with told me if you water flowers/plants in the heat of the day, they get cooked. I dunno if that’s exactly true but somehow it makes sense to water things when they are not in full sunlight. I’m talking a few pots of impatiens, not trying to give farm crop advice.

BTW, I think I can be credited for giving my old co-worker a subtle tip about how she might turn her boyfriend into a fiance. (Go away for a bit.) I am not Ann Landers but in this case, I sussed things out correctly. It worked and I haven’t seen her in a bazillion years but their children have got to be through college and well launched into their adult lives by now. I hope she and her family are thriving.

Back to the weather… We got a good gully washer this morning. By the time it arrived I was about to head outside to commune with MMCB for our weekly “zoom” coffee. But then. Kaboom Kabaam. It went on for at least an hour. It was coming from Wisconsin, said the GG. In truth, there was a LOT of thunder but nothing severe. What there was, was a lot of was rain! Which we needed. And it was COOOOOL in the Landfill for the first time in I dunno 10 days?

The photo is one my mouse sent me, Likely from the Plum parking lot early this morning. With permission, although I think any pic she sends me is okay to post. I do draw the line at pics of people.

These might only work as hats for cone heads. This is actually a bunch of garlic bread loaves I made today. I bought Zingerman’s baguettes at The Plum this morning and I buttered them, sprinkled garlic powder (powder, not salt) on them, wrapped them up in foil and put them in the freezer.

I use garlic powder on garlic bread because… When I was a kid, The Commander would *mince* garlic (by hand) for garlic bread and once a piece of minced garlic gave me a “garlic hangover”. I mean the next day I could STILL taste garlic and it was not pleasant. Broccoli was part of the dinner plan the next evening and that actually got rid of the garlic hangover. So I use garlic powder for my garlic bread. But not garlic salt.

I also got half-length lasagna noodles and Soy Vay marinade/sauce at the Plum. I need the half length noodles so I can make two half lasagnas for the Piedy 4th of July party, meat and veggie, and put them in different pans. I got Soy Vay because although I can easily make marinade for steak or whatever, Soy Vay is good and quick. It was my brother who originally found that. I think he found it somewhere in Sault Ste. Siberia (Glen’s maybe?) but that was something like 25 years ago and I haven’t been able to find it there recently.

Can I mobilize my Mirrix tapestry loom to take up there and if I do, will I actually USE it?

I took a chance on buying this book for the GG. I am not much of a history buff but after listening to two NPR interviews with this author on the anniversary of D-Day, I was impressed enough that I thought I’d give it a shot. It turned out to be a winner, even though I heard about it on NPR, which can be “persona non grata” to some folks around here. Not to mention that reading a book in a kayak is a good way to spend a very hot week. He has finished it and passed it on to his ID twin, the UU.

Our heat wave finally cooled down over last night and although I think the Landfill is still retaining some residual heat, it was comfortable all day today and outside was glorious. I retreated there for much of the afternoon after I got some chores done.

I dealt with some quilt-type fabric today. A number of years ago, I hit some kind of flinging wall and decided to donate a bunch of quilt fabrics. One of the places I donated to was via a work friend who used to meet weekly(?) with a group that made quilts to donate. When they received my contribution, the group leader apparently immediately dropped her plans for the day and used some of my fabrics instead.

The other place I donated to was via my daughter and wouldn’t you know, I got some of that stuff back recently. And that’s okay. After I made my original donations, I kind of regretted doing it. This stuff is all so hard. Anyway, I enjoyed reacquainting myself with some old fabric friends today. There was one bag in the box that I had not donated. At first glance it looked like old socks or something. I didn’t take a careful look but this is also okay. I will wash those items and mail them off in a take-back bag.

That is about all for tonight. Love y’all, KW.

First, a note to the weather “gods”. I don’t mean the “gods” that actually MAKE the weather. I mean those who try to predict it.

From last Sunday through Thursday, I was getting regular “alerts” from Weather Underground (I think) that our heat advisory was updated and was going to end in x days and y hours. The expiration on this advisory seemed to be Thursday night. But. Thursday night arrived. And Friday? I didn’t get any more alerts but the only difference I could detect from Friday’s weather and the rest of the week was that THERE WAS NO BLASTED BREEZE. The temperature was STILL in the low 90s. So why end the alert?

Today was another hot hot hot day but the breeze was back so I felt reasonably cool when I shelled my eight quarts of peas this morning. I bought four quarts on Wednesday and another four today. The vendor I bought from today said there would PROBABLY be peas on Wednesday and MAYBE next Saturday. It’s always a short season but this one is even shorter because of the heat. I told him I was heading to the yooperland in a week or so and would probably stay there for a while and he said, “You’re going in the right direction.” Yes.

Back to the weather, why can’t “they” just say something like, “It’s gonna be hot!” On top of that, Weather Underground was reporting all day yesterday that it was 99 degrees. Nowhere near! And no that wasn’t the heat index or whatever it is. Seems like Weather Underground was once the gold standard of weather forecasting/reporting? Wait! Is AI generating these advisories and alerts? If so, fire it.

I do love these meeses to pieces. On the left, the yellow one is my Tigger dog’s favorite toy ever. The Commander gave it to me when they had Tig euthanized (she was old and sick) when I went to college and I have saved it all these years. It still makes a hearty squeak when you squeeze it. I have never had another dog. I am a one dog woman even on a three dog night. The other mice have their tails wrapped across their faces. It took me a while to process that…

Well, we bought our fancy she-shed from Jim’s Amish Structures in the nearby burg of Chelsea. Despite the Amish-ness of the name, the shed was trucked in by some big rig. We had to cut down the remains of our mostly dead apple tree so it could get into the back yard. So not anything like the buggies the eastern yooperland Amish drive down dangerous Six Mile Road aka Waiska (Whiskey) Bay Road.

The neighbor is having a shed built. Or is it a garage? Opinions vary. Lots of gossip when we should just ASK Dan next door what he is building! The materials were delivered a few days ago via a gas powered flatbed truck. Today the building crew arrived, again via a gas powered vee-hickle. They got to business right off the bat. Tappity-tappity tap hammer bing bang. The GG was watching from the back room and was amazed at how fast they were working.

This is a pic he took. The workers are dressed in a sorta Amish fashion. But they weren’t driving a buggy. Anyone driving a buggy around here would be risking life and limb even more so than up on Six Mile/Whiskey Bay in the eastern yooperland. We went to pick up Mooon Yooonit from scheduled maintenance at around noon yesterday and the traffic just about drove me cray-zee. I’m thinking that I’ve heard that not all Amish stick totally to the old ways any more? I dunno.

It wasn’t any hotter today than it has been the rest of the week but somehow, I felt hotter today than the rest of the week. [Delete a bunch of stuff about heat indexes, etc.]

Keeping it real, this is a shot of teleCublandia, my “office” for the last four years. That is when I am not in the Lyme Lounge or the moomincabin or wherever. Don’t look at Green Guy or the frooogs. They are like trombone players. You’ll only encourage them. Other people I work with have (as far as I know) set up actual OFFICES in their homes. I think the company would buy us desks and chairs and whatever. I was like, I don’t need no stinkin’ desk. Or chair. None of that stuff worked for me.

When we first got sent home because covid, I commandeered the crappy old Green Couch. I hung out there until I managed to get the GG to replace his family’s beloved old Green Couch with a NEW one. At some point “every person in my family has been sick on that couch” didn’t fly any more. Even though I am one of his family members who HAS been sick on that blasted couch. But I now have the Teal Couch and the GG is happy with it.

In a heat wave or whatever it is we’re dealing with (it isn’t 100 degrees after all), teleCublandia can get as hot as all getout at the end of the afternoon and I was kinda melting today. I was bathed in sunlight. Hot hot hot. I was soooo hot that I bagged work a little early. By the time I took this pic, some cloud cover had moved in so you can’t see the bright sunlight that bathed me and my little office.

I shut down my work laptop and moved into the Landfill Chitchen. It was almost immediately cooler there. I didn’t turn on any lights but our kitchen lights are all LED anyway so I don’t think they heat the room up much.

Hoping for bit of a cool-down tomorrow but we’ll see.

And other random stuff.

First, I woke up in the middle of the night to the strongest 🦨 smell we’ve had in a while. It STUNK BUT it wasn’t as bad as the time 3rd grade teacher Mr. K (of Multiplication Blues fame) asked me about the skunk smell and I told him it had been skunky all night. He called it the Night of Skunks. I used to walk one of my beach urchins to school while she was in the “H-team” (3rd and 4th grade). This was at her request. Before the doors were open for the day, the entrance was a melee of backpack flinging. My kid could have easily dealt with that and knew it but didn’t want to tolerate that kind of juvenile crap and I don’t blame her. My presence maybe(?) settled it down a bit. I did not “police” kids and she didn’t seem embarrassed by me. Most days I was over there in the mornings on PTO bizness anyway.

I went to the Wednesday farmers market this morning. I don’t usually go to the Wednesday market but it is shelling pea season and I am gimme gimme gimme about those. So I GOT SOME. That’s all I bought. I didn’t have much of a plan for anything else. Yet. So, at my leisure, I walked by the Throne and grabbed a pic. I did not USE the throne. I didn’t need to. I like the idea of these (they are other thrones in the downtown Planet Ann Arbor) but I am a bit skeptical. [Delete long thoughts about outhouses and growing up using them. Although this is not your granddaddy’s outhouse. Or even the one on your rustic campground.]

Heat index, shmeat index. Again the weather “gods” (the human ones) over-hyped a week long heat wave for the Planet Ann Arbor. Did it happen? Yes. But. No. Predictions were for upper 90s. We NEVER got anywhere near that. 90 has been about the average late afternoon temperature here and we have had a lot of good breezes. 90 is hot but except for an experimental test of our central A/C on Monday, we haven’t turned it on. We have run the attic fan a bit. I’m not running it now because it’s loud and the GG is on a North Country Trail call. But overnight temps are in the 70s and while it’s not perfect sleeping weather, it’s tolerable.

And so g’night. Our “hot” weather is supposed to break a bit sometime tomorrow 🧡🧡🧡

When I was at the moomin the last little bit, I finally got totally fed up with having to peek around the curtain to check the temperature on the indoor/outdoor thermometer mounted outside the eastern picture window. We don’t have to live in the 1970s forever do we? I “suggested” (passive/agressively) to the GG that it would be “nice” to have a thermometer in the kitchen. He responded by digging up an ancient analog thermometer and mounting it there. Problem? The temperature was always the same. I *know* the temperature outside is constantly changing so I reported that it wasn’t working. Much experimentation ensued until I finally clarified that I had wanted an *indoor/outdoor* thermometer. My bad, I guess. Specification, KW? (The temperature INSIDE changes a lot too but we won’t go there for the moment.)

Last Tuesday when we got home from the moomin (was it really a week ago?) he had a gift for me. Yes! This was what I had in mind!

We have three variations on this here at the Landfill. One of them (the one in the Water Closet) is a liar if you look at it when the sun is on the sensor. It is rarely (but not never) 60 degrees at 10:00 AM in February here. Anyway, it turned out it didn’t quiiiite work “out of the box”. So a work light was needed. Fortunately one was at the ready.

Here he is at work.

And the aftermath of his exertions.

BTW, it does work now and is ready for duty at the moomincabin.

It is a central A/C experiment. I do not know (or wanna know) the details. It also involves the attic fan. The A/C is on and I am living with it. After a whole night of rain and thunderstorms (noisy but not severe), the temp got up to 90 today. The Weather Gods have been threatening us with a heat wave for days now but I was glad to have a nice cool morning before it all started up and I didn’t have to water the flowers today.

I lasted in teleCubelandia withOUT the A/C until the late afternoon when I am basically sitting in the sun. At about 3:30 I moved to a shadier part of the room. I considered turning on the attic fan but didn’t feel like crossing whatever rules my HVAC “engineer” (the GG) might have about heating and cooling. I could always push back on his “rules”. I often have but I’m kinda taaarred of arguing with him about things I know he’s gonna do “anyway”.

These “experiments” keep him outta my hair sometimes, plus he fixed a weird problem with Rooooomba yesterday. It was an actual broken plastic part and he somehow MacGyvered a solution. Note that I have never watched MacGyver. I dunno when it aired on TV but it apparently wasn’t on my radar screen. But people on them thar intertubes are always talking about MacGyvering this and that. Maybe The GG would like the series? He could yell things at the TV like “You idiot, I wouldda done it like this!” Or maybe he might learn new tricks.

The Landfill did not have central A/C when we moved in and for many years after. We had a couple CRAPPY A/C “units” that could sorta cool the room they were in. And NOISY? You betcha. Some of our summers are hotter than others and we sweltered through a number of the hotter ones until we eventually installed a new furnace and central A/C. Heck, neither one of us even owned an air-conditioned CAR until our kids were a few years old and we bought the Exxon Tanker Valdez (1989 Chrysler minivan). Our mouse during her first ride in the Exxon: “Let’s go to Houghton Lake.”

It was the summer of 1988 that pushed us into buying that van. Days upon days upon days of 90-105 temps with a pre-schooler and toddler. At one point the toddler contracted roseola and one afternoon her temperature (104) matched the outdoor (and indoor) temperature.

So it is hot here today (but NOT 110!) and since I am not driving back and forth to an air-conditioned office in an air-conditioned car, I allowed the central A/C to get turned on in the late afternoon. And I am enjoying it.

This is “leftenant” “Finnelson” back in WWII. If I get it right (and I could well be mangling it), his dad (my granddaddy) was on the local draft board. Dad was in college and his brother was in med school and maybe they could have squeaked by without serving in WWII. But Granddaddy grew increasingly uncomfortable with sending other people’s sons to war so he told his own sons to get their affairs in order and enlist. My dad joined the Army Air Corps and I think my uncle was in the Navy, serving as a medic.

Many years later, one of my beach urchins was interviewing my dad (on the phone) for a school prodject and she was asking him questions about WWII. When The Commander wasn’t interrupting in the background to try and correct him 🤣🤣🤣, he told about how by enlisting, he got to choose his job. I dunno exactly how true that is but he wanted to learn to fly and that’s what he did, mainly training other pilots who got sent off to the south Pacific or wherever.

He never saw action because A-bomb. He and The Commander lived with her family in the Detroit area for a bit while he did factory work and tried to finish his college degree. He struggled with “hay fever” and at one point, he said something like, “I am going to the yooperland, are you coming with me?” The Comm was working at the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store but she pretty happily said goodbye to city life. They lived in the yoop for the rest of their lives, becoming what my dad called successful failures.

The Commander, ever the stickler for grammar/syntax/whatever always hated that some local folks mispronounced our family name (Finlayson) as “Finnelson”. Upon recently learning from the GG that some people up there are still doing that my reaction was to laugh out loud and embrace it 🧡

As the asparagus season wanes, the shelling pea season begins.

I had asparagus on our Day Before Father’s Day menu. I figured it was getting late but I’d still be able to get some at the farmers market. And yes! I did. I heard one of the vendors tell someone this was the last. I still miss getting it at Farmer John’s lunchroom market over at Cubelandia but anyway. I got asparagus today and I ALSO GOT SHELLING PEAS! So I shelled them and added them to our menu. Local asparagus and local peas on the same menu? Yes yes yes.

I told one of my local friends that I would be home for shelling pea season and she said something like, “That’s one of the things I like about you.” Her husband plants a HUGE garden every year and they harvested something like 1400 veggies last year, which kept them in veg pretty much the whole year. I’m pretty sure they don’t do peas.

I have been to the Plum twice since I returned from the yooperland and both times I’ve been hailed with “Welcome home!” from various employees. This morning my own personal employee was also there meaning a [small] chorus of “there’s your mom” apparently ensued. And I am now known as a pea-sheller but that’s all I will say about that.

Anyway, I was down at the farmers market at 0-skunk-30 this morning. Came home for a bit, then hit up the Plum for things I couldn’t (or didn’t) get at the market. A long day of cooking prep and cooking, then kebabs grilled in the backyard and eaten with friends (kebab friends and human friends).

And that’s about it for tonight. Love y’all, KW.

Way back in January when Black Thumb completed yet another trip around the sun, one of the beach urchins ordered her some flowers, as she always does. This year, they came accompanied by a small house plant. The beach urchin knows how bad Black Thumb is with gardening and plants and offered to adopt the plant. “Oh no, lemme just try it,” said Black Thumb.

Wonder of wonders? It actually survived and seemed like it was thriving! For a couple weeks after its arrival, it wasn’t really on Black Thumb’s radar screen. It was sitting on the window sill next to teleCublandia so not really all that hard to ignore. Nevertheless, she persisted. (To ignore it, I mean.)

Until one day she looked down on the window sill and it looked a wee bit droopy (the plant, not the window sill). Hmmmm, I bet it needs some water. So Black Thumb poured some water out of her water glass. Within hours, the cute little plant had perked up. Black Thumb actually continued to monitor it, albeit not too closely, which is probably good because she suspects that most of her past plant failures involve over-watering. And (wonder of wonders), it began to flourish.

Until… Dun da dun dun… Black Thumb left for the yooperland for two-and-a-half weeks. She failed to make adequate arrangements to take care of the poor little plant. When she returned, the plant was still green but droopy. She watered it. After a while, it had perked up a bit but the next morning some leaves had turned yellow.

Black Thumb is hoping the Plant Protective Services will confiscate it and hand it over to her beach urchin as a foster plant to hopefully nurse it back to health while Black Thumb completes Plant Parenting classes.

So today I was like, looks like LofPnet got a new car? This seemed odd to me because he normally drives a BIG pickup truck and looked like he now had a smallish SUV of some sort.

I am not a neighborhood busybody although telecommuting all these years, I am sort of a modern day Gladys Kravitz type spy. If you are old enough to have watched the TV show Bewitched, you might know about her. Years later, watching “B-witch” re-runs on morning TV provided the kind of multi-tasking that helped get my older beach urchin dressed on time for kindergarten.

I was hauling my reee-cycle out to the curb as LofPnet was arriving home this afternoon and I got these scoops:

— It is NOT a new vee-hickle. His (beloved) pickup truck got side-swiped on MOTHER’S DAY and has just now gone in for body work. I am pretty sure I don’t wanna know that long story.

— In a recent spate of vee-hickle “break-ins”, our next door neighbors’ doorbell cam caught a person wandering up and down the street trying car doors.

1) A number of people had their cars ransacked, including one of our next door neighbors’ cars.

2) I had picked (some of) this up on next door neighbor (as did a friend of mine NOT in the neighborhood who messaged me about it).

3) We were not home Saturday night as were none of our vee-hickles.

4) When we DID get home on Tuesday I did not manage to lock our car doors that night. It was a long travel day and involved FlaMan, that is all I will say. Our vee-hickles were apparently not entered. I had a baggy of laundry mat quarters in Cygnus (not visible unless you actually entered the car) and they were undisturbed as was everything else in the car on Wednesday morning.

— Two doors down, the people who have lived there less than a year have moved out but some relative is moving in. They will apparently renovate the house (probably needs it) and are good at gardening. Maybe I can hire them? 🤣🤣🤣 The people who just moved out had a child-size bicycle on their front lawn just about the entire time they lived there. I’m not sure if I ever saw a kid ride it or not and why it was never stolen I will never know.

— Was I not retired?!? (This after I mentioned we’d been outta town for a while and I was telecommuting.) No no no. I am not. When you have a sweet job like I do you hang on to it until you are damn good and ready. Of course, I work for an at will company so ya nevah know.

All right KW, go lock your car doors.

Whaddya think? There are three piles of laundry there, two of them in baskets. We won’t even talk about the shoes.

This was undoubtedly a laundry day and I schlepped all of that crapola into the laundromat (except the shoes), probably with at least one beach urchin in tow. I would fill up at least two triple loaders.

This morning I did two loads of laundry here at the Landfill. One was a moomincabin load, the other was stuff Mr. Rank and Odiferous left in the Landfill laundry basket from his Tick Trips. I did not (yet) wash the sleeeeeep comforter or my sleeping bag but I’ll get there.

I schlepped the first finished load upstairs myself but wasn’t ready to deal with it, most of which involved putting it back into the basket for the next drive north. The GG grabbed the second load and then kicked in to Suzy Homemaker mode and sorted it all out. Which was fine except that he folded the moomincabin bath towels the wrong way and I had to unfold and refold them. We’ve been “rolling” them these last few years.

“I’ve got the all night laundry mat blues. I’m washing everything I own except my shoes.” (Credit to Joe Walsh.) Except that I can actually wash my shoes these days because I almost exclusively wear Keen sandals, even in the winter. They are washable but don’t throw them in the dryer.

Can you tell I am taaarrred tonight? Yes. Yes, I am. G’night!

That was what the GG said as we left FlaMan’s place this afternoon. I knew what he meant but not sure too many in the younger generations would. A side story about Columbo is that when I was much younger, I sometimes watched Columbo with my family and at some point, we realized that The Commander regularly wore a trench coat that matched Columbo’s. And she kind of looked like him, except for the fact that she was not an Italian(?) man. This was funny to her, believe it or not.

Anyway, we traveled down south today because on a Tuesday there are usually waaaaay fewer yay-hoos on the I75 SUV Speedway than on a Sunday. And that was true today with a couple notable exceptions, one being Gaylord, where we needed to stop at Meijer to get some supplies for FlaMan. Gaylord has always been a “cross-roads” and now, with the addition of lemme see… Meijer, Walmart, Menards, Lowes, and I can’t even think what else, it is CRAY-ZEE there, even on a Tuesday. Add to that the fact that I couldn’t exactly remember where Meijer was and the GG jumped out ahead of me at the freeway exit (we were driving two cars because we love to waste gasoline, of course). There was no way I could catch up with him and it felt like I was halfway to Elmira before I finally saw the Meijer sign. I’m thinking next time we need a Meijer stop on our way down the I75 SUV Speedway, we’ll try West Branch.

FlaMan’s place was hot and noisy. Gunsmoke reruns were on loud (this is per usual), and an oxygen musheen was also running. Also loud, which is probably why Gunsmoke was so loud. And then the O₂ musheen started emitting a LOUD alarm. Think smoke/CO alarm. I was going absolutely nutso by that thing but of course “we” (aka the GG) had to stay to try to silence the alarm because it was ALSO driving FlaMan nutso. Given my recent dying smoke alarm experiences, I felt for FlaMan. But their conversations were also driving me nuts and I wanted to get home home home.

The last hour of the trip from FlaMan’s place to The Landfill was fine, since it wasn’t a Sunday, but it is ALWAYS busy on a weekday with lots of trucks and things.

The pic is from my lunch break yesterday. It was colder than blue blazes. But now we are back on the Planet Ann Arbor where it is supposed to heat up into the 90s over the next week or whatever. Part of me is wondering what the heck I am doing here but another part is whispering, “It’s shelling pea season.”

P.S. We have been home fewer/less than two hours and the GG has already been to the hardware store or wherever and is whaling away with some noisy tool in the backyard in order to fix the lawn mower. Or something. I hope he fixes the hole in my flower-watering hose too.