Actually it isn’t exactly a beach here at the Hoton Lake Group Home aka the cFam cabin. This is an inland lake (albeit a LARGE one) so, unlike the oceans or Great Lakes, there aren’t long stretches of sugar sand beach. Mostly people have seawalls, like the cFam does. There are little pieces of sand beach but they are few and far between and some of them are man-made.

The moomincabin is on a 3/4 mile (or so) sugar sand beach on the Upper St. Marys River (no apostrophe in “Marys”). It is not quiiiiite on Lake Superior but faces northwest into Whitefish Bay (cue Gordon Lightfoot) which *is* part of Lake Superior. The moominbeach is a sunset beach.

The cFam cabin is different than the moomincabin. For one thing, it is a totally modern HOUSE although it was much more rustic before the cFam parents died and the cFam sibs rebuilt it. The moomincabin is semi-rustic, mainly that it is not insulated. Nevertheless, it is pretty comfortable except when it’s frozen solid like it probably is now.

I knew the minute I first arrived at the moldy old cFam cabin, in the winter when we had to flush the toilet with buckets of water, that the GG was the guy for me. Go figger. Of course, meeting two of his brothers (including his ID twin), and his (late) little sister (18 or 19 then), The Beautiful Suzie, helped seal the deal. I remember Suze being a bit skeptical of meeeee that weekend. Like, “why is SHE riding in the front passenger seat. That’s MY seat.” But Suze and I bonded PDQ. We loved each other and I miss her greatly.

I watched the sun rise this morning and then we moseyed over to Little Boots Country Diner for breakfast. It’s my first time there since before covid. Before that, we went there all the time. I ordered my usual, the Smokin’ Gun Quesadilla. It is lovely and comes served in three triangular pieces with little containers of salsa and sour cream on the side. My pre-covid approach to what is kind of a lot of food for me was to eat two of the triangular pieces and box the other for breakfast the next day. I haven’t been eating big breakfasts since covid and I could only manage one triangle today. But that’s okay because we have TWO triangles left for breakfast tomorrow. One for meeeee and one for the GG.

17 what? You might ask. 17 accidents between The Planet Ann Arbor and Hoton Lake, that’s what. Can you say intermittent black ice and other various forms of frozen water?

We encountered the first two (slide-offs) within a mile of getting on the freeway. Most of the accidents we saw were slide-offs, including one semi that jack-knifed into the median. I didn’t see his face but the GG got a glimpse and said he looked very unhappy. There were a few two-car crashes and one that involved SIX cars if we counted right. I couldn’t tell if any of these involved injuries, etc. We saw one ambulance leaving a scene but couldn’t see what had happened because there was a barrier between the southbound and northbound. Maybe that was a good thing.

Did the GG slow down? Oh, yes he did. Disclaimer: he is a good driver but occasionally he is a little fast for my taste, especially in inclement weather. Today I was pretty comfortable with the speed we were going but kinda wished we would just get off the freeway and make our way back home via the back roads, although they were probably worse than the freeway today, just not a lot of traffic. The freeway was jammed with semis and recklessly fast pickup trucks. Guys, SLOW DOWN! When we passed a slow-moving pickup, the GG was marveling at its speed until I said, “It’s a woman.”

Nevertheless, we persisted, making a stop at FlaMan’s place after which the roads got much better. And after lunch at the Spikehorn Bar (we were both starving and the fish sandwich hit the spot), gas and windshield washer (low as you can probably guess via the photo), we got to the Hoton Lake Group Home aka the cFam cabin. The GG did a lot of snow-blowing (with my dad’s old blower). We aren’t sure what our itinerary is from here, weather permitting it might include Gaylord and/or Iggy (St. Ignace). But we’ll be back on The Planet at the end of the week by hook or by crook.

Replying to a comment by JP of Porterization a couple nights ago… JP and the GG tie for the title of King of Cryptic Text Messages. I mean, just today, the GG texted me from Sparrow Meats to ask if I wanted him to pick anything up. Yes. Lamb stew meat and do they have duck breasts? I was hoping for a yes-or-no answer. I got, “She does not have duck breasts (human I think).” Yes that is crude! It also doesn’t answer the question. The answer turned out to be no and while I was disappointed, it was okay. They have the best duck breast form factor in town and I had originally planned on duck breasts (from Sparrow) on my birthday but I got distracted and it turned out to be a no-go. But filet mignon worked out fine.

So JP of porterization commented “When we go out, we get our car started before we get back. (ibid)” The back story behind this is that it was uber cold on Friday night so we decided instead of making everyone walk a distance from parking to Dexter’s Pub, the GG and I would drive our friends of porterization out there and drop them and me off. They parked on the street in front of our house and transferred directly into Cygnus and we taxied them out and back. As it turned out there was a close parking space at Dexter’s (and we didn’t even have a Parking Guru in the car).

We took a river ride back and at some point somebody became sentient enough to realize that we could probably start the vee-hickle of porterization remotely from Huron River Drive. Some fumbling occurred but yer fav-o-rite retaared user experience designer figgered it out and when we turned onto our street, there was their car, headlights on and running.

I do not know what “ibid” means. I even looked it up but the definition was a bit obtuse. Plain English, please? I could have been an English major and at one point early in college I was actually (very casually) invited to be an English major. But I was gonna play my flute and I didn’t study English. But I am not stupid about English either (don’t ask me about the subjunctive or things like “ibid” 🙂 ) That said, one time an uber-smart colleague in India got all excited about the Oxford Comma. Yes yes yes! It’s a bit controversial. Such a fun conversation.

It snowed ALL DAY today. I’m not sure if it’s done yet. We are not in any kind of snowmageddon. This is typical southeast Michigan snow. I think we might get six inches by the time it finally ends. Our stores do NOT EVER run out of milk and bread and other staples because of a snowstorm. Covid maybe. Back in the 2014 Polar Vortex Winter, the Plum Market butcher at the time walked through deep snow down the middle of North Maple to get to work on one particularly challenging day. (He lived somewhere in the neighborhood.) I had walked too and was there to greet him at the meat counter, LOL!

Actually it’s Guenther Road, which intersects with Jerusalem but I like the name Jerusalem better. It’s also a prettier road, lined with old oaks or whatever, a bit like a tunnel, but Guenther is pretty too.

Moooon Yooonit did not start (again) this morning until her “younger sister” Cygnus jumped her but after the GG drove her around for a while, she has been starting without a problem. My personal opinion is that it’s still time for a new battery. Clearly this one is in a failure mode and a car battery is definitely not something we can’t afford. Fortunately I almost exclusively drive Cygnus (she’s “my” car), so I don’t have to deal with it.

A little car battery story to illustrate The Master of the Universe’s skills and ingenuity. Long long ago in a galaxy only blocks away — our pre-baby apartment on Jackson Ave. — the battery in one of our Ford Fiestas died. These were the old-school Fiestas from the late 1970s/early 1980s. *I* could actually (sorta) afford one at $5,000 but my parents bought me one anyway and NO I was not spoiled. My dad and brother were all excited about the Wenkel engine. Google it if you care. I was really excited about owning my first *new* (cute) car but I have long since moved on from my Ford Fiesta. My top three fave cars being the Dogha, the Ninja, and Cygnus X-1. Not in any particular order.

Anyway, in those days, the GG and I used to drive to work in one Ford Fiesta and I would usually walk home (We both worked at the Environmental Protection Agency). We knew the battery was in a failure mode so we went to Sears (why Sears, I dunno) to buy a new one. Problem. Some young punk at Sears refused to install it. I fergit what the “policy” was but they did allow us to *buy* the battery so the GG put it in the back of the car and we went home.

The next morning, the OLD battery started right up and we drove the few blocks from our apartment down to the Huron/Seventh stop light. And stopped. And the battery died. Right in the middle of all kinds of traffic and not to be resurrected. The GG opened the back hatch, pulled out the new battery, *jumped* the old one with the new one and voila, we were on our way (and so were all the people behind us, gah). This operation took a couple minutes.

The Twinz of Terror put themselves through college in part by working summers at the Chrysler Hamtramck Assembly Plant. The GG could take a car apart and put it back together and in our early days, he did a lot of DIY repairs, sometimes dicey ones. Nowadays we mostly take our vee-hickles in for service. In part (but not totally) because of all the computerized components.

There he is, all plugged in and everything.

So this is what went down this afternoon. Don’t worry, it isn’t all that exciting although the GG was a wee bit stressed out about it. We had a need to get Mooon Yooonit outta the driveway. Mooon Yooonit has been in the driveway for quite a while now and hasn’t been run for a long time. You can guess what happened next, right? If you guessed “her battery was dead”, ding ding ding, you win the booby prize.

So the GG got out his “jumper” (in the pic) and guess what? It didn’t work. Did it overheat or is it just dead after *45* years? I’m thinking whether or not it overheated, it’s probably time for a new one. And maybe a new battery for Mooon Yooonit at six years and I’m afraid to count how many miles. He did eventually successfully jump start Mooon Yooonit via Cygnus’s battery. But still.

I INSISTED that we take Cygnus out to Dexter’s Pub. Friends of porterization were riding with us. I KNEW Cygnus’s battery was fine. I didn’t exactly trust Mooon Yooonit’s at this point. What if we get done with dinner and the battery is dead *again*? Me and Cygnus won that sorta argument and all was fine.

And then. After he charged Mooon Yooonit’s battery this afternoon, the GG started trying to tell me a long story about Toyota design flaws (Mooon Yooonit is a RAV4) and his “jumper” and as it went on and on, I finally said something like, “I am not gonna EVER understand all of this.” He retorted with something like, “You have no idea about what kind of things I do around here.” No. No, I don’t. I am not mechanically or electrically inclined. But also, yes I do. I so so so do appreciate all the things he does that I have no clue about how to do or even that he is doing them.

By the way, the backdrop to all of this is the temperatures around here are now about zero F. and never got above five today. I’ll tell y’all (again) about what it was like to walk to high school in minus 32 degree temps some other day. And I am NOT talking about the wind chill factor, which wasn’t even invented yet. Minus 32 was the ambient temperature.

I’ve stumbled upon some facebook videos that I actually like. Amateur online videos generally drive me nuts. Things I hate about these: 1) Sometimes they are toooooo long. I mean with nothing happening FOREVER or even at all. 2) Quick little videos that don’t make any sense. Whut just happened? 3) Big family videos. How many kids do you have and why are you putting them out there on the internet? How many of them are gonna move to Timbuktu without leaving a forwarding address when they reach the age of majority?

On facebook I am delighted to have stumbled upon Jase and Josh, two British guys who are doing a little drive-through of the Great Lake State. In January. A cold and snowy January. They were most of the way up the west side of the state and went sledding at Boyne Mountain (I skied at Boyne a billion times in my misspent youth) and one of them (Josh, I think), did something to his back(?) (not sure if the sledding caused that or not) and spent a couple of nights at the hoosegow. They had to make a decision about whether to continue on to the yooperland and they decided YES! They are in Marquette now. Yes, they did miss Sault Ste. Siberia. That may have been a good thing. Today (yesterday?), a jeep was going waaaay too fast for conditions coming along the curve on Ashmun (the main drag) north toward Easterday, spun out, jumped a couple of four foot snowbanks, and crashed into a house.

I love Jase and Josh’s videos. They are 10-15 seconds each, so they are short, but we KNOW what’s going on because they narrate them. I would call them amateur but very well done. So I am following them.

The photooo is another one from 2006. I can’t think what car we navigated up that ice hill with. The Dogha (Dirty Old Green Honda Accord) maybe? At that time we did not own an SUV, except for the Jeep Wrangler, which at 14 years old, I doubt we drove on that trip. The Dogha was a great car and could handle snow like a champ. But that ice? Not sure…

The other thing that initially puzzled me about the timing of this photo is that it was 2006 and my dad died in 2006. But then I remembered this was January. We must have been up there for my birthday and my dad was alive and well on that trip. 10 days later (or so), he was on his daily walk down the escarpment when he fell and smashed his pelvis. The Commander called me to say they were being air-ambulanced to the Henry Ford hoosegow in Detroit. I made daily trips over there for three weeks or so. They fixed that and he was ground-ambulanced back to the yooperland and installed in rehab at what was then called Tendercare, a couple blocks from their house. Alas, he did not thrive, which was not unusual for someone that age with that kind of injury, and died in March.

The GG is on a call with the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore North Country Trail Chapter. I don’t participate (much) in these calls but I like to be able to hear them from the kitchen. I am not all that involved in the details but I am interested in what they are doing. Especially the chainsaw guys.

Apparently the GG set up two computers to join this call. So they can all see him in duplicate, which would be the same as looking at identical twins, and he has one. For a moment there was a thought that I might also join from my laptop in the kitchen but naw. I did many covid type years on MS Teams calls and we did NOT show ourselves live.

This MacStack is from the 2000s. I’m sure my original 2003 12 inch screen PowerBook is in this picture but not sure if we still have it. I was the earliest adopter. The Commander bought me one (long story). It arrived a day late because snowstorm. It came with a printer and I fergit what else. The GG was in the back room when it all arrived and I unboxed it all. Eventually he came out to the front room to visit our guinea pig and that’s when he noticed my new laptop.

When I schlepped my laptop about town(s), I was met with differing reactions from people of the male persuasion. Young males would sidle up to me and offer help, which I certainly didn’t need. Older males acted like they had seen an alien. Nope, it’s just a SMART woman with a computer. Women? They didn’t really pay attention to my new computer. They were doing what women do, chores and grock shopping and laundry and schlepping children around. Computer? Whatever.

Within a couple years, this stack of Mac laptops had accumulated. Me, The Comm, daughters, nieces, and sister-in-law. I think. And a ‘hattan to top it all off.

Wow! What a good time. At the EPA retiree lunch, that is. We met at Paesano’s. It’s a really good restaurant but we don’t often go there because it’s across town and getting there is like running a gauntlet. A (late) MacMu uncle of mine lived down the street from the restaurant so usually we went when there was some kind of family event he was organizing. (But not the one where he told a bunch of us, including an aunt and uncle on the FinFam side of my family that the last time he had a party, he ate so many marijuana brownies he couldn’t remember if he had six or eight kids. Answer, six. Three from his first marriage and three stepchildren. But that party was in his back yard. My main take-away from that was “don’t eat any brownies.” I learned early on that pot makes me paranoid and I don’t touch it.)

I hadn’t seen some of these people in AGES and some of them were more familiar than others but once they reintroduced themselves, it all fell into place. Making things a bit difficult was that I was facing bright sunlight so I was seeing the folks on the other side of the table in silhouette, meaning their facial features were not very visible.

Nevertheless, I remembered EVERYONE. I worked at That Darn EPA for 15 years (or so) and got to know a lot of folks pretty well due to my presence at “The Window”. The Window was where people dropped off data sheets (hand-filled) for processing and picked up printouts from the Data 100 printer, a behemoth. Oh yeah. And COMPLAINED.

When I first worked there, it was my JOB to man The Window. I mean, I went to college for this crappy job? I think it paid something like $8,700 a year. But I am a self-starter and after a few years, I was the “technical supervisor” (something like that), teaching myself how to code FORTRAN along the way, and was receiving a more or less living salary. Various other people ran The Window by then but I was still a regular presence there, solving problems and showing people how to fill out their data sheets, or just lending a hand and hopefully some good cheer. “This is not rocket science, we will figure it out.” And we always did.

It was a smallish crowd today and that was okay with me. “Friendly Introvert” that I am, that allowed me to “ease in”. There were three women besides me and they implored me to come back again to increase their numbers. Yes. Yes, I will. I love all these people but in particular, CDP’s wife is special to me. She did not work at the EPA, she was an MSU college prof, so I didn’t meet her until much later but we hit it off PDQ. And in one of those strange twists of fate, I also know her daughter. We took community college classes together for a couple years. I left for Corporate America and I think she is free-lance but she also *taught* at the college at least for a while (she has a masters in education).

The pic is from “memories” (2025). Man was that day a mess. We hadn’t gotten a lot of snow but what we did get was CEMENT. See the branches sticking out of the snow cement on Cygnus’s veeendsheeeld? I backed her down the driveway to get some sunlight and ran her defroster at full blast seemingly forever but I can’t remember if I ever got that stuff melted or not. At least not that day.

P.S. This is kind of a higglety-pigglety stream-of-consciousness entry so I want to make clear that: 1) I did not retire from the EPA. 2) I retired from Corporate America. 3) I worked for the EPA as a contractor (Computer Sciences Corporation) and voluntarily took a layoff from that company when a new contractor took over and I decided to be a SAHM for a while. I could have probably taken a job with the new contractor or maybe even gone federal. But I didn’t.

The poorly framed photo has nothing to do with the content of this post.

I’m gonna riff off the old Sault Ste. Siberia Penney’s store (and others), since Pooh and Margaret kinda got my brain off on a tangent. J.C. Penney *was* a relatively affordable place to buy clothing if you were not a terrifically affluent family and we bought stuff there. I suppose there were also the “dime stores”. We had three. Woolworth’s, Kresge, and Scott’s. Did they even carry clothing? I can’t remember. I do remember lusting for a Barbie bridal gown, but they never had one so The Commander made a beautiful one for my Barbie. I suppose the last Barbie bridal gown got off the truck in Traverse City or some place and those yooperland kids would just have to deal with tennis outfits or whatever. (My kids are probably ROFL if they are reading this.)

The store The Commander liked the best was The Hub (womens’ clothing). Unfortunately we were only occasional customers there. A bit too expensive for us. There were a few other stores selling womens’ clothing but I suspect that the sometimes snooty Commander regarded them as “old lady” stores. And not without reason. I don’t think the inventory changed all that often (like for years) and once all of the hats in one of them had to be fumigated (or whatever) because of lice. In all fairness, The Comm’s early career was at the downtown Detroit Hudson’s, which was an elegant store when she worked there but was imploded (on purpose) a number of years later.

Nowadays, I am all about comfort and ordering online from trusted sources. Elastic-waist skirts, tights, leggings, base layer shirts. Tie-dye. Anything that’s comfortable and makes me look a little crazy.

Fun fact, my MacMu granddaddy worked in downtown Detroit (he had something to do with building contractors) and he used to see old man Kresge in the streets at lunch time or whenever. I don’t think he knew Kresge personally. He also used to meet my mother (his daughter) for lunch at places that, well, I’ll just say, by the time she moved to the yooperland with my dad, she knew the difference between pasties (long a) and pasties (short a). Don’t worry, she was of age on these lunch junkets, if barely.

So. Go or no-go. Until now, go/no-go was when my team got together before a software release to decide whether it was a “go” or maybe we had to pull it back. I don’t think we EVER didn’t decide on GO. We were that good. Tomorrow’s go/no-go is do I go to the monthly EPA retiree lunch (with the GG) or not? I have not been to one of these lunches yet. If the GG goes alone, I get to be spac-i-fied. On the other hand, I know a lot of those people because I also worked with them long ago. And I was pretty dern bored today*. If the weather permits. If I do go, I hope CDP and wife are there.

*I am okay, just haven’t cobbled together a new routine yet. I WILL GET THERE! CHEERS!

I have driven up and down Trinkle Road umpteen bazillion times. During the heyday of the pandemic, I did it frequently because it was a way to get OUT of my neighborhood, especially when the GG was gone for the weekend, or a few weeks or whatever.

Today is the first time I have ever seen this structure. It is feet (10?) from the road but when the trees are leafed out, it is invisible, at least if you are driving (and are an intensely focused driver, like me). Today I was in the passenger seat and there are no leaves and there it was! Turn around and STOP! I gotta get a pic! There were also a bunch of smaller outbuildings in various states of disrepair. Some creative dad or whatever once had fun creating a small “town” or maybe “farm” is a better word and he is no longer around to keep up with it.

I have to laugh when I mention the GG being gone for a few weeks. He occasionally is, especially when he is supporting our friend Joan in her hiking endeavors. A few years ago I was walking in the woods behind my house and Luke of Perrynet approached me. He asked the question shyly, giggling a bit, “Is the GG ever coming home?” I’m sure he had been noticing that Cygnus was the solo car in the driveway and wondering if we had separated or something. Oh, no such luck. I explained about his adventures with Joan and all was well. The GG came home the next Sunday. We don’t have a particularly unconventional marriage but we trust each other and give each other a lot of space. I’ve never been interested in having affairs with other people and neither has he.

A serious winter storm is predicted for midnight through Tuesday morning and this time I am thinking they are not lying. It is a snowier winter than we’ve had for a while and I feel it in mah bonz or more likely my intuition is telling me to hunker down.

P.S. Pooh (my cousin) asked if the building in yesterday’s pic was the old Sault Ste. Siberia J.C. Penney store. Yes. Yes it was. And yes we bought fabric there. There was a balcony between the 1st and 3rd floors that housed fabric and patterns. Nowadays I believe it holds tribal offices (the decoration feels Native American) and I thought that the River of History Museum was in the building’s basement but not totally sure. The museum entrance is a couple doors down the street. But it could be that the museum continues along under several buildings including the old Penney’s. I only did light googling on this stuff.

The filets were cooked to perfection. Beach urchins took care of all the rest of the food. We couldn’t get the music pods working the way we wanted to so the Racc started pulling out records (and we dredged some more records up from the basement) and he did a great job of DJ-ing throughout the evening.

A number of years ago I started boxing up my record collection, such as it is, as well as my parents’ records and I was about to donate the whole shebang. Not so fast, KW. Little Cat Z happened in on all this during a visit from her then home in Detroit. Not so fast, mama. She took a box of records and the rest, or some of the rest, were relegated to the basement. I think I was thinking something like digitizing the ones I wanted and donating the rest. As it turns out, I was wrong (again!) because they sure came in handy tonight. And with somebody else’s eyes to leaf through the so-called collection, the playlist was much more interesting than whatever I might’ve stumbled upon. I do NOT have anything approaching an organized record collection, which may (or may not) make DJ-ing more interesting.

The pic is one I took on my daily winter 2012 schlep to hang out with The Commander at the War Memorial Hoosegow in Sault Ste Siberia. YakTrax on, backpack filled with two laptops (work and personal), phone in one pocket, cash, cards, and keys in the other. People up there were and are ingenious with their snow removal equipment. This is just a small bit of equipment. On the other end, there is a HUGE snowplow that can lift a plow totally up in the air over a parked car if necessary.

This was a cold day but in truth, that winter was an extremely warm one overall. The I500 snowmobile race was a mud race that year and after The Comm died in late February, when we were back on The Planet Ann Arbor, March featured temperatures in the 90s, a tornado and trees that flowered two months early. Flowering trees usually don’t blossom until May here.

So, on No Politics Day (NPD), I actually didn’t listen to a lot of political news. I did veer in the direction of politics when I mentioned one of my fave causes, Planned Parenthood, but that threatened to escalate and that’s all I will say about that except we shut that discussion down PDQ.

I prefer going out to lunch (over dinner) on NPD. I do like having a Landfill dinner on NPD. So we did lunch with some beach urchins at Casey’s Tavern today. We’re being porterized tonight at the Landfill (Chinese, the food, not the Porters), and tomorrow night we’ll have a family Landfill dinner. If I were still working, I would’ve taken today off and since MLK Day is Monday, it’d be a 4-day weekend. But whatever.

I was spotted at Casey’s because of my tie-dyed skirt by a man with a tie-dyed t-shirt. I *think* we have encountered this couple in Casey’s before. The wife is in a wheelchair. This was a good encounter.

We porterized ourselves tonight with Chinese takeout. I was happy with that and there was a fake log faaaar in the faaaarplace. We are on a different “clock” than our friends of porterization but they are now on their way home to watch whatever TV shows they want until whenever they want to watch them and I am gonna crash out.

P.S. I did snow driving today and I was a champ. Regained some of the driving confidence covid took away from me.

Little Cat Z always sends me flowers on No Politics Day. This year, she sent them a day early because a lunch date on No Politics Day meant we couldn’t guarantee that anyone would be here to accept the delivery and it is frigid out there. I don’t think it got to 20 degrees but I could be wrong. And I think it might be colder tomorrow. A lovely young woman called to make sure I (or someone) would be home before delivering them. The vase was The Commander’s. It’s a bit bigger than it looks in the pic and it is HEAVY!!!

One of the first years of the No Politics Day flower tradition, we were out when the flowers arrived. We had covid and no we were not out at a restaurant, we were driving around the countryside because cabin f*cking fever. (We were not very sick but no way would we pay covid forward!) The flowers got delivered to my uber nice next door neighbors’ house and when the husband brought them around, I gave my neighbor a status update and told him to leave them on the porch and I would grab them when he was a safe distance from my virus.

My main excursion today was the Plum Market. I know, so exciting, especially since I’m usually there every other day. I was trying to make marinade for filets and didn’t have any oil besides olive oil (which I have in spades…) Olive oil doesn’t (to me anyway) go well with tamari and brown sugar and friends so I got canola. Oh, and we were flat out of dry vermouth. So I made a mini-run. As I was heading toward the door, I heard a growl behind me. Oh, don’t worry, it was a familiar growl, i.e., the GG. What the heck was HEEEEE doing in the Plum. He coerced me into a trip to Tractor Supply on the way home (he had been out walking). Tractor Supply was not actually on the way home but it was a sunny day and the roads weren’t toooo messy. So.

Happy No Politics Day to the mean old grunchie old grinchie and Our Northern Correspondent, who celebrate that holiday today, sharing it with Martin Luther King.

P.S. A little pack of Bon Bon Bon chocolates came with the flowers. They are so good and if you order them online, you get a tote bag that I think is also a cooler? I was like, oh no, another bag but the GG uses his (from Valentine’s last year) even though the colors are kinda girly and he is a “manly man” LOL, think chainsaw guy. And it’s a Detroit business.

Yeah, maybe. For many years, we shoveled our snow the old fashioned way. I did most of it for most of those years. Even the snow cement the plows left at the bottom of the driveway.

At some point in time, the GG asked for a yooperland style snowblower for xmas. By that time I was working full time at Cubelandia and he was retaaared and I bought this thing for him and I don’t really do snow shoveling any more. Today we got kind of a lot of snow and he was like, “I can’t wait to run my snowblower.” So that’s what he’s doing and NOW he is putting vee-hickles out in the street so he can blow the driveway. I have to say I am a fan.

I am not looking forward to the next freeze and thaw cycle.

Canya tell by the title what I was doing today? That’s right, I was cleaning out the refrigimitator. I am not finished yet. This seems to be a multi-day project this time. Partly because I wash all the shelves with soapy water and let them totally dry out before I put them back in.

But oh dear, it looked like the refrigerator door was even more full of condiments and stuff than it usually is and yes, yes, yes it was. Why? Well, for one thing, there were three partially full bottles of Sriracha and two partially full bottles of yellow mustard plus another mostly full one. I was able to “combind” the three partial srirachas into one and two of the yellow mustards into one.

People, that’s as far as I got, at least for today. I cannot keep up with this stuff. I don’t use sriracha at all. I rarely use yellow mustard. And there are a whole bunch of fancy mustards in there that I haven’t even looked at yet.

My day was interrupted (happily enough) by the GG calling from Dexter asking for a pickup. We decided that involved lunch at Dexter’s Pub. It was mid-afternoon already, which is a good time to go out to lunch because the bar was empty and there was plenty of parking. But after that, I was toast in terms of refrigerator cleaning and “combinding” of condiments. It’s okay, I will continue my slog again tomorrow.

“Combind/combinded/combinding”? This originates from a pretty funny story. For a long time the Twinz of Terror were regular blood donors. The GG lived here (with me) on the Planet Ann Arbor. The UU lived an hour or so away. At one point, their records got mixed up somehow. When they tried to straighten them out, the woman they were dealing with said something like, “Oh the records got combinded!” Combinded? Okay, we get it. She supposedly straightened that out but… Then… They got “combinded” again. I mean, they are ID twins but they have different names and lived/live in very different locations.

And the weird tower is somewhere near Milan – the Michigan Milan, which is pronounced with a long i, as opposed to the Italian Milan. I couldn’t do much to prettify this fugly picture but I figgered it was better than the inside of my refrigerator.

Yes, that Flint. (The pic is not from Flint. It’s from yesterday’s ICE protest in Saline.) But, yes, that Flint. The one where Michigan’s “leaders” poisoned people with crappy water from the Flint River. Flint’s population is about 80K. That’s apparently up from recent years. I’m not sure why I am suddenly obsessed with populations. When I was a kid traveling down to Ann Arbor and DayTwa from the yooperland in the back seat of my parents’ car, I always thought Flint was a bigger city than the Planet Ann Arbor. And maybe it was. Over the years, A-squared (as we like to call Ann Arbor) has grown a LOT and I think Flint has shrunk. Our populations have very different characteristics.

On those childhood trips, I would spend a lot of time in the back seat looking at the Michigan road map and following our progress. I *think* it listed at least some populations. There was a distance, hmmm, what do I call it? It was a graphic representation of how far apart many Michigan cities were. After years of writing functional specifications and designing informational graphics, I think it’s one small reason why I was good at making informational graphics. Okay, ’nuff navel gazin’ KW.

So FlaMan lives in Flint and he doesn’t drive so we (and other siblings) supply him with food, supplies, and pretty much anything he wants. I don’t exactly know how to describe FlaMan but he has some interesting wants. Light bulb cameras are a recent one. We’ll talk about the nose hair trimmer some other day. Or not. I am a HUGE fan of FlaMan and support pretty much whatever he wants as long as it doesn’t involve a telemarketer or bank fraud…

It is difficult to visit FlaMan because it’s an hour away on the freeway and when you get there, Gunsmoke reruns are on, both in the living room and his bedroom, where he usually is. But I asked the GG, “Can we take Argentine Road home?” The answer was yes (as I knew it would be) and so I accompanied him. I didn’t spend a lot of time with FlaMan, who was in the bedroom the whole time and the GG turned down Gunsmoke in the living room so I could hear myself think.

Argentine Road is a little (but paved) road and I know about it because there is a girl scout camp along it where I went for weekend trips quite a few times with a couple troops. We always had a lot of moms on those trips and once we got caught with STRICTLY VERBOTEN whine. We were not caught by a camp official. We were caught by the extremely religious mom around the corner (who was with our group) and guess what? As we were packing up to go, she giggled, “Somebody left their Chardonnay in the refrigerator.”

Or should it be ICE ICE Barbie?

As we are often wont to do, we took a drive in the country today. The Planet Ann Arbor is a medium(?) sized city (population 122K) in southeast Michigan. It has a LOT of traffic and a bazillion traffic lights. It is *not* a Detroit suburb and from our neighborhood on the western edge, it doesn’t take much time to get OUTTA town. I mean to empty tertiary highways and dirt roads. We went south today.

Because we were going south, we drove through the much smaller city of Saline (population 9K). Like Ann Arbor, Saline is not a suburb of anything. If I were to associate it with Ann Arbor, I would probably call it a “satellite” city. It is close enough to Ann Arbor that many people who live there enjoy a short commute to Ann Arbor.

So, we were approaching Saline and when we got to the main intersection, I was amazed at how many people were out there protesting ICE! I was not really aware of protests but this was a MOB. And I mean a FRIENDLY mob. I couldn’t get my phone out of my pocket fast enough our first time through the intersection so I asked the GG to go around the block and he obliged.

From Cygnus, even though I wasn’t driving, I could not get a photo that captured the numbers of people at that intersection. But as luck would have it, the light was red and I got a few pics. A couple people noticed my phone and must have ascertained that I was friendly (I was waving) because they pushed their signs out in front of Cygnus so I could get pics. In the end, this was my fave with the “peach” (derierre) and orange haired poop. “ICE storms are deadly” is also good. Because yes they certainly are although the usual meaning in the Great White North is a bit different than what happened last week in Minneapolis.

The GG noticed that it was an older crowd. I was like, so what? I’m not sure what he was trying to say and I’m not sure what to say next. Well, except this. I hesitate to say that Trump/MAGA are fascists exactly because I think they are their own damn cult and I feel like this is a little different than the Nazis. But. My dad served in WWII (as a pilot instructor, he never saw action – hey, somebody has to teach kids how to fly planes. Why not a slightly older kid?). A lot of these “older” protesters probably had parents/grandparents who also served in that war. They’ve heard about this kind of stuff and don’t want ICE thugs coming into their neighborhoods to terrorize people, not to mention shoot them dead. I don’t really know why the crowd skewed older but I’m glad they were out there.

Democracy is as messy as all get out but authoritarian rule (fascist, communist or whatever) is much much much worse. What’s going on right now is too scary.

First, I dunno if the GG will read my blahg today. He doesn’t always. I don’t think he can keep up with me. Hell, *I* can’t even keep up with me. But I’m taking a risk writing about the mini-win I had on Thursday. We are in a “mixed” marriage. MAGA vs. sanity. My viewpoint at least.

Make no mistake, the GG is a wonderful guy in all other ways. He helped me take care of my mother when she was dying and all that goes with that. After she died, he organized and trailered all of the physical objects that needed to be moved somewhere to wherever they needed to go. I was working full-tilt-boogie. He is also a wonderful father. Born in the middle of 10 siblings, he had been changing diapers for umpteen bazillion years when Little Cat Z was born. I had NEVER changed a diaper and that continued for another couple weeks as I recovered from, uh, a rather massive amount of stitches.

Preamble outta the way. We had multiple *polite* conversations throughout Thursday about the horrendous Minnesota ICE shooting. MAGA talking points about “domestic terrorist” came through. I looked at those videos too. What I saw was it seemed like split seconds before the ICE guy (’cause I don’t think he’s a real cop) left his car, ordered Renee out of her car and when she tried to flee, he shot her. Where was the polite (but scary) guy at her door asking her polite (but scary) questions? The ones a REAL cop HOPEFULLY would ask. Ma’am can I see your license? Nope, this guy just ordered her outta the car and very quickly shot her.

I had trouble processing the videos that day and I know there are more now and I haven’t even watched all of them. All I could think of was how I would feel if were driving that car. In one that I did see, she told the ICE “cop” something like “I don’t hate you.” It sounded like multiple people were yelling and giving her maybe conflicting orders. Y’all have seen all these. I would’ve been totally freaked out and maybe a bit frozen encountering that kind of situation.

If I had been driving that car, I would have tried to get outta there ASAP. And that’s what I think she was doing. Trump was lying (lying lying lying lying because that’s what he does) when he said she ran over the ICE “cop” and he was in the hoosegow with critical injuries (or whatever). He was not injured. The ICE “cop” walked away unscathed from a minor “nudging” incident.

I want to see the ICE “cop” prosecuted. But. I also want to see ORGANIZED, PLANNED, deportation procedures where people are not randomly picked up because of their skin color or whatever and thrown onto planes to whatever country might take them, even if they have never lived in that country. This administration has even tried to deport US citizens. Yes, it has. Look it up somewhere besides MAGA slanted media.

I could go on and on about this but I will give kudos to the GG (aka Suzy Homemaker) who cleaned the hell outta the bathroom today, also the kitchen floor. I think he was partially providing silent commentary about my kinda half-assed cleaning efforts lately. (I do clean the toilet.) But I appreciated his efforts. When he starts cleaning stuff, I get outta the way. It works better that way.

The mini-win is that I heard the GG tell his ID twin that he agreed me about the shooting. I was like YES but we’re still in a marital journey through MAGA.

Twitter play:

Setting: War Memorial Hospital, Sault Ste. Siberia

The Commander: Just remember you were a *wanted* child. (Said umpteen bazillion times)
Kayak Woman: That may be true but I’m not sure I turned out like what you *wanted*.
[Nurse in the hallway raises her eyebrows.]
Kayak Woman [stage-whispering and giggling]: I was *not* the favorite child

First I have to commemorate The Commander’s birthday. This is her high school graduation pic, I think. A few years before I was a twinkle in my dad’s eye.

And it was a looooong time after that that I was born. 11 years after their marriage. I dunno if they were seriously trying at first (well sure they were KW, whether they knew it or not). But they did try for a long time. I’ve been told what the issue(s) were but I don’t remember and probably wouldn’t post it here anyway. To explain the Twitter play, I had a younger brother. They didn’t think he would live very long but he did although he succumbed at 47. Long story I don’t feel like writing about right now.

I joke that he was the favorite child. I know he wasn’t but he was fragile as a newborn and (of course) I had to take a bit of a back seat for a while.

The second pic is of The Comm threatening me with a kitchen knife at the moomincabin. Oh don’t worry, it was all in fun. We loved each other but I was a “spirited” (although often awkward) child and sometimes gave my parents grief. Like showing up on the sidewalk in front of our shabby little Superior Street bungalow in 9th grade with Bad Boyfriend in tow. Unexpectedly. “Where’d’ya find *him*?” In truth, I was as surprised as they were that he walked me home. [Delete a couple ensuing years of teenage drama.]

We are celebrating our Polish friend Diane’s birthday tonight at Amadeus, a Polish restaurant I haven’t been to since before covid. We’re having a pre-dinner ‘hattan here. Before covid, we were just training them to make ‘hattans but who knows where that knowledge has gone or who is even working there now.

And dare I mention it’s also Richard Nixon’s birthday? Given what’s going on nowadays, Tricky Dick’s presidency seems tame. At least people put the brakes on him. (Not that I am a Nixon scholar by any means.)

We had two goals for our outing today. One was to check out the huge amount of construction going on at Briarwood Mall. Basically, they have torn down the weakest (in my opinion) anchor store (Sears) and are building, uh, what? A big 2-story(?) grocery store and maybe other stores and a big “luxury” apartment building for “low income” folks, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, so maybe I misunderstood. I have read about this project but didn’t really process it. Any way, there’s a lotta construction flying around.

I have a couple of thoughts about all this. I don’t think MOST people WANT to live in apartments, especially high-rise apartments (the apartments being built are what I might call medium-rise, 5-6 stories or thereabouts). When we bought the Landfill I was looking specifically for a single-family house with a backyard. When the (small) one we bought also bordered a small adjacent woods, I was over the moon. I know that not everyone nowadays can afford such a situation, at least not in the city. We could barely afford it 40 years ago when we started our loverly little family.

My second thought is that the GG asked me when the last time I had been in Briarwood was. I could not remember. I finally ventured that it probably had something to do with the Apple Store. I know it was pre-COVID. We’ve been ordering new iPhones online since before COVID and my MacBook Pro is humming along nicely so hasn’t needed repairs (knock on wood). I had to order TWO “new” (refurbished) work PCs after COVID. Those things die like flies. At any rate I had stopped shopping in person for most things you might find at a mall long before COVID. Clothing? Hit or miss, mostly miss. Maybe an occasional trip with the beach urchins?

Since Briarwood is a couple miles up S. State from Cubelandia, I asked if we could dip down there and take a look. I am not sentimental about this place although I feel a bit of nostalgia for the good times we had when most of us worked there (at least some of the time). But we’d been outta there never to return since COVID. I had heard rumors that a church had moved in and yes! Bethesda Church (whatever that is). Who’da thunk it? I couldn’t really look inside as curious as I was.