I guess I can blahg about this since her family has published her obit. A LONG time friend of mine died this week. Yesterday, I think. I am not even sure if I can go on with this. This day has been harder for me than the days my brother, father, aunt Radical Betty, and mother died. All of those times, I was taking care of people. Driving people to and from the yooperland. I did all that without even thinking much about what the hell I was doing.

Today I was watching from the sidelines. A woman with four children and five grandchildren. She has been my friend for something like 25 years. She renovated her house to accommodate her husband’s disabled sister and partner. I wonder who is gonna take care of all those people. I know it will work out but still. Goddamn I will miss this mensch. She called me a mensch first. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time (I am not Jewish) but I have since owned it even though I don’t think I really deserve it.

I am okay with all of this. My mouse came over to have a ‘hattan with me and we are probably meeting for lunch tomorrow. Mouse checked in with me first about my friend, having heard about it from a friend of hers on facebook. I already knew.

But life goes on here on the Ice Road Asteroid and I had to deal with taking my garbage/recycle carts out this afternoon. YakTrax? Yes. This is the mess of ice cement at the end of my driveway. Maybe it’ll melt someday (lol).

Love y’all, KW

I knew there would be slow days coming and I am working to deal with them. Not always easy though.

The GG and I set up the xmas tree yesterday. My job is to stabilize it while he screws in the stuff in the stand at the bottom. I always put a little pair of glubs on and stand there until it is stable.

So the tree is set up and actually there are now lights on it. I think he wants me to put ornaments on it. I’ve never been crazy about that job so we’ll see what I get done while he is outta town. It’s too much randomness for meeeeeee to figger out where to put ornaments.

I have grokkery and xmas errands to run tomorrow and this weekend so I am hoping there isn’t too much goddamn ice. Umpteen bazillion trucks came up and down the street today plowing and salting and whatever. This is not the usual thing so we’ll see how it works.

A facebook friend posted a video of driving down “my” road at the moomincabin the other day taking pics of turkeys. I was like, THAT’S *MY* ROAD! As you might be able to see from the screenshot, he even identified the area.

I have been facebook friends with this person (we’ll just call him Mushy) for years. I don’t think I have ever met him in person but he went to my high school five years ahead of me. I recognized his name when he friend-requested me and in accordance with my loose rules about accepting facebook friend requests I accepted his. I figured he knew some of my older cousins and my uncle probably delivered him.

And yes, my uncle did deliver him (and about a billion other babies) and not only that, after a bit of facebook interaction last night, he ‘fessed up to walking my cousin Susie home “up Prospect Street” from junior high or high school or whatever to home. Did he have a crush on her? I will never really know. Susie was very popular (unlike me) but also very particular about who she hung around with and that’s about all I know about that. I was just a little kid in those days although I had big crushes on boys and I mean local boys, not The Beatles. Like Paul McCartney would ever wanna hook up with me? Not a chance so why bother.

I am not at all freaked out about “Mushy” driving down our moominbeach road. He and I do not agree about politics at all so I don’t interact with his political posts. But then I don’t agree with my husband about politics either. What I have encountered about Mushy is that even though he doesn’t know me personally, he remembers my family with much love and on the off-chance I have responded to stuff he has posted and have been trolled, he ALWAYS shuts the trolls down. Fast. No. This woman’s family is wonderful. And we pretty much are.

So if he wants to drive down the moominbeach road, I am fine with it. Just don’t hit the turkeys, which he is not doing.

Today did not start out very auspiciously. Why? Moooon Yoooonit would not start. Why not? Because “someone” did not successfully close the back gate all the way and the battery discharged. Thankfully Cygnus handily jumped her and all was well. I did not have to deal with any of this except to watch it out the window and chuckle a bit.

This is not the first care package I’ve ever received from one of my sisters-in-law. This one is from The Lady of Linden (and the Lord) and it marks my “retirement”. Of course, y’all know I didn’t get a chance to officially retire. I was laid off. I lied about that on facebook but I won’t lie about it on my boring blahg of blather. It was okay. It was time and I was gonna retire in the next six months anyway. My status is such that I could even get re-hired at the company if there was a job that was a good fit. Some people have taken that route over the years but I won’t be one of them. I am done and happily so.

For a while I was wondering if I would “beat out” The Lady of Linden, like who would retire first? But she has beaten me (i.e., she still has a job) and I am very happy for her. Totally different job situation, not Corporate America like me, more like family business. In Corporate America, layoffs happen and as I think I have said before, I knew that going in. In fact, when I was permanently hired, I’m pretty sure the laptop I was assigned belonged to someone who was laid off. Even though I don’t think I exactly replaced him, I have always felt a bit bad about it and hope he has done well in life. I KNOW who is replacing me and I am HAPPY for him. We were fast friends from the moment we met (he is a kayaker for one thing) and probably needs the job more than I do although I think he is totally afloat and nowhere near destitute. If only some of the old fossils in the damn government would give up their jobs to younger generations. It’s time.

So once the GG got Mooon Yooonit going this morning, he drove up to FlaMan’s place and the Lady of Linden got him to meet her in the area so she could pass off this loverly care package for meeeee. I got lucky in terms of sisters-in-law, the GG’s sisters (four) and his brothers’ wives (two). I miss The Beautiful Suzie. She was extra special to me and died waaaay too young.

Sam came over wearing a party skirt so I had to put one on too. The GG drove us over to Sessions in Cygnus X-1 for a loverly lunch and after that, dropped us off at the Plum Market to get a few things for dinner.

First of all, Kathy was in the entry way when we arrived. We only had a couple of things on our list and I usually do the uScan but I saw that Joyce was running a cash register so I went through her lane and introduced her to my BFF Sam. Sam and I were both wearing party skirts and it turned out that Joyce was also wearing a party skirt. The pic is only Sam and me but I kinda wish I had been together enough to make a pic with all three of us in party skirts. Somehow somebody alerted mouse that her moom was in the store so she met us in the checkout line.

I have been going through Joyce’s line since long before my mouse worked at that plum. Joyce “bullied” me into making my Plum app work on my phone, which turned out to be a life-saver when the pandemic hit. When my mouse started working there, Joyce figured out she was my daughter. She had noticed that my mouse seemed to know what she was doing right off the bat. She made the guess that it was because mouse used to work at the Plum on the other side of town, which was correct.

Anyway, we put lamb stew and garlic bread and salad together tonight and both of my local beach urchins came over for dinner. They hung out with Sam in the chitchen (gabbling about umbellifers among other things) while me and the GG and jcb hung out in the back room. I am so happy that my adult daughters love Sam so much that they come over to meet and gabble with her. I wish Hotlanta wasn’t so far away but we did make it work this weekend.

It arrived today. It’s the box that I sent my work laptop off in to the great wide open or wherever. I was okay with that but I am not an engineer so I let my own personal engineer pack it up and take it over to a Fedex dropoff while I kinda looked the other way.

Actually, he packed TWO laptops (and three power cables) into the box. A couple years ago, I had a previous laptop die and it could not be resurrected so they sent me a “new” one. It wasn’t actually brand new and I never actually got along with the “jumpy” keyboard/touchpad interactions but I managed. But they told me to just get rid of the old one. I was not really comfortable with that instruction so I kept it around. Hopefully they are happy to get it back even though it’s basically been a brick the last couple years. I certainly didn’t want it around any more. I am a MacBook Pro kinda gal anyway and knock on wood my MacBook Pro is much older than those crappy laptops and still going strong. But I certainly did not want to be accused of stealing anything.

My Sam engineered a loverly chili and salad dinner tonight. Little Cat Z enhanced the salad with some stuff from her house and I provided some garlic bread I had made and stashed in the freezer. Dinner for eight and lots of fun talk. I have such a good life.

First of all, this pic was taken by my forever BFF Sam. It is the courthouse in Napoleon Ohio. The GG and I drove past it a few years ago and I wanted to get a pic but I didn’t quite manage it. She and her hubby jcb (aka the Guru who hosts my website) were driving the back roads through Ohio today and when she texted to say they were in Napoleon for lunch, I begged for a pic of the courthouse. And she obliged. So photo credit to Sam.

They took us out for dinner at Dexter’s Pub and we made sure to drive them past the cider mill. It’s closed at this time of year but she remembers visiting it as a child, when her family drove from south of Lansing to Dexter on day trips. She has a beautiful pic of it on her blahg.

I met my Sam on Radical Betty’s back deck a million years ago. At that time she was my cousin’s Jay’s friend and when I first met her, I thought she was wonderful but I didn’t realize she would become my best friend in life. We were both going to college at MooU and our families both owned property in the yooperland and I guess she came to a party at my apartment in East Lansing and I don’t remember the exact party but apparently things went from there and here we are.

I’m thinkin’ the first time the GG met Sam was at a party at Pooh and Mark’s apartment on Seventh Street on The Planet Ann Arbor. I don’t remember much about that except that the GG said something like it was a good thing finding that Sam. Yes it was.

The moon is full tonight and the sky is crystal clear but I am not in a place to get a good picture of it because of the woods behind the Landfill back yard and it’s at a weird angle. I like this old pic taken about this time of year but I have always been annoyed at how the moon is kinda sliced off on the right. My eye didn’t see it but my iPhone sure did. Point and shoot.

Today. Today. I forced my social anxiety into a corner (where it belongs) and went to meet (eight? nine?) former co-workers for lunch (and the GG, who was in heavy-duty North Country Trail recruitment mode). Two of these folks recently retired and a few others didn’t show up because cold symptoms (missed you but thank you very much). This luncheon was not to honor me or anyone else, it was just a pay-your-own-way holiday get-together. The retired folks have already had parties and I don’t really need or want one although I was offered one.

I was the oldest person there and the shortest timer at 18 years. We had so much fun! I told them (and this is true) that I was more upset when I was 16 and Bad Boyfriend dumped me than I was about the layoff. That got a deserved laugh. I told them that Amazon Woman was the best boss I have ever had. I have never had a bad boss but she really was the best. Fun fact: Amazon Woman is an electrical engineer by education and she and the GG both like to take things apart and fix them so they gabbled about that. Taking things apart and fixing them is not a skill I possess. I told old outhouse stories from the moominbeach when I was a kid and I don’t remember what else. People were wondering why I wasn’t in the yooperland right now. Because the moomincabin is closed for the season.

Exit stories came up and I came to know that being laid off is not necessarily the worst way to go although everyone is happy with their retirement. That is all I will say about that. Except that I felt sooooo loved by these old friends.

Most of today is pretty much unblahggable. Not in a bad way though. It was a good day.

On facebook, a friend of my little brother announced his retirement from an esteemed career as a conductor of bands and orchestras, mainly in Florida. I should say he was a wonderful friend of mine too, although he and my brother were both three years younger than me. We were all talented musicians. Me a flutist, my brother a trombonist, and our friend, a percussionist. My brother and I didn’t pursue music as careers but our percussionist friend ended up with a PHD and a career as an acclaimed and beloved teacher and conductor.

We all got our start in music in Sault Ste. Siberia, a place where decent music teachers were few and far between. I had ONE decent flute teacher throughout my childhood there. I was in eighth grade and my flute teacher was married to an Air Force officer who spent a year at Kincheloe AFB (now defunct). They rented a small house across the Lincoln school yard from my family’s little bungalow. When The Commander found out about her, she immediately signed me up for lessons. Jan (the teacher) got what I was all about immediately and showered me with the kind of virtuoso music I craved and more. My family was not rich but The Commander willingly ordered whatever music Jan suggested for me and knowing The Comm, she probably paid Jan more than what she asked for. Among other things, Jan taught me how to flutter tongue. (Google it.) She was a kind, beautiful young woman and I LOVED her.

A few years later, my brother drove a VW Bug he took over from the family car collection when he went to college. I will never forget one night when he and our percussionist friend and a trumpet friend and meeeee, were driving up Ashmun Street across the bridge over the canal and playing Zoom Schwartz Profigliano. I don’t remember how to play that old game and not sure I could even play it competently then.

That’s meeee and my little brother on top of a big snowbank down by my grandparents’ house, eight blocks or so away from our house.

Years and years ago I tried to nudge the GG away from brown colors into blue. I thought he would look good in blue and it is one of my fave colors.

He wasn’t quiiiite ready for blue in those days. It wasn’t until he fell off a log bridge (three times) in the yooperland on the North Country Trail that he began to embrace blue, even though it is the color of the paint that blazes his beloved North Country Trail.

After that incident, he walked quickly a couple miles to where a person with a warmed up vee-hickle met him with warm, dry clothing from a thrift shop. Thanks for cell service there. It was the yooperland so that is not always guaranteed. A photo of him in his thrift shop attire was posted and meeeee and the beach urchins saw it and we were like, he’s wearing blue?

Since then, he often wears blue. He has finally adopted the color of the North Country Trail blazes. So here he is in blue getting a certain holiday item off the top of Cygnus. No, it isn’t in the house yet. I’m not quiiiite ready for it to be in the house.

…is over. We made an airport run to drop our bonus daughter off at metro at 0-skunk-30 this morning to continue her holiday adventures. After we dropped her off and got onto I275, I could see the first rays of today’s sunrise.

I was kind of a nervous wreck. I could not believe how much traffic there was on that run. I knoooooow it’s just after Thanksgiving. I wish I had taken a picture but I was sitting in the back seat of Cygnus just trying to keep myself calm and collected. It helped that bonus daughter was very calm, chatting with the GG in the front. She flies all over the place all the time so this was just another day in the air and she sent a pic of her and a friend meeting at Metro because they were both there at the same time. I mean, they planned to make that happen, it wasn’t random.

Bonus daughter didn’t actually stay with us. She bunked with Little Cat Z. Much more fun and they even co-worked a bit. Despite a four-year age difference, they have always been close and some of my fave memories are of LCZ singing to BD upstairs at the moomincabin when BD was fussing a bit, as young babies do. BD grew up (as young babies do) and ROCKS the world. I had a hard time dropping her off and am missing her. If the stars align correctly, we hope to see her in the summer.

The pic is of the GG playing with one of his boy toys, a big yooperland sized snowblower. We didn’t really get a lot of snow but it was kind of fugly snow and from what I’m told the roads weren’t great Sunday morning when this was taken. Thankfully everything was dry for our airport run this morning.

But then, the GG came home and spent ALL DAY working on the jigsaw puzz (and finished it) and THEN! He started rummaging. I was dealing with another (somewhat stressful) issue and I was NOT a happy camper. Oh don’t worry, it’s technical crapola and it’ll get sorted out eventually, which I am okay with. For now. Ticket successfully filed. Onward.

We didn’t have a dinner plan for the fam tonight, at least not a home made one. I’ve been craving Chinese takeout for a while so I suggested that and it was a go. Little Cat Z collected everyone’s preferences and made a LIST!

Besides being an uber-organized person in general, she has a lot of experience making lists of what people want at restaurants. When the beach urchins were small (my kids and their first and/or second cousins) and we were at the moomincabin, I would often pack them into the Exxon Tanker Valdez (Chrysler mini-van) and take them over the back roads to Clyde’s Drive-In on the St. Marys River, where we could watch freighters go by while eating. Or we could get to-go food and take it over to “Goose Poop Park” (aka Rotary Park) where there was playground equipment.

We always took cafeteria trays with us and clean wet washcloths. Clyde’s is loverly but quite greasy. When Little Cat Z got old enough to write a coherent, easily readable list, her task became taking orders from everyone in the van and making a list on our way there. So when we got to Clyde’s, we could just read off the list or even hand it to the waitress.

Here’s the 2011 Mean Green Frog Hoppin’ Musheen at Clyde’s back in the day. The St. Marys River and Sugar Island Ferry are out of view behind me. And by this time there were no beach urchins in the car. They were all graduated from college and off on their own adventures in their own vee-hickles.

I have kind of a long weird history with this Planet Ann Arbor theatre. My first memory of it was when I was I dunno like 10 or 12. We traveled from the yooperland to visit our FinFam Ann Arbor cousins and we went to see HMS Pinafore. Was I entranced? I dunno. I have never been all that entranced by musicals but I certainly didn’t have a bad time. But I NOTICED THE LIGHTS in the lobby.

Years and years later, living in Ann Arbor, as I do, I was a mother of young children and I was sometimes recruited to play the flute in pit orchestras for musicals in the Lydia Mendelssohn. I REMEMBERED THE LIGHTS! In the lobby. From when I was a child.

My children grew older and I stopped doing pit orchestra gigs but then. My children became actors with YAG. And guess where they played a couple times a year? The Lydia Mendelssohn. I REMEMBERED THE LIGHTS. In the lobby.

I spent many years working to support YAG and my children in plays at the Mendelssohn. I loved ALL of it. I especially loved hanging around with Madame Producer in the green room. We would laugh uproariously (but silently) when things kinda went sideways. As they do. I loved helping the uber costume women in the bowels of the theatre and running front of house.

I will never forget when I got my first Apple laptop (2003 and The Commander helped buy it, thanks moom) and I figured out that I had wifi access at the Mendelssohn. That was a game changer. No more big binders full of papers to haul around.

We had a FinFam steak dinner here tonight and it is snowing but everyone in our family has made it home safely.

Looking for something else, I found this. I dunno what I was even looking now. It’s Radical Betty and the GG two years before she died. We were having brunch at the Hotel Ojibway and The Commander and Cam are also with us (and not sure who else).

On NPR (LOL) this afternoon I heard a familiar voice. It was Big Abe. He has been dead for a long time but he was a Native American fisherman (and bar owner, probably more well known for that) in the area of the moominbeach and there was a big kerfuffle about various kinds of fishing, “gill net” being an operative word. This is all too complicated for my “pretty” little head and my family does not fish at all but that would be a story for another day. Or not.

At one point, Big Abe got taaaared of law officials trying to track him down, so he called them up and said, “I am gonna be fishing HERE today, come and get me.” A lot of stuff ensued that I don’t really understand, so I’ll have to listen to the podcast.

Okay. I had a Japanese Uncle. Tatsuo Takei (yeah, he was from samurai). He married my eccentric Aunt Roberta when she was 70 and he was 60. He fancied himself as an entrepreneur and wanted to do some kind of deal with the eastern yooperland Native Americans. So he scheduled a meeting with the tribe and he and Roberta stayed with my parents, who accompanied rhwm to his meeting out on the reservation. Now. My dad was a long-time *savvy* local banker and I’m sure he knew a lot of these people and what they were all about. Native American or not, my dad had a better handle on what eastern yooperland people were all about than Tatsuo did.

So the whole meeting from what I remember being told about it was a little crazy in terms of cultural differences. Japanese? Many rules and protocols, like kids (for example) were probably not even around in Japanese negotiations. Native Americans? Kids were running in and out of the building all the time, acting like “wild Indians”, kinda like my cousins and I did when we were kids on the moominbeach.

Tatsuo dubbed Big Abe as Big Chief. Big Abe was not the chief. He called another guy “Big Mouth”. I don’t think he was the chief either. I don’t know who the chief was. My parents were laughing about all this but I suspect Tatsuo also understood some of this stuff. I’m pretty sure no entrepreneurial deals came out of this shindig.

My main mantras for dealing with successful adult children are “go with the flow” and “stay outta the fray”.

Today I came up with a new one. It’s a holiday mantra but I’m not sure I totally have the right words yet. Something like, “plan for more than enough for whoever might show up and welcome everyone but don’t ever try to guilt trip people into joining you” but that’s a pretty long mantra. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never done things that way anyway. Turkey day is easy to do and I do welcome everyone. Well, not serial killer type people of course but they are not likely to hang out with the people in my family.

So it was a great turkey day. Some of the fam went downtown to do the turkey trot. The GG went downtown early early to meet up with them (although he did not do the trot). He did eventually find the trotters but not for a while because he didn’t exactly get the time right. Whatever. We had eggs benny and then the trotters came over and made their own breakfasts on Gertrude after the turkey trot. My mouse cleaned Gertrude’s stovetop within an inch of its life and I am forever grateful for that.

Then I cooked a pretty traditional tday dinner with enough for everyone in the local fam plus. npJane visited for a while but had other plans for dinner with The Friends and we had a couple other guests. And a terrifically hard jigsaw puzzle, which the GG is working on in the pic. I am not really a jigsaw aficionado (except for the one the Uncly Uncle had made for me out of a photo I took) but jigsaw puzzles give people something to do on holidays when it’s too crappy to go outside and the football game is over.

My main point is, anyone who wants to join us for turkey day (or any other holiday) is welcome. Even if you want to spend the afternoon napping on the couch, which a couple of trotters did today. I love when people are napping in my house. That means they are comfortable here.

Oh, don’t worry. I have NOT moved over to the fugly orange side of things. And neither has Gertrude, my stove. Just file the pic under Weird Stuff Found in the Landfill. And I found it just before the GG was scheduled to arrive at home this afternoon so of course I put it on for his entertainment. That’s the kind of thing you sometimes do when you are in a Mixed Marriage. In our case, that would be Trump supporter (the GG) and F*ck Trump (meeeee). Turns out Doug (our brother-in-law) bought these hats and handed them out. I love Doug ANYWAY.

Gawd, it was fugly this morning. The only thing that wasn’t happening was snow. Not yet. That started later but Old Man Winter was just spitting it at us. Last I looked there was NO accumulation. Not so in the yooperland, northern lower, and west coast (Michigan west coast that is). Lake effect.

It was windy as all getout this morning when I made a Plum dash right about when it opened at 8:00 AM. That was my penultimate shopping spree before turkey day although (of course) I was texting mouse with forgotten items later. If I need anything tomorrow, I’ll make another wee run or the GG can do it if it’s something he can manage to select properly. I am a u-scan ninja but my fave cashier Joyce was there today and I chose to be lazy and let her and her lovely young bagger scoot me out the door. I picked away at prepping turkey day stuff the rest of the day and the GG came home with some surprise pork chops from Sparrow, just the right size for a small turkey day eve dinner.

Babblety babblety g’night. The GG has been playing a turkey gobbling audio clip off and on ALL DAY. Yeah, just like the REAL turkeys that were waking me up at 0-skunk-30 in the morning at the moomincabin last summer.

We met up at Sessions for dinner tonight. I keep a lot of family stories in my head and I told some tonight.

The one I will tell right now is about a time I drove the beach urchins up to the moomincabin from the Planet Ann Arbor. Little Cat Z was maybe a second grader. I worked a half day and when I got home, LCZ had made peanut butter sandwiches for us to eat in the POC (crappy old Island Teal Chrysler minivan).

We stopped at Hoton Lake halfway up to visit with the beach urchins’ Grandpa Garth and Grandma Sally, where we exchanged an old rusty rake and some shoeboxes and empty film canisters and I fergit what else for a rotten cucumber and green pepper. Something like that.

While we were there, I somehow got the grandparents rolling on retirement accounts. Jeebus. LCZ, who had heard this spiel umpteen bazillion times before and knew how much I hated it, got up close to my ear and stage whispered, “Mom! Change the talk.” And so I did, which is how we ended up with the rotten veggies. I took those oid veggies up to the moominbeach and dumped them in my uncle Don’s compost. Don’t get me wrong, my in-laws were wonderful and I loved them.

We’ll talk about the time my dad was running from the moominbeach into town on the old railroad grade and ran INTO a person running the other way some other day (or not). It was pitch black when that happened.

Then there’s just plain weird stuff. I was hanging around the Landfill this morning making gravy and of all the things that popped into my head, I realized that I was probably more upset when I was 16 and Bad Boyfriend dumped me than when I got laid off last week. I think I cried for days and had no appetite.

Jeebus. I was a pretty (I was told) but VERY awkward high school freshman when Bad Boyfriend noticed me and brokered a meeting with me through a mutual friend. Joan was her name. I did not have male friends at that time. I had no clue how to talk to boys. The mean old Grunchy old Grinchy didn’t count ’cause he was my cousin and my brother’s friends were just little kids.

Why did this *gorgeous* older (sophomore) guy want meeee for a girlfriend? We didn’t meet up all that often at first because we couldn’t drive and he lived out in Algonquin, a long way from my house. The first time he met my parents was when he walked me home from the Memorial Day parade. Thinking back on that, I can’t believe he would want to be seen with me, wearing my fugly band uniform. Or maybe I’m slightly misremembering. Anyway, The Commander, a teacher at my high school, asked, “Where did you find him?”

The Commander liked him all right but she was worried that I would turn into a fairly typical yooperland statistic, pregnant and married well before I was ready. That did not happen, partly why I was dumped. I knew I was college bound and he wasn’t, at least not yet. I learned through the grapevine that he was later regretful about dumping me but by that time we had both moved on to different relationships. His led him to an early marriage and children, mine into a more mature relationship with a college guy. That was “okay” back then, it is viewed as a bit sketchy now. But it isn’t always. That boyfriend was a gentleman and treated me very well. But I dumped him and a few years later, I ended up with the GG who gave me my beautiful beach urchins.

I’ve also figured out through the grapevine (and facebook) that Bad Boyfriend turned out pretty okay too. He did eventually go to college and earned an engineering degree! I am happy for him but I feel lucky that he dumped me and I ended up with the GG.

The point here is that life can be bumpy but it does go on.

My old facebook “bio” was “Vagabond masquerading as a fintech pro”. So it was time to change it.

Back in my early days of my fintech industry employment, my then boss (the LSCHP) found my twitter account, which had the same “bio” as my facebook profile. Remember when we (some of us at least) used to actually USE Twitter? I was on vacation when he tweeted me. Like really? I panicked for a split-second. What do you do when you’re sitting on the moomindeck and your boss TWEETS at you? Is he firing you? By Twitter? Nope, although we certainly know someone who does that now. He was just letting me know about an upcoming team function at a science museum in Detroit. Of course I replied to him. It was all pretty funny because when I got back, my then Cube Nayber told me our boss was ADAMANT that he TWEET the invitation to me which was hilarious to both of us. And my boss loved my Twitter “bio” and wished he had thought of it for himself.

The post title is my new “bio”, or half of it at least. I’m not quiiiiite ready to give up the cool thing I did for a living for 18 years. I’m not gonna just sit around and do little old lady things (whatever those are) although I’m not sure what I AM gonna do next. (Don’t ask. I know. I said that already.) For the moment I am gonna enjoy Turkey Day week, which will likely mean umpteen bazillion trips to the grokkery store. But I have friends (and a relative) there.

I wonder how many people actually know what “pragmatic” means. I *think* I do but I have to keep looking it up to double-check myself.

My old mensch of a boss had to lay off MANY people over the years and HATED every minute of it. I survived all of that including his own layoff. I’ll probably write more about all of that someday (or not). I will say that when he did get laid off, I was the first person he told. I mean, maybe because I was the first person he encountered when he left his office. But we were close.

Right now, I am still “processing” my own status although I still don’t seem to be upset about it. Reductions In Force are part of working for Corporate America and I knew that going in. 18 years… I will say that my old boss landed on his feet. I haven’t had to land on my feet because the GG and I have already been on our feet for years. We haven’t had a mortgage or any debt for many years and we have successful adult children. We aren’t “Warren Buffet” but we have worked hard and are fine.

How many hats can one man own? Turns out the count is 30. Last I was told.

This guy wears hats. Sometimes he even needs one. It does get cold here in the Great Lake State. Stormy Kromer hats? He probably has about eight.

Anyway, the GG puts a hat on every time he goes outside and often wears one even in the house. I don’t bother to tell him that wearing a hat inside the house (if you are a man) is sorta verboten. Or at least it used to be back in the “white glove”, “no white clothing after Labor Day” era. I was a child in that era and I did have white gloves to wear to church and such. The Commander tried to raise me “properly” but her lessons didn’t really stick. She was trying to fit into Sault Ste. Siberia as a young wife and mother and part of that was teaching us kids how to behave, etc. And then the 1960s hit and all hell broke loose everywhere. In the end, The Comm became a greatly loved and respected member of the community on her own partly because she didn’t exactly subscribe to all those old social rules and eventually kicked back a bit. My dad picked a good gal on the banks of the Red Cedar River. My words are gonna trail off here for today, because I’m talking about the GG’s hat “collection” today.

So, about three times a week, the GG will be rummaging all over the place. I ask, “What ARE you doing?” and he replies, “Looking for my hat!” Well. Which hat, just for one thing?

Apparently today was the day to rummage the Landfill collecting all of his hats and gathering them together. Maybe he could donate some of them? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have lice.