How about a little lighter-weight fare today?

Here is Jesus in St. Joe’s church parking lot up in Sault Ste. Siberia. I took this in 2013 when we traveled up there to close out my parents’ safe deposit box (mom had died the year before). The bank was closing that branch and in addition to all the stuff in the box, the bank manager (also mom’s next door neighbor) dredged up a bunch of photos of my dad and granddaddy from the basement. I still don’t have all that stuff sorted out. I need to get at it.

After that, while the GG took a catnap, I walked south to my shabby little childhood bungalow on Superior Street, across from good old Stinkin’ Linkin’ elementary school. I used to Red Queen over there from my house every morning. I turned around at that point and took my old walking/biking route to my grandparents’ house on John Street, which went through St. Joe’s parking lot. The snow banks surrounding Jesus were higher than my head but he must have “risen” that morning because he was above them. (It was March but not Easter.)

We stayed at the Hotel Ojibway that weekend because the moomincabin was closed for the season and Command Central (The Comm’s house on Dillon) was not sold yet but it was completely empty. At one point the ever frugal (except when he’s not) GG asked me if I wanted to open the house up again so we could “camp” there. No no no no no! I do not. We’re DONE with that house and the Hotel Ojibway is not gonna break the bank. (It was a good house, I just wanted that chapter to be over.)

There wasn’t as much “he is risen” on Facebook today as there usually is. But an in-law shared an old pic with the caption, “He is risen and he has poop in his pants.” The pic was of one of our great-nephews when he was a baby, standing up in his crib not looking all that happy. How old is that kid now? 12 maybe? Talented skier and footballer and probably a bunch of stuff I don’t even know about. Time flies and I enjoyed the humor.

We aren’t exactly observing Easter but any excuse to get together and “party”, right? Beach urchins and friends are here, a faaaar is in the faaarplace, and sliced honey-baked ham is heating along with some friends. I soooo wish local asparagus was available here in March. One year (2012) people were able to harvest asparagus in March. This year, I’m serving asparagus from Chile or somewhere. I dunno why but asparagus seems like an Easter veggie to me.

Whether you observe/celebrate Easter or not, cheers!

This entry will probably come out as rambling gibberish but I have to try. A lot of people seem to be babbling about putting God and Jesus “back” into our government. First, last I looked, one of our country’s founding principles is something called separation of church and state. Roight? So how can we put something “back” that isn’t there in the first place?

As I have said before, I am not religious although I had something of a religious upbringing. Sunday School and sometimes church, which I struggled to sit through. My parents were not religious either but for various reasons we participated. And there were lots of good things! Kind Sunday School teachers. Singing hymns with gorgeous pipe organ accompaniment. Stained glass windows. The xmas eve candlelight service with all its pageantry. I even played Mary one year. Long boring sermons were not my fave.

I am not an atheist. I simply have no idea how the universe (as we call it) works. I don’t think anybody does. Is there one omniscient entity who runs all this stuff? Who knows?

I’m thinking about this partly because I know that tomorrow my facebook feed will be filled with “He is risen!” If people need to believe in a god, that’s okay. It’s pretty scary sometimes thinking (like I do) about how alone we are in an unfathomably large universe. Why are we here? Seeking comfort in a religious belief system is a pretty natural way for earthlings to try and find meaning in the unknown.

But. When I was going to Sunday School and learning about Jesus (who in my opinion may or may not have been a real person but I highly doubt was a *divine* entity), we learned about his kindness, especially toward people who were among the less fortunate members of society.

What I am feeling in US politics is a lot of hatred. Powerful people are name-calling and making fun of others: appearance, poverty, disabilities, you name it. And they are invoking God and Jesus. This is not a new phenomenon but I believe it escalated in the mid-2010s (you know when). I don’t think the Jesus I was taught about would approve. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You don’t have to participate in an organized religion to live by the golden rule. I am far from perfect but I constantly try to improve.

I believe organized religion and those who participate in it can be of great good and many people treat others with kindness and compassion. But there are some evil influences afoot. In my opinion, the loudest voices belong to those *least* likely to care anything about Jesus. I’m sure I’m largely “preaching to the choir” but resist them resist them resist them! They are invoking Jesus to amass money and power for themselves, not to help others. Unfortunately, their “church” has a lot of followers.

The title is a real song (insert desired bank name). I learned it from the same person who taught me another loverly little ditty: “Seven old ladies were locked in a lavatory. They were in there from Monday through Saturday.” That’s all I know of it although I bet it’s google-able. We’ll just call these little ditties “Pooh songs” 😉

Because I am (once again) unable to put a sentence together to save my life (10:00 PM isn’t past my bedtime but I NEEEEEEED to be chilling out by this time), you get this pic the GG took “up north” a few weeks ago. Orion, or “The Rion” as he was once called by a beach urchin. Embiggen embiggen.

Just touching in so the beach urchins don’t wonder “where is the blahg?” We have been “arguing” about hams tonight. I thought the GG was all excited about getting a ham from Honey Baked Hams over in Ypsi or wherever, meaning I thought I didn’t have to worry about it. Not necessarily although I think we have it sorted out. I just want a small amount of spiral sliced ham. Why is that so hard to obtain? I am not feeding an army.

Now I’m remembering Easter brunches with The Commander and Radical Betty at the Hotel Ojibway. The restaurant there can be a bit iffy depending upon who is running it (management changes pretty frequently) but when those gals were still alive, it put on some decent holiday brunches with fancy omelet bars and all kinds of stuff. We always took Frooogy with us. Radical Betty LOVED Frooogy. The Commander was a little less entranced.

A while back when I worked at Cubelandia, Cube Neighbor used to travel around to watch Umich hockey games. Once when they were in Sault Ste. Siberia, they stayed in the Hotel Ojibway. There were pics of local folks in the hotel lobby and when she returned she asked about this FinFam guy in one of the pics. I said, “Yes, that was my uncle.”

G’night, KW.

I have recently learned the word “Timmie”, meaning a person who is afraid of bridges. I know such people exist. I worked with a woman who even avoided short foot bridges like in urban parks. I mean STURDY ones with high thick railings, not flimsy-looking ones like the photo MMCB₂ sent from her trip to an African country. It looked like it might sway and whatever was below seemed like a long way down. I said, “Tell me you didn’t cross that.” Yes. She did. I didn’t press her but next time we meet for zoom coffee, I’ll get the story.

The Big Mac (and a lot of other large bridges) offers a driving service for “Timmies”. Someone will drive you across the bridge in your car. You can sit there and white knuckle it with your eyes wide open or you can hide under a blanket or lie down on the floor in the back seat. No judgment. We all have our phobias and I live with a PARTICULARLY STUPID one so I take other people’s phobias seriously and don’t tease or poke at them.

I am not a Timmie (with one big-time exception). The Big Mac has always been exciting for me. And I have driven it in all kinds of conditions. High winds. Snowstorms. In a crappy old Ford Pinto wagon no less. Oh, not that a snowstorm in a Pinto is exciting. Actually it was pretty darn nerve-racking but I always managed.

The one big-time exception? The Sunshine Skyway Bridge, St. Petersburg to Bradenton, where my parents-in-law lived. We drove down there in 1986, us and our toddler and The Beautiful Suzie, my sister-in-law (miss her so much). The Sunshine Skyway had been two bridges with one-way traffic on each. One of them was hit by a freighter in 1980 (I just looked that up) and collapsed. Multiple cars and a Greyhound bus fell off the bridge and 35 people died. They kept the other bridge open, routing two-way traffic onto it as they began building a new bridge.

I hadn’t been worried about crossing that bridge. Heck it’ll be like the Mackinac. Roight? So I thought. Not all bridges are alike. We were up top at a near standstill with cars everywhere. Traffic jam both directions. I was terrified (the GG was driving). It seemed so flimsy. They were building the new bridge at the time and on subsequent trips to Fla, we drove it and I was fine. Interestingly, they have left parts of the old bridge’s approaches as fishing piers.

Frooog photo credit to mouse.

I dunno where to even start. Bridge collapses are one of the scariest ways I can think of to die. There are others, make no mistake. This morning when I was talking to MMCB₂ I knew nothing about the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse. I actually think this is the first time I have even known about the Francis Scott Key bridge. It sounds like the incident happened in the wee hours when most of the 35,000(?) people who cross the bridge daily were not crossing it but still. Some people have lost their lives and, well, I have no words and “thoughts and “prayers” will not help anyone. Ugh.

I cross the Mackinac Bridge so often that I have a commuter “transponder” (or whatever it is) embedded in my windshield. The first time I crossed the Mac was the night it opened. You can be sure that my parents took me and my three-month-old brother across the bridge. I have a little card that “certifies” me as a first time crosser. Since it is written in The Commander’s handwriting, I know that the toll booth worker handed it to my mom and my mom filled it out. It’s still valuable, to me at least.

I have to add that I also have vague memories of traveling on the ferries before the Big Mac was built. I remember being dressed in cute little tartan skirt outfits and I remember saying “We go to ‘Detrite’ in the middle of the night.” That’s because in order to get to my Detroit grandparents’ house, we had to get up at something like 3:00 AM in order to catch the first ferry across the Straits of Mackinac.

The Mackinac Bridge made our trip a whole lot shorter although it was a while before the I75 SUV Speedway took our trip off the old two-lane highways and made it more like five hours instead of eleven or whatever. But that might be another story.

So people on the internet are wondering if the Big Mac Bridge could collapse like the Francis Scott Key. Well yes, any bridge could collapse if the right ship hit it in the right place. When I cross the Big Mac and there is a freighter passing below, I don’t ever freak out. There are not all that many freighters that pass through at any given time. As someone said on facebook, if you see a freighter coming along, go get a cup of coffee. If not, cross. I will never stop for coffee.

There have been two incidents of vee-hickles going over the side of the Mackinac Bridge. Instead of trying to write about this in my own words, I’m gonna link to some FAQs from the Mackinac Bridge Authority.

My dad called me from the moominbeach the night of the Yugo incident so I could hear how loud the winds were. We were laughing at the time but we so regret the Yugo incident.

In my mind, the lyrics to an “alternate” version of Jingle Bells is something like: Jingle Bells, Santa Smells, Easter’s on the way. I can’t find that on the internet, not that I have tried very hard. I mean it’s kinda like googling if Soupy Sales is dead, which I have done and yes he is. And I didn’t ever see him on TV because we didn’t have TV until I was two and when we did get TV, we didn’t have a channel with Soupy Sales on it. Not that we knew who Soupy Sales was. I only remember watching Howdy Doody at that age and that is a pretty vague memory. And Don Ramsey and his family country-style band on Sault Ste. Siberia Ontario channel 2, CJIC.

Anyway, I get search results with “Batman smells” and some other variations and I’m not gonna go any farther than that tonight. I remember making this bunny Halloween costume (she’s only wearing the head here). I made a lot of Halloween costumes in my day, some of them quite elaborate. And then. I just kinda quit. I mean how many sequins can you sew around a fairy’s wings. The kindergargen teacher said, “Those wings will fall apart. Nope they didn’t but still. Sigh.

The rabbit in the pic was home from school “sick” with something very mild but contagious so I kept her home and let her ride her bike up and down the sidewalk. It’s okay. She did not feel “like sand”, i.e., it wasn’t strep or whatever. So I was NOT a Bad Mom. At least not that time.

So if we can figger out how to get a SLICED ham that isn’t umpteen bazillion pounds (I’m thinking a quarter ham), we will have Easter dinner here. In a SECULAR way, mind you. I don’t believe in resurrection of dead people although I do welcome the spring “rebirth” of living things. Metaphors matter.

Asparagus? Bring it on. But it’s too early for local asparagus here so I’ll have to buy some from Californy or Chile or wherever. I think the GG will venture over to Honey Baked Hams for the ham. We don’t eat ham often except for Easter and the occasional Canadian Bacon for Eggs Benny.

The most mundane things sometimes provide photo ops. The Lyme Lounge hangs at the top of the Landfill Driveway when it is not somewhere else. It blocks my view of the neighbors’ back yard but the current neighbor doesn’t engage in Burke behavior, i.e., hanging out in the back yard sans clothing. (Burke was a good neighbor and we miss him.)

Anyway, I was getting dinner ready last night and I glanced out the chitchen window and WOW! What was the Lyme Lounge up to? YELLOW! and ICE! Snow on top of the LL had apparently “dribbled”, then when the temps dropped, the dribbles froze.

Light can do interesting things to our house at this time of the year when the trees don’t have leaves yet and Mr. Golden Sun deigns to make an appearance. So, maybe TMI but a beach urchin was over here and the skirt I was wearing (thin black cotton) went see-through when MGS shone brightly through the front door and silhouetted my bare legs beneath it. Fortunately I was not in, uh, commando mode at the time.

Moving right along, that got me motivated to do some dusting today. I don’t do a lot of dusting. I would do more dusting if I didn’t have to move all kinds of crapola outta the way. But this is ALSO the time of year when MGS’s rays highlight every blasted mote of dust anywhere. As we will be hosting a SMALL SECULAR observance of Easter next weekend, I knew my OTHER beach urchin would notice dust.

So that was my day. I actually had the idea to get lunch at the Griz or Conor O’Neill’s or somewhere but somehow I never got around to making it happen. But NOTE! It was MY idea and that means I am finally coming out of my state of covid cowardice. (But not enough to go to Ireland.) Oh, make no mistake, I have been to restaurants, etc. Even a Big Fat Greek Wedding and a crowded symposium. But this would’ve been on MY initiative, not just me timidly but bravely going with the flow.

And YES, life is better for me as it was four years ago (except for the loss of people’s reproductive rights – I’ll go there another day though). What are people thinking? I have to add that it was not “bad” exactly four years ago. Weird and scary might be better words at least for those of us who could afford to avoid covid. But people *were* dying from a virus “we” didn’t understand and the Meanie in Chief was promoting quack remedies like hydroxychloroquine and putting lights inside human bodies. Or whatever. I never did understand exactly what the Crackpot in Chief was talking about with the lights and I have seen the video clip multiple times. How can anyone want the Orange Baboon back as president?

The GG space-i-fied me today by driving down to O-haaa-o to meet with some folks down there for a mini-hike and I dunno what else. North Country Trail and Wabash Cannonball Trail folks. It’s complicated so don’t ask.

Apparently the group SANG the Wabash Cannonball song! This cracked me up to no end. Whenever I hear anything about the Wabash Cannonball, it makes me think about my childhood career over at the EPA. At one point in time we were getting big boxes of paper from a company called Wabash. I’m not sure if it still makes/sells paper or not. My boss Byron would walk (seemingly endlessly) through the “computer room” hauling Wabash boxes in and out. (We used to use soooo much paper.) Byron was quite bald and one of my co-workers once said, “Here comes the Wabash Cannonball”. We were very young and we totally cracked up. The crazy things that stick in your head.

I really liked working for Byron and I have all kinds of stories about him but I’ll spare you for now.

The little line of snow in the sorta foreground of the pic heading out to the She-Shed is where the power line shaded the ground from Mr. Golden Sun. When he was on that side of the house. It was good that the GG ran his snowblower yesterday but as I always say, in March, especially LATE March, when Mr. Golden shines brightly after a snowstorm, he melts Old Man Winter. Even though we only got into the mid 30s today, all paved surfaces are DRY now. Snow only lingers in grassy spots that Mr. Golden Sun didn’t shine down on for whatever reason.

I guess that’s just about all for today. The “garbage” cart lids were white at 0-skunk-30 and then it really started coming down. All told we got a few inches or thereabouts. Looking at Goomaps, the freeway system ringing our little city was red red red. PEOPLE, SLOW DOWN! That white stuff is slippery. None of “us” had to be anywhere that required an automotive vee-hickle and it wasn’t really all that slippery walking. Sayonara, KW.

Fixed it! Weird quote character issue…

Or not. I put a few unidentified (to me) things from the freezer into the garbage today. They have been in the freezer since xmas and they are NOT things we (I) will ever eat.

I also put the ONE remaining slice of home-made pizza in there. It was from last Wednesday. That’s more than a week. The pizza was what started the garbage sorting. GG: Where is the leftover pizza? KW: I threw the last remaining piece out. It’s been over a week and I have rules about this stuff. It’s why you don’t ever get food poisoning😵‍💫

The GG identified one of the things in the garbage as the xmas duck carcass. A beach urchin had expressed interest in it so I threw it in the freezer. Welp. That was three months ago and I am done done done, da dun dun dun. If she hasn’t collected it by now, it is no longer on her radar screen and I want to remove it from MY radar screen. So thanks for making me (minorly) stressed out about it…

He comes by this honestly. When we would go to the Moldy Old Cabin at Hoton Lake, The Gumper (his dad) would often take passes through the various garbage containers to see what someone might be recklessly throwing out. Once it was jalapeno cream cheese with MOLD in it. After I threw it out, we took a trip around the lake to buy food and hardware and when we got back, the cream cheese was NOT in the garbage and the Gumper was crowing about making a bagel “with that ‘japaleno’ cream cheese”. He was having great fun at my expense. He KNEW “japaleno” was not the right word and I don’t think he actually ate the moldy cream cheese. More likely he spread his bagel with peanut butter, which I can’t really even fathom. Seems like a bagel with peanut butter would glue your mouth shut.

Anyway, it was funny when The Gumper did stuff like that but I was hoping that trait wouldn’t pass to the next generation. After The Gumper died, his kids took a few years to regroup and then we tore down the Moldy Old and replaced it with a modern dwelling. It is gorgeous but some of us still miss the Moldy Old.

P.S. I can’t really complain too much because yesterday he dragged a whole bunch of scrap metal off to wherever they take scrap metal. How do we end up with all this scrap?

The pic is the last mess I cleaned up in the Fugly Old Landfill Chitchen, the evening before they came to demolish it. It isn’t “garbage”. It is compost and somehow I managed to flip the container off the counter. And yes I cleaned it up and dumped it in the bin in the back of the back yard.

This is not today. This is March 2014, our Polar Vortex Winter. The one where Canada got drunk and fell asleep down here on top of the United Snakes. I did not come up with that thing about Canananada but I wish I had. And that is not a dig at Canadians at all (one set of my grandparents were born there and they were teetotalers). It’s just a weather “funny”.

I had shoveled twice that day. Or possibly my first shovel had happened a day or so before. Whenever it was, it happened at 0-skunk-30 when it was still pitch black. I dunno how many inches fell in that snowfall but I got the walks and the driveway done in the first shovel. I think the GG was still gainfully employed at that time? So I got it done before he had to leave for work. Whatever day this was, when I got home from my work at Cubelandia in the afternoon, the plows had (finally) been by, and there was the usual big berm of cement-like snow at the end of the driveway. I was driving the Frog Hopper and I didn’t think even that vee-hickle (Subie Outback) could get through that berm. So I shoveled it out and parked the Frog Hopper and the GG had no problem parking the Ninja.

A couple years after that, the GG asked for a big yooper style snowblower for xmas or whatever and I bought it for him. And nowadays he does most of the snow clearing. Of course *this* year, 10 years after the Polar Vortex, I can’t remember if the snowblower has been used even once. We have had so little snow. The authorities are threatening us with significant snow on Friday? Maybe? Less than six inches if I have it right. It will snarl the morning commute (if it happens) but it will melt fast since Monday’s forecast is in the 40s and rain. In mid-late March, I don’t usually bother shoveling.

Old Man Winter probably has a few more snowballs to throw at us this year but our street will not look like this.

It is 10 years ago this week that we began the Landfill chitchen reno. We did NOT do it ourselves despite the fact that the GG is a big time DIY-er. This is often handy but it can also be pretty annoying.

We hired Certified Kitchen Lady and her outfit and we were NOT disappointed. It wasn’t exactly cheap but I didn’t care and it didn’t break the bank. They started on time, maybe even a day or two early? That was okay. We were more than ready. And they finished a couple days early. And it was/is gorgeous! At least I think it is.

A problem? This person wrote her name ON THE WALL as a toddler. I took photos of it the night before the demolition. I didn’t expect we would be able to actually SAVE IT. This kiddo figured out how to write her name when she was about two-and-a-half. She started on paper and I wish I had a video that showed how she would write the first letter, turn the paper completely upside down, and then write the rest of her name. I think by the time she wrote this one, she had figured out how not to turn the paper upside down because you certainly can’t do that when you are writing on a WALL.

The GG was a wee bit nervous to get started on this prodject, being a DIY-er. (Yes you were nervous.) And then he met Jerry, the lead carpenter. We showed the wall writing to Jerry. His unexpected response was, “I can get that off of there for you!” And he did. And that little piece of drywall is now framed. The GG’s response to that was, “Jerry is a GENIUS!” Indeed.

I finished the sixth and last season of The Crown last night. As I have said before, I really enjoyed this series even though I am not a particular fan of the British royalty. I wasn’t totally crazy about the last scene but I sorta get what they were trying to do.

So. What do I watch next… I mean what does KW watch all by her lonesome… The GG and I are watching yet another rendition of Fargo together. This kind of stuff works for us to watch together. As I’ve said before, he may have liked some of the early Crown episodes but I doubt he’d have tolerated much past maybe the second season.

A visiting beach urchin suggested All Creatures Great and Small for KW alone. I have read the books (some of them) but I was a bit skeptical. I was on a ski trip to Steamboat Springs in my youth. There were eight of us in my uncle’s big van (license plate BGY747). I was with two sets of aunts and uncles, two cousins, and the wife of one of them. The other cousin was the Mean Old Grunchy Old Grinchie. We were both young (22 and 25) and single and we whooped it up pretty darn good with the locals and other tourists once we got to Steamboat Springs. People were buying us beers and I think that’s the first time I heard the song “Up Against the Wall You Redneck Mothers”. A big part of the fun was that other people didn’t always know the Grinch and I were related. So they thought we were a couple. Nope. We’re cousins. And not kissin’ cousins. Although we did love each other and still do, I don’t think we always clarified all of that on that trip. It was fun to toy with people. BTW: I could HANDLE skiing there but The Grinch was a MUCH BETTER skier than I was! Memories from some of the misspent parts of my youth.

It’s a long drive from Michigan to Colorado and I ran out of things to read on the way. One of my aunts offered All Creatures Great and Small and I enjoyed it and read a sequel or two. Still, yesterday I wasn’t sure the TV series would be the right fit for meeee. But I finished the Crown and I still needed a bit more chill-out time so I started on All Creatures. I think it’s a gonna be a keeper for me.

I don’t binge watch TV series-es(???plural of this???). I mean I don’t spend weekends watching episodes one after another after another. With KW-alone stuff, I usually watch one a night, occasionally I will watch a second. If I don’t fall asleep. If I am watching something with the GG, we watch it in the Cozy Room on The Mothership (his big iMac) while eating dinner. So yeah, we’re eating while Fargo is throwing people into wood chippers and whatever…

That’s enough for now, right? The pic is from Mouse. It’s a vernal pond and the colors are from various minerals in the water.

Actually St. Urho’s Day was yesterday. I do not celebrate St. Urho’s Day. That’s a Finnish holiday. I don’t really celebrate St. Patrick’s Day either except that sometimes I have to dredge Froooogy outta the londry baskit the next morning and try to dry him out. But that’s not really celebrating.

I am [allegedly] Irish. I am not [that I know of] Finnish but it’s entirely possible that I have some kind of Scandahoovian blood in me from back in the days when the British Isles were mixing it up with the Baltic Peninsula, way before reliable records were kept, not that record-keeping has necessarily been reliable since then.

The thing is I never knew anything about St. Urho’s Day until facebook came along. Friends of mine who ARE Finnish celebrate St. Urho’s Day on March 16. Which is A-OK! What got to me is that other folks started wishing meeee happy St. Urho’s Day. Um, nope. I am not Finnish. Yes I have blonde hair and blue eyes and my last name begins with “Fin”. So what?

The GG and a beach urchin are downtown watching a show at The Ark tonight. There was much discussion about whether/where to eat. We all figured that on St. Pat’s day the downtown restaurants (especially Conor O’Neill’s) would be slammed with Irishmen from any and all countries. Eventually I offered enchiladas at the Landfill and that was the chosen option.

On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish. My once boss, the LSCHP, a rabbi, Irish only in spirit, always took us all out to a bar to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. We are a multicultural crowd. One year, one of our Indian guys got a little too much into the green beer. The LSCHP was worried about him driving home but that turned out okay because his car broke down.

I [belatedly] wish my Finnish friends a happy St. Urho’s Day and of course happy St. Patrick’s to everyone. But don’t end up in the londry baskit with Froooogy.

The title is in quotes because I “stole” it from an Instagram commenter. I thought it was perfect. It is (of course) apped with the “color leak” filter which I definitely overuse. I was waiting to make a left turn outta the Plum Market parking lot and what I was doing was totally illegal because in this state there is a law against using a phone (with your hands) to do *anything* while driving. A law that I actually agree with.

Booooks. I finished “Interesting Facts about Space”. I liked it quite a lot (a bit draggy from time to time). I still think it wouldn’t be everyone’s cuppa. I can’t even feature the GG reading it.

Today I read “Nemesis”, a short fictional portrayal of one of the big polio epidemics that happened before I was born. I can’t remember how this book flew by me on the internet but I am at the point where I can read about pandemics without anxiety and polio is interesting to me because just a year *after* I was born, the polio vaccine became available. I got it plus the oral booster some 10 years later. We lined up at the National Guard facility in Sault Ste. Siberia to get our sugar cube.

I (of course) don’t have any real memories about polio but a kid my age contracted it as a baby and walked with a big fugly leg brace. I had a “brace” when I was a baby, for a big toe that turned in. I don’t remember my brace at all but when hearing about it years later, I imagined a big metal apparatus like Shane had. Years later than *that* when I posted a pic of me as a baby, a cousin asked something like, “What is that sock thing?” I looked at the pic again and realized it was my brace.

This was an interesting book and I recognized a lot of the confusion we experienced in the beginning years of covid (although I think we STILL have a lot of confusion about covid). The book disappointed me a bit but that was not unexpected because it’s an author I have mixed feelings about. The only other book I have read by him is “Portnoy’s Complaint”.

I was a teenager when it was published and my mom and I would “share” books at that time. She bought it and I asked, “Can I read it when you’re done?” “Sure!” But then the book quickly disappeared. I found it in a drawer and as I started to read it, I realized why it disappeared. I knew the basic facts of life by that time but I sure learned some things from that book. I also didn’t like it very well. I am not a fan of gratuitous sex now and I think it started with that book. Nemesis didn’t have any of that but it left me unsatisfied in a way I can’t articulate. That said, I am glad it is now in my repertoire of epidemic/pandemic fiction.

You get these new daffs instead. The snake was victim to a controlled burn and I got the pic in a text from my mouse.

This pic is the same ol’ same ol’ bunch of daffs that come up every year. I always have to take a pic anyway. I also found a couple little violet-like flowering plants (tiny ones) on my afternoon trip to the compost heap. And a pair of robins have been out there scouting out nesting platforms. We have three. Let’s fill ’em up! Um, I think only one of the platforms was made (by the GG) to attract robins. Another one is on top of a set of security lights, which we do NOT turn on when robins nest there. And I’m not sure about the third.

Way back when I first started my blahg of blather (2003), my brother was still alive and once I posted some kind of dead aminal. Most likely it was something that drifted onto the beach but I can’t remember. Most of our dead flotsam is seagulls but sometimes other stuff comes in. I remember when I was a kid there was a dead dog and I walked by it for weeks while it decomposed. I don’t remember being freaked out about it at all. One of its eyes was particularly interesting but I can’t put into words why.

Anyway my brother responded to my dead aminal post with, “Oh dead aminals on the blahg”, followed by a photo of a dead sturgeon that had washed up. BIG FISH.

Well, we’ve been porterized tonight and I am kinda done and ready to watch a Crown episode. I am nearing the end and I am still enjoying it but I think the screen writer and producer, etc., made a wise decision to stop after six seasons.

Sayonara, KW.

I meant to say that yesterday but last evening I was particularly scattered and you get what you get. This is not some kind of covid brain fog. I don’t have covid and I did not get long covid from my one case two years ago. It’s just the usual data soup that has always occupied my brain. I have a lot of data in there at this point. Not as much as Joe Biden though. Nevertheless, I feel pretty darn sharp and when I listen to Biden talk, I think he is too. At least he doesn’t vomit garbage pails full of partially digested word salad like his opponent does.

Anyway, I do hate memes. For one thing, they often spell things wrong. I mean, if you are writing two short sentences, can you at least proof-read your work? And maybe get the apostrophes right? Even when the spelling and syntax are accurate, I don’t always understand them. I mean I have NEVER understood that cat meme. Maybe you know the one. The left half is a couple of women apparently screaming. The right half is the Lord High Muckity-Muck sitting at a fancy dinner table looking imperious. What is going on here? I get that cats can kinda rule their owners. I just don’t quiiiite get this meme. I wouldn’t let a frickin’ cat push me around but maybe I am totally misunderstanding.

And I have KNOWN a Lord High Muckity-Muck cat. I didn’t own him. He was a moominbeach cat. Not feral and not a stray.

His name was originally Mike. After my cousin maybe? (Y’all may know him as the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie and Mike isn’t even his real name). My cousin (not the Grinch) originally owned Mike but when she moved west to take a teaching job, her mother (my aunt), The White Tornado, who loved pets, adopted him and he was very well taken care of.

He was allowed to wander as cats were in those days. So Mike got to know Duke and Radical Betty and my family and frequently visited all of us. I will never forget when The Commander allowed Mike to come in to the moomicabin and climb into bed with me. He walked all over my head to wake me up.

The Lord High Muckity-Muck had a lot of names besides Mike. One of them was Muksaslouie (I don’t really know how to spell that). There are a LOT of stories about this legendary catsa but I won’t go there tonight.

And no it’s not the alpacas. My mouse took this pic but I know where this place is and pass by it fairly frequently. But isn’t that big guy on the right actually a llama? I am “cornfused”, as the LSCHP would sometimes say – out loud in meetings in his big booming voice. But I haven’t done the due diligence to look up the differences between llamas and alpacas. I only sorta know them.

Anyway, the meme of the day was this:

Little girl: Mom, what is a contradiction?

Mom: Believing that a 12-year-old is mature enough to give birth but needs parental approval to check out a library book.

Yes, there are many loaded issues within this short conversation. But still.

Today was a day fraught with the damn taxes. I was doing an archaeological dig here at teleCubelandia and the negative, stressful energy emanating from what I will call the Tax Room was driving me NUTS. It’s all done now and the damn taxes have been sent in. I’m not really complaining. I am happy that the GG has taken on this increasingly more complicated task. I remember when I would sit cross-legged on the floor in the back room and do the taxes in like a half hour. Without a computer.

Tonight the GG was on a long phone call with a sibling. I ruled out one (his ID twin) because they talked about the twin (oh nothing bad, just his current whereabouts), another is currently visiting his grandchildren in a western state and I doubted he would be calling the GG about web cams and cloud storage from there. This was a male voice and his other two brothers are dead. That leaves FlaMan. Who sounded like he was in really good form today. So yay!