“He’s parking behind our garage,” was reported to me from the moomincabin. I could feel a weeeeee bit of outrage building in the reporter. My reaction? I gnoffed and gnoffed and gnoffed. I do not care if my neighbor-cousin parks behind the moomingarage in the winter. We aren’t there in the winter and if parking there makes his life a bit easier, it is A-OK with me.

That vee-hickle is his second vee-hickle. I’m not sure how often he even uses it. His main vee-hickle is a big utility van that he uses to travel to and from construction jobs (drywall is his specialty), picking up and dropping off employees who don’t have transportation along the way. That’s business in the yooperland. At least my cousin’s business.

I love all of my cousins, FinFam and MacMu. This guy and I have had a rather special relationship. The first time I remember interacting with him, I was three and he was six. We were in the back seat of our grandaddy’s Studebaker. Our dads were also in the car, Jack and Duke, man’s men, WWII pilots. We had taken a little trip along the shores of Gitchee Gumee to obtain some smoked fish from the reservation. My cousin and I both loved fish and we had a “fight” over who got to hold on to the package of smoked fish. He and I are not totally alike but we are kindred spirits and not only because we both like smoked fish.

The car in the pic is his mother’s car, a Honda Accord. That would be Radical Betty’s car. I was kinda gobsmacked thinking about how old that car must be since Radical Betty died in 2009 and I think she bought it (new) a few years before she died. Biden is not the only person who has trouble dredging up significant dates when blindsided by a question.

This is what the GG woke up to Saturday morning at the moomincabin. He went off on a hike that day and the amount and type of precipitation that fell varied from rain to six inches of snow. Slippery roads but it was slushy stuff that melted quickly.

It is March and if a snowdrift has not formed between the cabins by now, it is not going to. Also, ice will not form in the bay, not to mention Lake Superior, at this point.

The last time I posted about the GG camping in the moomincabin yard, I forgot to mention that although the Lyme Lounge doesn’t have any bathroom facilities, there is a functional outhouse behind the Old Cabin. The outhouse I was taught forced to use at three years old. There was a potty behind the “door” at the Old Cabin but The Commander was trying to get me to use the outhouse. And I did, for many years until we built the moomincabin and its own outhouse, which doesn’t exist any more. I still use the Old Cabin Outhouse when I need to, if the moomincabin is closed or full with people. May that outhouse live forever.

Me? Ugh but yay! After weeks of archaeological digs and re-watching a recorded meeting a billion times, I *finally* understand a complicated piece of our online banking application that dates from our old legacy system. I hired in at the beginning of the transition from legacy to web. I decided early on that my future was with the web application. I was right about that but there are times when legacy functionality rears its ugly head and I have to bang against it.

I thought I heard that the IRS has created their own e-file system. I am skeptical. It took my team something like 15 years to move our legacy system to a web application. We did it s-l-o-w-l-y and carefully. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I hope our government has created (and tested tested tested) this new system with this kind of thing in mind.

I chose to read Baby X because the Goodreads description talked about IVF technology “on steroids”. That’s my interpretation of the description, those words weren’t actually used. This book is set in the near future where people can sort of “design” their own children. That is all I will say about that.

If you know me, you know I am concerned about the constant whittling away at pro-choice rights. I totally do not understand how these same people seem to be against IVF. Um, isn’t that supposed to bring MORE babies into the world? But it seems to me like the anti-choice folks are doing quite some contortions to put their heads up you-know-where. I know I am GROSSLY oversimplifying this stuff but I feel like I am totally missing something. Scratches head. Again. You want more babies to be born but you you prefer “forced birth” and not actual choice? Anyone who goes through IVF is CHOOSING life. At least for babies. Not necessarily for other categories of people but we won’t go there today.

Anyway, I spent yesterday telling people that Baby X was a terrible book. It isn’t great literature in any way, shape, or form. But then I started actually getting in to it. It all wrapped up neatly in the end and I was even sprouting a few tears by that time. That said, I am not really recommending the book but it is a fast read and maybe that’s what I needed this weekend.

After finishing Baby X, I started in on Interesting Facts about Space. I am really enjoying this one. I’m not sure it would be everyone’s cuppa, definitely not the GG’s. But if casual lesbian hook-ups (no graphic sex so far), true crime podcasts, and blended family dysfunction (and more) don’t turn you off, you might have fun with this. I am. Sprinkled into all the other themes are random facts about space. The protagonist (a “space agency” information architect) uses these in part to communicate with her mother.

Not a whole lot of ice this year. I can remember walking along the hummocks on the second sand bar in *April*. Not so much this year. Note that the hummocks are not terribly dangerous on our beach (the water is very shallow) but they are extremely dangerous in other places on the great lakes. We are still very careful about them on our beach and do not climb (or slide) down into them.

But I’m not at the moomincabin. I’m on The Planet Ann Arbor where I made chicken pot pie (but not the purple kind) and salad and various nibblies, shrimp ring, Tracklements smoked salmon, flavored goat cheese and crackers. I cooked for the Planet Ann Arbor beach urchins and their partners and had a great time doing it although I also enjoy when they come over and cook for meeeee.

That’s all for now. G’night!

Well, the GG arrived at the moomincabin this afternoon and he was able to drive in with no problem. There’s a wee bit of snow to the left of Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge but it is insignificant.

Most years (including almost all of my life), this snow drift between the Old Cabin (in the pic) and the moomincabin has prevented anyone from driving in. The drift is about where Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge are situated in the first pic but the pic is from a different angle.

We have had an unseasonably warm winter here in the Great Lake State. Honestly it isn’t our first one but the yooperland usually gets more snow and I’m not sure Lake Superior iced over this year. They are opening the Soo Locks a few days earlier than planned but not sure what that really means. The above picture was probably taken in February but that drift usually hangs around through most of April. I dunno what’s going on. I am not a climate change denier. I just don’t know how to process the difference between climate change and weather.

I’ve been asking the GG for more pics (for blog fodder but also for me). He has sent some and they are wonderful but he is missing some pics that I want… He did send me a pic of “Jeep and Pan”, my cousin and her husband. They look absolutely fabulous but in this day and age, I don’t often post pics of people on the internet.

If we ever get VOT going tonight, I will ‘splain to him what I want.

Macy’s is closing stores but I can’t find any conclusive info on whether they are closing OUR local store. If so, it’ll be another anchor store gone from the mall. Sears is already torn down and in the process of being repurposed. It’s okay. I never go to the mall.

I have never been much of a Macy’s shopper. The last time I can actually remember shopping at Macy’s was one summer a LONG time ago when they had a “summer of love” thing going on. I got some nice tie-dyed cotton maxi skirts that summer. But once I discovered Chico’s and JJill and a few others online, around the time I started working again, I stopped shopping for clothes in person. I know what I like and I know what fits and it’s just easier.

Last fall when we were invited to a formal wedding, the only store I could even remember was Macy’s. I talked myself off that ledge PDQ. Would they have anything that would work for meeeee? Probably not. Instead I ordered a bunch of stuff from the internet and literally the morning of the wedding cobbled an outfit together. I dunno if you could call it formal or even elegant but it worked for me. In this case it was more important that I beeeee at my beloved young cousin’s wedding. I’m sure my clothing was not noticed.

Actually, the original predecessor of what is now Macy’s in our local mall was J. L. Hudson. I *did* shop there. I had been shopping at Hudson’s since I was a little kid. I went to the downtown Detroit and Northland shopping center Hudson’s with my parents when we were visiting my Detroit grandparents. I had my picture taken with Santa at Northland. When I was a teenager, mom and I would make a day of it in the many storied downtown store, where she would buy me clothes and we would have lunch on the mezzanine.

The downtown Hudson’s store was Mom’s old stomping grounds. She worked there as a buyer after she graduated from college until my old coot decided Detroit was not for him and whisked her north to the yooperland. She would tell stories about meeting *her* dad (my granddaddy) for lunch back in the day (he also worked downtown) and sometimes they lunched at places where some of the women wore pasties. Which is not the same as the yooperland kind of pasties 🤣

We all watched (on TV) when the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store was imploded. Mom was at my brother’s house and he reported that she was stoic. Which is kinda how “we” are. Usually.

Although I shopped at the local Hudson’s it was never really the same as the old downtown Detroit store. When it became Dayton-Hudson and then Macy’s, I mostly lost interest.

I miss those days. I don’t miss those days.

P.S. River photo by mouse.

Because y’all do NOT want me to grouse about polly-ticks as if I could write coherently about that anyway…

Spring has not really sprung although our temps have been a little and sometimes a lot warmer than most years. But the Lyme Lounge was sprung today. The pics are old but the first one shows the Lyme Lounge in its winter berth in the UU’s huge garage. Again, THANK YOU THANK YOU for storing it. We don’t have a garage here at the landfill.

Here it is outside hooked up to The Mean Green Frog Hoppin’ Musheen. Like I said, this was a few years ago (pre-COVID). We don’t have the Frog Hopper any more so Mooon Yooonit tows the Lyme Lounge these days. And this pic is not even winter. It’s just a random pic from whenever.

The Lyme Lounge did not get stored the last couple years because the GG was using it in the winter on his North Country Trail hiking trips with our friend Joan who has her own trailer, Sunny. They would camp in parks or be hosted by various “trail angels”. Space in their driveways and sometimes in their homes.

It’s been kind of nice not to have the Lyme Lounge, Mooon Yooonit, and Cygnus all in the landfill driveway at the same time this winter but I will welcome the Lyme Lounge’s return. For the next few days, it will be hanging out in the moomincabin “parking lot”, which apparently does NOT have a 10-foot snow drift in the middle this year. The GG will have lucky-shucky, heat, wifi (fiber optic no less), and I think there is a water tank in the trailer. The water in the moomincabin cannot be turned on yet via Old Man Winter’s rules.

I survived the Great Facebook Outage. I am embarrassed to admit how many unsuccessful gyrations I went through trying to change my password, not to mention the low-level panic I felt. Can I just say worst captcha pics on earth? Until. I asked the GG to open Facebook. Guess what? He couldn’t log in either. At that point I did the google and yes, Facebook was down today. When I got back on, I had to log in and my *changed* password was accepted.

Later in the day, the Mad Scientist made a trip to the hardware store and the next thing I knew, he was “cooking” something. I asked what he was doing but when I did so, he was heading toward the Water Closet so his answer started with a “p”. When I asked again, at a more appropriate time, the answer was “manufacturing”.

This is kind of a weird picture in low light but if you can see that tube thingy to the right of the iPhone (an old repurposed one), it is now affixed to a device that rotates it s-l-o-w-l-y over the course of an hour. The “manufacturing” part of the whole thing was “cooking” some plastic in order to mold it or whatever. Which means I have a mess to clean up on Gertude’s glass cooktop. I tried to ask, well, like “why” did you do this prodject? Like, how did you get the idea? I did not get a satisfactory answer. Sometimes Mad Scientists gotta do what Mad Scientists gotta do.

Among other artifacts in the pic are Rat Fink and Svengooli and a tin foil hat down there on the right by the globe.

I’ve been going to the Quiet [Water]Adventure Symposium for about a gazillion years now. Except for three years off during the covid years (which are not over BTW). This year I almost felt like a celebrity, at least within our group of North Country Trail booths. People would ask me who I was and I would say my name and then just point at the GG and say, “I’m with him.” They all knew who “him” was.

I didn’t feel like I was much help during the symposium but there were PLENTY of volunteers there and I have learned a few things over the years. One is that the GG does NOT need help with setting things up or breaking them down. He has the procedures for this stuff totally internalized and trying to delegate tasks to other people just distracts, meaning things get lost or not put away properly. I used to feel guilty for not helping him all that much. Eventually I learned that staying outta the fray was the best way I could help him. There are a couple of long-time regulars that know enough about “the drill” to be somewhat helpful. (There is an element of being an identical twin involved but I won’t go there today except to say they do not communicate telepathically. I don’t think…)

I spent a lot of time explaining to people who felt like they weren’t helping enough with our booths that they didn’t really have to work that hard. For one thing (see above), they really can’t help the GG much with his stuff. And two, we had a bazillion volunteers at this thing. There isn’t much to do DURING the event except for answering questions about the trail and how to volunteer, etc. I can answer many of those questions but I am not an expert so I defer a lot of stuff to others who know more and are better ambassadors. I also encourage our volunteers to attend the many presentations throughout the day. I love those but I am still covid averse enough that I didn’t want to be in a crowded room with a bunch of unmasked people. And most but not all people were unmasked. Including me…

When I told the GG that I was actively deflecting people from “helping” him, he thanked me.

After we got home on Sunday, he unpacked a bunch of stuff and then he was on his computer for a while and then… It was awfully quiet for a while and when I looked into the back room… He slept for a couple hours. He needed it.

When the weather is good, I always try to insist on a slow back road drive home from the Quiet [Water]Adventure Symposium. From East Lansing to The Planet Ann Arbor. The weather WAS good this weekend. 60-something today and sunny. I think last year around this time we had thundersnow followed by an ice storm.

Anyway, we were heading over to Meridian Road and I opened up the xword puzzle. Wouldn’t you know, I did not START the puzz when I opened it up. I was too busy looking at the scenery and Goomaps. The next time I looked down at my phone, the puzz was running at 9:13 minutes and I HAD NOT STARTED IT YET. Jeebus. I do the xword “with” my daughter. That is we both do it every day and report our times to each other (or DNFs…). This is NOT a competition between us. Sometimes one of us does better than the other. Not every puzz is in everyone’s “wheelhouse”. She SOMETIMES admits to looking at the xword write-up for clues. I don’t do that. If I DNF, I DNF. DNF = did not finish in case you were wondering. But the main “rule” we have for this little bit of morning connection is we make our own rules and respect each other’s rules.

I didn’t start the puzz until we got home and when I reported my time, I subtracted 9:13 from it. But I also had to report a few typo/stupid errors. I am like five down from queen bee on the spelling bee. There are two 11-letter answers that I am not getting even though I think we’ve had similar letters before and I DID get them then. Plus a couple others. And I’m missing one pangram. Sigh… It’s been a while since I haven’t gotten to queen bee. I make myself get to genius with looking at the “grid”. After that I open the grid. That’s my rule.

The pic is from a road we haven’t traveled before or at least not for a long time. We took Meridian down to [North?] Territorial. We took [North?] Territorial over to M52, then hung a louie onto Farnsworth Road (not paved) and snaked around until we got to NORTH Territorial. We aren’t sure if Territorial and North Territorial are the same road or not. Or maybe once were before M52 cut through. Anyway the pic is from somewhere on Farnsworth Road. I think. And this is all gobblety-gook if you don’t live around here. And probably even to most Planet Ann Arbor-ites.

Whew! I knew I wasn’t ready to spend a whole day plus at a symposium around a bazillion people. I told the GG that. He pressured me anyway. How did I do? I did my best which was okay. After lunch at the time when the event gets uber busy, I took myself out of the action. I went out to Mooon Yooonit, opened some windows (it was pretty warm today) and read a book for a couple hours. No one seemed to have a problem with that.

By the time I decided to head back in, it wasn’t long before it was time to break up camp, which is what’s happening here. I didn’t really get many other pics this year. It somehow wasn’t very photogenic this year, not sure why.

It feels like we are at a bit of a crossroads of a sort. The last time I went to the symposium, the same old beloved friends were there. They did not attend this year, except for Greg and Tom and Joan, who is actually a new friend since the last symposium. By the end of the evening, I was well on my way to making new friends, introvert that I am.

Oddly enough the person I spent the most time talking to today was a young college senior soon to graduate. She attends the college in my home town. I mean Sault Ste. Siberia, the town I grew up in. One of the places she lived during her college career turned out to be two blocks south of my grandparents’ house.

Boy did that bring back memories. I lived 7-8 blocks away from my grandparents depending on whether I took the “hypotenuse” through St. Joe’s parking lot. The whole neighborhood went to Stinkin’ Linkin’ elementary except for the kids who went to St. Joe’s. So I knew (and still do) that neighborhood like the back of my hand, walking and biking through all its twists and turns, nooks and crannies. The Gully? Yes. This young woman seemed totally okay hanging out with a baggy old bag, even seeking me out when I wasn’t hiding out in the car. I had a great time with her.

There was lots of discussion about whether our North Country Trail chapters should set up a fake campfire and a little tent in our booth. It didn’t happen but fake fires seemed to be *the* thing this year as a lot of booths had set them up.

Pizza House rounded out the evening and we are now chilling out in our hotel, ready for what I hope is a slow drive back to the planet tomorrow.

We ate at Beggar’s tonight but we ate at Dagwood’s for lunch. Dagwood’s is a “dive bar” but the food is good and it ALWAYS seems to be busy. Which bothered me a bit even though I knew what to expect.

It is bar food and I had an olive burger deluxe. It cost $4.00. I dunno if olive burgers are a Great Lake State thing or what but I have only discovered them in the last 10 years or so. If you had confronted me with an olive burger when I was a kid, I would have totally turned up my nose.

So we were at Beggar’s tonight with some other North Country Trail folks and our young waiter overheard us talking about Dagwood’s and he opined that you walk out of there feeling like you need to take a shower. This is definitely true but since we only eat there about once a year (or four given covid), I think we’re fine. And our waitress (at Dagwood’s) was proactive about asking if I wanted a second glass of whine. I said, “You’ve got *my* number!” The waiter (Beggar’s) also told us that his mom used to live *above* Dagwood’s and it was a horrible place to live. I can believe this. Oh don’t get me wrong, he was a wonderful waiter and we had a good time with him.

Beggar’s was not crowded, which I also expected because it gets more of a college crowd and Moo-U is just finishing up spring break. Sunday night it’ll be jam-packed but I’ll be back on The Planet Ann Arbor in my own little hidey hole of a house by then. In keeping with the theme of ordering something I HATED as a child, I got one of their mac-‘n’-cheese entrees. I got “Bob’s” and I got a “Betty” sized order rather than a “Bob” sized order. You might guess that ‘splaining this to the GG took some doing. It was word salad to him but in the end, he ordered the same thing, we both ate approximately half, and the rest of it is in the full-sized refrigimatator in our hotel room. We didn’t manage to get the ice maker going for tonight but after Beggar’s, I figured out that it had an ON switch. Who knew? Anyway, it is going now.

As you might have figured out, my brain is mush. G’night!

The GG aka Trail Guy was hot into it when I brought the mail in this afternoon. Yes there was something for him but it was NOT my For Days take back bags.

The “something” for him was his 100 mile North Country Trail award. He began his 100 miles on New Year’s Day and finished the next weekend. It was a *loverly* week for me, one in which I was space-i-fied for days on end. It was also a dry week, which was a good thing because precipitation here in early January usually arrives in a slippery form and that would have made it difficult to *get* to the North Country Trail, which, at its closest to the Planet Ann Arbor, is maybe 50 miles.

I am gearing myself up to attend the Quiet Adventures Symposium event for the first time since 2020. The last time I attended it covid was on the horizon and none of us were adequately prepared or even informed. I remember attending a symposium presentation and having a weird guy sit next to me in my preferred front row. He was overly friendly and scooched his chair RIGHT UP NEXT TO ME and talked right into my face. Um, don’t you realize there is a global pandemic about to smack us upside the head? It’s probably already here so get outta my face. I didn’t say that though. I just endured him until the presentation began at which time he and his (silent) wife LEFT 🤷‍♀️. I basked in my alone-ness.

I did not get covid that weekend. I hope I don’t get it this weekend. I will have mask*S*. The GG thinks I will be the only masked bandit. I do not agree.

Struggling to come up with something for my xmas list this year, I got to looking at the rusty old mailbox and thought… Hmmm… Also the porch light. I bet those artifacts are original to the house. 1959.

It’s winter and this is Michigan and no one was in a hurry to actually swap out the old fixtures for the new. Yesterday our temps got up to 70. That’s unusual but not THAT unusual for February and it’s back down to 25 as I write this. Anyway, the GG took advantage of the warm weather to install the new mailbox and porch light. The light is LED and we can change the color a bit. It is still hooked up to the motion sensor and timer.

In the first pic, he has already removed the old light but not the mailbox. In the second pic, he has installed both the new light and mailbox and is holding the old rusty ones.

Of course then I realized that we needed new house numbers too. I had actually thought about that back in December but it dropped off my radar screen. But those numbers don’t match the style of the new fixtures and we need a different font! The GG was a weeeee bit I dunno grumbly(?) about this until 1) I pointed out that new numbers would not break the bank and 2) he figured out that the old ones were plastic.

Alas, these fixtures don’t really “go with” the old shingle (or whatever it is) siding on the Landfill… To my eye anyway. I’ve been thinking about engaging Certified Kitchen Lady for some more work but I don’t think she does exteriors as a general rule.

I kinda wonder if the mail carrier noticed they were delivering to a brand new box today but probably not. We seem to have multiple mail carriers these days. At most, it will be multiple mail carriers who notice. If they notice at all.

So, I was walking past my polling place this morning, which for all practical purposes is in my back yard aka my children’s elementary school. It was maybe 10 minutes after the polls opened at seven. I took this pic (wondering if I was violating some kind of rule or something).

As I continued on my walk a poll worker opened the door… Oh no… What did I do wrong? Well, nothing of course. He called out a cheery “Good morning!” I returned his greeting and, realizing he thought I might be a voter, explained that I had voted a few weeks ago. I then asked him how many customers he’d had so far. He formed a zero with his thumb and index finger and said he thought maybe I would be his first.

I think this was an outcome of absentee voting for everyone for any reason. I almost told him the GG would be over a little later (and he was). In truth, I was wavering a bit about reminding the GG it was an election day because the GG and I live in a house divided. In the end, my conscious conscience got the better of me and I reminded him, although I doubt he actually needed a reminder from me. He was voter 29 at I dunno, nine-something.

I also told the poll worker that pre-you-know-what, I used to always try to be the first voter, at least in the little elections. I was in a silent contest with Mr. Mxyzptlk, a guy who always arrived on his bicycle and usually beat me out for number one voter. In fact, whenever I was first, I would kinda wonder where he was…

I never tried to be first for presidential elections or primaries. Too many people. The last time I voted in person was the 2020 Michigan primary. It was March 10 and covid was looming. I got there before the polls opened and was something like six or eight in line. I remember talking to my line neighbors all the while wondering if we were three feet apart (a few days later it was six, both numbers arbitrary and meaningless in my opinion). Two days later I was sent home to telecommute for what has turned out to be forever.

At this point, I am not afraid to vote in person because of covid. It’s just so easy to fill out a ballot at leisure and drop it into the box at like 7:00 AM when there’s no traffic. I will vote in person again though. Friends of mine worked the polls today and I miss them.

Blahgging, that is. Yesterday’s six o’clock disturbance was a garden variety baggy old married couple dispute. It was minor but it rather discombobulated yer fav-o-rite blahgger from doing her blahg.

It involved locating quit claim deeds for multiple FinFam generations of property transfers (yes really). Was this something good to get a handle on? Yes. Did it need to become a Hot Issue at 6:00 PM on Sunday? Nope. Where are Liii-yuns football games when I need them? Quit claim deeds, etc. are online these days and after a WHOLE DAY (today) of searches, my marital partner found what he needed. Okay great! Why does this stuff have to be so stressful? I mean it FELT stressful. Mostly because what angst there was got directed at me. Or at least it FELT that way. I actually find looking around for internet records kinda zen. Usually. But some of this stuff dredges up unpleasant memories from 10-ish years ago after The Commander died and an in-law decided to attack me and my family with unscrupulous lawyers.

That’s all I will say about that. Except that although it is good to have copies of legal records in your home, I can’t help thinking, “What if the house explodes?” Two houses in our area have exploded in two months. Even the GG had to laugh… Of course this is totally black humor and pretty inappropriate given that in one explosion, four people died.

Anyway, dinner got an even later start than usual. That along with TWO series episodes made it impossible for me to concentrate on a blahg entry. Uh, not that y’all care. Two series? Station Eleven. I’ve watched it already, the GG has not so I’m watching it with him. And The Crown (I’m closing out the 4th season). The GG isn’t watching this. I think the early episodes with Churchill, etc., may have been somewhat interesting to him but I don’t think he is that much interested in Princess Di and the various dramas of QEII’s adult children. I have mixed feelings about that era and how it is portrayed in the series but I am not a palace insider so I don’t know what the hell really went on. Mostly I don’t know what to believe. I will say that this series, although I am enjoying it, is not going to turn me into a royalist or whatever you call it.

I finished the last two pages of The Covenant of Water this morning before work. Overall I liked the book a lot. It dragged a bit in places. I am not “afraid” of long books (700-plus pages depending on how it’s measured) but I felt this one could have been edited down a bit. Not all that much, maybe 100 pages or so? Disclaimer: I am not qualified to be an editor, not to mention a book critic. Today I started a re-read of The Color Purple, which I read when I was very young. I’m wondering what I will think of it 40-50 years after I first read it. I have not forgotten the phrase “Shug Avery pee”.

The pic is another steal from my mouse, lightly apped to increase contrast.

This is just to report that I am alive and well but I was unable to finish the last two pages of my current book (The Covenant of Water). I was interrupted from that, not to mention cooking dinner, at around 6:00 PM. That is all. It was nothing urgent. But I am totally unable to write a coherent blahg entry…

Crappy photo of our southward Saturday Drive today. We were mostly on small back roads like this one and out of frame to the left are the (distant) Monroe nuclear cooling towers.

Since we were heading south and into the area between The Planet Ann Arbor and one of its satellite burgs (Saline), I directed the GG to take my old Zen Commute Route to check out what might be happening down at Cubelandia. Turns out our part of the building seems to be totally deserted. There wasn’t even a “for rent” sign that I could see. I am sad/not sad about this. I usually went into the office unless there was a snowstorm (why muck up the roads with one more vee-hickle when I can work from home) or working from the moomincabin or somewhere. On the other hand, if people can work productively from home, why the heck not? We do. So does my boss by the way. He is in Virginia and I have never met him in person. I get really cranky when I read about corporate lord high muckity mucks trying to drag their employees back to the office. Especially tech companies. Delete long rant about how people don’t really come up with brilliant ideas when they are talking around the proverbial water cooler. Usually they’re just gossiping about movies or video games or other people. Which is okay. But…

From there we had an annoying errand at our nephew’s empty house (he and his family moved outta town so they’re getting ready to sell). The GG is missing a “tool” of some sort and the last time he saw it was there a few days ago when he was helping his brother empty the house. He didn’t find it but I bet he will eventually. Like the other day when, after much fiddly-doodling around and quite some marital stress, he found the *changed* password to one of my financial accounts. The one that I TEXTED to him after I was *forced* to change it.

Nevertheless, we had a nice drive in brilliant sunshine with temps in the 20s. We are in a very flat part of SE Michigan here but we turned right (west) and within a mile we were in glacial moraine meaning ups and downs and twists and turns. Back up through Tecumseh where we were not able to locate the building of the long-defunct Chilean House, a restaurant we frequented in our “childhood” years. A Chilean co-worker’s family owned it and it was REALLY GOOD! Then off through Macon to Saline, BACK to the nephew’s house to look AGAIN for the dang tool (still not found) and finally home.

Boring but orange-ya glad I didn’t talk about polly-ticks again today? I’ll be back…

I am about at the end of my rope. I am and always have been a pro-choice feminist. This isn’t really something I “inherited” from my once republican-voting parents. But they were, guess what, pro-choice too. Maybe not completely feminist at the beginning but my moom worked most of her life. Buyer at the downtown Detroit Hudson’s store after college, then a job at the Sault Ste. Siberia Monkey Wards store before I was born.

She took a bit of a break when she had me and Jim but eased back into work as a part-time teacher when I was ten. She was not (yet) trained as a teacher but had a once a week teaching job that year and I guess she decided I was capable of tending my 7-year-old brother and the dog for an hour or so once a week before she got home from work.

Not long after that she got a teaching certificate in order to begin teaching “home-ec” at our high school and after a few years of that. Dun dun dun. She went back to school to obtain her masters degree in teaching. We had the occasional difficulties a spirited teenage girl has with her mother but she was a good, well liked teacher and I was very proud of her. I will never forget when a nurse at Freighter View assisted living pulled me aside to tell me she had my mom as a teacher and how much she loved her.

Mom and I both worked to support ourselves and our families most of our lives. We were both fortunate to be able to take a few years off to take care of our children. It wasn’t easy for either of us but we managed. And we followed similar trajectories. After a few years off, we got antsy, wanting to DO something and hopefully earn some money in the process.

We worked (I still work) both to help support our families and because it was important to us to contribute to something more, not to mention it’s always nice for anyone to have their own money. That’s about as feministic as it gets, I think.

Except. My parents always supported a woman’s right to choose, among other things. They would not recognize The Orange Baboon’s takeover of the GOP, turning it into the mean, xenophobic bunch of MAGAts it seems to have become. Republican voices of reason need to turn up the volume and remove the MAGAts.

Something is landing (or not) on the moon right now. I am not watching. I have seen various moon landings in my life including manned landings. This one is not manned, which may be a good thing because from what I can hear from the next room, things don’t seem to be going all that well. The real reason I am not watching (besides kinda boring) is that I am FRIED after a very long day that included a performance evaluation prep discussion. Which was fine, just that I don’t think *anyone* views these as a fun thing. Including managers, who have to both lead them and go through their own. Such is life in Corporate America. After I left my “childhood” tech job (my choice and on good terms), I “swore” I would never work for a big corporation again. But here I am, drug test and all. (A story for another day but yes I passed. Of course.)

My mouse sent some loverly skunk cabbage photooos. There were some others: kayaking, a muskrat, hepatica (a spring wildflower). We are concerned about the appearance of hepatica this early in the season. Well before the vernal equinox aka first day of spring. This flower was in a particular micro-climate but still.

My thoughts went back to March 2012, which was just after The Commander died. Down here on the Planet Ann Arbor (and other parts of the state), temperatures were in the 90s for *days* and flowering trees, some of them fruit-bearing, all did their thing IN MARCH. May is more normal for that. Of course, many of the March 2012 trees froze in April, wreaking havoc on fruit crops.

So when the GG first alerted me about the moon landing, I was watching Tommy Tuberville make an absolute ass of himself by demonstrating that he knows NOTHING about IVF or probably much of anything else except maybe football? I mean, “We need more kids?” 8-celled embryos (is it 8?) are NOT children. They don’t become children until and unless 1) they get successfully implanted in a uterus and 2) they manage to gestate long enough to be born successfully. Not to mention that most of those embryos have been created by people who WANT to make more children (Tommy?) but now the IVF system has been thrown into chaos, potentially keeping people from accessing it to CREATE more children (Tommy?). This makes my head explode! Who the hell are these people and who the hell is voting for them? Jesus certainly isn’t.