This isn’t the first time I’ve posted these pics but I’m doing it again because I don’t got much else. “Don’t got” is another throwback to my yooperland childhood where I had to balance getting along with the “homies” in the neighborhood and learning proper English, which I was taught at home as well as at school. Ain’t was a common word in my neighborhood (I ain’t got none) but if I wanted to say it, I had better damn darn well be over in the schoolyard where The Comm couldn’t hear me.

So some interior shots of the Shabby Superior Street bungalow. First up, me doing some kind of craft on my yellow table in my bedroom next to my clothes rack. No closet there but I LOVED my clothes rack.

And probably one of my fave pics ever, me and my bro playing in my bedroom with Easter rabbits, one of which is probably still around. The Comm engineered buying me a bed with a SILVER headboard. I couldn’t believe she had chosen something so glamorous.

Here’s me, much younger and before my brother was born, having my breakfast in my footie pajamas on the pullout cutting board in the chitchen.

Here is The Comm. She’s cooking at a stove that I don’t really even remember although I do vaguely remember when we got a new one and I remember the new one pretty well and even cooked on it as a teenager.

She’s using a big juice can as a utensil holder. Behind her is a broom closet. Taped to the interior of the door that’s open is a newspaper cartoon. It’s Gertrude. She’s flopped out on the top of an ironing board. I have looked high and low for that cartoon and it is nowhere. I can only guess it disappeared when my parents moved from the Shabby Superior Bungalow to the Dillon House they “inherited” from my grandparents. That’d be a whole ‘nother story. I did name my stove after her. Gertrude, that is.

This was the shabby little bungalow I grew up in, not to be confused with the shabby little ranch/ticky-tacky house of my adulthood. My childhood bedroom is inside the window to the left.

Behind me is Lincoln School and its vast playground, at least it seemed like it was vast back then. I used to Red Queen over there every morning. Can anybody guess what that means? 😉

My house was a lot shabbier back then, for one thing the living room and front entrance have been expanded somehow. I can’t envision what it looks like inside now.

I didn’t really notice our house’s shabbiness when I was a kid, I guess because although we were FAR from wealthy, we always had more than enough to eat, not to mention clothing, working utilities, and an automobile (or two or three in later years) and all the other things we all need to live in this society. And we had the cabin…

My grandparents and local aunt and uncle had nicer, bigger houses but I never felt envious about that. I was much more interested in the little nooks and crannies in those houses when we visited them. A breakfast nook in my aunt and uncle’s. The walk-through pantry in my grandma’s. Not that you could ever WALK THROUGH that pantry because I think the door to the hallway was blocked or locked or whatever. At the end of the day, I loved my cute little bedroom in our shabby little house.

It’s all relative. One time one of the Lesk (intentionally misspelled) kiddos from further up Superior where the houses got even shabbier than ours got a gander of our crappy little living room with its holey carpet and cat-clawed couch and exclaimed, “Finnelsons is rich!” The Commander was dumbfounded. Finnelson is how a lot of local folks mispronounced our name. I could never “unnerstand” [snort] this. My name was so easy to spell. It was three words. Fin. Lay. Son. How hard was that?

But what The Comm was dumbfounded about was his opinion of our house. We were all accustomed to the mispronunciation. In those days there were a lot of illiterate folk around town. I think that has improved although I don’t think the poverty rate has although it may have shifted populations a bit. If a kid thought our shabby living room indicated we were rich, I can’t think what he might have been living in. Except I kinda do. A whole bunch of kids in a small, squalid house. I dunno what happened to all of those kids but I’m pretty sure some of them became pretty darn successful and live in much fancier houses than mine. I followed my parents’ modus operandi. Don’t spend more than you earn.

Oh, those snowbanks? I used to walk to school on top of those. (When I wasn’t Red Queening!)

A while back I posted a pic of our insipid little string of xmas lights. The ones we turn on for the season (and sometimes we turn ’em on in like July, just for grins). We’ve never been the kind of people that wrap their entire house with blinking, flashing lights and play xmas music at top volume to boot but there have been years when we’ve had more than this stupid little string.

Pnet across the street usually has a tasteful light display but has been suspiciously dark this season. Until this afternoon. LPnet was out draping his bushes with beautiful LED lights. Red. Green. White. Multi. Actually, an hour or so later, he’s still at work. It’s been pitch black almost since he began. I guess his prodject is providing enough light.

I am kind of a grinch about xmas these days. People want to buy me STUFF. I don’t NEED stuff! I may have managed to nip that issue in the bud this morning. Time will tell… I do like lights. Oh, I don’t mean wrapping my whole house in light. Faaaar in the faaaarplace maybe and a few fairy lights elsewhere.

I am not religious and we celebrate xmas in a secular way. If I have it right, a lot of “Christian” xmas customs originated somewhere other than a mythical stable in Bethlehem. I went to Sunday School when I was a kid but I’m convinced that was mainly because we lived in the same small northern town as my grandparents, who were pillars of society and supported the church. My parents were NOT religious but they also became pillars of society. All of those folks became successful under their own steam but supporting the church probably did facilitate it.

We attended the Central United Methodist church aka mainstream protestant. It wasn’t a bad place except for some long-winded ministers and one goofy straight-laced Sunday schoolmarm. Still, with my dad’s blessing, I stopped going to church/Sunday School when I was 16 and haven’t looked back. I think I was prepared to use that silly 1970s argument that communing with nature was the same as going to church. I needn’t have. My dad had formed his own ideas well before I was born. We didn’t even talk about it. He just said okay. He may have even been relieved that I hadn’t succumbed to religion but he didn’t say so.

At some point in my life, I figured out that light is probably associated with holidays that happen near the winter solstice because the days are short and often dark. At least they are dark in the Great Lake State, although I don’t think we had a cloud in the sky all day today.

So, I do want some xmas lights.

Another old photoooo. 10 years ago. Coming up to The Commander’s last xmas. When I first saw this, I was thinking it was in her house but looking at it again, I’m not sure. Oh well. I didn’t get any good photos ANYWHERE today. It was either too dark or too fugly or once when we were driving, there was traffic behind us.

What a day! We had a “deluge” for what seemed like hours during the night. When I checked my phone this morning, there was a weather notification “deluge stopping in 10 minutes”. No tornadoes, thank you very much. I visited the Water Closet at that Batscope Hour (during the deluge) and I thought I heard a weak clap of thunder but that was about it for us. So awful about the storms in states to the south of us. As I drove down to the farmers market (in the dark), NPR was reporting “dozens” of deaths. Weather happens but UGH!

At least it was warm (and dry) on my 0-skunk-30 market trip. I got lettuce from the Goetz Family Farm and potatoes and delicata and red onions from various vendors. The wind came up after I got home and the temps dropped steadily throughout the day. Sometime around mid-afternoon I was FREEZING and I remembered that I didn’t turn up the thermostat when I got up this morning because it was 57 or something outside. Not any more. In the cold season, we do 60 degrees overnight and 66 during the day. And because I am a native yooper, we have TONS of blankets in all sizes. My dad loved giving them as gifts and one of my faves is from him.

We did make a few donation drops. Shoes and clothing, a toaster and toaster oven, and an ancient iron that the GG swears came from “my” family. Um. This is not an iron that I EVER remember from my childhood. It is this little skinny thing with no place to store water. My moom had a series of irons when I was a kid but they all required distilled water. Except… When I was really young, she used a sprinkling bottle (that’s the only words I have for it) and would sprinkle water on the fabric, then iron it. Hmmm… Irons drive me nuts in general but that’d be a whole ‘nother post.

The GG had a hard time getting rid of these old appliances. I did not. They have been in the dungeon for years and we aren’t using them. I was just glad to get rid of a few more things. There is a lot more to go.

If I’d had my wits about me when I made my mad dash to the Plum this morning, I’d’ve tried to get a sneaky pic of two of the Plum guys silhouetted against a gorgeous rising sun. They had gone outside to take a gander and were talking about what a beautiful day it was. But although I stopped in my tracks for a moment, I was focused on getting in there, getting my grocks, and getting out. I am probably the fastest u-scan operator in the Great Lake State although I do sometimes get ahead of myself and confuse it and have to call for help 🐽

Instead you get this one of Jesus. He’s at St. Joseph’s Church parking lot in Sault Ste. Siberia and it was March and we were up there to clean out my parents’ safe deposit because PNC was closing their bank branch up there and I didn’t want the contents to end up in Cheboygan. I took a walk from the Hotel Ojibway up to my childhood house on Superior Street and to return downtown, I followed the route I used to walk / bike from my house to my grandparents’ house or my friend Helen’s. And that took me through St. Joe’s parking lot. And there was Jesus Christ himself blessing the crappy March snow piles.

While we were emptying the safe deposit box, the bank manager came along and said, “There are pictures of your grandfather in the basement. Do you want them?” Well, sure I do! (The bank manager was the daughter of my mom’s next door neighbor. She landed on her feet at another branch and is now happily retired and married to her second husband.)

My grandfather was the bank president when I was a kid (it was the First National Bank then, not PNC) and my dad was making his way up through the ranks from assistant teller to (eventually) president. When I visited them at the bank it was always fun to wander around behind the tellers’ windows and into the vault and I LOVED when my dad brought an adding musheen home. Fun times!

The second pic is my favorite from outta that basement, well maybe except for my young father hobnobbing with some Lovely Ladies at an xmas party. I remember this kid-sized teller window well because it’s where I deposited little bits of money into my savings account. This is my kindly bank prez granddaddy in a publicity photo serving some young ladies at the kid teller window. My granddaddy WAS VERY kind to most people and especially to children. I was a direct recipient of his love and kindliness. According to The Commander, who lived with my dad at my grandparents’ house for a short period of time after they married, his voice became cold when he was calling to make collections.

Because I don’t think Feedly (et al) updates posts. The yooperland got five FEET of snow in that storm, not five INCHES! Five inches is nothing up there.

Alternate title: I married you for better or worse but not for lunch! I dunno, it was just a loooooonnnng day at the Landfill.

Instead of providing the gory details (mostly rummaging and random odd noises of various sorts), I will reminisce about the Great Snowstorm of 1995. It happened in Sault Ste. Siberia, not here, and I was blissfully unaware of it for a day or so.

Not knowing about the snow, I had tried to call The Commander a couple times and couldn’t get through. This did not panic me at all. Grandroobly was still alive. They were both in good shape, well under 80, and had a lively social network of friends and relatives in town. Also, the Dillon House phone had been wonky FOREVER and it wasn’t unusual for me not to be able to get through. There was no snow down here and I didn’t really think about it.

One of the beach urchins was in third grade and she had Mr. K of Plutification Blues that year. I also used to walk her to school (at her request) because the kids waiting outside the H-team entrance had a penchant for wildly swinging their backpacks around. I don’t think she felt bullied, just wasn’t impressed by that behavior. Neither was I. I mean, who wants to get slammed by a backpack?

So when Mr. K opened the door, he spotted me and asked how the yooperland was doing with all the snow. Duh, what snow? Oh, okay.

Eventually I got hold of my mother and what a story! They got five FEET of snow and that amount of snow is enough to stop Sault Ste. Siberia in its tracks. A state of emergency was called and the National Guard came in.

As luck would have it, their telephone WAS indeed down. My mother suited up and waded through waist-deep snow to the neighbors to use their phone to call the telephone company. So when she DID call the telephone company, she got somebody in DETROIT. That woman told mom that they had already “sent someone out”. My moom said, “Oh no you haven’t!”

I forget how it all got resolved and I certainly can’t ask my parents. BTW, the photos are not from that storm. They are me and my little brother playing on a snowbank down by my grandparents’ house back in the day. Aren’t we cute? 🐽🐽🐽 I remember the jacket but not the boots or hat.

On FaceTime with MMCB² this morning, MMCB₁ said something about not going to a wedding in Canada this weekend. She has relatives in Montreal or somewhere so I was thinking she meant they were canceling out on something there. She astounded me when she said the wedding would be in Sault Ste. Siberia, the Canuckian side, that is. Of all things!

I erupted! No No No DO NOT GO! Oh man…

1) They would have to drive up the I75 SUV Speedway to and through the yooperland. The yooperland and I dunno where else has already been dumped with snow and there is a “bomb cyclone” predicted for this weekend if I am not mistaken. 2) She mentioned flying there and I said oh no no no. You can but… 3) And then there’s getting INTO Canananada during the plague.

1) The city of Sault Ste. Siberia (Michigan side) is GREAT at plowing. I’m gonna guess the Ontario side is too. But there’s only so much you can do to keep the freeway clear. And so…

2) Yes, there are flights from DayTwa to Sault Ste. Siberia (Michigan) but maybe once a day? It can be dicey enough to get there on a nice hot summer day. If a bomb cyclone comes along, you might get stuck at that beautiful but TINY airport without easy access to hotels. Unless you can catch a ride down to the Hotel Ojibway, which might be possible given that there are a lot of GREAT snow-drivers up there.

3) MMCB₁ is a jet-setting world traveler and she has the rules for getting into Canananada down pat. So that might be the easiest obstacle to overcome. But the bridge to Canananada is 99.9999999% into the trip. You have to get there first.

Oh and I fergot to mention that 4) in recent years the Mackinac Bridge closes at the drop of a hat.

Pic is from many years ago. I think it was taken toward the end of a Sault Ste. Siberian winter when there was nowhere to plow the dirty old snow so they had to load it into a dump truck and haul it away 🤣🤣🤣

Good call for not attending that wedding.

You can’t see the actual sun in this sunset pic. The streetlight is brighter. If we were approaching the SUMMER solstice and were at the moominbeach, Mr. Golden Sun would be blasting us with white hot heat.

I love both solstices and all of the seasons in between. Except for the snow driving. I am glad I don’t have to snow-drive to Cubelandia any more. Even though I now own Cygnus (Subie Crosstrek), who is AWD and probably great at snow. When Cygnus was brand new, I had her parked at the farmers market one Saturday in June and as I returned to her, some nice Young Turk had just parked his pickup next to Cygnus and he was gushing about her. He had owned a Crosstrek and was reminiscing about driving it in the snow “up north”.

I accepted his kudos on my vee-hickle purchase. I didn’t say anything about whether or not I would be out having “fun” in the snow with Cygnus but I did tell him about the last car I owned (my loverly 6 speed manual Ninja) and how it was NOT really a good snow car.

I also didn’t tell him I grew up in Sault Ste. Siberia and learned to drive in snow. I can still remember driving family-owned rear wheel drive vee-hickles in deep slushy snow. I would be driving either my parents’ Pontiac Tempest or my grandma’s Ford Fairlane that became “ours” when she couldn’t drive any more. Whichever of those cars I was driving it was like driving a motor bote navigating through all that snow.

Those cars were both mid-60s vee-hickles. If I remember correctly, the Fairlane had power steering and power brakes. The Tempest did not. Neither of those cars had air conditioning. The first vee-hickle the GG and I bought with A/C was the Exxon Tanker Valdez (Plymouth minivan) we bought in 1989.

First, if you haven’t finished the NYT Spelling Bee yet (this is only for people who do it and you know who you are), don’t read to the end unless you want a hint.

In his quest to hike as much of the North Country Trail as possible The Pensioner spent the last few days down in Ohio hiking near the Lincoln Highway.

I recently enjoyed a book titled “The Lincoln Highway” and of all things he has been reading it too. We don’t usually have the same taste in books. I mean he reads old books about the Russian Revolution and, I dunno, geology, etc. I can’t describe my taste except that it’s somewhat eclectic. I guess his is too. But it’s rare that we read the same book. And actually, I don’t really know if he likes it.

It was a bit of a coincidence that his weekend hiking expotition put him on/near the Lincoln Highway. I don’t really worry about him on these junkets even though he hikes many miles a day. I am not always enamored of his choices in places to stay. I won’t name his go-to choice of cheepo lodging because some of them are okay but they are not my faves, especially not the one at the end of the Knoxville airport runway. And probably not the one in downtown Bradenton but I haven’t stayed there. The GG stayed there one night on a solo trip then moved to the nice new SAFE Best Western down the street. I’ll tell that story [again] some other time.

Anyway, he found the Spread Eagle Tavern Restaurant & Inn online pre-trip and I encouraged him to stay there. He kind of pooh-poohed the idea for the usual reason, which was probably money but I can’t really remember. So I was pleasantly surprised when he texted that he had moved to the Spread Eagle for his last night.

If I get it right, he sandwiched a 28 mile day between two 22 mile days. The second 22-miler (today) was quite tiring. I asked, “How much elevation?” Yes that was it.

P.S. I loved “The Lincoln Highway” but my first introduction to Amor Towles was “A Gentleman In Moscow” and that one knocked my socks off.

Spelling bee hint: hoot doog*s*. The person this is aimed at probably already has these words but I couldn’t help posting this hint because it relates to an inside family joke. One that I don’t totally understand even though I was there but still find funny as a crutch 🤣🤣🤣

So this isn’t the first time I’ve told this story but there is a bit of an update to it now.

The morning of The Commander’s funeral visitation was pretty crazy. She died in February 2012 and although that was one of the warmest winters on record (flowering trees in Ann Arbor bloomed in March that year), the day of her funeral home visitation there was a blasted snowstorm up in Sault Ste. Siberia. With an eye to getting her house emptied out so we could put it on the market, that morning we bundled up all of her clothing except her underwear and took it down to Sally Ann for donation. I dunno exactly why but that was a really surreal memory for me.

We made a number of northward trips in the ensuing months, triaging The Comm’s stuff. What to donate. What to keep. What one of her grandchildren might want. The GG became intimately familiar with the local Habitat for Humanity and, because they accepted mattresses there, at one point we even hauled a couple up from the Planet Ann Arbor and dropped them off. And terlets? Need a terlet? They have a whole yard full of terlets.

On one of those trips, the GG innocently enough asked me to bag up The Comm’s underwear so we could drop that off for donation. Um. 👀👀👀. No! We are NOT donating my mother’s underwear!!! For a few reasons: 1) I knew that my moom would’ve been mortified by the idea of someone else wearing her used undies 2) Clothing donation centers do NOT accept underwear 3) I was incensed by the idea.

I bagged up my moom’s underwear and put it in the trash.

Fast forward. A beach urchin has alerted me that nowadays you can in fact actually donate used underwear. Knickey.com will re*cycle*, not re*use* your crappy (sorry) old underwear. I was wondering if they required the undies to be clean and couldn’t find (on a quick trip through Knickeys) anything about that. I personally would NEVER send used undies to a donation center unless they had been laundered.

I know that my mother would not want her underwear to be used by another person but I think she would have approved of this kind of effort to keep textiles out of our landfills.

First of all, that gorgeous skyscape did not happen today. I won’t complain because Mr. Golden Sun shone down on us all day. But this is approximately a year ago and the yellow things on the ground have to do with the Great Gas Meter Replacement Prodject. Prior to that prodject, I had tentative plans to morph the extra bedroom into an office. The ongoing Gas Meter entertainment derailed my office prodject but I am now angling for a new couch because the Green Couch just isn’t doing it for me any more. The hitch is that I also want to GET RID OF THE Green Couch. It’s time. Also. We’ll see how that goes.

And so today. Usual Saturday type chores plus some. Organized the meager pile of xmas gifts and located some gift wrap in the dungeon. Unfortunately it’s got metallic elements so not recyclable unless I decide to see if the Scrap Box will take it. Hmmm… Emptied the freezer and reorganized it. Again. At least it’s frost-free so that was a relatively painless prodject. Vacuuming (Roooomba) and floor mopping. Grocery/chore list. I used to keep chores and groceries on a separate list but I ALWAYS neglect to look at the chore list so I’m experimenting with putting everything on one list.

Valuable things found today: 1) The Commander’s xmas cookie recipes. A few of them anyway. Frosted sugar cookies, cucidata (spellings vary), shortbread, mint-chocolate bars and holiday fruit drops. I found them on my laptop, some of them in dangerously old Word formats. 2) The Commander’s old 10″ hand-made ceramic pie plate from the old Woodland Workshop, a unique shop in the owners’ house down the beach from us. She “willed” this pie plate to my mouse, who also inherited her grandmoose’s pie-making skills. A slight panic happened that it might have been left at a previous apartment. But no, she had wisely left it safely stored with me until she had a place with a little more space. And I will fling things but I would NEVER fling something like that. Or anything from the Woodland Workshop for that matter. In the end, she left it here with me again and that’s okay.

Speaking of grocery lists, the GG has told me TWICE that we need bar soap. I put it on my list the first time. Not complaining here but it brings to mind a time during early pandemic days when all of a sudden, the debit card I had been ordering EVERYTHING on suddenly didn’t work. I spent something like 20 minutes on the phone with the bank and then had to present identification at the bank the next morning for them to unfreeze my account. This was back in the day when we were worried about COVID spreading on fomites so the last thing I wanted to do was go through the drive-through bank.

The point here is that the thing I was trying to buy (from Amazon) when my debit card choked was BAR SOAP. I dunno what triggered the issue but after MONTHS of ordering things online from EVERYWHERE, bar soap? White Dial? Jeebus.

Obviously we don’t put a lot of effort into outdoor holiday lighting. In fact, it is even worse than you might think. This single string of LED lights has been up for YEARS! When people tell me about all the work they did to put their holiday lights up, I love to say, “Oh yeah, I turned ours on” and then cackle like crazy. We plug this insipid little light string in sometime after Thanksgiving and unplug it eventually and USUALLY it doesn’t get turned on until the next holiday season but you never know.

Soooo…. The city council in its infinite wisdom has passed a new ordinance that outdoor holiday lights must be turned off at midnight. Guess what? Turning off my outdoor holiday lights requires a trip outside, albeit a brief one. So I probably won’t be doing it unless…

All right. How the HECK is this enforceable? Are the city police going to patrol neighborhoods after midnight, writing tickets to people with holiday lights still lit? Of course not. Is the city going to hire a whole bunch of holiday light enforcers? Of course not.

They are going to rely on neighbors reporting other neighbors’ violations. Do I think this is a good idea? NO I DO NOT. (This is not a new thing, they already do this for snow removal infractions.)

Okay. Neighbors turning neighbors in? When in history has that ever been a good strategy? Then there are all of the lights that do NOT get turned out overnight. For one, you can see the glow from the streetlight in front of my house. It is a LOT brighter than my insipid string of lights (and it doesn’t bother me). Not to mention, as some have, the signs surrounding the Big House football stadium. Somebody on Next Door Neighbor said you can see those from space? Not sure and have not researched.

I know there are people who wrap their entire houses in lights for the holidays and I get how annoying that must be for neighbors if left on overnight. I also get that huge light displays are not conducive to energy conservation and may disrupt migratory birds.

Still I wish there was a better way to deal with this than making a law, especially a largely unenforceable one. For now, my insipid little string of lights will stay on overnight. If somebody turns me in, I’ll start turning them off.

How about a little lighter post today? 🐸 I did appreciate your comments of agreement from yesterday. It seems that there are so many folks out there who have opposing viewpoints, including some that I dearly love. Where are The Commander and Radical Betty and all of my strong feminist pro-choice aunts when I need them?

Anyway, when I first walked through the schoolyard this morning it was so dark I didn’t notice the big dirty snowballs. By the time I came back through, it was a lot closer to dawn and I could see them all over the place. Those kids must have had a great time at recess yesterday.

From the Wayback Musheen…

Once when we had snow like this when the beach urchins went to the school in our back yard, one of them came home from school in tears the next day. This disconcerted me at first. My kids NEVER cried about stuff that happened at school and ALMOST always handled whatever it was themselves. I didn’t want to be THAT mother and I think they sussed that. So what could POSSIBLY be wrong?

Oh dear. It was the “cute” snowballs she made at recess that afternoon. She didn’t have any way to carry them home (they were much smaller than the one in the pic, which is several feet in diameter, but still) and was worried that “people” might destroy them. “People” most likely meaning “others who are not girls”.

All right, that was an easy problem to fix. Sugar (neon pink plastic sled) and Jealousy (neon green plastic sled) were grazing on the front porch. They had nice bowls of warm water to drink and everything. I saddled up Sugar and we went over to the schoolyard and rescued the snowballs. They lived out their lives pastured in the front yard, slowly melting with dignity.

We chose this house all those years ago in part because our yet-to-be-born kids would be easily able to walk to elementary school. It occurs to me just now that if getting to school had required a car or bus, this story would not have had a happy ending.

P.S. Sugar and Jealousy still live here and a couple years ago (pre COVID) a nest of baby Henrys (rabbits) was born under Sugar.

Ugh 1: The Great Lake State has now had a school shooting that killed at least four. Preliminary evidence points to premeditation. I never worried about my kids getting shot at school. I remember Columbine as the beginning of all this even though it probably wasn’t. Me and my buddy Vicky were walking up Arborview and a woman I had never talked to before asked us if we had heard about the shooting at Columbine. I had a kid at our local Community High and we didn’t hear her accurately at first. What? I did the math and realized that my kid was probably home by then. But it wasn’t her high school, thank you. I am not anti gun but there’s a huge continuum between “Beto’s gonna take all your assault rifles away” and responsible, thoughtful policy about how to manage civilian weaponry so that (as ONE example) children are not killing other children. I mean we have all kinds of rules about automotive vee-hickles, don’t we? They also kill a lot of people.

Ugh 2: Omicron in the US? Why is anyone surprised? COVID (alpha?) was here long before we knew it too. Don’t deny it. Potential COVID (breakthrough) exposures messed with our SMALL Thanksgiving family event although that story ultimately had a good ending. My boss scheduled an in-person holiday lunch for today and I skipped it, even though it was “outside”. No one was pressured to attend. I sooooo like that my boss and team are both serious about COVID protocols and laid back about attending holiday events. I mean, even before COVID there were people who didn’t because they were busy doing WORK and/or are introverts.

Ugh 3: Supreme Court? I have always been staunchly on the pro-choice side of this. I can’t even say anything more about this tonight. I had this stuff on the radio this morning but I was working and couldn’t (and didn’t want to) pay total attention to the details of the conversations but I could hear tones of voice come through. As always throughout my life, the MEN were talking as if they knew everything about the subject (childbearing) and the highly intelligent, credentialed, and experienced women did not. I have no more words here for now so I’m done.

But then, somebody on the radio was talking about how the former guy was anti-abortion. The former guy has one litmus test for any kind of policy and (in my opinion) it has nothing to do with abortion. Does it help him (former guy) or does it help his rival? Whatever rival he has at the moment. It’s okay with me if it’s a TV reality show rival. It’s not okay when he is vying for president of the United States. I yelled, “F*CK TRUMP”. The GG told me that was not a lady-like thing to say. I replied, “I’m not lady-like”. He knew what I was about when he married me.

It was one of those days when I felt like I earned my pay. At one point I was on the Hot Seat. I mean that in a virtual sense. In reality I was Sittin’ on the Green Couch (watching all the dogz go by) and it is not hot on the Green Couch at this time of year, which is a good thing.

While I was in the Hot Seat, it was pointed out (forcefully) that I had made an error. Horrors! But I had! And I even knew I had. What had I been thinking? Nothing like sitting through a (forceful) critique of your writing. But we got it all straight in the end.

Most people don’t critique my blahg writing even though I do make typos and misspellings and often just plain write gobblety-gook. Like today. I don’t really care. I actually LIKE when people point out misspellings. You won’t find too many, mostly because wordpress catches most of them but also because spelling is innate for me. That doesn’t mean I’m smarter than other people, it just means I’m good at spelling.

There are words I intentionally misspell. Prodject for one. That’s how one of the beach urchins spelled it when she was an emerging speller. She’s been as good or better at spelling than me forever. Aminal? This goes waaaayy back to when I was visiting my cuzzint Pooh when she was in grad school at Moo-U. I attended a big lecture-style class with her and watched her spell animal that way umpteen bazillion times as she was taking notes. She is definitely a good speller and I may be misremembering this but somehow it stuck with me all these years. We have always called our collection of Landfill stuffties aminals. Stuffties isn’t a misspelling, it’s a made-up word. And cuzzint isn’t really either a misspelling or a made-up word. It is an interpretation of what some little kids call cousins because that’s how they’ve interpreted the word as they have heard it and are too young to figure out the spelling rules of the English language. I loved having cousins (and still do) and didn’t care what they were called. Friends🧡🧡🧡

And now Maggie is on satty-lite radio and I’ll stop. Maggie dredges up some weird memories that aren’t really a big part of my life from the getgo. Oh man, actually two sets of them. Maybe someday I will figger out a way to write about them. Or not… No big movie deal in either case.

I didn’t participate in Black Friday but I definitely did Cyber Monday albeit not intentionally.

In our small family, all adults, xmas is a toned down affair but we do exchange gifts. Because ALL of us are struggling to downsize our possessions, we email a specific list of things we actually need or want, with links if they are available online. Note that we do also buy local when we can.

As hard as we try to keep on top of the xmas lists, it can get totally out of control. Like the year I asked for an extra pair of Smartwool leggings and two people bought them 🤣. That was a good thing though. It’s always fine to have an extra pair or two of something you wear literally every day (in season). I suppose it’s why I have 11 tie-dyed t-shirts.

So I was in a mess again this year. Lists got added to and people talked about what they were gonna buy for others and, well… This morning my mouse was over for a while due to some vee-hickle maintenance [delete long boring logistical car appointment stuff – you’re welcome]. She was doing some spreadsheet work before work-work and volunteered to compile all of the stuff into an online spreadsheet* including items people had already volunteered to buy. And even the weird thing the GG asked for that isn’t on a list anywhere.

There HAS to be an app for handling shared gift lists. Every year I think I’ll look for one and every year I fail to get around to it.

And then there’s MY LIST. This year there are two things on it. A small tapestry loom (I hope I push myself to use it) and more styluses for my iPhone so I don’t have to take my gloves off to use it when I’m walking in Old Man Winter. Somehow these things have a habit of making their way OUT of my pockets. Maybe I just need to dedicate a SEPARATE pocketses for styluses alone.

But what else do I need? I don’t need ANYTHING!

*Oh, not that I can’t make spreadsheets. I have been making spreadsheets since Excel was Visicalc and I make/maintain them at teleCubelandia all the time. Once when I was a middle school PTO treasurer, I was at a meeting and somebody called me a Spreadsheet Queen. Somebody else joked about that being better than a Bedsheet Queen. Except that I could be called that too given all of the bedsheets I have laundered in my life. It was nice for somebody else to make a spreadsheet for MEEEE for once. A person who wasn’t born when I learned Visicalc.

Yes. I needed my Yax this morning. In fact there was probably enough snow in places that I really needed boots but my sandals sufficed. Last winter I may have worn my boots about twice. It was almost like Old Man Winter was giving us a pandemic break. Is he now as tired of the pandemic as we all are? Does that mean he’ll put things back to normal this year? Like so many people are trying to do, as the virus continues to outsmart us.

I had some flinging plans today but they were pleasantly derailed by the unexpected arrival of a beach urchin. I was out in Cygnus futzing around trying to connect my phone to it so I can remote start it (long story) when someone approached the passenger door. She had stayed at the Mouse House for the long weekend and was returning my roasting pan on her way home.

I like that my girls get along so well in adulthood. Really they always have although certainly there were plenty of sibling squabbles. I often terrorized my little brother when we were kids but we also got along and continued to into adulthood. The worst moments we had were when we were all staying at the moomincabin with the grandparents, our spouses, and the grandchildren.

It was partly because there were a number of people (and dogs) in a small space. And partly because he fought a chronic illness that eventually killed him way too early. I came to understand there was a third reason, which was when my childhood nuclear family spent multiple days together, we sometimes returned to the patterns of interaction we developed when there were just the four of us and two of us were kids. Adding spouses and grandchildren to the mix was wonderful but could exacerbate those interactions on a bad day.

I’ll stop there mostly because I’m not sure I’m making sense except to myself. My mother was pretty good at staying OUT of things unless asked for advice or if she perceived that a grandchild might need protection. My dad, as was his way, mostly stayed out of whatever fray might be happening and observed.

You may be thinking something like, “Why didn’t some of you stay at a hotel?” Or the grandparents’ HOUSE, which was an easy 20 minute drive away. Well. Because it was summer and we all wanted to stay at the MOOMINCABIN. You couldn’t get up in the morning at a hotel or a house in Sault Ste. Siberia and walk a short path to a private beach. And our arguments were not all that frequent. We also had a whole lot of fun.

And no, that’s not the current temperature. We’ll talk more about that later.

I finished my 2021 Goodreads challenge today! 100 books! I didn’t even realize it until one of the beach urchins congratulated me on Goodreads. I started doing the challenge in 2019. A couple years before that I began trying to restart a reading habit. I wasn’t one of those prodigies that taught myself to read at age three but I picked it up PDQ in elementary school and was always way ahead of grade level.

I was never a Super Reader like my cousin Pooh or the beach urchins. One of the big things that interfered with more prolific reading was MUSIC!!! Yes. I played [classical] piano and flute and practiced for HOURS every day. I was a TOTAL MUSIC NERD! Scales and exercises? Bring ’em on.

I read constantly to my kids when they were little and between that and an intense part-time tech job (and chores and general parenting), I didn’t do a lot of reading for myself. Not that I didn’t enjoy reading to them. Lots of good kid lit especially when they were old enough to focus on “chapter” books (and they were able to understand some of them at around three). My memory fails me at the moment except that I will never forget reading Indian in the Cupboard on the moominbeach to multiple generation audiences. Oh, and reading to the beach urchins at breakfast was a wonderful tool for calming everybody down before school.

During the years I started my current career and my elders were dying, I couldn’t focus on reading a book to save my life. I gradually started inching along and in 2019, I did my first Goodreads challenge. I started out at 50 but when I got to that 50 at less than halfway through the year, I upped it to 100. And surpassed that. As my daughter said, “My mom went pig wild.” So what the heck, 100 is now my standard goal. I mean I do have to work and keep up with the chores, etc.

When I started writing this I was all hot to list my favorite books from the last year. It quickly got complicated and I don’t have the chops for it today so I’ll save it for another post. Maybe.

Back to that temperature? 30 maybe? And snowing🐽🐽🐽 I have already put my Yaks on my sandals for walking tomorrow morning and I’m wondering if we have salt to de-ice the sidewalk. Here we go again…

P.S. Umich beat Ohio State today for the first time in what feels like forever. I did not go to college at Umich but I have loved The Planet Ann Arbor since I was a kid and I have lived here throughout most of my adulthood and raised my kids here and I just have to say GO BLUE!!!

Even pre-COVID times, I was a serious Black Friday avoider. I don’t really buy the kind of things people seem to buy that day, electronic crapola and toys? What else? Clothes? Jewelry? We have two television sets that were at least made in this century. We watch a bit of TV in the bedroom at night, Green Acres reruns on weeknights and Svengoolie on Saturday. We rarely use the one in the back room. The GG had the Lions on for a while yesterday, watching them once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as people often say. (His twin brother was at the game.)

Computers and phones? We buy Apple and buy them when we need them, which is usually not on Black Friday. What else? Toys? I can’t say I didn’t [over]buy toys for my kids because I SURE DID! I am still kicking myself for that. I mean, yes, toys are fine. Every little girl who wants a Barbie should HAVE one. It’s not so much that they are fun to play with, it’s a matter of ownership. If every other kid in the nursery school has a Barbie, your kid should probably have one too. My kids were tired of them by the time they were seven anyway. (I got my first Barbie when I was eight but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) Jewelry? Clothes? I love the IDEA of jewelry but wearing it drives me a little nuts. As for clothing, I have a couple of “uniforms” and I buy all of the components online. And now I’m buying plastic shipping bags online to get rid of old clothes that aren’t really worth taking to Kiwanis or SallyAnn or wherever.

Today I did have a short list of stuff I buy at Meijer. I dithered and dathered during my 0-skunk-30. When would Black Friday start up out there? Would there be people lined up? I wanted nothing of that. I mean I don’t think people should be crowding in to stores with COVID still outsmarting us. In the end, I saddled up Cygnus and drove over there. It was as empty as it ever is at 7:30 in the morning. I was in and outta there in fewer than 10 minutes even though I had to do a bit of reconnoitering to find one item.

Were the shelves bare? Not at all! There were some occasional “holes”. I wanted Lundberg long grain white rice and they didn’t have that but what the heck, I just bought a bag of Riceland. What I like about Lundberg is that it comes in a resealable bag that stands up nicely. Picky picky picky. Riceland is just fine. There was plenty of terlet paper (which wasn’t on my list) and terlet bowl cleaner (which WAS on my list). We’ll talk about pumpkin shortages (not) some other day.

Man was it COLD today. Technically the temp was around freezing but it felt bitter cold when I took the garbage, etc., carts out this afternoon. After a HOT summer that extended well into fall, I am not accustomed to this.