I have my co-workers at work and then I have my co-workers at the moominbeach, some of whom are my cousins.

I had Little Cat Z for a while and now I have npJane. At the end of a very beautiful beach day, np headed down to the beach and yelled over, I’m gonna have a cocktail down on the beach. I was totally on board and, after doing a few dinner prep things, I joined her.

The GG flew from Asheville to Traverse City today and eventually he joined us for a cocktail. A freezer ‘hattan that I set up for him. We ate pretty late but watching the sun go down was more important than just about anything else.

I was in the middle of a daily stand-up meeting this morning when my phone went nuts. It was not spam, it was my cousin Doug. Youngest cousin on my mom’s side. I dived to answer the call. I did NOT want to miss it. The standup today was the dev team and some others gabbling away about technical stuff that had nothing to do with me, so I immediately put in the meeting chat “I have to drop for a while”, then took my phone out to the moominkitchen so I could talk to Doug.

His subject was putting our aunt Roberta’s ashes to rest. It’s been quite a few years. As much of an idiot as I can be, I felt today that he wanted to talk to meee. In some ways to help him (our youngest cousin) figure out how to talk to some of the cousins he doesn’t know very well. I am thinking about how I might help with this… At any rate, I told him how happy I was that he called me today and I really meant that.

In a conversation about cousin ages, I reminded him of my age and he said I sounded absolutely robust! Yes, and by the way THANK YOU! I did qualify that I also sound CONGESTED. He acknowledged that but still gave me a thumbs up.

I love lying in bed in the moomincabin in the morning listening to the foghorns. It was foggy this morning, which I didn’t know until I got up and botes in the channel started blowing their horns.

I faaaared up Marine Traffic and WHOA! One of the boats coming south was the Wilfred Sykes! This was a family bote fave when I was a child, along with the Ryerson and the Cliffs Victory and I fergit what else. My dad and brother were the serious Boat Nerds in my childhood family.

The dilemma this morning was how to meet up with the Sykes to get a pic. The laundromat and a quick stop at Meijer were on my agenda and I was about to leave for those errands. The Up North Laundry is a block away from the locks. Would the bote paparazzi gods put me close enough to the Sykes to get a pic? I rolled the dice and left for the laundromat.

The adventure there *today* (it’s a boring one) is that when I schlepped my laundry in to My Corner (which is usually deserted except for the day Felon Voter and Betty Boop were there), there was a woman in a MASK doing something with laundry next to musheens 17 and 18, which I wanted to use. I was kicking myself for not bringing a mask up here (I had thought about it). I was hoping against hope that I could suppress any cough that might bubble up. I managed to throw my laundry in, pay for it (Dexter Pay app) and skedaddle to the bench outside without coughing. Hopefully I wasn’t close to her long enough to give her whatever I have. Phew. [Delete long thoughts here. Some other time. I do hope I didn’t make her sick…]

Whenever I leave the Up North Laundry, I head west on Portage (past the Soo Locks) to check if there are any botes. There was a bote in the locks but it wasn’t the Sykes. It was the bote coming down from Gitchee Gumee ahead of the Sykes. I held my breath a bit. I inched along Portage until the end. I went on into the West Pier. THERE WAS THE SYKES, BIG AS LIFE! I couldn’t believe my luck. I parked Cygnus on the grass. I got out of Cygnus and angled myself the best I could to get a pic of the Sykes. There were a lot of other bote paparazzi and seeing all of us, she blew a huge captain’s salute.

If I had been on my “game”, I might have schmoozed with the other paparazzi a little. I am learning to do that a *bit* nowadays, but I was focused on my next errand (Meijer) and didn’t think it through. Although I did schmooze with the Meijer uScan gal, just not about the Sykes. (I also hope I didn’t give *her* covid or whatever it was.)

But maybe I could’ve told another bote paparazzi about my story of watching the Sykes from the moominbeach since well before they were alive and maaaayybbbeeee they might have cared? Ya nevah know. But try harder, KW. You do have stories to tell. If people don’t care to hear them, that’s OKAY!

Oh, not from the cold/covid(?) virus. I never had any trouble catching my breath during that. My hacking, unproductive cough was alarming people although I knew I just had to wait it out. So by way of update, in the middle of the night last night, Little Cat Z (LCZ) crept quietly down the “stairs” (ladder) to use the water closet and I woke up. Of course I coughed, because that’s been one of my main activities the last few days. But. This time I realized that I was no longer trying to cough up a big cement block (at least that’s what it felt like). I’m not done with this thing yet but “things” were obviously moving more “fluidly” again.

My beach urchin returned to The Planet Ann Arbor today. Fastest trip ever, she said. That’s because every Michigander under the sun is walking the Mackinac Bridge tomorrow, which means it is closed to vehicular traffic until noon. Which is (one reason) why she left today.

I will miss her but. I dunno. I have been up here all summer. I’ve either been working remotely or have had guests. Even though no guests actually stayed here, we all gathered here for dinner and afterward every night. DO NOT GET ME WRONG! I LOVED THIS! But all summer, little chores and issues have been nagging me and I couldn’t quite get to them. Long-term moominkitchen reorganizations (minor ones, like where is that old yellow pot lid? Oh there, underneath a whole bunch of crapola). And my clothing has been in a huge shambling mound ALL SUMMER. Related to that, why the heck do I have FOUR tie-dyed t-shirts here? I can easily get to a laundromat and two would suffice. The answer to the last question is because when I packed to come up here, I more or less randomly threw a whole bunch of clothes into a bag.

Almost as soon as LCZ left today, I sort of EMERGED from my summer-long fog. I took care of my clothes (and made myself a list for future reference, i.e., only TWO tie-dyed t-shirts). I cleaned out several kitchen storage areas and found the missing pot lid. I organized laundry for tomorrow, including some filthy rugs and things LCZ dredged out when she voomed the bathroom. I am COUNTING on the Up North laundry being open on Labor Day but if it is not, I have some grocks to get too so a trip to town will not be in vain. I’ll figure out another laundry day or send the GG to the laundromat. Wonder if he’ll be able to work the washing musheen payment app. The proprietor sez women are better at catching on to it than men. I wonder why🐽

I’m thinking I could go on and on and on tonight but I’ll leave you with two thoughts. 1) I cooked bacon (ignore the grease, it wasn’t drained yet) using the Bacon Pliers. My little brother, a future mechanical engineer, named that utensil Bacon Pliers when he was about three. 2) THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Little Cat Z for everything you did, including but not limited to vooming the bathroom and taking care of me when I was sick but didn’t really know it yet😵‍💫

Tomorrow commences my last week here for the summer. Love y’all and cheers, KW.

I had big plans to take the recycle in by about Thursday. Unfortunately that didn’t happen due to illness. So I took it today. I had also planned to take a green bag up to the dump today and that *did* happen. And wouldn’t you know it, as I was driving out, a neighbor cousin came out of the Old Cabin with a green bag in tow. The more the merrier? I said, “put it in the back and I’ll take it up.” I think that was a welcome offer as those folks were going out to lunch in town, the opposite direction from the dump. We could’ve joined them but begged off due to coughing and sneezing and blowing our noses.

A beloved neighbor stopped by with some covid tests. Although we were very grateful, we haven’t used them. Since we aren’t that sick and can easily isolate from infecting others with whatever we have, there doesn’t seem to be much point. I’m not sure there’s any meaningful place to report covid cases with RFKjr at the “helm”.

I am HUGELY skeptical of the whole MAHA thing in general and not just because of the crackpot in charge. If you want to make Americans get healthy you have to make a sea change in how they conduct their lives. Just in terms of eating habits, that would mean cutting out at least half of the grocery store products available today and all of the fast food restaurants. Those things aren’t going to happen unless PEOPLE WANT THEM TO HAPPEN, which means they would have to stop buying that crapola. I don’t see that happening any time soon. And as someone else pointed out during our late-afternoon moominbeach conclave of kibbitz, if we got rid of fast food what would the orange baboon eat? Anyway, vaccine policy may need to be tweaked (what doesn’t?) but it is NOT at the crux of the issue and vaccines save many many lives. My parents, who watched as friends dropped dead of polio overnight, would be horrified. Yet here we are. I was tentative about expressing my views but I was reassured that I was preaching to the choir.

So we are slowly improving and coughing is my main symptom, which it ALWAYS is when I am kicking a respiratory virus to the curb. Onward and upward.

Last night my beach urchin was taking care of her baggy old moom even though she wasn’t at 100% either. She got me to lie down on the couch and got me water and I actually dozed off in the evening well before the sun went down. She got this pic (and one of me sleeping). Obviously this is the one I have posted.

Slept “late” again this morning (8 AM is late for me). Actually I stayed in bed as long as that because it was COLD this morning and I needed to run the propane heater for a bit before getting up. It’s supposed to be even colder tonight and I may have to sleep in socks so I don’t freeze my feet getting up to turn on the heater tomorrow morning.

The neighbor cousins saved us this morning by bringing over some of their blueberry muffins for breakfast. Then I logged on to work long enough to bag off for another day because why not and my beach urchin voomed the bathroom Little Cat Z style, which it NEEDED DESPERATELY. Although I am not the absolute worst cleaner on earth, I’ve never gotten the hang of voom. Of course if you voom the bathroom, you get the first shower.

Since we don’t know if we’ve had covid or not, we weren’t very social today. Are covid tests still around? I can only guess they are but obtaining one would mean a trip to town and neither of us wanted to go there although Lizard did venture to the park store for a few supplies to cobble something together for dinner.

And so goodnight, KW and Little Cat Z

I am always grumpy about Trump. Today I have a more pedestrian reason to be grumpy. It is a virus. I do not think it is covid but who knows. It is not a terrible illness but I am not used to being sick at this point so I am really grumpy.

I took most of today off (sick day) and plan on doing the same tomorrow. I have not taken a sick day since I had covid in January 2022. I was less sick with covid than I am with this thing.

And that is about all I have to say.

The Twinz of Terror, those jet/camper-setters, wung it today. The UU was scheduled to visit his son and grandchildren. His young grandson made a request. “Can the other one come too?” Get it? Look-alike grandpas🤪

They have had some interesting times being identical grandpas. Once, when another grandson was *very* young, the GG was carrying him around at a party. It was all good. He thought he was with his granddad. But then. His granddad walked up to them. Oops. How can my granddad be in *front* of me if he’s carrying me?

Anyway, “the other one” thought “Why not?” and I said, “Get outta here”, so he bought plane tickets for the same flight as his brother and off they went. They left me and Lizard Breath here at the moomincabin salt mines on a rainy, chilly day. My Indian and Floridian colleagues were not much help in keeping me warm here in the Great Green Wet Windy North. You can’t send heat through a teams meeting.🤪

And I’m wondering if I’ve been left with my first respiratory virus since covid. If so, it’s very mild so far, not much more coughing than I do on any other random day and cold weather makes my nose run so it’s been running a lot at the moomin this summer. IS it covid? I do not know. I do know that covid cases are up this summer. The GG apparently had only one day of feeling like crap so my fingers are crossed that I have missed whatever virus it is or it’ll be mild. Most viruses are milder for me than him, butchya nevah know. I feel really good overall but knock on wood.

Still deciding “virus or not” (and I am STILL deciding hours later), I drove into Sault Ste. Siberia to pick up lunch at Penny’s Kitchen for me and my Cabin Co-worker (beach urchin, different job than me to be clear). Pesto grill (veggie for her, turkey for me), and a cup of gumbo. I forgot to order a HALF sandwich but that’s okay. We have lunch for tomorrow too! Penny’s Kitchen is a fave of ours and we used to eat there ALL THE TIME when The Comm and Radical Betty were still around. It was a regular spot on their pod of little old ladies’ lunch circuit. Miss them when I go to Penny’s and see this decade’s little old lady pods🧡 So glad my pod died before covid because I’m thinking not being able to meet for lunch might’ve killed them quicker.

Our mother and daughter work days ended and after I got the zucchini parmesan assembled, I joined my beach urchin down on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench for a Beach Hour. This is about the second day of a “three-day blow” but it was pretty warm down there wearing my blue polar fleece jacket.

The Round Island seagulls are gone (we think). Except for the young ones who (sadly) are not going to make it through the upcoming winter season. That means sick or injured youngsters along with some of those incorrigible teenagers who stubbornly refuse to listen to their parents. It’s possible that *some* of those will survive???

We did see a bunch of graceful birds that we *think* are Caspian terns. That’s our best guess. And soaring high over the beach was a boiled iggle. One of my younger cousins (but not that much younger) called bald eagles “boiled iggles” as a very young child. I’m sure us slightly older cousins teased her unmercifully about that. We were older and knew so much more. Not. All these years later I still remember that and, having raised young children myself, I think it is a WONDERFUL interpretation of “bald eagle”.

We eventually came up to the moomincabin to get our (late) dinner going and the radio is talk around here in the evening. I prefer music in the evening. My beach urchin didn’t want talk radio either so she put Paul Winter’s Common Ground on the pod. When she was a very young child, we used to play a tape of that almost every night at the moomin as we were getting dinner ready. Our good buddy Master Woodring gave it to us. I think it has whale song in it. I had been thinking about that just before she played it.

I was MORTIFIED this morning when I returned from a bacon run to Meijer to find that I was 13 minutes late for a meeting. How do I ‘splain this? I ‘fessed up that it was a bacon run.

When Lizard Breath arrived here on Saturday, she asked if we had bacon. Well, oops, no. I had thought about it but for some confuddled reason or another, I didn’t buy it. Bacon used to be a staple at the moomincabin when the beach urchins were young and we made some most mornings. We don’t eat as much of it as we used to but it is nice to have some around the moomin. So I was caught out doing a “sinful” errand. As it turned out, I was able to significantly contribute to the meeting *anyway* and it was also recorded, always a good thing when people are MIA or even if they are not.

When my original boss, the LSCHP, hired me, he provided the rules for meetings. Meetings happened between 10AM and noon and 2-4PM. Other times sometimes happen. 9AM happens occasionally. 1PM happens occasionally. Meetings *can* but usually don’t last until 5 PM. Noon is verboten because the LSCHP went out to lunch a lot. He was a really good boss and I still channel him but Amazon Woman is also fantabulous. And we still pretty much follow his meeting rules among other things.

So 9AM meetings are rare, especially on Mondays and I totally missed that this one was scheduled. It was all right and everyone laughed about the bacon run.

These bearded and John Bolton mustachioed guys returned from their trip to North Dakota today. One of them brought a friend with him in the form of a cold-type virus. I hope it’s not covid but whatever it is, I am keeping him at arms length. Fortunately he is sleeping in the Lyme Lounge and I am sleeping in the moomincabin. TMI or not, I kinda miss sleeping with another human but I do not wanna get sick.

I pulled down a baking dish to heat up last night’s leftovers for dinner. There was a spider in it. It was alive and energetically crawling around. If The Commander had been here, she prob’ly would’ve grabbed a paper towel and dispatched it PDQ. She had a pretty serious phobia about spiders despite the fact that we only have a couple of dangerous spiders in the Great Lake State and they are rarely seen. I don’t think this spider was dangerous but I dumped it out onto the floor. Lizard Breath, always vigilant about cleanliness (which is good), asked if I was gonna wash the baking dish. Yes. I was. And I did.

Lizard Breath and I drove up to Whitefish Point today. She drove Cygnus X-1 and I looked out the window. After Whitefish Point, we had lunch at the Wheelhouse Diner and Goatlocker Saloon in Paradise. It was wonderful. I had a veggie wrap with pepperjack cheese, black beans, corn, tomatoes, and I dunno what else. I took half of it home but I’m not gonna look up the ingredients now.

Paradise has come a long way since I was a kid and even since my kids were kids. Mainly that means you can get an “upscale” kind of meal instead of a hamburger or whatever, although I certainly could’ve gotten a hamburger today. When I was a kid and we trekked up to the Paradise area (Tahquemenon Falls and Whitefish Point are in the area), we took PBJ sandwiches. We even did that when our kids were kids.

I have never been to the Goat Locker (which is four years old), but Liz and the Twinz of Terror traveled to Paradise last winter and they ate at the Goat Locker *twice* and The Inn once. The Inn sounded familiar to me and I kept asking if it was the gastropub. Because I have eaten at a gastropub in Paradise but it was before COVID and I wondered if that place had survived. In the end, GooMaps told me that it *had* survived and it was called The Inn. It was a good place but we chose the Goat Locker because I hadn’t been there before. It was a good choice although I will be back to The Inn too.

As ecstatic as I am about the relative plethora of restaurant choices in the Paradise area (and the cell service, which has expanded its range significantly), I am less than pleased about the burgeoning number of new dwellings being built along the road up to Whitefish Point. Not to mention that the road is lined with real estate signs. I wish the best for the people who are hot for Lake Superior shoreline property without the rustic conditions the first three American generations of my family dealt with. Outhouses, cold water running through garden hoses (or up from the lake). I get that. We aren’t quite as rustic as we were when I was a child. Hello fiber optic internet and telecommuting. I just hope we aren’t building a new megalopolis along Whitefish Bay.

We really NEVER see moose here at the moominbeach but the Paradise area gets a lot of them. I dunno where this moosehead came from.

Thunderstorms overnight. Two or three? I’m not sure. Definitely one before I crashed out, then one or two in the wee hours. Were they severe storms? They were occasionally loud but I don’t think so.

I had chores and errands up the wazoo this morning but it was pretty darn gorgeous this morning (and warm) so I sat on the deck for a while, organizing my grock list, a relatively meager one, and just soaking up an end of summer morning.

Laundry, grocks (a few), recycle, back out to the moomincabin to pick up my stinky fruit fly attracting green garbage bag and then the dump.

I never know what I’ll encounter at the laundromat. Sometimes weirdness, sometimes not. Today was weirdness. Oh, not the dangereuse kind. Three young turks (early 20s) were in there in MY corner of the laundromat. They might’ve freaked somebody else out. A reeeeallly tall kid with an “I voted for the Felon” t-shirt. A shorter guy with red pajama pants plastered with Betty Boop images.

If I didn’t know that laundromat pretty well, I mightta been freaked out? But I do know the laundromat and the owner was there and the usual bunch of senior citizen couples arguing (or not) loudly (or not) with their spouses. Today it was loudly but we won’t go there.

So I was waiting patiently (really) for the guys to figure out how the dryers worked and after a few minutes felon voter noticed me standing there with my laundry cart and VERY gallantly apologized for himself and his friends and shooed them off. I put my stuff in the dryers… 10 minutes later, I nipped in to pull a skirt out of one of the dryers. I was putting the skirt into Cygnus X-1 when Betty Boop came out of the laundromat. “Miss? This fell out of your dryer.” Oh, it was a Smartwool sock that must’ve gotten stuck to my skirt.

Much later in the day after chores and visits with beloved cousins, Lizard Breath arrived. When I told her my laundromat story, she asked if the dropped item was underwear. Ouch, no, not this time. I’m guessing if it had been underwear, Betty Boop wouldn’t have touched it with a 10-foot pole. And I do not wear granny pants. I wear black Smartwool bikini style underwear. But still.

All of that reminded me of being at Hoton Lake with Grandpa Garth umpteen bazillion years ago. When he would find women’s or girl’s panties in some weird place (dropped from somewhere), he would bring them into the main room (kitchen) of that old cabin, holding them delicately with two fingers, with a sly smile on his face. Make no mistake, this father of 10, grandfather of 19 was NOT CREEPY.

Cubelandia was on land that was originally owned by the Avis family. The rental car company folks. Mr. Avis was dead by the time I worked there but some co-workers remembered him being driven around the park in a golf cart.

Thinking back, it wasn’t a bad business park. There were a lot of buildings but I think the tallest may have been three stories? Cubelandia was one story. There were also a number of ponds, man-made or not, I’m not sure. And a nature trail, although by the time we got bounced outta there (covid), it was overgrown and infested with ticks.

This was the only time I saw a sandhill crane walk through the “garden” along the side of the building.

The Metavante Vultures (turkey vultures) used to walk there frequently the first few years I worked at Cubelandia. There were always a bazillion geese and red-wing blackbirds used to crap on my side mirrors, and one day a couple of seagulls took a nap on my beloved old Ninja’s roof. And any number of other aminals and things that I won’t bore y’all with.

Of course, EVERYONE gathered in the lunch room to take pictures of this lovely bird. I think I was the first person at Cubelandia to own an iPhone (it was 2007 and people were kinda like, “Oh, can I touch it?”) but I certainly wasn’t the last as you can see.

The lovely woman on the left is retiring NEXT WEEK. Yikes! We will miss her greatly but she has worked there for 25 years and she is ready. The lovely woman in the middle is Building Mom, a “gem”, as my old boss the LSCHP called her. Despite much trying by my/her manager to find a role for her post covid, it didn’t work out. She managed a building, not a bunch of people working from home and scattered all over the globe. But she landed on her feet because she is a gem.

You’ve heard of SAT test coaches and college admissions coaches, roight? Did you know you can pay $3-$6K to coach your budding young debutante daughter to get into the college sorority of her choice? Yes, yes, you can. Well, except these coaches don’t guarantee entry into her preferred sorority or any sorority.

Never was I was ever interested in joining a sorority. I was not that kind of gal. I may have wished I was but I just couldn’t get to that point. Was I pretty enough? Yeah, I probably was. I am not bragging here. When I was a young teenager, it felt like the only card I had to play. What I am NOT is SOCIAL enough. I had the idea that sorority girls were flibbertygibbets who cared only about clothes and make-up and engaged in superficial conversations. I know that was not universally true. I also know that *I* cared a lot about clothes and make-up. Superficial conversations not so much. I much preferred hanging around with “interesting” people. Like “hippies” or whatever. Although I was *never* a hippie myself. Highly trained, focused 1st seat flute musician who practiced MANY hours and still aced my non-music classes? Yes. Not bragging, just simple truth.

NPR ran a segment on All Things Considered yesterday where they interviewed someone about these sorority coaches. These kinds of topics interest me so I tuned my ears in. Among other things was that these coaches are particularly sought after in southern schools, think Ole Miss and ‘bama if you will. Okay, that kind of thing seemed stereotypical to me. But then… Apparently many northern gals (like meeeee) are seeking out some of those schools because of the sorority culture, not that we don’t have sorority cultures up in the Great White North because we sure do.

The main thing that bothered me about the NPR segment was that the interviewee said “exspecially” umpteen bazillion times. Yes, there is an “x” inserted into “especially”. The first time, I thought I had mis-heard. But nope. Over and over and over again. My ears felt like they were being pierced by an ice pick. Does this woman really work for the New York Times or did I mis-hear that too? Exspecially, exspecially, exspecially. Jeebus.

“Exspecially” brings me to the end of this rambling, incoherent rant. I hope I haven’t insulted any “Greek” (frat) folks. Just because it wasn’t for me doesn’t mean it wasn’t for you. Also I am mashing a whole bunch of unsorted crapola from various stages of my life together into one blahg post so in a way, it’s all gibberish.

In other news, I was just about to nod off last night when… Yikes! Someone has droven in! Bright lights behind Cygnus X-1. I freaked out for about a millisecond, but I knew PDQ I was being Porterized by benign aliens. I welcomed them in and managed to find them a couple beers and it was a good time and I got to bed on time for a “school” night.

Love y’all, KW

Fortunately I do not get a lot of comments, and that’s okay, see below. But when I do, lately, they show up on my blahg but I canNOT always find them anywhere else.

For many years, comments arrived in my email mailbox with great reliability. Then, a few years ago, they started getting routed to the spam folder. Years ago it seemed I could mark emails as NOT SPAM but I can’t find how nowadays (probably my bad) so I got into the habit of fishing them out of spam so I could reply to them from my inbox. Recently, they started getting delivered to my inbox again. YAY! This is so cool. Except. Now three things seem to (randomly) happen to them. 1) They get delivered to my inbox. 2) They get delivered to spam and I fish them out. 3) They get POSTED but they don’t get delivered ANYWHERE. It’s like the wild wild west and I do not know why🤷‍♀️ All that to say that I might not see your comment right away and if I reply to it, the email subject will be “your comment”.

So, I am not a “comment whore”. While I welcome comments, I don’t feel shunned if I don’t get them. As always my main reason for writing this blahg of blather is to dump whatever is in my baggy old brain. It is an interesting writing exercise, which is probably why I have continued to blahg for 22 years (or whatever). There is soooo much I can’t say on my blahg and although it would be more interesting if I could include the “I-can’t-blahg-about-that” category, best not to.

My other writing gig, the paid one, requires a whole different set of rules. There is NO I-can’t-blahg-about-that category, or at least just about EVERYTHING belongs in that category. I have a different audience, which is mainly web developers and testers (and posterity) and I have to come up with very precise specification for our online banking application.

Nothing terribly “deep” here, just that it is an interesting exercise to write for different audiences.

I’m not gonna show you the ree-cycle mess just outside the back door and to the right. It is toadily overflowing at this point. I usually keep up with the ree-cycle here at the moominbeach. I can’t just dump it all unsorted into a big cart next to my front door like I can at the Landfill. I have to sort it and take it to Northern Transitions to dump. So I usually keep up with it, filling reusable grock bags with sorted recycle (I’m taaared of typing “ree-cycle” and you are taaared of reading it). I dump the recycle and then I have empty grock bags to buy grocks with at Meijer or Pat’s or wherever. I am Garbage Woman and I have it down pat.

Except… The recycle center had a bailer failure 10 days ago so they had to close for a while. Which meant I couldn’t dump my recycle. So it has been piling up like crazy. We have a lot of GLASS this time. We don’t usually because I buy box whine when we are up here. But when we were flooded by beloved my cousins (of a couple degrees) here, we finished a few bottles of sippin’ spirits so, all roight, we have some glass.

The bailer failure was fixed last week but I couldn’t get there at a time it was open. It’s a long story but I can go tomorrow.

What is cracking me up is that every time I think of “bailer failure”, I think of “testicle festival”. Sorry.

So, today I logged onto work for the first time in 2-1/2 weeks. What meetings did I have today? Was it just the usual Monday 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock? Or did someone sneak some other meetings in there? Phew! It’s only the usual. Okay. I emailed Amazon Woman and my new(ish) colleague (need a blahg name for him…) and said, “I’m back but I’m meeting friends for lunch a few miles up the road.”

Was that okay? On my first day back from vacation? Of COURSE it was okay! Anyway, Pickles is only a few miles up the road on the res. No traffic lights and light traffic. And Amazon Woman was okay with it as I knew she would be. And I was back in plenty of time for the 2 o’clock. Which was a great meeting but that’s boring work stuff.

I met up with Sam (archaeologist, not dog) and the Guru, who has kept this boring blahg of blather going since forever. I have known Sam since way back when before the internet. They were passing through today and I hadn’t seen them in a couple(?) years and they looked absolutely fabulous. A sight for sore eyes.

We all had a lot to say. We know a lot of people in common. My family, her family, a few of our in-laws and a few friends sprinkled in here and there. We did NOT get into MAGA rants. That is a good thing although we are on the same side of that ridiculous crapola. Better that we were gabbling about our own lives and those of the people we all know and love. At times I felt like I was monopolizing the conversation. It just felt sooooo good to talk to my long-time friend.

I first met Sam on Radical Betty’s back deck when I was a college girl. Betty was my cool aunt. Sam was my cousin Jay’s college friend and a guest at the Old Cabin. I am an introvert and do not seek out friends but sometimes people kinda “stick” to me anyway. Sam was wonderful but in no way did I think we would be friends at the time we first met. I didn’t really think we would ever see each other again. WRONG! I don’t remember exactly how our relationship evolved into umpteen bazillion years of being BFFs but here we are🧡🧡🧡

Summer is winding down and I am faced with the reality that I will have to return to Trollandia in a couple weeks. It isn’t all that bad. I knew that I wanted to live on The Planet Ann Arbor by the time I was 12 years old or so. Somehow I made that happen and even ended up marrying a guy who was willing to help make that little dream come true. We bought The Landfill (our house) there and brought up our daughters there. Our little house in Ann Arbor was a wonderful place to raise our children. And. They both live there (or near there) as adults🧡

I am also lucky in that the guy I convinced to move to A2 with me embraced my family’s beach land here on Gitchee Gumee (Lake Superior). Although my family is friendly and welcoming, this place isn’t for everyone. I mean, when the GG first visited, we still had an outhouse. We have modern plumbing today but the place isn’t fancy. The moomincabin is small and there isn’t a whole lot of privacy, etc., etc. The GG was pretty okay with all this having grown up going to a rustic cabin with his family. He got along well with my family and was a special friend to The Commander in her later years, which helped me out a LOT since I was beginning a new job at that time. My moom was very proud of me for embarking on a new career after the age of 50 but I didn’t have a whole lot of time off to spend with her.

We still have some summertime left and the Twinz of Terror ate breakfast here this morning and then left for a North Country Trail mini-celebration in North Dakota. npJane will be heading up later this week and Lizard Breath this weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous on the beach this evening and after I decamped to the moomincabin, I turned on the deck lights so the next door cousins would know it was okay to visit, although we had also texted about that. It was a great opportunity for me to vent about MAGA.

Love y’all and thanks cousins for letting me vent. KW.

We had a big thunderstorm in the middle of last night and then another one late this afternoon. The overnight storm was violent enough that I went out to the moomindeck to move my basket inside and the GG went down to the beach. This afternoon. we were on the beach watching the storm clouds approach. It started to rain so we decamped up to the moomincabin and Lyme Lounge and after a bit all hell broke loose.

When it all settled down a bit, the current Next Door Cousins came over for dinner with a gorgeous salad in tow.

The GG spent just about the entire day working on a lucky-shuckial problem with the Lyme Lounge. The Lyme Lounge is scheduled to be towed via Mooon Yooonit to North Dakota beginning tomorrow. Hoping it all works out well. Since the Twinz of Terror are going on this trip, I am pretty optimistic that they will prevail over any problems. Do they need snake boots out there? I dunno.

The Great Lake State is such a benign place to live in a lot of ways. Only one venomous snake (Massasauga rattlesnake) and it is rarely seen. No volcanoes. Occasional tornadoes. Floods and wildfires happen but they are rare. I do hate driving in blizzards and freezing rain and we get plenty of that.

G’night, KW.

…you will replace the window in the back door with its associated SCREEN.

I have posted various versions of this pic before. The door straight ahead is the “back” door. The door to the right is the “front” door. They aren’t very far apart, are they? Why? Because the moomincabin is not a very big place. It’s okay, it’s comfortable and easy to heat. Also, the “front” door is on the “side” of the cabin. Why? Because Gitchee Gumee is in “front” of the cabin and if you put a door in the front, there will be days when you can’t get the door to open because of high northwest winds. Also because outside the “front” door is the main moomincabin parking spot, used almost exclusively by meeeee this summer because I am the main “hopper”, aka I get most of the grocks and schlep the laundry to the laundromat. After four years of owning Cygnus X-1, I am getting really good at precision backing up with her backup cam.

So the refrigerator was not quiiiiite fixed when the GG was ready this evening and he was looking at me with a hangdog look. I said something like, “I’ll be in to fix the fridge in a few minutes but meanwhile, you could put the screen in the back door.” He made some hedging noises and I countered with, “I will be in the moominkitchen and it is hot today and I will need air and oh BTW if you don’t put the screen in, The Commander will hurl a lightning bolt at you.”

As any woman who has ever cooked in the moominkitchen knows, when it is HOT out, which it is today (that means it’s in the 80s), the back door is the first door to be replaced with its associated screen. The doors look identical but don’t try to put the front screen in the back door or vice versa. If it’s hot enough. we also replace the front door with its screen but that doesn’t happen as often. Oh, men do cook in the moominkitchen but usually us gals commandeer it. The Commander led that charge but we all know our way around. Even UKW, who visits only every couple years.

So he put the screen in and I fixed the refrigerator. And Trumpty Dumpty did something today but I know not what because the radio is basically not talking about the specifics yet. Maybe because there aren’t any specifics yet?

The GG is “modeling” this loverly t-shirt but it does not belong to him. Our mouse spied this at Meijer on a rack “over at the ‘stuff’ end of the store.” She didn’t buy it then but she did take a pic of it and I located it today and purchased it for her.

I could only guess what the “stuff” end of the store was but I guessed correctly that it the part of the store that is at the other end from the grock end of the store and I was correct. “Yeah, over by the toothpaste end of things.” That’s not an exact quote but close. The eight deodorants that I accidentally bought during covid are long gone so, while I was over in that area, I butt danced a bit with a guy in the shaving/deodorant aisle.

Meijer is a Michigan-based chain of big box grock stores. I have a young cousin who works for Meijer corporate but I’ve been shopping at Meijer since well before she was born. I mostly shopped at Meijer in college over in the East Lansing area and then on The Planet Ann Arbor. I will never forget when Sault Ste. Siberia acquired a Meijer. We were all ecstatic about that and when I posted a photooo of mouse and I in the parking lot on Instagram, an Ann Arbor yooper from Marquette marveled, “There is a *Meijer* in Sault Ste. Marie?” Yes. Yes there is and I think there is now one in Marquette too.

The best thing about the Sault Meijer, for me anyway, is that I can drive to it in 15 minutes without encountering ANY traffic lights or traffic if you don’t count deer, turkeys, sandhill cranes, or the occasional bear. I have posted this before. If I have recycling to drop off, I can also snake down 14th Ave/St/whatever from Meijer to Easterday without encountering any traffic lights. Alas, the recycling center is currently closed due to a bailer failure so I may have to drive out to Bay Mills Township to dump my growing pile of recycle. Oh well.

So, most Meijer stores have similar inventories but there are little areas where they sell local stuff, like Soo High Blue Devil sweatshirts and this loverly tee shirt. Apparently the idea is to wear it around on The Planet Ann Arbor on a football Saturday. I totally approve!