Before I tackled the pantry mess from yesterday, I took Cygnus for a little joyride. It has been a while since I’ve taken her anywhere but over to the Plum and back or down the I75 SUV Speedway.

I wasn’t really thinking too much about the timing but I like to get out fairly early before the traffic heats up although I head for the back (dirt) roads where there isn’t usually a lot of traffic and I can creep along. I ended up getting out just about when the Sunday morning jazz starts up on WEMU. I don’t know jack-doodly about jazz but I love the Sunday morning show because they play a lot of ancient jazz, often on vinyl (which I am also NOT a snob about). But it’s easy to listen to and kinda “slow” on a Sunday morning and I love it.

Wow! The sun and the light and the colors! This is typical late summer/early fall colors. The trees haven’t begun to turn yet so there’s a ton of greeeeeen with a golden sheen over the landscape in general. I was going slow enough to be able to stop and take pics but I do better at that when I am actually walking. I did get this one and didn’t notice the Waning Gibbous until HOURS after I took it and posted it to Insty.

And then. I slogged along ALL AFTERNOON picking away at resetting the Landfill Chitchen. I combined what duplicates I could. I dumped a few things that were long past their date. They were things that don’t require refrigeration so they were probably fine but they were open and I used that as an excuse to thin things out since we’re obviously not using them. I hate throwing food out but sometimes it feels good and at least I recycled the containers. I still have a Pandemic Stash but it’s more organized and some of the things in it are what’s left of the umpteen bazillion jars of capers (and other things) I bought in sixes from Amazon back in the beginning. Yes I do use capers, sometimes more frequently than others.

I did devise a potential system for keeping track of this stuff and it’s on my phone, which is my handiest device. I won’t divulge the details of that because who knows how long it’ll last. If it’s still going after say three months, maybe I’ll talk about it.

At the moment I am basking alone in an organized chitchen. I predict that’ll end abruptly tomorrow when the GG brings five containers of mustard home. And wilted lettuce🐽🐽🐽

This mess represents the partial contents of my “pantry”, the remains of my pandemic stash, and some grocks that came home from the moomin. This is mid-prodject. I am trying to decide how to organize this stuff so I DON’T BUY THINGS I ALREADY HAVE MULTIPLE TIMES! My preference is to keep a limited supply of grocks around and only buy [most] things when I need them. I mean, I live in a cornucopia and my fave grock shop is a three minute drive/10 minute walk away. The pandemic blew that strategy away but knock on wood I am braving grocery stores again, early when nobody’s there and MASKED! So. I gotta get control again!

I mean how many bottles of vinegar can one own? I have TWO bottles of RICE vinegar, which I almost never use. I could donate one but I think they’re both open🐽. And then there are the two bags of coffee beans. When we came down from the moomin, we found we had forgotten the coffee and there was apparently none here (but I shouldda looked) so the GG went out and bought some. Today I found THAT BAG plus an unopened one. Jeebus.

Before I put this stuff away, I’m considering making an inventory even though I have tried that approach any number of times and it always falls apart. I am human. I don’t always follow through. But maybe my phone will help me with that? We’ll see. I’m gonna let it all sit there overnight and hope I get inspired.

I have two boxes of Tazo tea bags. I am not a tea drinker and I think they belong to a beach urchin (and have been here for a couple years, thank you COVID). At one point this afternoon I thought maybe I could get rid of them. A familiar looking gray Civic pulled up in front of the Landfill and parked. This was unexpected. And it was a false alarm because I made a quick visit to the Water Closet and when I came out the Civic was gone. [Note that this is NOT a hint!]

Anyway, the GG will be back soon with whatever food (and lettuce) he has picked up in his recent travels. Oh yeah, lettuce. I used to buy lettuce all the time. My go-to Cubelandia lunch was a small Pyrex container with leftovers on the bottom and a bit of salad on top. Somehow that stopped when I became a full-time telecommuter. I like lettuce and lettuce is gooood for you but I guess I took a little break. But I always bought my lettuce from the Goetz Family Farm (or whoever) at the farmers market. I am not a fan of grocery store lettuce. I like leaf lettuce but even at the upscale stores it seems to wilt just about immediately.

Note to those who also buy grocks around here (aka mostly the GG). Please please please when you go to the grocery store, don’t ask me what I need (usually not much). Instead tell me what’s on YOUR LIST and I’ll tell you if we ALREADY HAVE IT OR NOT.

I am really glad we snagged Cygnus back in May because apparently new vee-hickles are now hard to come by. I had been lolly-gagging a bit last winter and I’m not sure what made me “pull the trigger” to buy Cygnus. It’s typical for us to decide we want to buy a car, order one, and not really care when it arrives. I certainly didn’t predict a car shortage and fortunately we were able to get what we wanted in quick order.

On the other hand? Pumpkin spice flavors are everywhere again. No supply issues there. Note that I get this info mostly from bloggers and random advertisements. I am not hanging out at Starbucks or wherever.

Once, how many years ago was that? My then co-worker Louie-Louii brought all of us “girls” at work pumpkin lattes (or whatever). Surprisingly I actually liked it. I haven’t pursued another one since but that’s mostly because I don’t often patronize coffee shops. I mean I did used to go to Barry Bagels and you can get flavored coffee there but my order was always medium black coffee. And I don’t go there any more (because COVID) although typing this gave me a mini-crave for a tuna bagel. I can get curbside pickup at Barry’s but I am gonna reset the Landfill Chitchen this weekend so I don’t need any extra food.

Anyway, I liked the pumpkin latte but I was less enthused by pumpkin Triscuits. Plain please? And pumpkin Cheerios? NOOOOOOO! I don’t buy dry cereal any more (except for when I make Chex Mix). If I did, I would buy the PLAIN Cheerios I have loved since I was three or so. I used to carry a small stash around in a little green vinyl(?) purse, one of the childhood artifacts I wish I still had.

I’m not an expert on supply chains. I just know that in the beginning of all this I was thinking we’d be living on beans and rice. Well, not. Steak, Copper River salmon (in season), and all kinds of fresh veggies (in season and in this northern climate that season is extended by folks who grow things in hoop houses). Again, not to mention all of the workers at every link of the supply chain who have been risking their lives throughout to deliver this stuff to where I can buy it. Or pick it up or get it delivered.

Yeah, a stream of consciousness for tonight. My [late] brother The Engineer used to love when I did this. Man that was so long ago. He Guest Blahgged a couple times. I’ll have to dredge those up some day. I think he would’ve loved Cygnus 🧡

Love y’all, KW

It was windy enough yesterday that I became a weeeee bit worried about trees falling. We’ve had two trees fall on our house since we’ve lived here and there are frequent incidents in the woods although that is far enough behind us that they don’t usually affect us. Except for the time lightning exploded and splintered a tree, which sent shrapnel around a couple block radius.

Branches were hitting the roof yesterday and I did hear something come down and hit, I dunno, the roof or Cygnus’s roof before it continued to the driveway. I took a look and Cygnus looked okay (whew!). This morning I went out and there was a branch down in front. It’s not a very big branch, small enough that I could easily drag it off the public sidewalk.

Then I took a River Ride to see if there was any flooding. And there was but it was nothing spectacular, just the usual stuff where some of the benches and pick-a-nick tables at Delhi Metro were partially under water.

I did not check the basement. I didn’t need to check the basement. The only time the Landfill Dungeon has flooded because of a storm was when Hurricane Ike raked a finger up through here. And that wasn’t what I would call an actual flood. The crappy carpet was damp. There was a period of time where the basement wall was cracked and water was seeping in through that but we hired Terra Firma and they fixed that up but good.

There’s a part of me that almost wishes for a bit of a basement flood because it might hasten the Landfill Flinging Prodject if things (that we are NOT USING and no one else wants) get ruined. But I know better than to wish for something like that.

Chilly today so I wore a turtleneck and tights and covered my legs with a blanket. A beach urchin encouraged me to turn the furnace on. I was not ready to do that. I resist turning on the furnace until at least October and I really wasn’t uncomfortable, especially after our hot summer. Soon enough we’ll have to run the furnace. For today I could still hear crickets.

Okay, just heard on the radio that the two main age groups with confirmed COVID cases in our county are those from 5-11 and 18-22. Well. As for the 5-11 group, what were they thinking opening the schools when kids that age can’t (yet) get vaxxed. 18-22? I dunno. I *think* colleges are mostly? maybe? requiring a vax. But not sure and not all people in that age group are *in* college. And hey, I’ve been that age. I was invincible! Weren’t you? If you are in the 18-22 age group, get the goddamn vax already. Disclaimer: I doubt I have ANY 18-22-year-old readers. The few who once read it when they were in that age group are now 30-somethings and they are absolutely VAXXED🐽

First day of fall came in like a lion. Heavy rain most of the night continuing into morning. I don’t keep track of my mouse’s work schedule so I didn’t know if she worked early or not today but I was thinking of her this morning, driving there in the dark in heavy rain. As it turns out, she was at work and I encountered her there during a quick early trip for grocks.

Because the GG is outta town, I am even less interested in menu planning than usual (this is pandemic related (I think)). So I was buying prepared food. A serving of turkey lasagne, a serving of turkey meatloaf, chicken salad, potato salad, and let’s not talk about the Great Lakes cherry potato chips. Here is Great Lakes online and they have a lot of flavors if cherry doesn’t float your boat (and it doesn’t float everyone’s boat). Lizard Breath ordered us a variety pack of these chips early on in the pandemic and I ordered more but they are available in Michigan stores so now I buy them there.

The gal I ordered some of my prepared food from at Plum this morning misheard part of my order, was very embarrassed about it, and thanked me for being so “nice”. Of COURSE I was NICE and I hope I reassured her that it was OKAY! It was a MINOR miscommunication and anyone who might have been angered by it needs to get a life. I’m beating a dead horse here but anyone who has been working in a likely low-wage service job throughout a pandemic deserves the utmost respect. I regularly count my lucky stars that I’ve had a cozy telecommuting job throughout. I was too terrified to even go in to stores until a couple MONTHS after I was vaxxed. I applaud all who have WORKED in service jobs. Many of them have probably had COVID. Some early enough that tests were not available. So glad for those who recovered and devastated for those who did not.

It has been scary to be a mom to an essential worker. And it’s not over yet. Please get vaxxed and mask up. For me and my relatives and friends if not for yourself.

I figured out my dishwasher did NOT run Monday night when the power went out despite the missing detergent pod. It ran like a charm last night.

And so we head on into the dark side of the year. I guess I’ll pontificate about that some other day. It isn’t all bad 🐸.

P.S. That sunset is from a couple weeks ago.

So I had a “date” to meet up with Amazon Woman at the Fedex shop on State Street so we could send my broken laptop off to the Mother Ship.

Okay State Street… How do I get there from here? This was REALLY ridiculous because I have been driving over to State Street for umpteen bazillion years. In the Jurassic Age I was at Briarwood Mall constantly and later on spent a lot of time at Cost Plus World Warehouse. Not to mention the Honda dealer is over there. I stopped most in-person shopping for everything but grocks waaaaay pre-pandemic when I turned into a big-time flinger. And we don’t currently own a Honda.

I did google where it was on State Street (just north of Cost Plus and kind of across from the Honda dealer) and it’s okay, I got over there without a problem, met Amazon Woman in the parking lot, and she shooed me off to deal with the business of mailing a Fedex box herself. I have the best boss!

When I got home, I was just about to email Robert, my super-duper tech person to let him know I had FINALLY sent my laptop. Before I could do that, there was an incoming call on Teams FROM Robert wondering if I had fallen of the face of the planet. I said “Hey, I was just gonna email you. I just walked in the door after dropping it off at Fedex.”

In other news, I was hanging out at The Landfill last night with all my LED lights on when someone came to the door!!! Who could it be. It was my new next door neighbor. “Is your power out?” Well. I didn’t notice that it was although I had tried to start the dishwasher and it gave me an error code. Suddenly I had the brilliant idea to check the INCANDESCENT lights. Brownout. All roight. He had made a report to DTE and I made my own. Shortly after that, ALL the lights went out.

We had heavy rain yesterday but no lucky-shuckial storms or high winds (that I could remember) so I wasn’t sure what happened. A facebook friend reported that a tree had fallen on to some waaaaars. That didn’t sound like a major event so I went to bed and when I woke up to visit the Water Closet at four or so, the lights were back on, including the annoying lamp by the GG’s side of the bed, which seems to have a mind of its own.

Now the question is, did the dishwasher run or not? This morning, the soap pod dispenser was empty and the dishes seemed clean. So maybe it started up in the middle of the night when the power came on?

That’s Java in the background. She’s my next door neighbors’ dog. She ambled into my yard this afternoon, peed on a bush and ambled back out. This dog is one of the few dogs I will share my 0-skunk-30 woods walk with. The others are Gretchen and Ano but I haven’t seen either of those in a looooong time. I’m guessing Gretchen MIGHT still be around (alive and living in the neighborhood) and I’m just not in the woods when she is. I sorta think Ano and their owner moved a while back.

Java is leashed when it seems PC to leash her. Her owners are impeccable about that. She is also perfectly capable of minding her own business without a leash if no other people (or dogs) are around. I don’t count as “other people” because her owners know I don’t care if she’s leashed or not. Or that she pees on bushes in my yard. I have never told them this. It’s a tacit understanding.

My brother’s dog Ernie would mind his owners and also meeeee without a leash. Up to a point. Once I was walking Ernie and Alfred down the beach to Doelles and I had taken off their leashes because nobody was ever down there. Roight? Not roight. That day, a couple of runners came out on to the beach from the *goddamn* new road down there. Alfred (who was uncontrollable without a leash) took off like a shot and Ernie followed him. I ran after them shouting apologies. No one was harmed and the runners graciously accepted my apologies. Alas. When I was a kid (and even a younger adult), you could walk down to that end of the beach with an un-tethered dog and no one would come flying outta the swamp at the end of the beach. Sigh.

Java knows me and pre-COVID I would pet her when I ran into her and her owner on my way back from my walk. Even vaxxed, we don’t get that close now. Hello breakthrough cases and f*ck anti-vaxxers!!! Java has some gray around her muzzle now so she is not a young dog but even when she and her owners moved here, she was a very calm dog. My childhood dog Tigger could be nutso as a young dog but she settled down as an older dog to where she would calmly walk to meet beach walkers with her tail wagging. Will you pet me please?

I notice I am struggling a bit with pronouns in this post. I myself am pretty firmly a cisgender she/her. My dog Tigger was born female and was spayed but we always used she/her pronouns. I *think* Java is she/her but not sure. Gretchen probably is. I dunno what Ano is so I used them/their. My brother’s dogs were all definitely he/him although they were neutered. We tried to call Tigger “it” for a while but it never worked for me. She was a she/her to me.

If you have read the last paragraph and think I am nutso, honestly I am just trying to wrap my brain around a new set of vocabulary words. It actually helps me when I write for my job. Writing they or them is much easier than writing “the user” everywhere. Jeebus.

This is our main camping rig these days, Mooon Yooonit (Toyota RAV4) and the Lyme Lounge (Scamp Trailer). Cygnus (Subie Crosstrek) can also pull trailers but it isn’t advisable for her to pull the Lyme Lounge, at least not very far. She can do the Trash Trailer (I think) if it doesn’t have a bunch of cement or something in it and she can pull lightweight bote trailers. But she isn’t our main towing vee-hickle and that’s okay with me because she’s “my” car and I don’t really like to pull trailers although I have done it successfully and comfortably on a few occasions.

For a while back in the 90s, we were in the habit of making short traveling trips (to our family cabins in the yooperland and northern lower) with The Indefatigable pulling the Trash Trailer. It was kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies, especially the time the Trash Trailer had a flat taaaar on the I75 SUV Speedway. The Indefatigable was our Jeep Wrangler, which we bought new in 1992 and owned for 17 years. The GG taught the beach urchins (and their cousins and some friends) how to drive in that vee-hickle, beginning when they were nine or 10 years old, on the long abandoned Raco air base runways and adjacent 2-track forest roads up in the yooperland. The beach urchins still prefer to drive stick and both own manual cars now. I love stick but although I could have opted for a manual version of Cygnus (🐭 has one), there were other options I wanted that didn’t come with stick so I sucked it up and for the first time in many years, we do not own a manual tranny.

The jeep photooo was taken when Lizard Breath was home from SanFran for xmas sometime after she graduated from college. Note the rust. You could also see through the floor in some places. She lives in Detroit now so those snow-driving skills come in handy. SanFran requires a whole different set of driving skills…

The Indefatigable was a great towing vee-hickle and often towed the Little Princess trailer of Uncle Fester Club fame. I’m not sure who actually owned the princess. The Uncly Uncle originally bought it but we used it a lot and may eventually have had some kind of vested interest in it. It didn’t really matter. The moominbeach grandparents greatly appreciated the trailer because the GG would regularly host Uncle Fester Club parties, packing any cousins in who were around. Those parties featured Jiffy Pop and once The Marquis tried to tell a scary story but he got halfway through the first sentence and when the kids heard him say “The Cylinder”, everybody screamed and chaos ensued. At any rate, the grandparents (and some of us mooms 🐽) all appreciated the Little Princess because it provided them with a peaceful evening. Once MDUH told me if we ever had a problem with the princess to please let him know and he would help if he could🧡

The Cylinder? The Cylinder? Say what? My dear late little brother The Engineer used to swear up and down that there was an old oil tank at the bottom of the lake somewhere out in front of Doelle’s. I have never seen this artifact but I have to admit when I am kayaking in that area I DO NOT LOOK DOWN!

Actually if you recognize that sun-face, you might know it’s Bell’s Oberon beer. For a while when the beach urchins were 20-somethings Oberon was our utility beer, at least in the summer. With a slice of orange, if you please. As Chief Cook and Bottle Washer at the moomin in those days, I spent a lot of time fishing orange slices out of beer bottles🐽 I DO wash returnable cans and bottles before I return them and if you’ve ever been in a Meijer bottle return room, you will know why. At some point, our utility beer switched to Bell’s Two Hearted and nobody puts orange slices in that.

Nowadays Bell’s is selling Oberon in a special North Country Trail themed mini-keg so you know we are buying it again, at least in mini-keg form. Apparently the Bell’s owner is an NCT fan and supporter so this is a collector’s item for us and the Uncly Uncle has already made us a lamp out of one. It’s in the Lyme Lounge. Collector’s item up to a point, I mean. They ARE returnable for 10 cents and I’m not gonna fill up The Landfill with them. This pic doesn’t show the whole trail, which consists of 4700 miles through eight states from North Dakota to Vermont but I did get all of what goes through the yooperland and most of the Great Lake State’s lower peninsula.

All roighty. Saturday back on the Planet Ann Arbor so I schlepped down to the farmers market in time to get there when it opened at seven. Home for just a bit, then hit up the Plum for things I can’t get at the market. Like lemons, which don’t grow in the Great Lake State. I spotted an orange Crosstrek at the market and I almost sent a text but it didn’t look quiiiiite like Oriole. And it wasn’t, because Oriole was in the Plum parking lot when I got over there.

I snuck up on my mouse (she was talking to a co-worker) and ANOTHER co-worker asked me if I was finding everything all right. I winked and pointed at my mouse and the FIRST co-worker took one look at me and said, “MOM!” It was hilarious, at least in a minor way and I’ll take what I can get in these difficult times. And so I got a careful masked hug. When I left town in late July, a lot of people at Plum were not masking but I think most everyone is now. My mouse never stopped masking and was double-masked today, one of them a KN95. Breakthrough infections are real and I don’t want one. Be careful please! You anti-vax yay-hoos, just get the microchip already. Please. Unless there’s a REALLY good reason not to and that reason is not “I read something scary on facebook.”

Oh man, the GG is leaving on a yooperland boondoggle tomorrow and I just caught him putting stuffed aminals in a bag. I peered at him and asked, “Did you pack Softy Beanbag?” Yes. It’s okay, I have Froggy and Green Guy. Yes we are a little nutso. Baggy old bags “fighting” over our children’s stuffed aminals. And Green Guy is my *older* cousin Grinch’s stuffty who lives with me now. We take him up to visit his real owner in the summer but trust me, Green Guy is safer here and he and Froggy are great friends. The things we do for love 🧡🧡🧡

A few more photos to explain the craziness of yesterday’s pic. In the first, I am kayaking directly toward the beach pointing at the location of the red bench (this was a few years before the bench was installed). The beach is around 3/4 mile long and the bench is a bit west of the midpoint.

Here’s Radical Betty walking back from the east end of the beach with GLOVES in JULY. It was a persistently chilly summer and her comment was a disgusted, “We just get a little BOX of summer!”

Next are the beach urchins hauling a piece of driftwood home.

And finally, an aerial view. This is from the Sherman Archives with Pete taking the pic while my dad drove the plane. The beach is that long straight strip of sand toward the top looking out to the island.

All that said, I have had what I call Shoreline Dreams my entire life. In them, our beach and the surrounding area morphs into all kinds of fantastical geography: islands and canals where there are none and that pic is well within the realm of things my subconscious is capable of conjuring up.

P.S. I called yesterday’s pic a pano but I’m not totally sure that’s what it is🐽

A beach urchin posted this photo on instagram a while back with the caption Matriarchy. It’s my cousins npJane and UKW and meeeee. We are not really matriarchs. When we were kids, our grandma Margaret was the beach matriarch, at least for the FinFam. Our friends the McNott’s had their own matriarch.

The next generation, The Commander, Radical Betty, The White Tornado, and Bubs took over the family matriarchical duties. I would add that The Comm and Radical went beyond beach duties. They were Forces of Nature in various organizations around town, for one thing helping found a program of “elder’s” classes at the local university.

Make no mistake. The males of that generation were highly successful, talented people in their own right. (And are, as MDUH is still alive and thriving.) One of the things our fathers did not do was stand in the way of our mothers’ choices to have careers (if they wanted them) and do pretty much what they wanted to do in general. And why not? They all made positive contributions to society, gainfully employed or not.

So us three in the pic are not matriarchs (I’m not sure I’m ready to be one 🐽). I do know that the beach urchins hold npJane and UKW in particularly high regard. Liz has had a special relationship with np since she was an infant and UKW is just an all around superwoman, not unlike her mother (Radical).

It’s a pretty sweet pic (there’s that word again) in general, actual matriarchs or not. And I LOVE the crazy looking pano.

<dog-rant>Look ma, no fence.

This is the woods behind my house. It’s between my yard (and other neighbors’ yards) and the schoolyard. It was this woods that sold me the Landfill. I couldn’t believe we could actually afford a HOUSE on the Planet Ann Arbor with a WOODS behind it. The house is okay too, comfortable but nothing fancy (except for my gutted/remodeled kitchen🐽).

This being the Planet Ann Arbor certain things create a lot of drama. Like dogs. There is a leash law. I don’t think it gets enforced a lot. There are dogs with all kinds of personalities and other issues. There are responsible dog owners. Others are not so much. And there is DOG POOP.

Years ago when my children were still young, I walked by the woods one day and the gate was PADLOCKED! Whyyyyy? My kids were out of elementary school but I knew Kathy and Jacqui on the PTO. So I emailed them. Whaaa? The answer from the principal was “there’s a lot of science in those woods”. She went on to say there was too much dog poop in there for the kids to spend time in there. Doing science, I guess.

Well… I racked (I looked up the spelling) my brain trying to remember the last time I had seen a classroom-sized bunch of kids in the woods. I also walk in the woods nearly every day and I do not see dog poop, at least not on the path. And the kids should stay on the path because poison ivy and other stuff. My PTO friends talked to the principal and the gates were unlocked.

I had recently retaaaared from a few years as the PTO treasurer. There was a TON of money in those days and I couldn’t encourage people to spend it. I couldn’t help but think (facetiously) that the PTO could buy rubber boots for all the students (who didn’t actually “do science” in the woods) and hose their boots off before they came back into the school. Whatever.

This morning. I went for my 0-skunk-30 here on the planet for the first time in something like six weeks. Where’s the fence? To be clear, they only removed a half of one side of fencing. The other 3-1/2 remain intact. The answer came from an old Haisley Mafia member who knows a current PTO person on his street. Again, it is a Dog Problem. Over the years dog owners have learned that if they shut the gate, they can let their dog run untethered. There is dog poop (except I STILL never see any on the path). And the fence is compromised in some places so small dogs can get out and onto the playground, which is probably not good if there are little kids on the playground. So there is no longer an enclosed space for people to let their dogs run.

I have changed my own behavior regarding entering the woods over the years. I no longer go in there if the gate is closed unless I can see that the dog in there is Java, who has to be the calmest, best behaved dog on earth. I also close the gate behind me when I do go in there so others think there is a dangerous dog in there. I don’t have any guest dogs to walk any more but I never picked up Ernie’s and Alfred’s (my late brother’s dogs) or Bandit’s (Chloe Belle’s dog) poop in there. I would NEVER neglect that responsibility now but carrying a poop bag around is one of the more trivial reasons I am not a dog owner.

The answer to all of this is that people who own dogs need to be responsible. Dogs need to be leashed if out in public. Some people are terrified of dogs. Some of those have had horrifying experiences with them. I did not have that kind of experience but I was terrified of dogs until I was five and we adopted Tigger. She cured me of that overnight.

I am not convinced that dog poop in the woods is that much of a problem but maybe there’s some “science” that I am not familiar with. Or maybe I don’t see a lot of dog poop in there because most owners are picking it up?</dog-rant>

We’ll talk about bicycles some other day. Or not 😉

I left the Planet Ann Arbor on July 31. I arrived at the moomin on August 1 after a night at Hoton Lake. I finally returned to the planet today. This is the longest time I’ve been away from the planet since I moved here back in the Jurassic Age.

We left the moomin this morning during the tail end of a HUGE thunderstorm. Apparently there was a gigantic seiche too but I didn’t go down to look at it because lightning. For a couple of miles on the yooperland stretch of the I75 SUV Speedway, it was raining so hard that Cygnus informed me that her Eyesight wasn’t working. It couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t see much but I could see Mooon Yooonit ahead of me and the lane markers on the freeway. I don’t really use Eyesight and I just hunkered down. Thankfully, the GG slowed down a bit during that episode…

There were big storms below the Big Mac during this period of time and for HOURS, Cygnus (via satty-lite radio) was shooting severe thunderstorm warnings at me. There is now a little smudge on my car touch screen from me canceling the warning umpteen bazillion times. We missed the big storms and the weather improved and eventually the warnings stopped. The traffic? BEAUTIFUL! Yeah, there were probably a FEW big frickin’ pickup trucks going 85 but nowhere near as many as on a southbound Sunday. It was almost always easy for me to jump out and pass slower traffic if I needed to.

So I am home again and it is hot and the only things I have seriously unpacked are perishable food items. I’m gonna take my time with the pantry stuff. I still have a bit of a pandemic stash going. I do not know how to minimize the huge numbers of things we schlep back and forth at the beginning and end of the summer. And I even worked on thinning it out over the weekend. So, I have put the perishables away and that will have to do for now.

The GG and I went our separate ways just north of Flint. I continued on down to the planet and he headed over to help FlaMan clean up his apartment. Don’t ask 🐽 I gave the GG a call about 10 miles north of Flint to check in about whether he was still planning to stop there. It is soooo cool to be able to phone each other when we are tandem driving. Some of the new vee-hickle technology drives me crazy (hello, out-of-lane warning) but plugging your phone into your car and calling via the touchscreen is much easier, not to mention SAFER than trying to call from an iPhone in your lap or wherever.

DISCLAIMER: I am not in the 1%.

I meet with Amazon Woman every Monday afternoon. The purpose of the meeting is to keep each other caught up on what I’m supposed to be doing but there’s a certain amount of general chit chat. There was more of that than usual today because when she began with the polite question “How are you?”, I replied that I was fine except for a few first world 1% problems (she knows I’m not in the 1%). We spent a good amount of time talking (and laughing) about our first world problems. And then we segued in to where the moomin is and she was looking it up on GooMaps and said, “I can’t see any buildings”. No. No you can’t. They are hidden by trees from above and it’s a private road so no Streetview. She did see our beautiful beach on GooMaps.

But First World Problems… UKW left this morning. She made me coffee and breakfast, then I went off to work while she embarked on making the Old Cabin cleaner than it was when she arrived, packing, and taking a last swim. She got off in the late morning and I felt more emotional about her departure than I let on. We have known each other our whole lives and although we are different in many ways there are certain thought processes we seem to share. I didn’t fully discover that until we were well into adulthood with adult children.

It was a fast two weeks and at one point I had to cancel my weekly facetime coffee klatch because people were piling up here at the moominbeach and life was moving at a dizzying speed for a while.

Although UKW is always welcome at the actual moomincabin, I had the brilliant idea that since the Old Cabin would be empty, she might enjoy having a separate space. Also it was the cabin our grandparents built 100 years ago and our families shared it in our early childhood. Many good memories permeate the place for all of us.

Even though UKW is as much a part of this place as I am, I was occasionally nervous that I wasn’t spending enough time “entertaining” her as I was working most weekdays. I finally came to the realization that both of us are happy with a lot of alone time and that was okay. We did do some things together and convened most evenings for Community Dinner. Other nights we ate separately to try to deal with leftovers, etc. On those nights, one of us would approach the other a bit tentatively and the other would say, “I was thinking that too.”

Miss my cuz. That is all.

P.S. I was trying to take pics of the sunset through the trees last night. They weren’t turning out well. Then I looked at my photo library this afternoon and found THIS! Accidental photos can be soooo much fun.

This is certainly not the best photoooo anyone has ever taken from the Spectacle Lake overlook. In fact I bet *I* have even taken better pics.

Even if you were born and raised in the eastern yooperland, there are certain things you revisit pretty much annually if not more often, Iroquois Lighthouse and the Spectacle Lake overlook being a couple of them. In recent years the Dancing Crane Coffeehouse is also in the area. It is a top-notch place and it’s open but I believe since COVID, they run a drive-thru only operation. The owner (I follow the DCC on facebook) is more concerned about COVID than a lot of folks. Actually I believe the tribe in general has acted very responsibly. These are GOOD THINGS! @RemoveRon DeathSantis, take a note.

From the overlook we can see Round Island, which is in front of the moominbeach, the Pickle Finger, the Birch Point range light, and other landmarks. Yesterday, due to the overcast conditions, they were a little harder to pick out, at least with the naked eye, which is what we were using. Ever since I put the Marine Traffic app on my phone, I don’t tend to tether myself to binoculars.

It isn’t technically very cold out today but there’s a pretty darn good nor’wester hitting our shores. As long as you are moving you are okay with maybe a polartech vest or jacket but later in the afternoon when I wanted to read on the deck, I found myself digging into my Extra Clothes Bag in Cygnus for my smartwool leggings.

Boring as it is, that’s about all I have today. Tonight is our last Community Dinner and tomorrow is our last day. So packing up and putting stuff away to get ready to migrate back down south.

Sweet isn’t a word I usually use unless I’m talking about something with sugar in it but today was a sweet day. The GG took off for a group hike at Tahq and me and my cuzz had the day to ourselves. A little work, a little play, lots of together time with some breaks in between.

We did a run to town to drop recycling and get a FEW grocks. After weeks of saying I needed to have a “Come to Jesus” meeting with the moomin refrigerator, I FINALLY DID!!! Got rid of a lot of dregs of things that I don’t want to schlep back to the Planet Ann Arbor and that added to the recycling stash, which started out the morning with ONE THING. We took back a bunch of returnables too and the Meijer uScan DOES INDEED accept returnable receipts. We were (that is, UKW was) RUTHLESS with the cans Meijer wouldn’t accept and THREW THEM OUT! I do NOT need to be traveling with those things rattling around in Cygnus and she doesn’t need them in her Subie either. On the other hand, all of my grocery bags were in Cygnus so I ended up with a couple more damn plastic bags, which I do NOT need! Can’t win…

We took a breather back at the moominbeach. I finished CLEANING the refrigerator and putting what’s left back in and I dunno what she did at the Old Cabin but probably similar stuff. Then we got back into her Subie and hauled two big Green Bags up to the res trash compactor.

Then… We drove through the res and up the shore. We hit the beach at Iroquois Lighthouse where UKW rockhounded for a bit. Me? We have enough rocks here 🐽 but I was happy to hang out and take pics. (Click and click again to embiggen enough to see the salty.) We continued on up the Whitefish Bay coast, then took the sharp turn onto Tower road and headed up and along the escarpment. The back way to the Spectacle Lake overlook and I wish I had taken a pic of driving along Tower Road, a beautiful tunnel of trees branching across a dirt/gravel road.

Up on the Spectacle Lake overlook, we spied Monocle Lake to the left. So we drove over there to explore a bit. My second high school boyfriend’s family had a cabin on that lake and I was curious in general. We didn’t look for old BF’s place, just drove in to the picnic area and through the GORGEOUS campground. I think there’s a separate entrance into the area where people have private property.

By the end of that it was getting to be time to get back to the moominbeach where we took another short break to do our own thing, then we reconvened for a glass of whine on the Old Cabin front porch. We’ll reconvene soon for Community Dinner.

Not a very exciting pic but I wanted to share a bit of my up north laundromat experience. I schlep my laundry inside, stuff it into however many triple load washing musheens I need, then I sit on one of these benches making my internet rounds and doing the xword and the bee.

This morning I sat on one of these benches for the fifth (I think) and last time this summer. For the first time, there was a bit of chill in the air when I first sat down. As Mr. Golden Sun got higher in the sky, that disappeared. I had a bunch of beach towels from the last round of guests so I did indeed use two triple loaders. We aren’t leaving for another few days and I’ll have laundry to take down to The Planet Ann Arbor but I wanted to get all those big towels washed and put away before I left. The beach urchins always offer to take laundry and sometimes I allow them to but really I am a Washerwoman and enjoy my solo trips to the laundromat.

I don’t have much else to say. UKW enjoyed a beautiful Beach Day, paddleboarding and riding with the GG over to Porterland in the Motor Bote. It was a Work Day for me and not the most exciting one but even though I wasn’t on the beach much until the end of the day, I was still HERE in this beautiful place. But fall is in the air and after my unplanned long stay here, I will have to transition away soon. A propane stove will not keep Old Man Winter out of a cabin on Gitchee Gumee with no insulation. And although I would love to make some improvements to this place (nod to hostile lurkers), I will NEVER agree to tear it down and replace it with a McMansion.

2020s that is. I am not wearing a flapper costume. Not anything close.

So I did pay the moomin proptaxes today. What happened is, like I said yesterday, our VERY friendly and with-it township treasurer and I were emailing. When I offered to drive a check over, she said, “I’ll be at work at the credit union in Brimley all day tomorrow so you can bring it over here.”

Okay. So I didn’t need an envelope. But I did need a pen. With ink in it. Could I find a working pen around here? No I could not. There are about a gazillion pencils. I made sure I had all the info I needed to write the check on my phone and headed out to Cygnus, planning to write the check at the bank. At the last minute I had the BRILLIANT idea to look in the glove box. Bingo. There was a nice new[ish] BIC pen and it worked. So my taxes are paid.

But is this what we’ve come to? I mean with office supplies. Once upon a time, I used to love to browse the aisles at Staples. Now I can’t find basic supplies like pens or envelopes in my house. Actually I have some of this stuff at my house, just not at the moomin.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I posted on the bird list today. They were talking about hummingbirds and how long they seem to be hanging around this year. I am a strictly casual bird watcher and have no clue about the migratory habits of any of them including hummingbirds. But I felt compelled to post where I was and that hummingbirds were still visiting my now-dying impatiens and that we don’t put feeders out because bears.

The pic? That’s Bucky Beaver’s work back there.

G’night, KW

Oh yeah. Just the usual. The “floater” laptop has everything I need except for two apps. One I was able to download today but the latest version is so different than what I had that I am on a steep learning curve. But it did what I wanted it to do today. The other is a purchase and I’d rather wait until I know the fate of my Real Laptop to initiate that for the floater. But I’ve been beating up on computers since mainframes (and the Apple II+). I don’t know it all but…

I finally did get a call on my support ticket this afternoon. I was in the middle of a meeting and it was an unrecognizable number so it was a good thing I was occupied or I’d’ve prob’ly blocked it. But. After I got outta my meeting, there was an email from support and in it was the info that somebody left me a voice mail. And yes, there was a voice mail. He said [in a polite way] he was done for the day and so was I so I’ll call him in the morning.

And then there was the property tax confuddlement. DISCLAIMER: If there are any hostile lurkers out there (you know who you are), unclutch yer pearls and don’t getchyer panties in a bunch. I know when the taxes are due (next week). The problem is that the tax bill is down on the Planet Ann Arbor and I am here. Why? Because I fully expected to get back down to the Planet in August to mail the tax bill. I did not. I asked the GG to bring it up here. He told me it was already packed. It was not. He did happen to have a check. I thought I packed some checks but. I did not. I can’t pay these taxes online but I WILL GET THEM PAID. ON TIME!

Once. In my adult life. I lost track of what date we were on and mailed the Planet Ann Arbor taxes a day late. One percent late fee (I think). I blame my parents. The Planet taxes are due July 31. My parents were married either on July 31 or August 1 and there has always been family confusion surrounding those dates. I *think* what happened was that The Comm was supposed to arrive out in the southwest in time for a July 31 wedding but the train was usurped (in favor of service personnel) or whatever so she didn’t quiiiite get out there in time. Her dad missed the wedding but I think her brother Austin was there. He may have been stationed not too far away though.

Update on the proptax thing. The treasurer returned my email with an image of the tax bill and it’s not due until the 14th, which matched my expectations. So there’s time to mail it if I could just find an envelope around here… 🐽🐽🐽

Those streaky looking things? Those are not the latest insect hatch. Those are raindrops. BIG ONES!

It was a stormy day here in the Great Lake State. My NPR sub-station up here is attached to WCMU down in the middle of the lower peninsula and I was getting weather alerts for the lower every 20 minutes or so ALL DAY LONG. Severe thunderstorms, ping pong sized hail, tornado warnings, you name it. We had quite a bit of rain here in the yooperland but this is the best storm Ma Natchur threw at us. Thunder, lightning, a little wind, and these huge rain drops. That was about it. It was still beautiful and we watched it from the Old Cabin front porch.

Other than that, UKW did garbage dropoff and I did recycle dropoff and I think we both hit up grock stores but not for anything major. We are all trying to finesse the balance between eating well while we are here and having to deal with a bunch of leftover grocks when we leave, which will be more or less for the year. I don’t leave ANY food, perishable or not, in the moomincabin over the winter.

Other than that, after a rough start getting onto the internet, I was able to return to teleBeachLandia in a productive way today, the GG spent the day in the garatchkey building a bench, and UKW split wood with two left-handed gloves and cooked dinner for our group among other things.

G’night, KW