I was sitting on the back steps of the Old Cabin with Uber Kayak Woman. We were about 10 and we were plotting and planning our adventures for the day. Radical Betty was inside cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast when she exploded! She was fighting with a garbage can. It was a little white tin cylindrical [dun dun dun] can with a foot pedal to open up the lid and apparently there wasn’t enough room in it for whatever RB wanted to put in it. Our initial terrification quickly dissolved into gales of laughter. Lemme see. She had said the “G” word. And the “D” word! And what the *heck* was a “doodly-squat?

Yesterday, I was sitting on the Green Couch watching all the dogs go by when Reee-cycle Ann Arbor came along (on a Sunday, go figger) and dropped this off (the leaf collection bin, not the vee-hickle, that’s just a gratuitous shot of my cute little Ninja):

What do you think the first thing that came into my mind was? Well, of course, it was, “that goddamn little doodly-squat won’t hold anything!” Because it won’t. That sniggly little plastic dumpster is what the benevolent despots that rule the Planet Ann Arbor think will hold the leaves that we will eventually have to rake out of our yard this fall. A leaf mountain like this (and that’s a gratuitous shot of the driver’s side mirror on our beloved old Dogha):

Hahahahahahaha! Ya know what? Ain’t no way that GDL doodly-squat is gonna hold our leaves. We used to just rake our leaves into the street and the planet would deploy a small army of these cute little vee-hickles plus some dump trucks to haul it all away to some uber-compost center somewhere:

No more. Now we get these cute little doodly-squats to put our leaves in. I think one of these might work somewhere on earth. The Sahara Desert, maybe? [Do they have fall there?] I do not think it is going to work in my neighborhood. If you look carefully at these photoooos, you will see TREES! Lots of trees. Big trees with lots of leaves. I know that the planet is trying to reduce costs and I know that the current leaf removal system is not particularly efficient (and that would be a whole ‘nother rant). But. Seriously. I will leave you with one more photooo. A gratuitous shot of my loverrrrrly old Island Teal POC parked in a bunch of leaves. How do ya like that loverrrrrly parallel parking job? That was accomplished by none other than yer favo-rite blahgger! And over on the right you can just barely see the tail end of the Indefatigable.

G’night, KW

It was a rather sleepy, slodgy day for me, here at the Landfill on the Planet Ann Arbor. Until about 5:00 PM when the GG* called me to tell me that our beloved Dogha had been towed. He and the UU went down to see a Lions game in the beeyootiful city of DayTwa today and I’m gonna let him guest blahg here tonight to tell his story. So here he is.

The Lions Win!!! I lose.

We parked near the intersection of Winder St. and I-75 Frontage Rd immediately North of Lions stadium. It is a short walk to the other side of the Fisher freeway to get to the stadium. We have been legally parking at this location for many years. Hundreds of vehicle owners have been parking in this location for many years – we even recognize some of the faces.

Note: I did not pay the street bum who wanted to collect a parking fee for parking on a public street.

Over 100 cars were absolutely, 100%, legally parked on Winder and I-75 Frontage. Hundreds were parked on nearby streets. There were no signs, warning or other information that would suggest that there was any problem legally parking on these very wide streets.

We had a great time at the game and the Lions absolutely murdered the Rams with a 44-6 win. When was the last time they looked good?

What a great weekend. Blue skies and an Indian summer. State beat Michigan in an excellent game in Ann Arbor.

We exited Lion stadium, walked across the freeway, and found an empty street – empty except for a line of taxis and their drivers waiting to inform folks that their cars were towed to the West side of Detroit.

Okayyyyy. We gathered other towing victims and shared the cost of a long slow taxi ride to Boulevard & Trumble Towing.

When we got to the towing office, there was a stuffy hot box of an office loaded with line other towing victims waiting for processing with a v e r y s l o w woman on the other side of bullet proof glass to process our claims for our “stolen” vehicles.

When you finally get your turn at the bullet proof window you have to identify your vehicle. She then tells you that you must show her the registration and proof of insurance. Since those items are in the car, you have to go outside and walk around and across a very large parking lot to retrieve them from you cars.

Then, you get to wait in line all over again.

Next, the very slow woman checks to see if the registration and insurance paperwork are up-to-date. Huh? My paperwork was up to date – if it isn’t they charge an extra $35.00 for not having up to date insurance (I don’t know the cost of old registration or not having the documents).

The taxis cost $5, the towing was $75, and the City of Detroit ticket was $30. The ticket said, “Improper Parking Moving Lane of Traffic”. The street was a very wide dead end street with plenty of room for parking on both sides plus room for two-way traffic.

There were hundreds of victims in this shake-down. I learned that earlier in the day the police arranged for the towing company to come and pick up cars after the streets were full of vehicles.

The cars were legally parked and there was not urgent need for towing on a dead end street.

So.

I betcha feel awfully sorry for me. Wimper. Wimper.

I don’t feel sorry for me. I feel really bad for the stadium worker victims that had their earnings eaten up by this shakedown. We found out that this was a popular parking location for stadium workers. I feel sorry for the folks who borrowed cars or had incomplete documentation and could not provide proper notarized documents that would allow them to recover their stolen cars.

Police corruption and City of Detroit corruption is very healthy. Detroit is a mess.

Will the Detroit Lions influence the City of Detroit to stop this corruption?

Okay. He also sent me a pic of the extremely slow woman who was processing all of this stuff at the towing company. At first I was all “yes, I will post her picture.” But I decided I could not do that. I may be wrong but I think that she is just a tool of the folks that employ her. So. For now, I will not post her photooo.

* The GG, aka @tmotu, aka my long-suffering husband and father of the beach urchins.

Contrary to popular belief, I couldn’t care less who won the blasted feetsball game today. I am one o’ them thar folks who lives here on the Planet Ann Arbor but went to school at Moo-U. Actually, in all truth, when I was a kid, I wanted to go to the illustrious blue university here on the Planet Ann Arbor more than anything. But I didn’t get in. Why? Well, all I will say is that it was not because of my grades or my test scores. My SATs are hanging out somewhere in the Landfill Dungeon but I’m not gonna go dredge ’em up right now. Because I don’t care any more. I did not get in because of my own youthful stupidity in not taking advantage of the opportunities and connections that were handed to me on a silver platter. And that story may (or may not) be told someday. My life, my decision. Don’t ask. After a collegiate odyssey that may only be topped by Sarah Palin’s (she played the flute too, hmmmm), I landed at Moo-U. I did okay there. I did okay everywhere. If I got a B in a class, it was because I didn’t care about the class. If I got a C in a class, it was because the teacher was a putz (yes, I do know what that means). I ran into two of those, one sexual predator (yes*) and another total nincompoop who dared to denigrate the yooperland, my homeland, to my face. In retrospect, maybe I shouldda paid more attention to some of the other schools that filled my mailbox with recruitment crap in high school: Harvard, MIT, or maybe that teensy little private liberal arts college that starts with a K. What is it? Kalamazoo College? Yeah. Great place. Sent two kids there.

Enough of that. College is very important but it mostly doesn’t matter where the heck you go or even what your grades were. What matters in life is showing up on time and being productive instead of facebooking or hanging out at the water cooler talking about last night’s Bonanza episode. I have lived here on the Planet Ann Arbor for many years now and I have come to believe that, although the U of M is a wonderful school, it isn’t really any better than any other school. Moo-U, Kalamazoo College, Harvard, whatever. And, although I respect that people are interested in sports that involve large men throwing balls around, I couldn’t care less about the whole thing myself. Well, the one exception is the fall of 1984, when the Dee-troit Tigers won the World Series and I was cooking the baby now known as Elizardbreath. I was hooked that fall. I do not know what got into me. Some people eat pickles. I watched baseball. The Tigers won the series and then my baby was born and I suppose she’s lucky I didn’t try to name her after Alan Trammell or somebody.

So Green won today. Who the heck cares? We walked downtown to meet up with some longtime friends at a family party. As my friend’s email invite phrased it, “my crazy family and some friends’ll be there.” I’m honored to be one of the friends and the party was fun and downtown was crazy with feetsball fans in general (and yes, that was fun!) and then we walked home and feetsball is over for us until tomorrow when the GG is scheduled to attend a Lions game with his identical twin and I dunno who else.

* And there were more of those later on but I became adept at handling those stupid old farts.

I’m a-draggin’. Draggin’ ass, that is (sorry about the bad word 🙂 ). I was this morning anyway. Not physically. I just didn’t wanna go to work. Why? 1) Yesterday I got to a stopping point on the prodject(s) (intentionally misspelled) that had been consuming me all week. 2) I knew it would take me a while to dredge up my other prodject, dust it off, and get back into the rhythm. 3) IT IS GORGEOUS OUT TODAY!!! INDIAN SUMMER? YES!!! Who the heck wanted to go to work!?! I wanted to go out in the county and hike or kayak or something!

I went to work anyway. I announced, “I’m a dragon!” That long-suffering cat-herding person thought that I said, “I’m a DRAG QUEEN” (!!!) Much hilarity ensued. I know. It doesn’t take much, does it? Anyway, I was slow to get started this morning but I eventually figgered out what the heck I had been working on a couple weeks ago and managed to get back into the rhythm. And then, of course, I could barely get myself to stop at the end of the day! Go figger. Day is done. It’s warm out with not a cloud in the sky and it’s supposed to stay that way until, I dunno, Sunday maybe? I am about to red-queen down to the Old Town Barrooooom to meet the GG (and anyone else who might show up) for cocktails and dinner. It will be nuts downtown because of the barbarian tradition of feetsball. Big Blue is gonna play Big Green tomorrow and it’s happening here on the Planet A-squared so everybody and his brother will be downtown tonight and beer will be flowing down the street and into the storm sewers.

Happy Friday! Have a good weekend! Be careful (especially my kids, wherever the heck they are).

Love,
Dragon Woman

Yeah, this is one of *those* days. Thursdays are often like that and I can’t even blame it on my job because Thursdays were like that when I was an overworked, underpaid theatre guild administrator too. Working from home. Or from the bowels of the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre. Or wherever we were rehearsing. Or Office Max. In a lot of ways, I liked that job. I mean, the pay was terrible but I wasn’t totally looking for money at that time. I had started out as a parent volunteer and a rather reluctant one at that. I was already over-committed with volunteer stuff. PTO treasuries, reading with at-risk kids, playing math games with at-risk kids, girl scouts. I made a lot of good friends doing all that stuff but the only thing I was ever really good at was running treasuries. Why? Because I’m really not all that good with kids. I don’t dislike them. I *have* two of them. Believe me, they were planned. But I am not good at entertaining random children and crowd control is not my forte.

I loved the actors guild though and, slow as she goes, I wormed my way into working on things that I could actually DO! Which means things that you do on a computer. Like play programs and maintaining addresses lists and things. I got more involved and started making friends and then they asked me to be on the board *and* handle administrative tasks for a stipend. I wasn’t doing much else at the time except being a mom and volunteering and I went for it. This was around 1998 or so and, since I had spent a couple years having to ask after every single blasted rehearsal, “when and where is the next rehearsal and do either/both of my kids have to be at it?”, I dragged our organization onto the World Wide Web! One place for everyone to go to find rehearsal schedules, et al. It was a beeeyoootyus website with a royal purple background and white letters.

It was all fine for a while. I had my traveling office and eventually I had a laptop and wifi started popping up everywhere and it was *fun* bopping around town working. But this was one of those disorganized organizations where not all of the board members were pulling their weight, at least not on a consistent basis. They were volunteers, after all. Sitting at the center of the communication structure, I felt responsible for dealing with whatever came in. That was fun the time a famous sci-fi author contacted us when we produced one of his plays. Alas, more often than not, what I got were parent complaints. Usually about things that I had absolutely no control over and often didn’t even have a straight answer to. Sorry. This organization is what it is. It is wonderful for those who can understand what it is. The stereotypical “soccer mom” with her highly organized schedule did not fit in. I hated dealing with those babes. Not to mention the folks who thought their kid should get the lead role in every blasted play they auditioned for.

Eventually, I decided I didn’t fit in either. My brother had died that summer, both my kids were in college and I had sent myself back to college. I was overwhelmed and over-scheduled and somebody stood me up for a meeting. Or so I thought. I found out later that it was a communication snafu involving my own cell phone. But it was too late and I had already quit. Abruptly. That’s not like me. I was shaking when I sent the email. Some people asked if I would consider coming back. Others didn’t and I knew that they were ready for me to move on. And so I did. And then the rest of that year ended up being horrendously awful. My dad fell down on his daily hike to his Sault Ste. Siberian post office box, smashed his pelvis and died after seven weeks of air ambulance rides and surgeries and crappy rehab facilities and, well, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

I spent that spring in a pretty big fog and then I started pulling myself out of it, reconnected with Uber Kayak Woman (big help in the whole pulling out process), threw myself back into school taking on project management roles with a vengeance, and somehow, in another year, I ended up with a real job with a real salary. I still fall back into that fog sometimes but things are not really too bad.

Aaaannnndd… Not sure how I got into all of that crap. When I started this, I could not think what to write about today. Total writer’s block. All I could think was that when I walked into the schoolyard this morning, I could look up to the left and see the Big Dipper and I could look up to the right and see Orion. Those two are my childhood constellations. I saw the Big Dipper on the moominbeach in the summer and Orion walking south in my alley in the frigid Sault Ste. Siberian winter. Beauty.

Goodnight,
Kayak Woman

I am making eggplant parmesan for dinner tonight and I guess this is the last batch of that stuff I will be making with fresh tomatoes for a while. I’ll be back to using canned tomato paste mixed with whine or whatever leftover tomato sauce I have hanging around from some other prodject (intentionally misspelled). I have been pretty spoiled here since sometime around mid-August or thereabouts. For one thing, there has been a grokkery store right there in the lunchroom at my work. Farmer J makes his living as a software developer but I think his heart is in the little farming operation he runs in his spare time. We all benefit from that. Fresh tomatoes, peppers, squash, raspberries, green beans and I forget what else. Oh yeah, corn on the cob!!! How could I forget? I can do much of my produce shopping right there at work and his prices are a lot less than Whole Foods or my beloved Plum Market.

He plowed the corn field a couple weeks ago and I think the last tomatoes were this week and we’re moving into pumpkins and things. And so we move rapidly toward the winter months in the Great Lake State and if you are lazy (like me) and don’t grow and preserve your own food, you are stuck with a few root vegetables and whatever the grokkery store has to offer. Shipped in from Cali or China or South America or wherever. Yes, I know we are “supposed” to eat locally and all that stuff. I am moving more and more in that direction but I am not a zero tolerance type person and it’ll be a pretty cold day in hell before I stop buying oranges and avocados and other things that just plain do not grow here in the Great Lake State.

It always kind of cracks me up when I read parenting bloggers and they are going nuts because their kids refuse to eat anything green. Or eat the same thing over and over and over and over for a couple weeks and then, just when you have laid in a lifetime supply of whatever it is, they suddenly refuse to eat it. Or eat air, as my kids often seemed to do. I want to comment sometimes but I generally sit on my hands because I’m sure nobody wants to listen to what some crabby old bag has to say. I sure didn’t listen to unsolicited advice from crabby old know-it-alls when my children were small. I also know how hard it can be to raise children and that what worked for me and my children may not work for someone else and their children. We are dealing with an unfathomably complex set of variables here.

But, y’know, despite many years of crazy eating habits, we’ve come full circle around here. Before I had the beach urchins, we ate relatively healthy food. I cooked things from scratch for the most part. I don’t like prepared food out of boxes and cans in general and I like to chop vegetables. But then there were kids… Teensy tinesy little six pounders who bounced along on the 0% growth curve throughout their childhoods, healthy as little miniature horses. Our habits changed a bit. Spaghettios sneaked onto the menu and later on that horrible fluorescent orange macaroni and cheese that *I* didn’t even like when *I* was a kid came crashing through the back door courtesy of “Papa”, the sweet grandpa next door. We won’t even talk about when they would come home from play rehearsals and microwave slices of pepperoni on paper towels. Blech! But then. They went away to college and, defying the stereotype of college kids packing in crappy cafeteria food, my kids went the other direction. I don’t think either one of them is a declared vegetarian but meat is not frequently on the menu and they are inspiring me to use fresh ingredients whenever I can find them and shop locally if possible. It is a challenge around here unless you have the time *and* dedication to ferret out food sources. Me? If Farmer J is out of business for the season, I mostly make do with walking to the Plum Market. I think CSAs are cool but it sounds like waaaaayyy too much food for us and I would overdose on kale and rutabaga very quickly.

So, yeah, obviously I am in a better mood. I didn’t even notice the mess in my house when I came home today. Although maybe that’s because I am absolutely utterly totally exhausted from work today. Devqua was after me today in full force and it was fuuunnnnnn but I am drained. And those are my beach urchins in the photooooo. The baby is wearing her (my) favorite little fishie suit (I think they call them “onesies” these days) and yes, the toddler with the blueberry eyes *does* have a dirty face. It’s probably chocolate. I bet her grandma gave it to her!

You’ve heard of progressive dinners, right? Where you go and have cocktails and appetizers at one house and salad at the next and then a main course somewhere else, etc., etc. Well, all of us on the geriatric team at work were standing in the “hall” outside that long-suffering cat-herding person’s office this afternoon. It was about that time of the afternoon. The time when, if those of us on the geriatric team don’t stand up and take a look around, we will nod off and fall out of our seats.

We started off talking about work. That conversation rather quickly devolved into the difficulties of translating the analytical skills we use on the job into strategies for managing our households. Or more specifically, the junk, crap, crud, corruption, flotsam, jetsam, and cosmic debris we have all collected in all the years we’ve lived in our houses. 26 years, in my case. Seems like *everybody* on my team, even those who don’t have any kids, have too much junk. And so we came up with the idea of having a progressive basement tour. One where we make an evening of visiting each others’ basements.

Of course we were just kidding around but honestly, I don’t know if looking at other peoples’ cluttered basements would make me feel any better or not. For a couple of years there, I was actually making progress on de-cluttering. It was slow progress but it was steady. Alas. More stuff made its way in. Two steps forward, three steps back. I am not afraid to throw out old stuff that I don’t use any more. I am not terribly sentimental about stuff. I do need to have the right psychological energy sometimes. But I can do it. It is just stuff. As The Beautiful Gay (aka TMOTB/CMOH) has been known to say, “Just because someone once owned it doesn’t mean it’s worth anything.” Indeed. And I would add, “or gave it to you.” What is it about the last couple of generations that stuff has become so important? I am drowning in it around here and I am not even a compulsive hoarder.

For the first time ever, I am wondering if we should just move. Maybe that would help us get rid of some of this stuff. I don’t really want to move but I am at a standstill. I do not have the psychological energy during my work week to deal with junk and lately I have been doing anything I can to avoid this place on weekends. Kitchen reno? I know some of y’all have been wondering. Stalemate at the moment. I do not have the guts to just go and knock out a wall (“load-bearing” wall, I think, used to be the back wall of the house) without some kind of reasonable plan. Not to mention a construction crew in my back pocket. This idea makes my stomach churn.

I doubt we’ll move. We do like the neighborhood and I used to like the house and I’m not sure there’s any other house on the Planet Ann Arbor with a woods behind it that we can afford. And we would prob’ly have to have a, uh, mortgage if we moved. We haven’t had a mortgage since about the Dark Ages. Somehow I have to figure out (again) how to get rid of enough junk to reclaim some space and make this a pleasant place to be. One that I can clean without moving a whole bunch of crap around. I am out of the depths of despair now but I am flummoxed about where/when/how to start. Or re-a-start, to quote an old Chilean buddy of mine.

P.S. That is *not* my bathroom in the photoooo. I have the Blue and Only Bathroom and I clean it.

Yes. It was one of those days. Oh, not *those* days. Nobody here is sick. Everybody has a job. And plenty of food. And clothing and automotive vee-hickles and more than a few computing devices. And even some measly little scraps of money when we’re careful. Nevertheless, I was totally tied up in knots today. Facing a snarled rats’ nest of seemingly intractable problems and not having the faintest idea of how to even begin to untangle them. I can do this kind of thing at work. I spent the entire afternoon picking away at making a flowchart to help me describe a complex algorithm involving a number of variables. It had been flummoxing everybody. It was flummoxing me. After a slodgily unproductive morning, I finally made myself buckle down aaaannnnnd… I did it! (I think. We’ll see if I can decipher my own work tomorrow morning.)

I can’t do that with life, no matter how hard I try. And so… I came home from work grumpy and then I schlumped around acting passive-aggressively for a while, endearing myself to everyone in my path. I hate when people do the whole passive-aggressive routine, don’t you? But I do it. And I hate myself when I act like that. Anyway. It was a bad day. A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, even. I was intensely frustrated and then I behaved pretty badly and now I am feeling worse and even more frustrated. I am about as far from perfect as a person can get. And I am a spirited person. I have a huuuuuge amount of energy and I never quite learned how channel that or to argue effectively and I can only act cool, calm, and collected for so long without exploding. Which I almost did today but not quite. And yes, I mean the throwing things kind of exploding. Oh, I throw things like dish cloths, not knives or breakable items. And I don’t throw them at people, although I will sometimes threaten the GG with wet dish cloths if he provokes me enough.

I hope y’all had a better day. I hope I am a little closer to what passes for normal tomorrow. For now, I have not yet surfaced outta the depths of despair. My little problems are those of the first-world more-or-less-privileged “class”. But they’ve got me down today.

We’ve got cans! Don’t they make a wonderful display? I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these gas cans date from the 1950s or maybe even the 1940s. These gas cans have serviced a plethora of motorized vee-hickles over the years: boats of all descriptions, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, lawn mowers. Some of these cans are still in use. Others probably aren’t even legal any more.

When I first started hanging around with the GG at Houghton Lake, The Gumper was still in his prime, at the top of his career as a mechanical engineer, working in the Motor City as a machine tool salesman. If I have it right, robots were just starting to take over the assembly line in those days. (Correct me, you guys.) I remember the one and *only* time the GG has ever been between jobs (many years ago) and he and some of his siblings and various friends were hanging out in the backyard at the old Woodsboro house in Royal Joke. The Gumper came home from work at lunchtime. He stood there surveying all of the teens and 20-somethings sunning in his backyard while he worked. It’s scary to think that we are now about the age he was then but I’ll save that for some other day.

Anyway, The Gumper spent many weekends at his beloved cabin at Houghton Lake. When we joined him there on weekends, he was always busy with something, and that something more often than not involved tinkering with motors. Boats of all descriptions, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, lawn mowers. One early summer weekend of intermittent light rain, I think I helped him hoist a lawn mower up onto a picnic table (and back down) about a thousand times. He would want to work on it and the rain would stop and I would help him get it up there and three minutes later it would start raining again and I would help him get it down again. And yes, I did it because I loved him.

The GG and many of his siblings and a lot of the out-laws love motorized vee-hickles too (and after a few years of being outright snotty about motorboats, Kayak Woman here has learned to appreciate them again). But many of us also enjoy what Dogmomster long ago dubbed as Silent Sports. Hiking, cross-country skiing, kayaking. There are still plenty of motorboats up at Houghton Lake these days. And lawn-mowers. But the snowmobiles and dirt bikes are long gone. But we do have gas cans! I think they look pretty cool arranged like they are on those shelves next to the old refrigerator with the bicycle in front. Oh, and there is a Hills Brothers coffee can on the top shelf. I walked down to end of the point and back before we left for home today and I spied a gaaarrrage with a whole shelf unit FULL of Hills Brothers coffee cans! Hoarder? Or what.

And so, it was a gorgeous overnight at Houghton Lake. And now we’re back here on the Planet Ann Arbor thinking (or not) about the [work] week ahead. Love y’all and hope you had a great weekend. Miss all the days we were up there with Grandpa Garth.

Good night,
Kayak Woman

That’s what Grandpa Garth used to say *every* weekend, and I think he is probably watching us this weekend, so y’all had better be working. That goes for you li’l chickies too! You know who you are.

If you click here, you can see photooos of a boat/dock/hoist removal operation conducted by none other than the Gumper. This operation is from sometime in the 1990s. Photoooos and videos from today’s operation are here. The Uncliest Uncle directed today’s operation. Yer favo-rite blahgger was her usual klunky old self. The GG was trying to faaarrrr up that big blue motorized monstrosity and KW could not figger out what it was, even when he chased her with it! Muuuuch later, she finally figgered out that not only was it a snowblower, it was once Grandroobly’s heavy duty Yooperland snowblower. Duuuuuhhhhhh….

The Beautiful Gay (aka TMOTB/CMOH) mowed the lawn. I have never seen TBG using a lawnmower before but I guess she enjoys it. Prob’ly a lot like pushing a vacuum cleaner. 😉 Prob’ly why *I* do not enjoy lawn-mowing. When somebody invents a Rooooomba for the lawn, I’ll be the first in line. The Lord and Lady of Linden made a reconnaissance mission over to Woldemort et al (and picked up some little knit gloves at my request, thank you!) and our friend Mike tinkered around with boats and faaarrrrs and mowers and things. We all had a good time doing pretty much what we wanted to do and TBG and I cooked turkey dawgs over the faaaarrrrr in the middle of the afternoon. And now it is the late afternoon and we’re mobilizing for a late dinner and there’s a feetsball game on and the sky is beautiful. And blah-de-blah-de. We don’t have to close this cabin for the winter any more. Just pull all the stuff out of the lake before it freezes over.

I guess I am finished blathering today. It is a Work Weekend but I am not working particularly hard. So there.

Y’all know the drill by now. After years and years of sticking her head in the sand, KW finally looked up and tentatively decided that maybe it might just be okay to go downtown once in a while. Specifically to have cocktails and dinner at the Old Town Barrrrrooooom. On Friday nights after work. Not every Friday, mind you, just the Fridays when she is on the Planet Ann Arbor and not rattling around “up north” somewhere. The routine is that the GG walks downtown first, either from his work or from home and gets the usual table at the Old Town. KW gets home from work, putters around *alone* for a half hour or so, starts her iPhone pedometer app and red-queens downtown, texting her progress every quarter mile. If she’s lucky, she doesn’t run into anyone she knows at the yellow-slide playground or Panzoni outside the Y.

Tonight? Well. To our absolute delight, NPJane invited herself to meet us there!!! I am serious about that. The GG probably showed NP every single blasted photoooo on his blasted iPad. And Mouse’s theatre friends were at their usual big round table next to ours. And then… Just as we were winding down our evening, none other than our long time friends Jane and Ken sat down at the booth right next to us!!! Elizilla is responsible for us meeting them all those years ago. She was a 4-year-old about to start kindergarten. I was at work (in my old computer job) and the GG took the beach urchins to a band concert in West Park. Elizilla had a plan in mind that night, which was to make a new friend. And so she found Chelsea and they turned out to be enrolled in Safety Town together and then the same kindergarten class! Although she and Chelsea are still friendly when they meet, their paths diverged to different schools and eventually different states. I am the one who got the grand prize out of that band concert because Chelsea’s mom Jane has been my good friend for many years.

So tonight, Jane met Jane and then we left and we walked home, arriving just as it was starting to rain. Tomorrow? Houghton Lake. Just a quick overnight trip to be with family and friends. Because that’s what makes the world go ’round. Don’tcha know.

Sappily yours,
Kayak Woman

P.S. They don’t even have orange slices in their mouths, do they…