What a day!!! Unfortunately, about 90% of everything that happened today falls into that loverly “I-can’t-blahg-about-it” category. There are so many days when I go to work and I sit in peace ticking away at whatever prodject(s) (intentionally misspelled) I’ve got going without too much interruption. Sometimes it’s almost like the long-suffering cat-herding person forgets I’m there and that can be a good thing. Today? Everybody and his special friend from Zephron III was after me. Probably the defining moment of the day was when I found myself talking to The Commander on my iPhone (love you, moom) while simultaneously problem solving over I/M with the long-suffering, cat-herding person. Yay for one-handed typing.

All I wanted to do this afternoon was come home, have some whine or something, heat up some leftover lasagna or turkey or whatever, and CRASH. But not. Well, first we had to drop the Dogha off over at Howard Cooper. The scheduled maintenance light has been on for eons and we think there might even be some kind of problem with the bearings. Or bearing. Or something. It’s okay and nobody needs to panic. The Dogha is nine years old and has 150,000 miles on it and has been virtually problem free its entire life.

That was fine. All I had to do was pick up the GG over at Howard Cooper. I didn’t even need to get out of the car. I could’ve worn pajamas or whatever. Except. We had another little expotition on our list, which was Big George appliances. I wish we could manage to at least start down a relatively straight path toward our kitchen redesign but we seem to be doing anything but. The latest boondoggle involves toying with the idea of just replacing the stove for now and continuing with the whole re-do later. The reason for that is that, one looooooverly day last March, I received a text message at work saying that a burner had blown up. Okay. My stove and I have a long, happy relationship. It was old when we bought the Landfill but I have always gotten along with it. From time to time a burner would “blow up” or whatever and the GG, who is a genius at repairing appliances, always used to be able to order an appropriate part and replace it. This time? Not so much. After the folks at Mastertech got done laughing, they told him they were sorry but they didn’t carry stove parts from the 1970s. Oh well, thought yer favo-rite blahgger, so I have a 3-burner stove for a while. We’re gonna re-do the chitchen and I’ll just live with it until then. And actually, I have been living with it very well, thank you very much. I am not cooking for a boarding house.

The GG thinks I deserve better I guess. Actually, he’s probably just tired of “cooking” his coffee water on the back left burner. Me? If I want coffee, I walk to Zinnnngerman’s at the Plum Market (or go to work). Anyway, I woman-ed up and rose to the occasion of a trip to Big George. Alas, I was underwhelmed. I mean, the stoves all seemed wonderful. It’s just that nothing jumped out at me and knocked my socks off. I have been using stoves since the Jurassic Age. All I really need is four burners and an oven. I’m not sure about these extra drawers and fifth burners and stuff. I think I would have to “test-drive” a few different stoves to figure out what might work the best for me, probably not a reasonable possibility either for me or Big George. I *am* willing to pay a little more for something that won’t disintegrate in five years, like the last couple of refrigerators I’ve owned did. But I do not need fancy.

NPJane is my youngest (and definitely cutest) “cuzzint” on the Fin side of the family. She was born when I was eight and I don’t think I have ever been snotty to her. I was old enough when she was born to understand that, as an infant, she needed love and attention and maybe protection, not teasing and snottiness, like my brother The Engineer and my cousin Jay (her sister) usually had to endure from me. Of course now Jane is an adult, albeit not quite as baggy and old as yer favo-rite blahgger.

Last night she stopped by The Landfill just long enough for a glass of whine and somehow we got off on the tangent of our grandparents. I think it started by reminiscing about their house (hope that link works, streetview was acting a little funky earlier). We both remember the closet that connected the front hall with the kitchen. It was used as a pantry and NPJane remembers walking through it. I maybe might have done that once. Otherwise, I remember you could enter it from the kitchen but either the door at the other end was blocked or we were discouraged from walking through it.

In general, I probably remember the house better than Jane does, mostly because it was, oh I dunno, 8-9 blocks away from my house up in Sault Ste. Siberia (Jane’s family lived here on the Planet Ann Arbor). We had many Sunday dinners (at noon, after church, thank you very much) over there and The Engineer and I often stayed there when The Commander and Grandroobly were out of town at “bank meetings” or other boondoggles. And we used to be forever driving a big ladder back and forth between our houses. The Commander would drive and my dad would hold the ladder outside the passenger-side window. Betcha you couldn’t get away with that these days… Anyway. I remember the pocket doors that led into the living room (double living room) and Grandma’s cart full of African violets and sliding down the carpeted stairs and some little game that I would play with the doorbell chimes behind the glass front door. The attic was verboten. That was where my grandmother’s eccentric younger sister resided. A mysterious place, as was the pass-through pantry.

The thing that we realized as we were talking was that I remember a different set of grandparents than Jane does. Because by the time Jane was born, the grandparents were getting quite elderly and I don’t think they were as interactive with Jane as they were with me and The Engineer. The grandparents I remember were active participants in my upbringing. We loved staying with them, not only because they would buy us just about anything we asked for at the grocery store or wherever but because we were comfortable with them. I’m kind of running out of words here but it was obvious that they cared about us very much. I am wracking my brain trying to remember them disciplining us. I imagine they had to, especially if I was tormenting my little brother. Mostly, I think we tried to be on our best behavior and, if they had to resort to discipline, they must have been very gentle with us, which is probably why I don’t remember it. Love.

As we were talking, I realized that some of my older cousins probably have yet a different set of grandparents than either Jane or I. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, my grandmother was not far off from my age now when she began having grandchildren. And that brings up all kinds of what-ifs in its own right although we won’t head off on that tangent.

By the way, the baby my grandmother is holding in that old scan is not either NPJane or yer favo-rite blahgger, it is none other than the mean old Mr. Grinch. Who is a few years older than me but has always been a cousin I’ve been particularly close to. It started when we had a fight over a package of smoked fish in the back of my dad’s (or granddaddy’s) car. I can’t remember which, I only remember that there was cigar smoke in the air. Oh, and Duke must’ve been involved because my dad did not like fish. I was three and the Grinchie was six. Go figger.

Another Thanksgiving weekend has come to an end. Except not quite. Because I am actually cooking a turkey dinner here at the Landfill tonight, Sunday night. Why? Well, whyyyyy not? Because we like turkey. I am cooking a whole turkey, not a turkey breast, by the way. I want the dark meat too. It’s the absolute smallest turkey I could find, a bit over 10 pounds.

Other than that? It was still pretty cold outside today but the sun stayed out and the wind died down. Some people were rather slodgy today and the GG and I couldn’t come to agreement about what to do with ourselves. GG: Go to Grand Blanc? Me: Walk in Miller Park? Christmas shop? Walk to Kerrytown? In the end, I walked to Kerrytown by myself, where I bought blackberries and a secret item for The Commander. I headed downtown and stopped in at Kilwin’s to harass Mouse for a few minutes, then I headed home.

I decided to walk through West Park, which has just been through a whole bunch of renovations. I used to live across the street from West Park in a loverly rockin’ ‘n’ rollin’ second floor apartment. I mean the floor was kind of rockin’ ‘n’ rollin’ although we definitely played some of that there rock ‘n’ roll music, any old way you choose it. And plenty of classical flute music too. Live. I hope it didn’t bother the neighbors too much. I was noisy then. I am quieter now. I think some folks might disagree with that.

I lived in that apartment for two years, until I married the GG. He had an apartment over in… Where the heck was that? Clawson? I drove over there a lot but, when we were on the Planet Ann Arbor, we frequently walked through West Park. Downtown to eat or go to a bar or the farmer’s market or the art fair. In those days, I got to the point where I didn’t walk through West Park alone. Why? Because it was where a large group of homeless men used to hang out. There was a public toilet in West Park in those days and the area under the overhang outside the public toilet was a mass of shopping carts and rather moldy looking old clothes, not that I ever got close enough to actually inspect them for mold. I wasn’t really afraid of the regular homeless folk who lived there. They never bothered the neighbors. But the whole hanging outside the public bathroom scenario attracted a certain type of male who would approach young women and I was careful enough that I avoided that place. I mean, why were these guys so forward toward random women. Didn’t they have mothers? Alas, probably some of them didn’t…

In some ways the park doesn’t look much different after the new reno. The public bathroom has been gone for years and a new homeless shelter has been built a couple blocks away from West Park. They’ve added the pond in the photoooo and some paved pathways. I think they are for bicycles and wheelchair access. The GG says they’re for the po-leese to drive their vee-hickles on. Probably both. I’m certainly not afraid to walk through there alone any more. And I am not terribly afraid of random men approaching me in general, depending on their demeanor and the setting. (Take a note, TSA.) So I gave a dollar to the purportedly homeless guy in front of Cafe Verde today. I don’t hand out money to every person asking for spare change but, well, I dunno where I’m going with this but I had enough money to buy *blackberries*, in the frozen north in November fer kee-reist, and I don’t know how hungry he was but I would have to be pretty desperate to stand outside Cafe Verde and beg for money. I hope I never am. Now, maybe he’s gaming the system and goes home every night and takes a shower in his McMansion out in the Polo Fields. But I don’t think so.

I am off on a tangent (or two) and there is a turkey that needs to be dealt with. Good night. Wonderful Thanksgiving weekend on the Planet Ann Arbor with the Regenstreif clan. Work tomorrow, hi-ho!

Oh, and now npJane is here (to drop off some boots the GG left at Chez Harry) and we are having a leetle bit of whine.

Cheers,
KW

My opinion, after being held captive in a chilly basement watching BLUE play RED for a few hours today? Well, let me back up a bit. I was not being held captive at all. I chose to go and hang out with some folks who wanted to watch a football game. It wasn’t a well thought-out plan (for me) by any means but it resulted in us hanging out with beloved relatives and getting rid of some food and beer that we wouldn’t have otherwise, so.. Let’s go! Anyway. We met up with The Marquis and Pooh and Rey over at the University of Meeecheeegan Arboretum midway through the morning. In a way, it’s hard for me to believe I have lived on the Planet Ann Arbor for 30 years and counting and don’t know my way around the Arb. But I don’t. I walk all kinds of other places but not usually the Arb. So it was extra fun for me.

And then. We were done walking. 3.25 moiles by my pedometer app. The Regenstreif clan was headed over to Chez Harry for turkey salad sandwiches. I thought that sounded good. Then. Out of the blue, the GG announced that HE was going to the Tractor Store. Yes. The Tractor Store. Ever been to one o’ those? I have. I helped The Commander buy a dog cage at one once. We now put our kayaks on top of that thing for the winter. Anyway. I hemmed and hawed. Do I wanna go to the Tractor Store with the GG or ride with the RegenAxes over to Chez Harry? I wouldda ridden with the RegenAxes but I also wanted to go *home* for a few minutes. So. I rode with the GG in the Dogha (what’s that noise, is a bearing going out?) to the tractor store. I sat in the parking lot while he went in to get his birdseed and TRIED to do the Saturday NYT crossword. Saturday always totally flummoxes me, darn it!!! Anyway. We then drove back to the Landfill to dispense the birdseed and grab some leftover beer and munchies. Y’all are glad you weren’t with us on that whole thing. I was a HARPY!!! Yes. The whole time!

Okay. Back in the Dogha. I *thought* we were going straight to Chez Harry’s at that point. But noooooo. We had to take a side trip to a car dealer. On the one hand, I was happy about this. I do not want to buy a new vee-hickle every year. Actually, we couldn’t afford to even if we wanted to. But I would like to buy new vee-hickles just a leetle bit more often. 150K? It’s time. So I was happy that the GG was directing some energy toward a particular vee-hickle. (And, er, he has moi blessing to buy that vee-hickle, even though I don’t particularly like the hen-shit brown type color. I don’t really care. I’ll deal. I mean that!!!!) On the other hand, I was about ready to start eating my arm!!!

Oh wait!! I said I had an actual opinion about football, right? Roight. My opinion is that BLUE (if you are from anywhere near the Great Lake State, you know what football team that is) got slaughtered today. My other, hem hem, opinion, which is not educated or very well researched, is… that… well… This new coach? Even somebody like me, who knows the U of M football schedule only to know when NOT to drive around town, knows the kind of person that old Bo was and the football teams that he fielded. Who the heck is this “new” guy Rodriguez? The U of M actually *bought* him out of a contract at, what school was that? To bring him here to lose football games left and right? What the heck?

We were at Chez Harry until the bitter end of the bloodbath. Thank god for the 3G network so I could surf the internet instead of sit there in stultification in front of the boob tube. At about six minutes from the end of the game, I started to work on dragging the GG outta there. I was thinking six minutes equals about a half hour. I was assured that this particular football-six minutes would go quicker than most. And that was right. They didn’t bother to stop the clock too many times at that point.

Hey, U or M, y’all used to have SPIRIT! I think you have lost that. I think that you can do better than what I saw today. And you already know that I am NOT a football fan. I’m just sayin’.

I wish I had a picture of the Marquis’s face when he told me that my brain was going to overheat this morning at the Village Kitchen Restaurant. But I don’t. (No, the video we took afterward didn’t quite grab the moment. Sorry.) I was too astounded to be able to grab my phone! Instead, you are stuck with this photo in which I am astounded about arriving at the Plum Market at 8:00 AM, or so said the Ninja’s clock. I grabbed a cart and walked up to the automatic door aaaannnnndddd…. Nothing happened! Say what? Pulled out my phone. 7:59. Oh, okay. I’m a minute early. Just after I took this photo, the doors miraculously opened. All by themselves. 8:00.

As I was cruising by the cheese counter, the cheese counter person asked me if I was out for Black Friday. “No! No!” I exclaimed. I told him that if I wanted to buy something from, say, Tarjay, I would just go to Tarjay on any day I wanted to and buy that item. And then I told him that I was at the Plum Market because I was having 12 people (or thereabouts) and two dogs over for a post-Thanksgiving lasagna dinner and I needed some things for that. And that I would probably be back because, undoubtedly, I was forgetting something. And I did forget something and so I did go back to the Plum Market and darned if I didn’t get the same cashier and darned if she didn’t recognize me. “Uh, weren’t you here earlier?” Uh, yeah, but I wasn’t wearing my black sequined mad bomber hat that time…

Aaaaannnnnd. Whew! I can cook lasagna pretty much upside down with my hands tied behind my back but there is some work involved and this old house is filled with dust and stuff, so I worked on food while the GG wielded the old upright vacuum cleaner around and actually did some dusting. He does not normally dust, but it is particularly awful around here right now, so it is making him sneeze. Yer favo-rite blahgger seems to be immune to dust and other types of allergens. And he was the Pyro Master, building a faaaarrrr in the faaarrrrplace and lighting candles around the Landfill.

Dogmomster and Pengo were here along with their dogs and many of the Regenstreif clan. Alas. Jay and Carl had a 3:00 flight back to their home in Seattle. I missed having them here. Yaknow, Jay is a couple years younger than me and, when I was a bratty little kid, she was more a contemporary of The Engineer than me. I hung around with her older sister Pooh, who was my age. I was not nice to those kids (my brother and Jay) most of the time. I was a snotty little kid. I wish I could go back and change that but I can’t. But I was sorry today that I didn’t have any more time to hang around with Jay and her wonderful husband Carl. And I miss them.

At any rate, I am done for the day and this is about all the boring old blather y’all are gonna get outta me. The guests are gone, the garbage (and recycle and compost) are out and there’s some football game on TV and I have no idea who’s playing and I might be able to actually stay awake long enough to hit the Publish button… Let’s see if I can…

We do pretty much the same old, same old for Christmas every year but our Thanksgiving plans vary pretty wildly. Usually we do something here on the Planet Ann Arbor but some years we’ve been in Sault Ste. Siberia, and one Thanksgiving weekend when Mouse was in Senegal, the GG and I spent a memorable weekend at Houghton Lake. This year, we stayed in town here on the Planet Ann Arbor and My Dear Uncle Harry invited us over to Chez Harry for an afternoon dinner. A variety of relatives were in attendance, including his three daughters, my beloved “cuzzints” Pooh, Jay, and NpJane. NpJane lives here in town, so I actually meet up with her once in a while but Pooh is in from St. Louie and Jay from Seattle. And Jay completely missed the loverly Snomg y’all have had out there. Mouse was with us but Elizilla is out in San Fran having dinner with a bunch of friends.

Today, after my early morning skunk walk, you could find me swinging around the Landfill Chitchen cooking eggs benedict (one turkey day tradition that doesn’t seem to change), doing the NYT crossword on my iPhone, and facebooking like crazy! The GG made an emergency run to the Plum Market for a lemon (because hollandaise isn’t hollandaise without lemon, at least not in my book) and coffee from the Zinnnngerman’s outlet in the Plum (because we don’t have a working coffee maker). And then he made that faaaarrrrr in the photooooo, which took off so ferociously I thought he had put gasoline or something on it. (Yes, he does know better than to start a faaarrrr with gasoline 😉 .)

Mouse and I made a beer walk to the Plum at around noon and then we packed up and headed over the river and through the woods to Chez Harry and I don’t know exactly what to say about that. Harry is a wonderful cook and host and another successful Thanksgiving dinner is over and done. Good company. Too much food. Constantly shifting conversations between sisters and cousins et al. Internet surfing throughout it all. Some may disagree with me but I view that 21st century phenomenon as an enhancement rather than a distraction. For one thing, it provides a means for little bits of interaction with friends and family who are in distant places.

It was a gray day here, drizzly in the morning changing to fog and then heavy rain. I love that kind of weather and it was perfect for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Hope y’all had a good holiday. Love, Kayak Woman.

So, it is the night before Thanksgiving and I was having a great time working away when we were encouraged to, uh, well, “pssst, leave a leetle bit early today”. All right, I guess I will. As grateful as I am for little perks like that, once I actually got home, I felt sort of deflated. It is not easy to be in the sandwich generation and I was worrying about not being with The Commander for the holiday, even though I don’t *regularly* spend Thanksgiving with her and she is *fine* and is spending it with a friend. I know that I don’t have a bad life or even a hard life. There aren’t all that many layers in my sandwich. I mean, there are women my age who are raising their grandchildren because their *children* are drug-addicted or whatever. Me? With my feisty, healthy mother and well-adjusted 20-something kids? Well, not so much. Still. I wallowed in self-pity for a while this afternoon. I guess we all need to do that from time to time.

And then I mobilized! The GG was also encouraged to leave work bit early and so we ended up treating today like any old in-town Friday night, that is, we walked (separately) down to the Old Town barrroooooomm for dinner. The waitress did a double-take when she saw us. Wait a minute? You guys are always here on Friday. What day is it? Yes, we go there often enough now that we are recognized. It was pretty quiet when we got there but the waitress was braced for a busy, crazy night and, sure enough, by the time we left at 7:30 or so, business had picked up considerably and it was starting to sound like a terrarium in there. It’s been years since I’ve stayed awake until after nine or 10 o’clock the night before Thanksgiving but I do remember those days. I would drive home from college in whatever god-awful weather Old Man Winter felt like throwing at me (hey Sam, remember when we fishtailed off the road into that big snowbank?) and, when I would *finally* get off the last exit on the I75 SUV Speedway, I would stop in to say a quick hello to the parental units and then find some friends and head down to the Alpha Bar. And that is all I’m gonna say about that for now.

The GG headed off to bed just after nine, grumbling that he was too old to go to bed that early. I am still up but I pretty frequently nod off by nine and I am not ashamed of that. I get up early early, I get a lot of exercise and I work very hard, both at my job and keeping up with life. If I am tired at nine o’clock, I probably need the sleep.

Happy Turkey Eve and good night,
Kayak Woman

That cute little vee-hickle in the photoooo is my little gold-colored Ford Fiesta. It’s an old-school Fiesta, vintage 1979. It was a pretty good little car but I think they are selling a fancier version nowadays.

The Fiesta wasn’t the first automotive vee-hickle I ever owned. That rather dubious honor belongs to an old pea-green Ford Pinto wagon. If you are old enough, you remember the kind. I think it was a 1974 and I “bought” it from my parental units when I was a college student. Let me tell you, it was just lovvvvverly traversing the I75 SUV Speedway to Sault Ste. Siberia in that thing in a snow storm. Or ice storm. Like the time zeee veeeeendsheeeeld viiiiiperrrr disintegrated 10 miles south of Gaylord. On the driver’s side. On top of the whole fish-tailing ice-driving thing, I could not see jack doodly. That was the Jurassic Age though and, back in the Jurassic Age, a lot of gas stations actually carried automobile parts and had employees who knew how to deal with them. I stopped at the old Amoco station just off exit 282 in Gaylord. I bought gas in the full-service lane and, when I told the attendant about the viiiiperrrrr, he went inside, grabbed a new one, replaced it quick as a wink. Didn’t charge me for the labor.

Anyway. I had the cute little gold Fiesta when I met the GG and, not too long after I started hangggggingggg around with him, he ditched his rickety old purple Gremlin (remember those?) and bought himself a new blue Fiesta.

That photooo was taken May 13, 1984, on M18, southbound from Houghton Lake. I was, lemme see, October, September, August, July, June, May… Three months pregnant with Elizilla. Or thereabouts. We were one week away from closing on this looooovvvvverrrllyyyyy landfill and we headed up to Houghton Lake, wanting to get away from our apartment and chill out a bit. Well. Chill out? I guess so! The next week, after we had closed on the landfill (and I made the GG cover up his sleazy-looking Shaky Jake tanktop before we transferred something like $8000 in cash from one bank to another), we went back up to Houghton Lake. That time? Shorts and t-shirts were in order. What do they say about the Great Lake State? If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes? Yes.

I won’t list all of the vee-hickles we have owned, at least not today (I’ve actually done it before, I think). We don’t buy new vee-hickles very often. Actually sometimes I wish we would buy them just a leeeeetle bit more often but I’m pretty happy with what we have right now, knock on wood. (2001 top-dollah Honda Accord EX-V6, 150K and going strong, knock on wood, 2008 Honda Civic SI, 6-speed manual, and 2005 Honda Civic EX that is on more or less permanent loan to Mouse.)

Is a new vee-hickle on the horizon for us? That depends on how you define “horizon”. In our case, imagine that you are standing on the south shore of Lake Superior looking out at the horizon. Our new vee-hickle, at about this point in time, is probably up there somewhere around Hudson Bay. If you don’t know your North American geography well or are too bored with this bunch of blather to google, that means it could be a while.

What are we thinking about getting? Well. All bets are off at this point but there is at least a bit of compulsion to keep up with the Jenkinses. 🙂

I don’t think I am going to do xmas stockings this year. It’s okay. I asked both the beach urchins about it and they were okay with it. I always put a whole bunch of trinkety stuff into stockings and they don’t want to receive a whole bunch of trinkety stuff and I don’t want to burden them with a whole bunch of trinkety stuff. We all have way too much stuff. None of us need any more. But I have always done xmas stockings. Every year of their lives.

I have carried on a tradition that I grew up with. I don’t remember when The Commander stopped giving us xmas stockings. I’m gonna guess it was after The Engineer and Dogmomster got married. They got married when The Engineer was, hmmm, lemme see, 24 years old and Dogmomster was even younger. I had to do some fast and fancy math there but I think that’s correct and yes, they were young ‘uns. At least they were younger than I was when I got married. (But I had the first grandchild. So, na-na-na-na-naaaa-na. Just kidding!) Anyway. I don’t think that we stopped getting xmas stockings because DogMomster joined the family. I think it was just time. You kids are grown up. Time to start forming your own traditions. The nuclear family I grew up in was then in the same stage that the one I have produced is now. Young adult children, no grandchildren (and no one is ready for them, including me, so don’t anyone get the wrong idea here).

I went home to the Great White North for xmas until after Elizilla was born. Except for the first xmas after we were married. That was a *loverly* xmas because I had a *loverly* gastro-type virus on xmas eve. Fun times. (That wasn’t why we didn’t go north, it was coincidental.) Liz was two months old on her first xmas and we drove up there through an ice storm in an old-school Ford Fiesta! We walked in the door at the grandparents’ and I put her in The Commander’s lap aaannnddd the baby gave her grandmother a huge toothless smile. A moment that neither The Commander or I will ever ever ever forget. We had fun up there that time but the weather was awful — rain and freezing rain. No skiing and I had to take precious vacation days. I decided it was time to start spending xmas here at the Landfill on The Planet Ann Arbor. I would rather use my scarce vacation time to slug around on the beach in the summer. And it was time to start our own traditions.

Stockings did become one of my traditions. One year we even made one for the GG. It was full of hot stuff: Tabasco sauce, Screaming Sphincter salsa, a Beanie Baby bull named Tabasco, and I forget what else. Seems to me that was also the day a Bad Aminal glued Mouse to her bed but that’d be a whole ‘nother story. Usually, I just made stockings for the beach urchins. They would open their stockings first, just as the sun peeked over the horizon, and compare notes about who opened what first, since the contents were identical.

If I get some kind of an inspiration, I may still end up putting stockings together. At the moment? Well. We’re coming up on the winter holidays again and, as usual, I am nowhere near ready for them. Last year, on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, I tried to fill a turkey brining bag all by myself, with the result that there was brining liquid all over the kitchen. My already broken old office chair was ruined beyond being usable and subsequently euthanized. This year? For starters, I need to get my you-know-what in gear and call My Dear Uncle Harry to ask him what he wants me to bring (take?) to Thanksgiving dinner this week!

Not only did I lose the title, I also lost my train of thought. I interrupted myself to put some chicken pot pie into the oven. I cannot remember the last time I made chicken pot pie. I mean, I have been making it since the Jurassic Age. But probably not since about April or May 2010. Back in the Jurassic Age, when I was faced with trying to feed my [very healthy] zero growth curve children, one of the things that they *would* eat were those frozen chicken pot pies that some of us [me] were served when we were children. And liked [me].

But… I like to cook from scratch, although I will use canned tomatoes when tomatoes are out of season. The Commander used to keep me supplied with home-canned tomatoes. Not so much nowadays. And that is OKAY!!!! (Saying that so The Commander doesn’t feel guilty about not canning tomatoes the last few years. WE LOVE YOU ANYWAY, GRANDMOOM!!!) Anyway, at some point in time, I found a chicken pot pie recipe somewhere. I actually think it was that Parade Magazine that used to come with the Ann Arbor Snooze. The recipe was simple, or so I thought. Well. It is simple in some ways but it turns out that I use every blasted bowl in the Landfill Chitchen to make it. Oh well. It is good and I used to take batches of it over to Kalamazoo College when one or more of the beach urchins were over there. And once I even dropped a batch off at Albion College. For a friend we were visiting on the way to K College. I wish I could send chicken pot pie to Cali but that would probably involve dry ice and lots of money. Kinda like sending headlamps to Senegal except that headlamps don’t need dry ice…

So… We left the Landfill at about 6:40 this morning. We walked through the neighborhoods up to Forsythe Middle School and over the freeway, through Bird Hills Park and along the Urine Huron River trails to the Northside Grille for breakfast. And then home, through town and the newly terraformed West Park and past the old Seventh Street apartment and W.05’s house and on and on up the old river valley toward home.

G’night. -KW

I was walking up Miller. Toward the west, that is. The sky was just beginning to get light. Suddenly a light streaked across the sky. At lightning speed. A meteor! My brain flashed back to November 2001. Yeah, post 911. I was walking along one morning and it was just starting to get a bit light and neighbor/Haisley Mom Mary Louise was walking toward me looking a little panicked. Did I see that light streak across the sky? What was it? [i.e., was it a plane crashing?] Well. I didn’t see it. I was heading away from it. But I hadn’t *heard* anything and I couldn’t see any smoke anywhere. I knew what it was and I warmly reassured her that the Leonid meteor shower was in progress and that I was sure that she had just seen a meteor.

Now. I am married to a mad scientist who, when Haley’s Comet came around back in 1986 and we were visiting the grandparents in Florida, got up at something like 3:00 AM every morning and drove a half hour or so inland (where there are fewer lights) to set up his telescope to watch it. I do not keep track of most astronomical events. Other than the sunrise, that is. Hopefully that happens every day, roight? I knew that there was a meteor shower going on at that time because Elizilla had gone out with her high school friends the night before to watch them. And yes, I know that it’s “Leonid”, not “Leonoid”. When I first knew the GG, he once referred to “Leonoid Brezhnev” and we were both cracking up about it and eventually it just turned into one of those things I misspell/mispronounce on purpose. Because ya can’t be toadily correct all the time or you’ll go nuts! Roight? Roight. It’s called poetic license. Or something like that.

I wanted to think that seeing that meteor was an omen that would bring me all kinds of good fortune. I dunno if that is some kind of a hangover from what were likely pagan ancestors somewhere back in the depths of time or what. Because really I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. I don’t think. So. Good fortune? Not really. But today was a pretty good day, knocking wood big time. I’ll take that. I didn’t really want to stay home this weekend but the holidays are coming up way too fast and this place is a mess. Since I thought we were gonna mobilize and re-do the Landfill Chitchen this fall, I was neglecting it big time. Okay. We’re not doing that yet. So. Today, I purged a bunch of old packaged food and stuff. Sorry about that *one* package of Ramen noodles. I can’t remember the last time somebody cooked any of those. I know. I know. I used to buy those by the dozen ten years ago or so. Wouldn’t you know, I throw out the one ramen package in the cupboard and five minutes later, the GG is looking for it for his lunch. I just assumed it was five years old or whatever. It’s okay. All is well. He found some ramen noodles in his camping stash.

One thing I did *not* purge was the cute little yellow mousey up on Froog’s head there in the photooo. I am not very sentimental about “stuff”. I am pretty good at purging but I have to be in the right kind of mood to do it. I was good today. But that little yellow mousey was my childhood dog Tigger’s toy. I cannot get rid of it. Especially since I have a daughter who has renamed herself “Mouse”. Actually, I think I *have* the mouse because The Commander, who is purging her belongings big-time, could not purge the mouse. She knew who to give it to. Yaknow… That little yellow mousey still squeaks, if you squeeze her. I think that’s amazing, given that she is 50 years old and spent 13 years of her life as a dog’s favorite toy.

I am rambling. Good night. Jay and Carl, have a great trip. Seeya tomorrow, maybe? Definitely on Thursday.

I neeeeeed a beeyootyful red skirt. A long, flowy one with a bit of tulle attached to the bottom and a few crystal colored sequins scattered about.

<headdesk>If you define a CSS ID, it won’t matter what garish color you’ve assigned for the background. If you call it as a *class*, the background will not show up. Nor will any of the other properties you’ve assigned. Nothing like wasting two whole hours.</headdesk> P.S. Don’t tell the long-suffering, cat-herding person. Unless you wanna be teased unmercifully.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to use the subjunctive. Whenever possible. [ducks under the Blue and Only Toilet]

Note to Old Town barrroooooom eavesdroppers: Our life is not [usually] anywhere near as soap opera-y as our conversation is making it sound like.

PTPM is not here tonight. But Owen is!

Where is McMackAttack when you need him?

If we leave downtown NOW, we will get to the Yellow Slide Playground just about the time I won’t be able to hold it any more.

If you wanna be a fish ant, you hafta turn *here*, not at the next block. Or not…

Laugh, laugh, I thought I’d die-hie-hie. It seemed so funny to me-hee-hee.

In which the GG again gets toadily into the whole AACT Old Town barrrrrooooom goodbye thing.

  Goodbye!  

  Goodbye!  

  Gooooooodbye!  

  Goodbyyyyye!  

  Goodbye!  

  Goodbye!  

  Goodbye!  

  Goooooodbyyyyyye!  

All roight. Haveya had enuff o’ meeeeee tonight? Am I obnoxious enuff? 🙂

Note to self: You can fall asleep on the couch tonight if you want but pleeeeeez make your way to bed waaaayyyyy before that batscope time of the morning. Otherwise, your stoopid old sleep cycles will get off-kilter again and you will wake up a half hour late and then you won’t have time to do your regular skunk walk and you’ll be ticked off at yourself all day because you are an OCD idiot about your walk. Just sayin’.

G’night. -KW

“You know you are very dark, don’t you?” Yes. I am. Very dark. I know no one can see me. A neighbor/dog-walker who I am vaguely acquainted with felt obligated to tell me that one dark, early morn. One of those kind of buttoned-up, fussy, politically correct type people whose face is frozen into a frown. People like that can be sooooo helpful sometimes. “You’re gonna get hit by a car, yada yada.” I think my all time favorite is that old wives’ tale about going outside in the cold with wet hair. “You’ll catch your death of cold!” Oh yeah? I get up every morning at 0-skunk-30. I take a shower and I walk. I do not dry my hair before I walk. I let the air do that. Or not. I have huge hair and, if it’s snowing, sometimes I end up with a big tangle of hair and ice. That has yet to happen this year. We’ve been having unseasonably warm weather. I’m sure that will change soon.

Anyway. Walking in the dark invigorates me! Walking in the dark in a snow storm and getting ice hair is icing on the cake, pun intended. And, yes, I am very dark. I like to be invisible!!!! And I walk in the street, mostly. I will not buy fluorescent orange clothing or stick neon pink duct tape to my jacket. I have thought about a headlamp, just because they’re cool and some friendly runner gals I see on Thursdays wear them. Still, I don’t think they are for me. Maybe a big spotlight so I can see the skunks? But I don’t need you to see me. I can see you. If you are driving an automotive vee-hickle, I can hear you from a few blocks away and I will just walk over onto the sidewalk until it passes me.

Well. Except for today. Two old warrior cats were circling each other in the dark in the middle of the street. About to fight, I thought. A car was coming around the corner. Should I jump out of the way? I didn’t know what the cats would do. Would they see the car? Would the car see them? I didn’t want to watch a cat get hit by a car. I stood there in the middle of the street in my invisible clothing. Would the car see me? It did! It slowed, the cats scattered, and I got out of the street.

Just a little slice of my so-called life. Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. I mean that. Snort.

Elephants? Really? I guess if you were a developer and some baggy old designer started talking about clicking on elephants, you’d probably think she had partaken of a liquid lunch too. Wouldn’t you? (Er, I mean *software* developer here. I put hexes on *real estate* developers.)

I dunno why my brain replaced “elements” with “elephants”. Maybe it’s because an elephant construction business has taken over my growlery? But no, I did not drink my lunch and everyone in that region of cube-land had a good, loud laugh. I can’t remember the last time I have drinken my lunch. At least not on a workday. I do occasionally have whine if I’m having lunch at a restaurant on a non-work-day. Once upon a time, back in the Jurassic Age, when I worked with those slackers over at the EPA, drinking lunch was a relatively frequent activity. I don’t mean that we did it every day. Most days, I did pretty much what I do now, which is to pack up leftovers for lunch and eat at my desk. But there were some surreal days that seemed to require going out for lunch and ordering a beer or even a ‘hattan. I won’t describe those days. Y’all know the kind.

That was when I was young and, well, a little wild and crazy sometimes. And then came the children… No more drinking at lunch. What the heck, no more lunch! When Elizilla was born, I took three months off. I got paid for that three months. When I asked my loverly government contractor employer about maternity leave, they looked at me like I was from Zephron III. After some hemming and hawing and shifting from one foot to the other, they more or less admitted that they did not have a maternity leave policy. But. I had something like three months worth of sick time saved up and THEY LET ME USE THAT!!! When that time was just about up, I was seesawing about going back. I did not want to put my beautiful little beach urchin in day care. Do not get me wrong. I am not against day care. I even think it can have some advantages. It just wasn’t right for me and my baby.

The solution ended up being that my company created a part-time job for me and let me share hours with the GG. Who, by the way, worked for the same company as me (that was before he jumped over to the EPA). What that meant was that the GG worked from 6:00 AM until 2:00 PM. I bundled my baby girl into the car and drove over to the EPA at 2:00 PM. The GG came out and drove the baby home and I went inside to work for five hours. So, no lunch. Sometimes when I look back on those days, it seems like it was so easy. And in some ways it was. It also made for a *very* long day for all of us and not a whole lot of alone time for parents, not that any parent gets much of that. Still, it worked for us. It meant that both of us could be primary caregivers for our young children and I will always appreciate how much support I got from my [late] boss Byron and other folks at that company *and* all of the EPA folks who put up with my schedule.

Now? Liquid lunch? No way. Even on the rare occasion that I go out for lunch with a group, I get water or iced tea or something. I *walk* almost every lunch hour. I walk about a mile and a half. Then I return to my desk and eat my lunch of cobbled together leftovers as I ease back into whatever prodject (or three) that I am currently working on.

I’ve kvetched before about losing our local daily newspaper, the one I used to affectionately call The Ann Arbor Snooze. People will say stuff like, “Oh that was a crappy newspaper, yada yada.” Maybe. It was what it was. It had local news and Dear Abby and once a week there was a gossip section about births and marriages and things. For a while I used to even look at the sports section occasionally, back when my crazy purple buddy’s son played football at Pi-Hi. That was a loonnnng time ago. Oh, and it had obituaries!!!

Our snoozy little newspaper has been gone for over a year now. It has been “replaced” by the website annarbor.com, which publishes a printed paper Thursdays and Sundays. I miss the daily snoozepaper. I subscribe to the Thursday/Sunday paper. I look at annarbor.com approximately once a day, which is when I receive an email with several “top” news stories. I dunno. For a long time, I couldn’t get myself to switch over to on-line news. That probably sounds really stupid for an online banking designer, especially one who has been doing her own banking online since the late 1990s. Why not on-line news? I dunno.

Anyway. I am not really all that crazy about annarbor.com. It’s okay. It is what it is. It took *months* after I signed up [or so I thought] to receive that daily email. I don’t like that the reporters/moderators spend what seems to me to be an inordinate amount of time dealing with the nasty sorts of comments that online news sites seem to attract. Delete ’em, don’t delete ’em, or just disallow comments altogether. It’s a lot of work to read and judge each comment against the commenting guidelines and *then* post a comment about why you deleted somebody’s comment. I’m not sure this is the right direction for the online news world. But maybe I’m wrong. We are at a crossroads here and I do not have an idea about where the news industry will end up in the not-too-distant future. We do still need good reporters/writers/editors/proofreaders and I hope we are planning on paying them!

In any case, I seem to have moved on. Oh, I will probably still read stories on annarbor.com and subscribe to the Thursday/Sunday paper. It does print obituaries. But I have *finally* managed to put The Ann Arbor Chronicle onto my RSS feed. It reports non-sensationalized in-depth local news in a blog-type format. (Thank you, NPJane.) (If you click over there RIGHT NOW, and read the story about the library, eventually, you will encounter our friend Ken, who is the best and most honest financial director the library has ever had. IMNSHO) Now, if I can just keep up with the chronicle!

Aaaaannnnddd… On the iPhone. NYT. Huffpo. And a whole bunch of other sources I’ve found via my recent polly ticking explorations. Still evaluating those. Oh, and I am now limbering up my brain every morning with the NYT crossword puzzle. On my phone. Not sure why it took me so long to get around to downloading that app.

What do y’all do for news these days? Still keeping the paper boys in business? Or are you on-line? If you are, what are you reading?

I am not in a bad mood today. Not exactly. I am just not feeling up to the next couple months. I get a bit like this every year. Just looking around the Landfill tires me out. There is clutter in every room and I do not have the psychological energy to do a comprehensive cleanup job. Do not get me wrong. We are not hoarders around here. I mean, we have “stuff” but there is plenty of open space here and I am pretty good at keeping up with at least the daily types of chores. I cook. I clean the kitchen and the bathroom. And do the laundry. And take out the trash. And make my bed. Etc. etc. But I always feel like I want to do a deep cleaning before the holiday season. Dust and vacuum *everything*. The GG (who seems to have more psychological energy for cleaning than I do at the moment) has done a bunch of window washing and stuff and he even fixed our big ugly upright vaccum and *used* it a couple weeks ago. Somehow, he thinks that I am not vacuuming when I run my cute little Rooooomba even though it actually does a pretty darn good job.

I dunno. I need about a week off to be home alone! So I can take my time and tinker around about cleaning up. I am not going to get a week off. I barely get any time at home alone any more. I go hucklety-buck to stumble out the door to work almost before the sun is up and the sun is just setting when I leave in the late afternoon. I do a certain set of chores every day and sometimes when I am home on the weekend, I don’t have one iota of the psychological energy required for deep cleaning. But this place needs it.

Oh yeah. We *were* going to re-do our kitchen this fall. Not happening. Basic mis-communication about how to get from point A to point B. The thought of just knocking down a wall without a plan makes me feel a little green around the gills. Maybe we should just move. Sigh…

And then I drove home and National Petroleum Radio was talking about the new “procedures” at all the airports. What the HECK? I *know* about the damned underwear bomber. It happened at MY airport. But still. There has GOT to be a better way. We should NOT be allowing any old TSA employee to feel us up. I think some of these people get will get their jollies out of this, if you know what I mean. I don’t care what “they” say, this IS a sexual assault. I don’t want to endure it and I cringe at the thought that my daughters might have to endure it. Or my mother!!! And who makes the decision as to who NEEDS extra screening? This is a bad thing. Yes. “Government has stepped over the line.” (Quoting someong on NPR.) I can laugh about a Soo Locks security guard asking me if I have weapons. Some random person sticking their hand where the sun don’t shine? Not. There has to be a better way!!!! Er, someONE. SomeONG? Sheesh.

All right. I got a few things outta my system. Whaddy’all want for xmas this year?

So, my morning walking route when I’m in my homeland of Sault Ste. Siberia takes me past the Soo Locks. This morning, as I approached the locks, it was dark and initially I didn’t think there were any freighters locking up or down. And then I saw a pair of bright white lights. There are a lot of lights at the locks throughout the night but these looked a bit odd. As I got closer, a huge superstructure loomed out of the darkness. It was an absolutely gorgeous salty, the Zelada Descagnes, locking up into Lake Superior.

I entered the locks park. It was early in the morning and there aren’t a lot of touristas there at this time of year, so I think I was the first person to enter the park. I had to wait a couple seconds for the security guard to come outside to ask me if I had any weapons. Weapons. Yeah. Me. Umbrella maybe. But not this time. When I was a kid, the beautiful park that surrounds the locks had many entrances and anyone could walk in and outta there pretty much whenever they wanted to. Now? Not so much. Thank you very much to our wonderful terrorists, Al Qaeda and homegrown both. You guys, can we just get along? Anyway, I greeted this guard with a big, cheerful, “Good morning!!!” He asked me the required question and I could tell he was doing his best to act cheerful in response to me. It was just after 7:00 AM and I bet the young guard was not happy about being up at that hour and having to greet some crazy woman who probably looked to him like about his grandmother’s age.

Anyway. I watched the Zelada Descagnes lock up and, yaknow, those boats are huge and I was right next to that boat. Behind a chainlink fence with barbed waaarrrr on the top of it, that is. I grew up in that town and I have probably watched about a billion boats go up and down the St. Mary’s River in and out of Lake Superior during that time. I am told that when I was first learning to talk, back in about the Eocene, I would frequently issue the command “Down boat!!!” which meant, “let’s get in the car [old black Ford] and drive down to the locks to look at the boats.” My boatnerd father aka Grandroobly would *always* oblige!!

Today I was somehow humbled by the size of that beautiful salty and how close I was to it and how it was tethered to the shore (shore?) by a few ropes. I have seen all of this stuff happen so many times before. I don’t know what made me actually think about it today. I caught myself wondering if they ever hire women to help lock boats through…

When The Commander asked if I wanted to attend the church bazaar, my first reaction was something like, “What the…???” I have not gone to church since I was a child. Heck, The Commander doesn’t even go to church. And then I immediately reconsidered. There are many reasons I don’t “have” religion or however you want to say it but none of them have anything to do with the church bazaar.

The church bazaar was always one of the *fun* things about church. It was an event to look forward to. You put on a party dress and your best shoes and ate pretty little sandwiches and cookies and nuts and mint candies. Just like in the picture. And the church ladies would pour tea and coffee out of highly polished silver tea sets. There was punch (in a crystal bowl) for the kids but your moom, if she was anything like The Commander, would let you get some tea and lace it up with as much cream and sugar as you wanted. And then you could go and get some punch.

The ladies of the church would also make lovely things to sell at the bazaar. I remember lots of beautifully crocheted lace doilies and pine cone Christmas arrangements, spray-painted with gold. All kinds of colorful stuff in general. I was bedazzled and I wanted to buy it all.

Today’s bazaar was a lot like the ones I looked forward to as a child. There were lots of beautiful knitted hats and mittens, placements and napkins and kitchen towels and things. Painted wooden ornaments. I didn’t see one crocheted doily or spray-painted pine cone, unless they were lurking in the “Attic Treasures” room, ghosts returning from bygone bazaars. Times change. Speaking of the “Attic Treasures” room, I thought The Commander was going to cane a couple other cute little old ladies! They actually had the gall to suggest that The Comm buy some “attic treasures” and take them home to throw out. After a tense couple of moments, I realized that the other women were Audrey and Shirley, her Sunday movie buddies, and it was all an act. They know that The Commander is in a deacquisitional mode and they were teasing her. Whew!

This whole event was a little bit time-warpy. I even dressed up. Er, that is, I wore my new black/silver tights and my beeyootiful new metallic blue foldable slipon shoes. (I’m not sure The Commander thoroughly approves of those 😉 ) I didn’t buy one single thing (except lunch) but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Oh, and we went with Barb, our beloved life-long friend and beach neighbor so the conversation wasn’t limited to me and The Comm nattering away at each other.

Some of my childhood friends who grew up here have moved away and so have their parents (or their parents are dead, we *are* at that age) and they have no reason to come back here. If they do, they have to stay in a hotel or whatever. Some of my childhood friends never left here and are part of the community in a way I haven’t been for many years. I am in the middle. I have built a life and community of friends on the Planet Ann Arbor but, when I come here, I have a place to stay and a little window into the community of Sault Ste. Siberia.

I gotta go. We’re meeting my beloved cousin, none other than that mean old sweetheart Mr. Grinch, at the Italian restaurant for dinner.

Good night. Typos and poorly constructed sentences be damned,
Kayak Woman

Sorry about yesterday! I have once again banished Froggy to his “londry baskit” until he sobers up. But we did go to a play last night and there was a character named “Froggy” in it. It was The Foreigner, by Larry Shue, performed at Ypsilanti’s Riverside Theatre by the Morrisco Art Theatre group. Mouse played the role of Catherine Simms, a rich young debutante engaged to a preacher/KKK guy and that’s about all I’ll say about the plot and characters.

I’ve lost count of how many plays Mouse has acted in, directed, costumed, or whatever. That all started when she was eight and that is a story for another day. It was a little weird last night. I mean, the play was very, very good. The cast was wonderful and we were all rolling around on the floor laughing. But swirling around me throughout the night were little wafts of “Mouse”, “is that her real name”, and a whole lot of comments about how beautiful she was, yada yada. Including from the folks in the seats directly in front of us. Well, of *course* *I* think she’s beautiful. She’s *my* baby, fer kee-reist!

Throughout it all, I sat there incognito in my third row seat, a baggy old kayak woman, who nobody even suspected was the mother of the glamorous (sorry Mouse but yes) young actress on the stage. When the folks in front of me were discussing her name, I almost said something. “I’m her moom and I did not name her that. She named herself. Yada yada.” Because she did name herself. She wasn’t really all that crazy about the name I gave her. And yaknow? That’s okay. I’m not all that crazy about the name I was given either. I live with it and I would prefer to be called Kayak Woman over Cordelia.

So. The story is. Mouse was given a beeyootiful puffalump style mousey for her first Christmas. The Uncly Uncle and The Beautiful Gay gave it to her. They also gave one of those mouseys to Mouse’s cousin Dave, who is the same age as Mouse. She was only eight months old that Christmas and so she didn’t really attach to the cute little mousey at that time. But, about a year later, we were at the annual Courtois Christmas party and the cute little mousey just happened to be among the stuffed aminals in our entourage. Mouse was carrying Mouse around and Dave thought that Mouse had *his* Mouse, so he grabbed her mouse away from her. I don’t know if that all made sense and I don’t exactly remember what happened next but I know that it was after that little incident that Mouse became attached to Mouse.

And so, she started to call herself Mouse. She was Mouse in nursery school and then reluctantly went by the name on her birth certificate from kindergarten through middle school. And Mouse ever since. And that’s the story and I can’t divulge the name that’s on her birth certificate. And I didn’t say anything to the folks in the row ahead of me either. Mouse was doing her job as an actress. Why spoil that by conjuring up an image of a cute little toddler dragging a stuffed mouse around.