As I drive to work, I often see sky-scapes that I desperately want to photograph. But I am always driving and I am not rabid enough about catching every beautiful sunrise that I try to find a decent place to stop where there’s just the right spot to get a good shot… You know, without the back end of Tarjay in the photooo, or whatever. Usually by the time I get to *my* parking place, the moment has gone. The sun is behind heavy cloud cover or whatever.

Today. I actually only had to sit through *one* red light on my journey to work today. Everywhere else, I either managed to get through the green or arrived just before the light turned green. Do you know how often that happens? Not very. And when I pulled into my own loverly parking place, this is what I saw. You have to look hard to see the office buildings on the other side of the pond, etc.

I am hearing a jetliner (probably Delta) heading out over my house out to SFO or SeaTac or Minneapolis or wherever. I love the dern Great Lake State but I kind of wish I was on that plane.

Cold clear light dark of [a December] day P. S. — just kiddin’. Happy here slodging out the Landfill Dungeon.

I’m not even feeling the bah humbug yet this year. Is it because we haven’t had any snow? I mean snow to speak of. The snow I’ve encountered so far this season is more like what we might get in October or thereabouts. But we’ve had other Decembers like this. The year of Peter Pan at the Mendelssohn Theatre, for example. I think that would be 1998. Fog fog fog… The next year was Alice (in Wonderland, in case you were wondering) and that play was wracked with a vomiting virus. The *next* year? 2000? Merlin, with snow in spades! That was the year I couldn’t see doodly-squat outta the POC’s veeeendsheeeeld because zeeee vipers were hosed and when I went to the auto supply store to get new ones, they just laughed. 1996 Plymouth Voyager? We’re all out!

I am kind of cracking up that, at the moment, as I write this, facebook is not showing photoooos… One FB friend said something like, “Now that FB has ‘improved’ their photos, I can’t see any of them.” Although I *love* to see photos that my friends have actually *taken* (even if it’s what they’re having for lunch [wink]), I am not missing the billion reposted cat pictures or cute little platitude thingies or bacon bikinis or… I mean, jeebus, I have a *few* facebook friends that get on to facebook once or twice a day and post / share 20 cute random photooos in a row. Do not get me wrong. If you do that kind of thing occasionally, I am fine with it. I even enjoy some of those memes and occasionally I even feel like “liking” one. But there is that small fraction of people that make me wonder. I know that facebook will fix the current photo problem, in fact it’s probably already fixed. In the meantime, I’m kind of cracking up. Except that some people have posted *real* photos from their actual lives and I want to see those.

On another facebook note, I am watching with interest as some of my extreme right-wing conservative fb friends who are also *union* workers implode now that our wondrous Republican governor (aka @onetoughnerd) stands ready to sign some hastily packaged legislation that will turn the godforsaken Great Lake State into a right-to-work state. That “socialism” you guys are always railing about? Look up that word. *I* will admit that *I* probably need to look up that word too*… But I will ask these fb friends, “What the heck were you thinking?” and I hope that One Tough Nerd decides that more time is needed to think this through.

* I remember learning about various forms of government in high school but I was *always* bored by history and polly-ticks then. I spent my spare time working my way through a rigorous self-devised flute course using the Taffanel-Gaubert flute exercises, the Moyse tone development books, and whatever flute “virtuoso” repertoire I could manage to get my hot little hands on. Not as easy in those days as it is now.

Ahem, now that I have my reglear nucular tagger laptop back (and the trackpad isn’t even acting up, knock on wood big-time)…

There was no ytterbium at the Mitchell Street Pub. Or at Ace Hardware or Symon’s General Store or “that man’s shoe place” or Cutler’s or McLean & Eakin (award-winning Petoskey indie book store) or even The Long Skinny Art Store that I love but can never remember the name of. And (sshh, don’t tell Mouse) we didn’t get to the yarn store. Actually, there could’ve been ytterbium in any or all of those places for all I know about ytterbium, even though I looked it up on my handy dandy periodic table iPhone app. Some may (or not) want to know why a baggy old kayak woman has a periodic table app on her iPhone. Well. It is because you never know when you might *need* a periodic table at hand! Like yesterday morning, when we were hanging out at the Group Home at Houghton Lake watching the snow fall and eating cranberry pie and yer fav-o-rite blahgger was doing the dern Saturday NYT xword. A clue: atomic number of ytterbium. Uh… I asked the Mad Scientist and he had no idea (although he feigned knowledge that an element called ytterbium existed). I did *not* look up the answer but I eventually deduced that it was 70 via the number of letters and one or two crosses. So *then* I had to look it up. And of course, given that it was meeeee and the GG, that led to lots of discussion about IOS periodic table apps and some deleting and downloading, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Truth. I *loved* the periodic table when I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia. I loved drawing little models of atoms in the way we did in school back in those days. They looked like little solar systems with the protons and neutrons in the middle and electrons orbiting them. I used to imagine that there those nuclei were little worlds with people (or whatever). Something like that anyway. We never got anywhere near atomic number 70, aka ytterbium and I suspect things got a bit complicated long before then. I wonder how children are taught about the atomic structure of elements nowadays. I mean those children who are being taught actual science and not being taught that the earth was created 9000 years ago (or whatever). (Sorry, I couldn’t help throwing that in there…)

At any rate, we had an absolutely fabulous time with The Uncly Uncle and The Beautiful Gay and our beautiful daughter Lizard Breath. The UU and TBG are the best hosts on earth and I know that the GG did not want to leave today. And really, I didn’t want to leave either but I was antsy. Weather reports were iffy all over the map and I hate sharing the I75 SUV Speedway with a bunch of Dee-troit area SUV Yayhoo Cowboys in a snowstorm. And I wanted to get back to The Landfill and get a jump on the coming week.

We did have a wee bit of sharing a snowy road with *those people* today but once we came down out of the highlands of mid-northern Michigan, things improved considerably and even though we drove the last chunk of the trip under a weather map that showed frozen precipitation, it was not slippery at all. Cognitive dissonance? I have mixed feelings about weather maps. I well remember back in the days (not that long ago) when we would embark upon a winter trip with little or no idea what the weather would be. I think that’s still true at least some of the time. Like today.

Love love love the Great White North. Houghton Lake, Gaylord, Michaywe, Sault Ste. Siberia, The Moominbeach (and all of the Yooperland). (And Lopez…) But… Love love love being home home home here at The Landfill.

I wanted to do one of those multi-photo blahgs like I sometimes do. Today it would’ve ranged from the snow we got down at Houghton Lake this morning to the loverly little military surplus shoppe we screeched to a stop at on the way to Gaylord, and then a photoooo or two from our trip over to one of our fav-o-rite shopping destinations here in the god-forsaken Great Lake State, none other than Petoskey.

Alas, I cannot believe how tech challenged I am without my regular laptop. My phone is loverly and that old beastie I used yesterday works up to a point. The Windows musheen that has been generally offered to me here on The Planet Gaylord is loverly but I keep fergitting that it is controlled via a mouse rather than a touchpad plus the keyboard seems to be a wee bit to the left of the one on the loverly Windows musheen that I use for work. So I keep trying to type things like “hello”, I get things like “jr;;p” and when I try to backspace, I get “…..” added on to regular words.

I am grateful for the computer loaner and I am irritated at myself for being such a klutz. Anyway, we are here with Bob and Gay on Bob White Way (in or near Gaylord) and we went to Petoskey today. I would go to Petoskey every other day (or at least every other month) if I could. I love to go to Petoskey. It is just enough off the beaten track from The Planet Ann Arbor to the yooperland that it’s hard to get to, especially when you are forever making emergency trips to the yooperland. No emergency trips today though and it’s a mere 40 minutes or thereabouts from Gaylord.

And so now that I am finally getting used to this mouse / keyboard form factor, I am so tired I can hardly see straight. We were at the Mitchell Street Pub today (for about the billionth time). Shopping, then back to Gaylord and dinner at the Michaywe Inn (or something like that).

G-night,
KW

You betcha it is. Because I am using a vintage 12″ screen Apple PowerBook G4. It is a loverly old musheen and I can remember when I first saw an advertisement for one. It was back in January 2003 in The New Yorker and it was love at first sight! It was exactly what I needed and, despite my usual reluctance to be the first kid on the block to adopt the latest and greatest technology, in less than a month, I had managed [by quite some hooks and crooks] to obtain one.

Why am I using such a loverly old beastie? Because I am at the Group Home at Houghton Lake and I managed to LEAVE MY CAREFULLY PACKED TECH BACKPACK BACK AT THE LANDFILL!!! !!! !!! How did I do that? I am not sure. The GG had finished loading the Frog Hopper and he had forgotten to put my snow boots in and I was brandishing those about on the Landfill front porch and my backpack was still inside. And. I locked the door. And got into the Frog Hopper. Without my backpack. I think. I don’t really remember.

I didn’t realize I didn’t have my backpack (with my MacBook Pro and iPad in it) until we were at least a half hour north of Dogmomster’s house and then there was a bit of a scramble that I will not go into but the backpack did *not* seem to be in the Frog Hopper… Hmmph… And then, someone had the bright idea to do find my iPad! Duh… Yes, there it was, at the Landfill, with 14% battery life left. So I am using this loverly old musheen, which still works perfectly but I am afraid to upgrade the browser because who knows what operating system is on it (I know that it is not Lion) and whether that OS supports the latest version of the browser. (It is not actually my old musheen, it is Lizard Breath’s old musheen and it has been repurposed to run the Houghton Lake webcam. Or something.)

So, we are here at Houghton Lake via the Champagne Flight. That is, we stopped of at Dogmomster’s on the way for some snacks and a wee bit o’ whine for those of us not driving (how did she know [wink]) and also to meet up with Lizard Breath who drove up from Fabulous Ferndale, dropped her vee-hickle off at Dogmomster’s and hitched a ride with us for the rest of the way.

And yes, the Archies were playing when we arrived, as you might be able to see. I decided I was so sick to death of polly-ticks that I switched us over from NPR to the ’60s satty-lite radio station as soon as we drove outta the driveway and there you go.

Number 1: The faaarrr alarms over in Cubeland went off at 4:30 in the afternoon today. Cubeland is a one-story building that is mostly open space divided by cube walls with some conference rooms and things here and there. If there ever was a *real* faaaarrr in Cubeland, *everyone* would know it. Actually, once there *was* a real “faaaarrrrr” of sorts, when somebody burned some damn Microwave popcorn. I mean, there wasn’t *really* a faaaarrrr, just probably enough smoke to trigger the faaaarrrr alarm system. It smelled *horrible* but that was about it. Today there was no faaarrrrr anywhere. We all knew that. Some of us took our sweet time putting on our jackets and skibands and glubs and making sure we had our car keys with us, etc. Others hid out and continued to do their jobs until somebody or other went in and ferreted them out. There was no faaaarrrr. The Planet Ann Arbor (actually Pittsfield Township) sent *two* trucks (count ’em) out anyway. How much does that cost?

Number 2: Sigh. What is going on in the “lame duck” session over in Lansing today? The frickin’ tea-partiers that have a stranglehold over the state legislature are doing their best to pass bill after bill after bill. Right to work (for less). “Religious freedom” for medical professionals to decide who they will or will not treat based on their own religious convictions (a thinly disguised swipe at abortion rights but could go down a few other slippery slopes that the radical tea party conservatives are too ignorant and uneducated to understand…). I’ve already discussed what our wondrous governor (with the full support of the tea party) is trying to do to education…

Many people went to Lansing to protest the right-to-work bill today. Enough that the state police got called in. They used tear-gas (I meant to write “pepper spray” but still) and the repugs shut the capitol for a while. This is disgusting. The people these bills will hurt are largely not free-loaders (or “welfare queens” or “dirty old hippies” or whatever). There are free-loaders at every level of our society and there always will be but most of our union workers are folks who work their damn butts off so they can provide for their families. We need to support them. … …

Number 3: Blimpy Burger is closing!!!! (or possibly relocating…)

Take yer pick… The whole world is going to hell in a handbasket anyway, Mayan calendar or not.

…or hardly working? I did work from home this afternoon. Really. I was working on a complex little piece of functionality and all of those mini-trips down to the dungeon to jerk furniture and boxes of crap around and set Rooooomba off on various tasks gave my brain the breaks it needed to compose complex spreadsheet functions…

The most irritating part of the day was when I took a lasagne-building mini-break and I mixed up the filling and I dunno, it wasn’t like it smelled *bad* exactly… Just wasn’t quite right… I only bought that ricotta a few days ago. It should’ve been okay and it probably was but… I dumped it. Jumped into the Ninja and *drove* over to the Plum. And couldn’t get outta my blasted neighborhood… Why? Because a po-leesewoman was stopped *right* at the end of the street sitting there doing I dunno what. Looked like reports or something. I wanted to make a left turn onto the North Maple Speedway but there was no way I was gonna go around to the left of that po-leesewoman. For one thing, it is dangereuse! Because people who want to turn *on* to the street I’m turning out of come swinging around there like bats outta hell. For another thing, I was figgering if I tried to go to the left of the po-leesewoman, she would figger out some way to ding me. I was irritated at her. I am not one of those who hates the po-leese but I did not like what this woman was doing. If she needed to sit around and do reports, she couldda picked a better place to park. And then, I got to the Plum and I had *one* item (ricotta) and I had to *wait*. In line. When I was over there on my earlier [planned] trip, I did not have to wait at all.

Anyway, this is all really mundane stuff. Because I am sitting here in the Landfill Backroom with Sam and Jcb. We are hanging out in front of a fake-log faaaarrrr waiting for Vorpal Blade to go Snicker Snack. Yes we are all hanging out on various Apple-type dee-vices. Are we being anti-social? Well, not really, since we are playing videos etc., for each other. Like Dave Brubeck, who died today at 91. He beat The Commander I guess, but not by much.

And then there is my blog friend Margaret’s husband, who began his journey over to the other side late last night Pacific time, after a long illness. Godspeed to Mr. Stargazer and a hope for peace to Margaret.

(Note to the GG: You mi’s’well quit reading right now. I know you’re sick of hearing me rant and rave and carp about this stuff.)

I guess that relentless positive action might work if you are big robot bugs who have arrived to take over the earth. I suppose if you lose a few of your comrades along the way, a 3D printer in the mother ship can just print more robot bugs and ship ’em down to earth. And your invasion goes on. Or if you are a tree who is intent on growing through a fence [wink].

Here in the god-forsaken Great Lake State, our wondrous governor is a firm believer in relentless positive action. And that’s okay up to a point. Except that some of the ideas that he has implemented via positive relentless action (and a bunch of radical tea party type conservatives in the legislature) could maybe use a second (and third (and fourth (and fifth))) think-through.

There’s the Emergency Manager law. Actually, there are two laws and one of them was repealed and it is much more complicated than my poor little blonde brain can process let alone ‘splain it on my blahg. Basically, it allows the guv’ner to appoint some random person to take over a failing school district or city. Last I looked, there were “courses” or whatever to “train” someone to be an emergency manager. So I guess it’s a “career path” now, at least here in the god-forsaken Great Lake State.

Does this work? How about Muskegon Heights public school district’s experience with it. The public school district in Muskegon Heights (a low-income area on the west side of our lower peninsula) was in financial dire straits. Our wondrous governor and his lackeys appointed an EM who decided that the ONLY way to “save” the schools was to sell (wrong word, see below) them off to a private big business for-profit charter school company. He fired ALL of the teachers at the end of the last school year and expected Mosaica to come in with a big Mighty Mouse cape on to save the day. Michigan Public Radio reported yesterday that one quarter of the 140 teachers hired by Mosaica over the summer have already quit. There were various reasons why they quit. They weren’t being paid a living wage and there were no discipline policies at the schools are two of them. … … …

There are a lot of problems with the public schools in the god-forsaken Great Lake State (and all over the country). Can we save our schools by having large for-profit corporations take them over? I do not think so. And what about those damn unions anyway? Is it hard to fire horrible teachers? Maybe it is. And maybe that kind of thing needs to be addressed. But, in my own experience as a student *plus* my childrens’ experiences, I can count the truly awful teachers on one hand, and most of those are on my own hand. Hey, there are terrible doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, and systems analysts out there too!

We need to FIX the public schools in our country. Do we have school boards who make horrible decisions? Yes, we do. But what about the children? Who is paying attention to the childrens’ experience. I spent a LOT of time volunteering over at my kids’ elementary (and middle and high) schools. (When they left for college, I took a well-deserved break.) I could walk to the elementary school in a couple minutes (I still walk through there every day). And during my volunteer work there and just hanging around with my friends there, I saw up front and personal, the kids and families who were struggling. Some of those kids attended multiple schools per year. Some kids survive that kind of thing somehow. Others may not.

My state is demoralizing its teachers. We cannot keep doing that. We cannot continue to go down the path of evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores. Public school teachers are working with whoever comes in the door. They have no control over what is going on at a student’s home and they have very little control over what their administration (not to mention a bunch of damn ill-informed politicians) decides to do. I have never been in a union (The Comm was, as a teacher) but I understand why unions exist and I support them and I believe in the public schools. We need to educate all children, not just those whose parents can afford to either send them to a fancy private school or move into a “good” neighborhood.

Boy oh boy am I tired…

Updated in the cold clear light of day: “Sell” is totally the wrong word. The taxpayers of this state are *paying* Mosaica to perform the duties of the public schools. I do not think we are getting our money’s worth.

It was only a matter of time before the dreaded Cat Family Book became an iPhone app. The real title of the Cat Family Book is actually Richard Scarry’s Best First Book Ever! I know the title because I own the damn book, which is currently sitting on my chitchen counter.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought the book (I *think* I bought it, I don’t *think* it was a gift) for my 2-year-old book freak. But, OMG! This book became a nightmare. It is basically a picture book. Every page shows a different scene in Busytown and can I just say that Busytown is BUSY!!! There is a very thin plotline (very thin) to the book, maybe a few lines per page, but for the most part, every single blasted item on each page is LABELED: “soap dish”, “apple”, “lost sneaker”, “pencil car”, etc. etc.

I’m sure there are kids who like to “read” books like this by themselves, savoring all of the pictures on each page and puzzling out (or not) the words beside them. I am sure there are kids who are happy to have someone read them the text involved in the thin little plot on each page. Not my kid. We had to read every blasted word on the page. If I missed a blasted label, she would point it out. She did this to The Commander too, although not so much to Grandroobly, who was allowed to just kind of page through without reprimand. Once many years ago we arrived at the grandparents’ house in Sault Ste. Siberia and, as I was hauling all of our crap into the house, The Comm pulled me aside and rather anxiously stage-whispered, “Didja bring the Cat Family Book?” “No,” I said and she replied, “Thank God!”

A couple years ago, I ran across the book down in the dungeon and I looked for an iPhone app. What the heck, there are Dr. Seuss iPhone apps out there, maybe Richard Scarry’s books are out there too. No dice. But Busytown totally lends itself to iPhone app-ability and so there is one now and yes I have it on my phone. [It is a bit clunky…]

And then I found a page with all kinds of links to Busytown “stuff”. Who knew that the book I bought all those years ago and saved (against all odds) has a kind of a life of its own on the internet. Or at least its author does. And not one that I would’ve ever dreamed of back in the days when I was dragging baby and toddler paraphernalia around. When I was reading every word of that book to my toddler, I was overwhelmed enough by my young children and my house and my intense part-time job and whatever that I did not catch on to a lot of the philosophical stuff that might have been going on in the author’s mind when he created his books. My bad and it is so much fun to revisit Richard Scarry and Busytown with a different frame of mind.

Today my childhood / high school / facebook friend, The Beautiful Mimi, posted a picture of one of her old piano method books. She took lessons from Mrs. Dybeck and Mrs. Dybeck taught young students via the John Thompson method books. I took lessons from Mrs. Diecke (I’m probably mangling the spelling) and she taught young students via the Leila Fletcher method books.

Actually, I taught myself to read music *and* play the piano before I was 10. I used hand-me-down Leila Fletcher books from my older cousins. I *got* most of it. Which keys on the piano corresponded to which notes on the music staff. Whole notes and half notes and quarter notes and even sixteenth notes. I had a small bit of trouble with dotted quarter (et al) notes for quite some time but then once when Uber Kayak Woman (who had been taking lessons for a while) was visiting, I asked about those indecipherable dotted quarter notes and I don’t remember exactly what she said but I GOT IT! I WAS ECSTACTIC! I made it up through about the third Leila Fletcher book under my own power and then The Commander commanded that I would be taking lessons. With Mrs. Diecke. Who was very nice and a wonderful teacher and yada yada.

Alas, when we were young, nerds like me did not always know that we were “cool”. I *loved* playing the piano (and flute but that’s a whole ‘nother story) but I QUIT (the piano, not the flute) in 8th grade. I was desperately trying to be “cool” aka popular and I had some strange idea that if I quit doing one of the things I loved, I would instantly be popular. Roight. I never quit *playing* the piano after that and in 11th grade, I came [partially] to my senses. I need piano lessons! Mrs. Diecke and her husband (the band director) had left town by then and so I arranged to get lessons from Mrs. Dybeck. I never used the John Thompson method books with her. I am not the best piano player on earth but I was well beyond any method books by then.

Mrs. Dybeck was also a wonderful piano teacher and I loved her and I actually practiced (usually). Do you know that a weekly piano lesson in Sault Ste. Siberia cost $1.50 in those days? My mother… The Commander… Was horrified about that. She told Mrs. Dybeck in no uncertain terms that she would be paying the grand sum of $2.00 for my lessons and Mrs. Dybeck had better just accept that. Clearly, The Comm was happy that I was taking lessons again and had initiated it myself. She also valued the talent and hard work of a private music teacher. The next year, Mrs. Dybeck told me that she was raising her rates to what my mother had already been paying.

Of all things, I am now selling my first piano teacher’s house (Mrs. Diecke). The room where I waited for my lessons eventually became my brother’s bedroom and then The Comm’s office. The room where I had my lessons became my grandmother’s and then my parents’ living room. With a piano in exactly the same place as Mrs. Diecke’s.

So we have a 20-pound carp here on The Planet Ann Arbor. He was found wreaking havoc in the new pond in West Park a few weeks ago. No one knows how he got there but speculation is that it wasn’t under his own power and, as the pond in West Park is not an appropriate environment for a 20-pound carp, he was relocated to a more appropriately sized venue down by Gallup Park. Of course he is on Twitter, along with the Ann Arbor Cougar and the Dexter Bare Bear. Of course, I am following him on Twitter, along with the Ann Arbor Cougar and the Dexter Bare Bear. He tweets rather copiously and esoterically about local polly-ticks. He talks to everyone [from underwater] from our wondrous mayor and a [retired] drain commissioner to swans and turtles. Why is it that because I follow him on Twitter, I think that he is actually alive and well and swimming around down by Gallup Park. I mean, he could actually *be* alive and well and swimming around down by Gallup Park. Or he could have moved on down or up the river. Or he could be, uh, dead. Or whatever. He is a FISH! But because I follow him on Twitter (along with the Ann Arbor Cougar and the Dexter Bare Bear) and he tweets about his talks with polly-tishuns and other pond/river aminals, somehow he seems alive to me. (Actually, the Dexter Bare Bear does seem to have moved on but we still occasionally hear from the Ann Arbor Cougar.)

Aside from that, can I just say I am exhausted? Down to the farmer’s market and back (with a heavy backpack) this morning, then up and down the stairs and lugging books and boxes and other crap around most of the day. Oh, and I can haz rodent crap? Because boy, do I have rodent crap! Rodent crap du jour is in the Dungeon Library. Not to mention that there was a drain backup down in the Freakout Chamber last summer that overflowed onto the Dungeon Library’s Yellow Shag Carpet. I will never forget the squish of my bare foot hitting that wet, sewer-ey carpet. Blech blech blech.

Seriously, the prodject of the weekend (and probably about the next 10 weekends give or take the ones when we are not home) is to pull everything out of the dungeon “library”, get rid of anything possible (this is reeeeeallllly hard for some people), and cleeeeeeeean. Especially the carpet. (Yes, the carpet needs to be replaced. But not until we get rid of some more stuff.) I managed to pull everything out of about maybe an eighth of the space. One little corner. I flung what was “legal” for me to fling, boxed some other stuff (taking a cue from my Seattle cuz, who is also in a flinging mode) and stacked up books on my staging table (old C fam chitchen table) for eventual return to the shelves I cleared off (and cleeeeaned). I hauled my ancient Electrolux down stairs, got down on my hands and knees and vacuumed up all the rodent crap and other flotsam and jetsam that I could. Now I am letting Roooomba roll around that little area of Yellow Shag Carpet to her heart’s content. She doesn’t get bored with vacuuming like I do and she will go over and over and over that little area of floor picking up stuff that I can’t even see. When her battery runs down, I will recharge her and then let her do it all over again. And maybe even a third time. Yes, it is that bad.

As it happened, “other” “people” were working on other rooms. Actually one other person worked on one other room, which happened to be the Messter Bedroom (credit to DogMomster or whoever it was who coined that term, I can’t remember). At one point there were two people in the house and three vacuum cleaners were going [grin]. Anyway, lots of stuff was cleaned/flung and the flat-screen TV we “inherited” from The Comm (aka snagged after she died) was finally mounted on the wall. The Landfill feels cleaner tonight if only symbolically, although the lingering smell of the Goo Gone I used in the chitchen today mitigates that somewhat somehow.

Anyway, my de-hoarding / cleaning efforts usually feel like two steps forward, three steps back. Especially since I have acquired a lot of things from The Comm’s house. Today, even though the Dungeon is a blasted mess right now, I feel as though I have taken about 10 steps forward. But does that mean I am set up to take, well, how many steps back? Solve for x here. Who said algebra wasn’t useful after high school?

Good night and happy flinging (if you are flinging),
KW