Archive for January, 2013

Is there life after user guides?

Friday, January 11th, 2013

Oh, that’s right, this was a full five-day week over at the salt mines. I guess I’m not used to that yet. Instead of texting the GG my usual Friday evening progress down to the Oscar Tango in quarter-mile increments, I texted photooos. Fuzzy photos from a woman in motion on this balmy night in January! First up? Just leaving my little corner of the Planet Ann Arbor, walking by Ritsema Woods into the Haisley schoolyard.

Leaving Haisley, turning down onto Duncan Street.

Wellington Park playground

Yellow Slide playground (yellow slide is long gone — too dangereuse…)

Huron/Jackson/Dexter/et al

Slauuuuson… Some of my cuzzints went there but the beach urchins didn’t.

YYYYYY M C A [doo do do do doo do doo do]

Drop Acid, Not Bombz Bridge

Oscar Tango

Two miles down and two miles back aaaaannnnddd… g’night!

That glare [wink]

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

I think this was it, right? We had just walked “the woods” back from cocktails and dinner at Radical Betty’s, a couple “doors” down. Walking “the woods” between cabins at the moominbeach means you *are* walking in the woods. There are old two-track roads but they are somewhat overgrown and it is DARK at night there, unless the moon is full and there are no clouds. So The Comm had struggled a bit walking home that night and, while I don’t think she exactly fell, it was a bit dicey getting her home (not to mention ourselves). When we got home, I suggested she needed a headlamp! This photo shows how well *that* went over.

Yes, my mother had one heckuva sense of humor although she could also be a bit judgmental, just a bit. Her older sister (who is still alive at something like 98) once told me that “they” called The Commander “Lemon Tongue” as a child. That’s a story for another day but I think I know why, because man oh man, she could say some “interesting” things about other people… I have to say that her third career teaching high school classes to at-risk students up in the Yooperland tempered that quite a bit.

As to why I say I don’t miss her? I have extremely complicated thoughts about that whole thing but on balance, I don’t. Yet. The reason is that I spent the last 10 months of her life in a situation that neither of us ever wanted. She was incapable of living independently and defiant about wanting to (you go girl!). But she needed a caregiver (or me). Except, she didn’t want a caregiver and (fer kee-reist) didn’t want it to be me. And that was a good thing because I am not a good caregiver, at least I would have trouble changing my life to become one for my mother. We were lucky that she could AFFORD to pay for a high quality assisted living facility. Not everyone can. I won’t go into the politics surrounding that tonight. She still wasn’t happy living in her beautiful apartment at FV. She still wanted to be home. At the end of it all, I felt relief and still do… Sigh…

The Commander really never lost her sense of humor. A year or so ago, I was walking from Command Central (her now-empty house) down to War Memorial Hospital every morning at 0-skunk-30. One morning I got down there and she was (I thought) sound asleep. I thought, “Whew!” I turned my back to her to take off my winter clothes, etc., and I was trying to be as quiet as a mouse. Suddenly! “ANNE!” I jumped about a mile. She needed water. I gave her water. She was very sick at that point but I can’t help thinking she got a kick out of making me jump like that.

Life is tough and then you die. Wishing all y’all many happy healthy years before that time comes.

Love y’all,
KW

P. S. The Comm would’ve adored my new stove! When I got that stove, I wanted to call her. Or text her a photo (yes, really, she texted). It was the first time I had that feeling.

In which January 9th is muuuuch more boring than it was one year ago…

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

One year ago today, we were headed north on yet another emergency trip. Our last, more or less, as it turned out. The Commander was back in the hoosegow and after a touch-and-go week of discharge plans that didn’t ever quite get executed, I was informed that she had a c. diff infection. Google it if you dare. I don’t even want to think about it. I won’t go into detail here but things went downhill from there. The worst thing? January 9th was The Comm’s birthday (and Richard Nixon’s by the way). I am not feeling upset that she isn’t around for her 92nd. Her last year was horrible and I believe she’s in a better place. Do I miss her? That’s waaaayyyy too complicated for today. Short answer? No, but! Today, I am going to do some stories…

My parents, mugging for the camera, ca. early 2000s… Sam (dog, not archaeologist) can be seen behind Grandroobly…

The Commander and Grandroobly dealing with fighting about the moomincabin garbage.

In which Kayak Woman is in trouble with The Commander.

And again…

The Comm was raised to be a “proppa” kind of gal and here she is making sure that Radical Betty had a napkin at RB’s last birthday. A cloth one, no less. Weeee have to doooo this right! Roight?

And then, there is the Thud Club. It started with The Goddess Esther, who apparently had a “thud” incident over in the Niagara Falls area, where she lives. The Comm earned her Thud Club apron back in the day when The Engineer and I were 20-somethings and kind of floundering around. Well, I was floundering, The Engineer was an engineer. The story was that The Comm and Radical Betty drank wine after dinner at RB’s house and kvetched about their kids and then they walked the beach and The Comm fell down in the shallow water next to the shore. And may have had some difficulty getting up. Oh heck, we all have Thud Club aprons now. I earned mine long ago.

I could go on but I think I am done for the night. HB to The Commander and a HUGE thanks to all who loved her and helped me during the last couple years of her life.

Way down upon the swanny river

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

This was the first morning in a couple weeks that I was able to take my usual 0-skunk-30 walk without the encumbrance of my beloved YakTrax. I *do* love my YakTrax but it was a relief not to need them today. The GG complains that I regard YakTrax as a “consumable”. That means he thinks I spend too much money on them. But they *are* a consumable. They wear out. I won’t even try to describe how, it’s too long. I go through a couple pairs a winter. At $30 a pair, I think that’s much cheaper than a concussion. Brains are not consumables. I can afford to buy any number of YakTrax. I cannot buy a new brain.

I liberated another of my loverly old red cafeteria trays today! It was being used to store knick-knacks down in the dungeon. I fergit how many of those trays I started out with (I bought them at Gordon Foods) but for a while there, I was down to about two. We use them here to eat dinner on in the back room (because we are too lazy to eat at the loverly teak dining table most of the time) but it was The Commander who first began acquiring red cafeteria trays up at the moomincabin. We used them to serve “mocha” and special breakfasts to “turtling” little beach urchins on the moomincabin couch on cold mornings. We used them to serve lunches to beach urchins out in the Little Princess trailer. We took them on trips to Clyde’s Drive In. At a certain point, Lizard Breath would take orders in the POC on the way there so we were ready to just read off our order when we got there. Most people already knew what they wanted anyway. Clyde’s is the best and greasiest burger joint on earth. And if you have kids, you can take them over to Goose Poop Park to play after you eat. Just watch out for the seagulls!

I was annoyed by parts of my work today. I won’t go into detail about that (it was what it was) except that I went to a spec review where I expected to have trouble staying awake, meaning not nodding off and falling out of my chair. Instead it turned into a melee (a veddy veddy polite one as always) but I had to wake up and try to figure out how to talk people down off the ledge. I was not all that successful. Why did I not take my laptop to that meeting like I usually do? But I will keep going via “relentless positive action”. It can work in the corporate world (except when it doesn’t). I don’t think it works in government…

I don’t even try to be a “bird paparazzi”, like my fellow blahgger The Marquis. But this guy (gal?) was just hanging out next to the river bank and even as I futzed around with my iPhone camera, he didn’t move. I also kind of liked all of the vegetation and reflections.

HB to me…

Monday, January 7th, 2013

Oh, don’t worry, you haven’t missed No Politics Day (and don’t worry if you DO miss NPD [wink]). It doesn’t happen for a week or thereabouts. But, for years, every time somebody asks me that loaded question, “What to you want for xmas / your birthday?”, my answer has been, “A dumpster in the driveway!” I’m sorry, when you are flinging, you want the outflow to surpass the inflow.

But then, a couple weeks ago, we were driving past this big u-store-it facility on Liberty, and I had this big-time light bulb moment. Not just your regular 100 watt incandescent light bulb moment. This light bulb filled the sky with sparkly rainbow colors. And then a second light bulb moment occurred, namely, there is one of those facilities “around the corner” from The Landfill. I mean it is just down the row from my fave Plum Market, which means I can walk to it. Not that I will because I will be hauling boxes and other cosmic debris that won’t fit in my backpack.

So yes, I bit the bullet and I am now the lessee on a little space of home-away-from-home. So far, I have one (count it) box in there. I am working slowly and databasing things* as I go. For now. I’m sure that’ll change when we get the rest of The Comm’s stuff out of the moomincabin garage and move it down here.

Getting rid of as much crud and corruption as I have in the last few years is giving me breathing space. Yes we have storage space at The Landfill… I clean out one basement room (or whatever) and another room (or area) gets cluttered. There’s too much.

We’re making progress. This year, I was actually able to identify a few things that I actually wanted for xmas. Little things, carefully considered. For instance, my beloved old indoor/outdoor thermometer that I have used *forever* got stuck on 106 last summer (really). So I needed a new thermometer (and I got a loverly one). I hope that having this extra space will give me more breathing space. And then maybe I can get on with some badly needed renovations…

Of course we could not rent the dern space without the GG bringing up one of his fave movies, The Silence of the Lambs. I bet the guy who runs that place is really bored talking about that…

G’night and no it is not my birthday.

* I am using MyStuff2, a cool iPhone app that my 10-year-old self wishes she had when she was reorganizing her bedroom… Once a nerd, always a nerd.

Mystery solved!

Sunday, January 6th, 2013

I don’t remember my parents saving newspapers. Years ago when I was a child, they saved them until my old coot burned the trash (yes, we did that then). Later on, they threw them out, used them as fire starter, or recycled them, whatever the era or season. They saved *clippings*. Important items when one of us made it into the Sault Evening Snooze, maybe family obituaries, etc. (And Grandma over a few blocks away kept a hawk-eye on the honor roll but that would be a whole ‘nother story [wink].) So I could not figure out why they had saved a complete newspaper from June 15, 1960. There’s nothing significant about that date that I know of and I could not find *anything* in the entire newspaper that might warrant saving it.

When the GG and I encountered this newspaper, we had the usual argument about whether or not to save it. I am more of a flinger but I caved in and didn’t immediately throw it into the recycle. That was months ago… Lizard Breath was here this morning and somehow the talk turned to that newspaper. I dredged it out and she volunteered to try to decipher out why it was saved. I thought something like, “Okay, go for it.” LB is a smarter little cookie than her baggy old moom ever was but I was skeptical that she would solve the mystery.

But then, after a while she giggled that she had figured it out. And I suspect she did. The Sundstrom boys and two of the Mackie boys are in this photo and article about baby skunks. It was on the back page. Now, how does Lizard Breath know anything about the Sundstrom or Mackie boys? She probably has not encountered the Mackie boys but I bet she remembers Marc S from the old Glen’s grocery store when she was about three. We went up to Siberia for Thanksgiving and we had gotten her all hyped up about “The Grinch” coming to Thanksgiving dinner. The Comm and I took Liz to the old Glen’s where we ran into Marc. After that little grocery store encounter, The Comm and I were talking about the Grinch and Liz said, “I already know him, I saw him at the grocery store.” Marc is a gentle giant who, at the time, was the father of an infant himself, but I remember Liz being wide-eyed. Who *was* this giant?

Marc is that cute little boy in the left of the photo. He was a couple years older than me and we didn’t go to the same grade school and I wasn’t friends with him until much later when he would come out to the beach and hang out with my cuzzints et al. Why did The Comm save that paper? I can only guess that she bought a couple extra copies to send to the Sundstroms and Mackies and somehow one copy of that paper got randomly stashed somewhere and here it is ???

I think I will save it [grin]. I love that my children know the name “Sundstrom” even though they did not grow up in Sault Ste. Siberia. Also, it is *hilarious* seeing ads for the old dime stores and Cowan’s and the Soo Creamery clown face again.

Knighty-Knight

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

Knight’s tonight with the GB Fins, Dogmomster and Valdemort. The wait was an hour and a half [because we didn’t bother to make reservations] but we hung out around the bar, doing our best to keep out of the way of the beleaguered wait-staff threading their way through the crowd. It was typical Knight’s, beloved despite the wait. Reminded me of the old Forsythe Science Fair days.

I was able to palm off a few little treasures and other items upon various people today and now, Lizard Breath (who is spending the night) is going through all of my old record albums — the ones I was gonna give away — and we are playing some of them and I am becoming convinced that I cannot dump them all off at the re-use center after all. Sigh. I am currently listening to the Supremes cover all kinds of other bands in one of their first albums. The strange thing about this is that I own this album because my rather conservative (at the time) parents bought it for me on a trip to Dee-troit that I didn’t go on. What possessed them and how did they decide what to buy? I liked the album but I probably would’ve chosen something different. Still, they tried, and I did like the album.

Knight’s claim to fame is as a steakhouse that serves ginormous drinks. I am glad that we can walk there… And I was glad to make way for several people throughout the night who were struggling to navigate the place with walkers. I remember when The Comm was using one and hating that she needed one with all the vitriol she could muster. As for Knight’s, one of my fave memories is when I was having breakfast with a bunch of middle school mom friends somewhere and my friend V and I were blathering about Knight’s. Another woman finally said, “Well… don’t a lot of Republicans go there?” V and I stopped dead for a minute and said, in unison, “Well, yes!” That was a long time ago when the Republican party was not quite so filled with loonies but still.

Done. Good night.

In the Evening News…

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Down in the Landfill Dungeon (somewhere), there is a photo of me and my buddy Bill (a high school/facebook friend, not the GG). We were in the Sault Evening News for getting scholarships to go to the Interlochen All-State summer music camp. More about that some other time. The point is that my husband, who grew up in the Megalopolis suburb of Royal Joke and maybe have visited the yooperland once or twice before he ran into yer fav-o-rite blahgger, has been featured in this Sault Evening News article.

He is actually a bit embarrassed about this. He took a rather intense two-day wilderness first aid class at the Ann Arbor REI last fall. He learned a lot but does *not* feel like an expert at any of this stuff by any stretch of the imagination. His presentation was more along the lines of “this is what I learned in the class” than “I am a wilderness first aid expert and know *everything*”. I suspect he feels competent at some of the more mundane problems (like blisters, for example), not life-threatening situations.

So, blisters. He has moleskin in his trail medical kit but that didn’t do him any good tonight because who would think to bring a trail medical kit to downtown Planet Ann Arbor? We took our usual Friday walk down to the Oscar Tango for dinner and, alas, a blister was forming on his foot. As we began our walk home, he mentioned something about taking a taxi. Lo and behold there was a taxi just sitting around on Washington outside the Mongolian BBQ. Was she available for a fare? Yes, she was. And so we taxied home. Wouldn’t you know, our taxi driver canoe-camps all over Michigan (and knows about moleskin) and is enrolled at WCC with a mind to changing careers (been there, done that, albeit in the usual random KW fashion). Really, the GG and I would rather have walked but… And as she dropped us off, I couldn’t help but think about the times our next door neighbors the Drs. Burke would get schnockered in their back yard (on Burke’s Erection) and then take a taxi downtown (or wherever) to eat and (probably) drink more (and sometimes we would be “treated” to a midnight vision of Mr. Dr. Burke on his deck in his birthday suit, not a particularly pretty sight but certainly entertaining).

Surfin’ on the downside of the holiday wave

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

There is this article about Harriet Tubman on The Atlantic’s website. We used to get the Atlantic Monthly when I was a kid and I read it when I wasn’t playing the flute or the piano or working my way through my dad’s ancient analytical geometry book. I dunno what’s true or not about Harriet but down in the dungeon, there is a papier mache model of Harriet, who served as a subject for one beach urchin’s Black History Month prodjects for at least two years.

I will never forget the year that particular beach urchin came home and told me about her 3rd-grade Black History month prodject and said something like, “Mr. K said we could choose anyone except this magic person but I don’t know who that is.” That “magic person” was Magic Johnson (of basketball fame) and [sigh] what I knew about him was that he was playing basketball at Moo-U while I was there. My roommate worked at the Big Boy restaurant and, when he first got famous, the restaurant gave him a free meal. Alas, thereafter he would come in and ask if he could have a free meal… I think that Harriet Tubman was a better choice for a prodject but I also think that my daughter may have had an interesting take on Magic Johnson. But what the heck, she was only in 3rd grade, fer kee-reist. I told Mr. K about that whole thing and he laughed but he also got it.

I definitely supported her choice to do her prodject on Harriet Tubman (er, not that I had much to do with it…). I don’t think anyone living knows exactly what Harriet Tubman did but I have a suspicion that she is someone who should be celebrated in HISTORY, not just Black History Month. History is the story of the earth and its geology and all of its living entities and I hate when polly-tickal crap gets in the way of that.

Because it seems like we are actually into something resembling a real winter…

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

…I think I will do my annual snow / ice removal rant. I mean it’s either that or a rambling disjointed education rant or a rambling disjointed reproductive rights [women’s, that is] rant. Y’all do not want me to go either of those places. Ice, I think I can handle somewhat concisely and without pissing anyone off. I hope…

Can I just say that the snow / ice removal on The Planet Ann Arbor sucks? Big-time. I am mainly talking about individual citizens with a mere nod to how bad the snowplowing is. I walk. I walk early in the morning, well before the sun comes up. Do you know how hard it is to navigate the residential sidewalks of The Planet Ann Arbor in the dark after a snowfall when everyone shovels / snowblows / wovels / salts [or not] their sidewalk in a different fashion?

I wear YakTrax on my boots these days when there’s even a little bit of snow. I am pretty confident wearing them. MMCB asked me if YakTrax were good in snow. She meant a significant accumulation. I said, “What YakTrax are good for in snow is when there is black ice underneath the snow.” I have had [over the years] a couple of falls where I would be walking along in grippy, non-slippery snow and BOTH FEET would hit a sheet of black ice (under the snow). Both times, I was down before I knew what hit me. Ka-whomp! Both times I picked myself up immediately and kept going. And was fine, except for a lingering feeling of being picked up and shaken by the Jolly (ho ho ho) Green White Giant.

I was walking along this morning — in my YakTrax — and it was obnoxious because it’s been a while since the last significant snow but temperatures have remained cold and, if anything, that means that the walking conditions have deteriorated. YakTrax are best on actual snow / ice but they are annoying on pavement so I have to constantly assess where to walk. Street? Sidewalk?

I *almost* didn’t wear my YakTrax today but, in the end, I was glad I had them. Because, although YakTrax are wonderful 99% of the time, occasionally you can hit a patch of ice where they turn into a skate. And that happened today. It was about a square foot of ice in a place where I will guess the homeowner thought, “Oh, that’s city property, I don’t need to clear that”. Roight… I did not fall. My other foot (also YakTraxxed) caught me and I did a herky-jerky little move that I can’t even exactly remember and then regained my pace. It was enough to kind of pull a muscle at the top of my left thigh a bit. It’s okay, it’s a dull, comfortable kind of ache. “You used me! I just wish you hadn’t used me quite so violently.”

Please please please please. Humanoids of The Planet Ann Arbor. Please whatever method of snow removal you use, if there is a potential for sheets (or even patches) of ice to form where you have shoveled / snowblown / woveled, put some salt out on your sidewalk. Also, please please please please, put all of your vee-hickles into your garage or driveway or whatever, so when the snowplows eventually come around, they can actually CLEAR THE STREET. And walk once in a while. Then you’ll know how bad it is out there. Yes, on your sidewalk.

P. S. What is a wovel? You wanna know, roight? Here is a wovel. So cool. Birthday anyone? Actually what I want for my birthday is a storage unit…

Hike. Fling. Read.

Tuesday, January 1st, 2013

We actually went *out* for New Year’s Eve. We went to our fave Old Town Barooom, aka the Oscar Tango. We got there before the New Year’s rush started and got the catbird seat where we could watch all of the goings on on Liberty, including these folks having a ciggie… We hit up the Grizzly Peak Brewery on the way home. I didn’t expect a decent ‘hattan at a brewpub but these ‘hattans rivaled Knight’s. We walked home after that and I don’t think either of us actually saw the ball drop.

Today? Man oh man, I chilled out in a major way. The usual amount of hiking aka my 0-skunk-30 walk plus a trip over to the Plum. I thought about dragging the GG out for some hiking somewhere but football was on TV and New Years’ Day is one of the few times I like to “watch” football, or at least have it on as ambient noise. But I do plan for some hiking expotitions in the new year. Flinging? Nothing today … That was okay. I needed to take a break. But I will continue. Read. Most of the latest New Yorker and worked on a book that’s been hanging out on my phone. My goal this year is to focus more on SSR (siddown, shaddup, and read).

This New Year’s Day has been much better than last year’s was when I had a very surreal phone answering experience in the Houghton Lake bathroom at 0-skunk-30. I miss my mother but I don’t miss those phone calls.