I was a wee bit nervous about wearing my new summer hiking uniform to work — baggy tie-dyed t-shirt, short blue quick-dry skirt, and a bathing suit in place of the typical work-type undergarments. I was nervous enough that I packed a plastic bag with a longer skirt in it, just in case. But we were told to wear “picnic casual” today, I think the exact words were “wear whatever you’ll be wearing out on the river to work in the morning”. I knew I was gonna get wet so I dressed for it. And after all, I needn’t have worried. When I arrived in the parking lot, the LSCHP was just getting out of his vee-hickle. He greeted me with a gesture indicating that I was blinding him and by that and *his* outfit (which actually didn’t include a Batman yarmulke this time) I knew I was still in good standing.

Beeeeecaaaauuuusssse… It was KAYAK DAY! This is my fav-o-rite work perk ever!!! What it amounts to is that a whole bunch of baggy old software developers and systems analysts of various stripes meet up at Argo Park and kayak / canoe down the Huron River to Gallup Park, where we get picked up and dumped off back at Argo. Where there is beer!

Nevertheless, I had a bit of trepidation about this particular outing. That’s because we would be going down the [dun dun dun duunnnn] CASCADES! The Argo cascades are a man made succession of little rapids and pools. Here are pics and here’s a video someone managed to take while traversing them. I have walked by them many times and something about them has always made me nervous. I am a weird aminal whose soul possesses both love of water and not a small bit of phobia. I am erroneously regarded as a kayaking “expert” by folks at work. People who have never kayaked before will ask me to help them get started, etc. They haven’t figured out yet that I am just a decently strong paddler on relatively flat water. Rapids? Hmmm. I can do very small ones.

I had to suppress my fear about the cascades but I had so much fun! The biggest problem is that there were just enough other kayakers and tubers in the cascades that I had to wait for others to go through first. Because I was trying to do the whole thing like they showed us in the video, lining my kayak up straight. I got wet! Each cascade involved a bit more water coming into the boat and the last one soaked me and filled my yak with several inches. These boats are designed to drain water quickly and it was out of my boat within minutes but my butt was wet hours later and I ended up taking a shower when I got home just to get the whole Urine Huron River experience out of my pores.

After the cascades, the river has a current but that gradually slows, eventually enough so that you can actually stop paddling long enough to get your iPhone out of its waterproof case. This photoooo shows the front of my kayak and Mary as we approach the pickup spot at Gallup. Mary and I were not the first kayakers on the river (but close) but we were the first kayakers to arrive at Gallup. She’s a runner. Both of us like to keep moving. Others behind us were stopping to watch the wildlife or jumping (on purpose) into the water. That was fine. Mary and I like to move (although we do like to watch wildlife). When we got back to Argo, I had a beer. Some people hadn’t even left the shelter. Card games were going on and someone had a puppy there with him and I do not even know what else. I am happy that the local backwater of the huge global corporation I work for schedules events that everyone can participate in. I am glad I’m one of those that who chose to take a kayak down the cascades.

Because my blahg server has been wonky all day and now that I *may* be back, I am just dead damn taaarrred. Here we are at Honest ? Joes yesterday morning for breakfast. Fun times. Except that the waitress was waaaayyyy slow, especially about bringing the damn check and some of us had to beeeeee other places, don’tcha know and I didn’t think we would *ever* get outta there. But the food was good so we’ll give it another try one o’ these days.

Spent the morning in downtown Daytwa. Well, some of us spent the morning there, others spent the whole day. First, some pics of Lizard Breath’s loverly new (since early summer) apartment in the Woodbridge area of Detroit, complete with photobombers. So here is a Mouse photobomber tending the amaryllis in Lizard’s cool chitchen.

Next we have the Twinz of Terror in their Dee-troit Lions regalia, photobombed by none other than Liz as well as a bookshelf The Commander made.

Finally, here’s The Comm’s old kitchen table and chairs from the Dillon house. No photobomber in this one except maybe for a very happy plant that has finally recovered after being moved. (For the second time, it moved from Sault Ste. Siberia to Ferndale and then to Detroit.)

These photooos do not do the apartment justice. It is a two-floor space with the main rooms on the second floor of the house and an attic bedroom on the third. It’s in a beautifully (and recently) restored old-school Detroit house in a thriving neighborhood. I won’t try to pin down the style of architecture, maybe Liz can fill us in. My grandaddy and Bolette had a kind of an art deco style house but it was a (beautiful) smaller house in a different neighborhood.

Being us, you have to know that the day was more complicated than just driving over to Detroit for breakfast and back. Noooo. The GG drove the Frog Hopper and I drove the Ninja and we picked up Mouse on the way and then, after breakfast, Mouse and I drove back to The Planet Ann Arbor because Mouse had to work today. The GG stayed around to attend the Lions game with his “ugly brother” the UU. And guess what? The Lions won and nobody’s vee-hickle got towed.

I spent a very satisfying spacified afternoon mostly cooking. Tomato sauce out of home grown veggies from three gardens plus the farmer’s market and stuff for dinner tonight and during the week. And then a bit of organizing in preparation for more flinging. But not the broiler pan. Not yet. (I’ve come to retuuuurrrn the broiler paaaannnnn — The White Tornado, singing opera-style ca hmmmm 1966 maybe?)

I looked at the clock a number of times this morning. I even reset the flashing clock on Gertrude, the victim of a bizarre power outage yesterday afternoon (one that I wasn’t home for). Suddenly it was 9:00 AM and I posted on facebook everything I had done by that time which was something like get up, shower, clean the Blue and Only Bathroom, walk to the farmer’s market and back (2 miles each way), do a bunch of laundry, “process” some (but not all) of the veggies I got at the market, and I fergit what else. I do know that I delegated vacuuming duties to Rosie the Robot Rooooomba.

So, I posted it all on facebook and I loved the responses I got. Most of them were along the lines of “haven’t gotten out of my pajamas yet and thinking about doing this or that, etc. So much fun. I am *always* out of my nightshirt at an early hour but I definitely have those days when I can’t jump-start myself and I totally understand that whole thing. Today? I dunno what hit me.

So, take a deep breath. I went on to walk to the Plum Market for a few more provisions, then drove over to the Jackson Road Meijer for stuff that I can’t or don’t wanna buy at the Plum. Gotta spread what passes for “wealth” around, roight? Yes. And then, I settled in to de-hoarding and I made good progress processing several boxes of The Comm’s stuff. Until. I. Burned. Out. I wanted to burn branches in the back yard but then it started to rain. And I love when it rains so I gave up on the burning. But then I was bored… I wanted to do more flinging but I couldn’t quite figure out what to fling. Like, there’s a full-sized broiler pan there and, even though I have never used one of those during my sojourn at The Landfill and currently have no place to store it, I have always wanted one of those and I can’t quite donate it.

The details of life can be so difficult.

Carl says that this painting’s title is “Cabin Dreams”. We don’t usually sit under this thing but we needed a big table down at the Oscar Tango tonight. Not only did we get Porterized, we were also cuzzintized! By none other than Jay and Carl, who drove down from the yooperland today and have to hit the skies back to Seattle tomorrow morning. Thankfully not at 0-dark-30.

It was getting to be a wild night down at the OT. When we got there, it was pretty quiet and the TV wasn’t even on. Then about 15 40-something male-type folks arrived, hugged, threw about four tables together, and ordered a bunch of pitchers. The TV came on but I fergit what kind of sporting event was on it. Carl could probably tell you. The bunch of guys were Notre Dame fans, we guessed. It’s okay. They’ll have a loooonnnnggg time to recover from tonight’s adventures tomorrow. The game isn’t until 8:00 PM. I wish I had a photoooo of all those guys hugging but I wasn’t quite quick enough with the iPhone.

I could tell Jay was taaaarrrred at the end of it all. Her taaarrred-ness flowed over into me although I did recover myself on the long walk up the hill to The Landfill. Of course, I also lost the GG somewhere along the way. He stopped in Maryfield Park to urbanP into the ravine and I kept on going, thinking he would catch up. As it turned out, I got all the way home and took a shower and when I got out of the shower, he still wasn’t home. For a split second or two, I was thinking I might have to go out and look for him or call the po-leeese or something but then he came galumphing in the door.

Farmer’s market early tomorrow and then Habitat for Humanity. And, if I can muster up the right kind of psychological energy, maybe a run down to Kiwanis with a couple boxes of stuff. We’ll see. Every little bit counts.

G’night,
KW

Here it is. I have been living on the periphery of Haisley School for closer to three decades than I feel strong enough to admit right now. Every morning, I walk past the Deeeeep Dark Scary Woods (and it is dark when I set out at this time of the year) and through the schoolyard, the first leg of my three-mile 0-skunk-30 powerwalk. The photo is looking toward the woods — that’s my entrance (and my exit). My house is on the other side of the woods.

I walk on the sidewalk if it’s not covered with huge mud puddles or glare ice. If I can’t navigate the sidewalk without reenacting the old pig fell in the mud joke or sliding down onto my you-know-what, I walk on the grass beside the sidewalk. The side of the sidewalk where the FENCE is. I don’t walk on the grass on the *other* side of the sidewalk because that side of the sidewalk is usually worse than the sidewalk, at least when it’s wet and muddy, ice is a whole ‘nother story.

This summer, they were doing paving and construction and stuff to the left of where I’m standing to take the picture. Since the area was blocked off by temporary orange plastic fencing, I took to walking *across* the grass (past that slide) and around the construction. Imagine that! Except. Last Friday morning. I walked past the Deeeeep Dark Scary woods and I was about to cut across the grass. But. THERE WAS A FENCE!!! The fence connects the fence around the Deeeeeep Dark Scary Woods and the back end of the school. I had to walk its entire length. Fortunately there was a gate and it wasn’t even padlocked. The janitor came out just then and I asked him about it. He didn’t have an answer and seemed a bit grumpy about being asked and said something about school property. Well, yeah, but it’s also PUBLIC property, paid for by my property taxes. It should be obvious that I’m not the kind of person that is gonna shoot up the school, me in my tie-dyed t-shirt, hiking skirt, purple Keens, and bedraggled hair. And at 6:00 AM, there are no kids over there anyway. Just other walkers, runners, dogs, and rabbits.

I searched the school district website for information. Nada. Finally, the first day of school, annarbor.com The Ann Arbor News did a story about school improvements made over the summer. Haisley School, accessible playground. Okay, I get that. Haisley has always had several classrooms of children with disabilities, some of them so severe that those children can’t walk or take care of their own basic needs in any way, shape or form. I think it’s great that there is an accessible playground for them. If I were still the PTO treasurer over there, I’d’ve advocated for that playground, even if the principal wanted to buy lobby furniture. The FENCE?!? I do not understand the fence. It isn’t like the entire playground is enclosed by the FENCE. The area is easily accessible from the other side.

Grump grump grump grumpity grump. Good night.

I was gonna kvetch about the new FENCE that the school district put up in the schoolyard I walk through EVERY DAMN DAY. But I won’t. At least not today. Because this photoooo appeared in my facebook feed and I am shamelessly stealing it from Mouse and posting it here. I don’t even care if the folks in it don’t want to have their faces plastered all over them thar tubes. They are already out there on facebook. And I think they are all beautiful!

This is the “hole” in front of the Old Cabin. It is a loverly place to sit at 0-beer-30 on a cold, windy day. Like today. These folks are my “baby” cuzzint npJane, a fellow Planet A2 denizen, my cuzzint Jay (npJane’s sis), Jay’s loverly husband Carl (they are Seattle folks), and, oh there’s the dern GG who gets toooooo much vacation time, not to mention he’s one o’ them thar sequester-type folks*. I have sat in the hole many a time with npJane and sometimes others but (all too often) by myself. They have BEER there and The Commander’s old basket, which nowadays permanently contains a bottle opener.

This doesn’t look much like a hole but, when I was a beach urchin, this spot was a actually a hole, a deep sand hole. Rumor has it that it was *possibly* created by a small tornado during a legendary storm back before I was born. I do not remember this of course but throughout my life, The Commander and others would refer to That Storm back in 1950 where the water came over the bank and up the road (?). Of course, these are the kinds of things I wish I could still talk to my parents and Radical Betty about. But when I was hanging out with The Comm at FV or the damn hoosegow, believe me, between the food and transportation complaints and later on the pain (sigh….) the last thing I could think of to ask her about was That Storm. Did it include a tornado or not? I do not know. Did anyone ever know? Looking back, it sure looked like something a tornado would do. Tornadoes are rare in the yooperland but they do occur. Maybe a small funnel cloud touched down.

Anyway, this hole represented major damage to the bank in front of the Old Cabin and my grandparents prevented further erosion by stacking up a bunch of pulp logs (they used to float in to the beach from Canadian paper mills) across the front. Us kids had so much fun down in that sand hole. It’s kind of hard to describe but I can still remember hanging about at the edges of the hole where little plant roots hung over the side making perfect little homes for imaginary beasties of any sort.

As you can see, it isn’t a sand hole anymore. After more years than I am strong enough to mention at the moment, the typical woods and bank vegetation have taken over again. Nevertheless, this area remains a protected spot.

*I made light of the whole sequester thing and I can do that because it does not have much of an effect on our overall lifestyle, which is pretty humble except for those few moments it’s not, like when I buy Copper River salmon at the Plum Market… We are okay because we both have decent incomes and our children are grown up and not dependent upon us (although I love love love to buy them stuff). But the sequester is extremely difficult for many people, including (but not limited to) young families who are struggling to raise children on small incomes. Like we once did. Been there, done that. But I won’t discuss the sequester tonight. Or maybe ever.

Oh hi, it’s me yer fav-o-rite blahgger iPhoneographer playing with the Hipstamatic Salvador 84 lens again. Aren’t I cool [not]?

Of course, this photoooo does not reflect reality [get the pun? hee hee hee] but it’s kind of cool anyway because if we owned a second purple Walden Vista, we could’ve staged a real photooo very much like this, minus the weird stuff the island and Canada are doing out there. We would need the Uncly Uncle, of course. Because y’all know — or do you? — that the GG is an identical twin, roight? They were numbers five and six out of ten and I believe the GG is something like 10 minutes older than the UU. I also believe that twins were not exactly expected, at least not until an x-ray showed something a little different in the late stages of Grandma Sally’s pregnancy. But I could be wrong about that so somebody correct me.

Things were a lot different back then and even when I had my first child in 1984. I didn’t even have an ultrasound with Lizard Breath. Having an ultrasound at that time entailed a lot of expensive guzzinto and there didn’t seem to be a reason for one and so I didn’t have one and guess what? Liz was *perfect*! I did have one for Mouse, even though I don’t think one was necessary (long story). I won’t go into TMI about that except to say that it reassured me that I was growing a *baby* and not an alien and boy was it a relief to pee when it was over. That is all and we will not revisit that subject, thank you very much.

The night of my wedding rehearsal, the GG’s aunt Gale (like the “wind”, as she would say) confided in me that the twins were holy terrors as children. I had already kind of guessed that, given some of the antics they have been known to get up to. It’s kind of hard to describe them. I was gonna say that they are not rule followers but that’s not exactly correct because you can’t totally disregard laws and also be successful, upstanding citizens. Maybe I should say they try to spurn the unnecessary and ridiculous rules that overly officious would-be “authorities” try to put in place? Hem hem, maybe they’re kind of like Fred and George Weasley if you’ve read the Harry Potter books. Dolores Umbridge, anyone? Hem hem…

Twin Sons of Different Mothers. Dan Fogelberg (who The Engineer liked if I remember accurately) and Tim Weisberg. A blast from the past. This YouTube video is five minutes and probably has an ad at the beginning but if you can deal with the ad, just listen to a few seconds of it. I own that album (or maybe I used to, I gifted my old albums to Lizard Breath a while back and she took about half and I don’t even know what’s left). I like that album (I am or was once a flute player) but I don’t want it back here in The Deacquisitioning Center, aka The Landfill.

First order of business: if you emailed me today and I did not reply, please email me again (or text or whatever). I was away from email for long enough today that several hundred spam messages filled up my box and I went out to webmail, did a quick scan and then a delete all. I hope I didn’t miss anything. Most people who know me well use text messaging to contact me nowadays but there are some folks I care about who don’t use text messaging for their own personal reasons. That’s cool with me. I just don’t want to miss your messages!

Yikes! I hate hate hate hate to travel on Labor Day weekend. Especially when the destination is in the yooperland and the only way back to troll-land from the yooperland is via the Mackinac Bridge. Why? Because Labor Day is the ONE day out of the year when people are allowed to WALK the bridge. That is a good thing but it totally hoses up traffic, sometimes for hours. No, I have never walked the Mackinac Bridge. Despite my reputation as one of those nuts who walks umpteen bazillion miles a day, I have never walked the bridge. I don’t have a blasted bucket list but if I did, walking the Mackinac Bridge would be on it. (The reason I did travel to the yooperland this Labor Day is because my children could both be there and some of my beloved cuzzints would be next door.)

Today might have been an interesting day to walk the bridge. As Liz and I were driving out the cabin road (me in the Ninja and Liz in whatever she calls her cute little Civic), I heard (or thought I heard) on NPR that there were high winds on the bridge and drivers were supposed to slow down to 20 mph (yes) and put their flashers on. Aaaannnnddd… Stay in the outside lane, the one where there isn’t an open metal grid underneath (if you are not driving (or even if you are, I suppose), you can open your window, look down, and see water far below). It was very very very windy in the Great Gray Green Greasy Limpopo North today and I actually felt a little nervous about that. I also couldn’t figure out how that kind of weather / traffic situation would work out with all of those walkers on the bridge. When we got there, the lucky-shuckial sign said “All clear. Drive carefully.” Okay. I will.

Slowdowns today? Yes. US2 in St. Ignace (where we got gas) was a mess. The bridge was clear until about the last third. We left the bridge on the southbound side just as the last walkers were approaching the finish line. Vanderbilt slowdown. Somewhere north of Grayling but can’t remember where. Standish through Bay City — this was actually posted on the big lucky-shuckial sign near Grayling. I called Lizard at the last possible moment as we were inching along right next to the Standish exit and suggested we bail and take M13. That was a go and we missed a big stretch of RED (via Google Maps) on the I75 SUV Speedway. Zilwaukee Bridge but that’s typical for that area. What else? Flint area had some slowdowns and I hit a couple of small ones after we split, Liz to Daytwa and me to The Planet. I realize this is all gobblety-gook to anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with Great Lake State geography. Actually it’s kind of gobblety-gook to me too. Where did I have to hit my brakes? How many times? I dunno. I just know that I am dun dun dun driving for the day.

But I did have to make one more trip after I got home. My ETA was later than I like to get home after a trip and, as I approached The Planet, I tried to remember if there was ORANGE JUICE in my refrigerator and, if so, HOW MUCH??? The answer turned out to be NOT ENOUGH FOR TOMORROW MORNING. I actually got into the Ninja AGAIN and DROVE over to the Plum Market to buy orange juice and a couple other necessities. I usually walk over there but I was kind of done for the day…

I texted “A2” to my fam when I got home. I was happy to get Liz’s “Whole Foods Detroit” text as well as some earlier texts indicating that the Lyme Lounge and its occupants were happily ensconced in a campsite at Trout Soldier Lake. With blueberries and moe-skee-toe bites and, by this time of night a wee bit of bourbon, I’m sure.

Good night,
Kayak Woman

It should be obvious that this photoooo I took on the moominbeach this afternoon has nothing to do with reality. I took it with the Hipstamatic Salvador 84 lens on my iPhone and one of my fave Hipstamatic films, Big Up. It’s not real, but alternate moominbeach shorelines like this one have figured in my dreams since I was a small child.

I don’t really want to talk about shoreline dreams today though. You know, 15 years ago or maybe more, we began using the internet up here at the beach. It was a dial-up modem back then and one of my fav-o-rite memories of that was one evening when I was checking my email and somebody was sending me a LARGE photo or something. It was taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r and a couple of middle school-aged beach urchins were anxiously awaiting me to get off the computer so they could use it. I was seated at the edge of the double bed upstairs in the front of the cabin and they were impatiently hanging out behind me on the bed. F-i-n-a-l-l-y, an email came through from our friend The Marquis. Attached was a HUGE picture of The Marquis himself and a friend. They were wearing Hawaiian shirts and holding a pig. Explosive laughter from behind me indicated that the photo was worth the wait.

I bought my first-generation iPhone in August 2007. The next day I picked up Uber Kayak Woman from Daytwa Metro and we drove to the moominbeach and I posted a blahg entry from my phone. I POSTED A BLAHG ENTRY FROM MY PHONE… … … !!! Because I could.

Fast forward a bit. We have a wonderful DSL here now which reliably supplies us and the cabins on either side of us with broadband wifi. Aaaaannnnndddd… We have the 4G network all over the place. Here in the Yooperland. We occasionally get a nasty note telling us we’re in Canada but usually within a minute or so, we’re back on the 4G here in the United Snakes of America.

And text messaging? Lemme tell you. Today. After a bumping session with Our Northern Correspondent down at Doelle’s today (that would be a whole ‘nother blahg post, it was hilarious (and ultimately successful)!), the texting began. I made a mad dash in to Glen’s Grokkeries to obtain some provisions. As I arrived in the parking lot, I saw a text message from ONC offering onions from her garden (she knew that I did NOT want to go in to town). I texted back that we would love some onions but that I was also buying beer and beef and eggs and… did I say beer? (There have been so few folks here this summer that the Beer Refrigerator isn’t even plugged in!) Anyway, after I got back to the beach, ONC dropped off some gorgeous little onions, perfect for our kebabs tonight.

And then there was the whole vanilla extract thing. Mouse needed vanilla extract for some cookies and some bad person (aka, meeeee) blanketly got rid of a lot of herbs, spices, extracts and whatever after The Commander died. Thinking that a lot of that stuff was probably 40 years old or whatever but also just kind of cleaning myself out, yada yada yada. So, we talked about who might have vanilla extract on the beach and pretty soon Jane texted that there was some at the Old Cabin. Oh, and it wasn’t even old. Pooh needed it for something this summer. Anyway, the Old Cabin folks were happy to give us a teaspoon of vanilla extract, probably thinking something like, “Whew, that’s another teaspoon out of that bottle.

Anyway, it is fun to text back and forth between cabins and the beach and up the hill to ONC’s house and just kind of get things done that way. When I was a kid, getting things done often meant meeeee running back and forth between cabins to ferry provisions to other people or fetch things. Or whatever.