But I am not. Somebody has to earn a goddamn living, roight? Of course that’s kind of bullshit because my job pays me well but the GG makes quite a bit more than me and he gets a ton of time off. Tonight, the GG is hanging out in a “lodge” in the upper Tahquamenon falls area with a bunch of North Country Trail folks. I wish I was there tonight but I would need a shower in the morning and I’m not sure there is running hot water and a shower there. Taking a damn shower is not negotiable for me. If there wasn’t a shower, I’d be heading down the damn I75 SUV Speedway to the UU’s house in Gaylord to hit his shower.

Oh well. I am here at the Landfill and maybe tomorrow I’ll pack up some more crap to prepare for our upcoming chichen reno. I love that word. Reno. I am so coooool these days. Or whatever [grin].

I don’t have a lot more to say tonight except that I love you all so much.

Worked from home today. My only vee-hickle for the weekend is my sweet little Ninja. It wouldda been fine around my side of town but I knew it wouldn’t be happy with the big piles of snow on top of glare ice over at Avis, not to mention that infamous stoplight, so I wimped. It was okay. The Queen Bee has a similar Outback to mine and turns out it slid too. Fortunately not into a snowbank, pond, or other vee-hickle.

Bitter cold returned today so I suited up in all of my cobbled-together zero-degree gear for my brisk walk over to the bank this morning. I had business that could only be taken care of face-to-face. I don’t go to the actual bank much these days so I was a bit surprised to read the notice on the door that all hats, hoods, and sunglasses, etc., must be removed before entering. Um, it was like three degrees Fahrenheit and I was wearing a blasted balaclava! So I could be warm, don’tcha know. I walked into the entryway and pulled off my balaclava and when I got inside the inner door, Eleanor yelled, “Hi KW!”, even though I haven’t been *inside* that bank in about a year. I love Eleanor. She used to put up with me when I did PTO treasury work and brought big ugly cash / coin deposits in. Carefully counted, bundled, and labeled, thank you very much! Banker’s daughter turned non-profit treasurer turned on-line banking systems analyst. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, roight? In truth, my dad and I had very different careers but I think he would approve of mine.

Alas, Eleanor couldn’t help with my business today. I needed one o’ them thar young whippersnappers aka “managers”. He looked at my last name on my debit card and said something like, “I’ve never seen that name before.” Which made me totally crack up. My dad and grandaddy never worked for PNC but they were bankers in a small-town bank that eventually got snarfed up by a precursor to PNC (and spat out last spring *by* PNC). I didn’t go into too much detail but I told the whippersnapper a little about my family’s history with his bank. Really, he was an okay kid. Took care of my business, didn’t miss a beat when I had to blow by dab doze (I dod’t hab a code but by doze was running a wee bit because of my brisk walk to the bank in the extreme cold), and listened to my words of wisdom. Of course those words of wisdom were that I love to spend money on my kids, in general but especially when it’s the kind of thing that can easily set a young person back a bit, like vee-hickular repairs or plane rides. And, on the rare occasions we are at the grokkery together, I always pay. Why? Because I love my children and I can. I was young[er] once and I’ve been there, done that on the being young and trying to make my way thing. I’m paying it forward now. Without any blasted strings. The whippersnapper liked that and then, when I told him I had *walked* to the bank, he advised me to walk *briskly* back. Okay I will. And I did, running across streets and jumping over snowbanks. Have YakTrax, will travel.

I am missing a trip to the yooperland this weekend. And a loverly hike (ski? snowshoe?) at Tahquamenon. I am in time-banking mode at this time of year. The GG had dinner with Jeep and Pan et al at their beautiful home on Gitchee Gumee and I miss them. He’s spending the night at our fave Hotel Ojibway and last I heard, was having a cocktail at my all-time fave Palace Saloon. The folks there took such good care of us on all of those emergency trips we were taking a few years ago. But I had a good day here on Ice Road Asteroid. I yakTracked downtown and met up with npJane for cocktails and dinner and we got a cameo appearance by Mouse, who was able to walk over from her work for about half a beer’s worth of time. It’s okay, the other half didn’t go to waste.

At dinner I was bugging the GG for moomincabin photoos and he sent me a couple. I showed them to npJane and (of course) she wanted to see one of the Old Cabin. We *all* spent our first summers in the Old Cabin but, by the time npJane was born, my branch of the fan-damily had built its own loverly little cabin. npJane’s fam now owns the Old Cabin and after npJane dropped me off tonight, I found that the GG had texted me one.

Oh, not really. That’s just a song my old coot used to sing. His actual modus operandi when it came to swimming was to get home from his bank job, change into swimming trunks, run down to the beach and do a shallow dive into shallow water. No, he never broke his neck. If Susie and Sandy happened to be on the beach, there may have been some mutual good-natured harassment of some sort. Man oh man, those were the days. We had so much fun!

We have no garbage to put out this week. We have no garbage to put out this week. WE HAVE NO GARBAGE TO PUT OUT THIS WEEK! How did that happen? I do not think it has EVER happened before unless we were out of town. We are not big-time Ann Arbor hippies who compost anything and everything and recycle the rest. We do compost quite a bit and I am the Queen of Recycling who, in addition to all of the Landfill recycling, hauls all kinds of recycling crap down from Houghton Lake and the moominbeach and sometimes over from DayTwa, so the recycle cart is usually pretty full. Got recycling? Bring it here! Garbage? Some weeks more than others but we usually have at least a couple kitchen-sized bags full. This week? Tonight, we walked outta the house to head over to Knight’s for dinner and I grabbed the ree-cycle cart (which actually didn’t have a whole lotta stuff in it either for once) and started hauling it down to the curb. The GG dutifully went for the garbage cart. But wait! “It’s empty!” I was a bit flabbergasted. I wonder if I can even round up *one* kitchen-sized bag of garbage to put out tomorrow. It’s not like we pay for it by the cart or anything. And they come around in a truck with a big mechanical arm, so it’s not like somebody is breaking their back picking it up.

Beyond that? Lemme see. Coffee at Barry’s with MMCD, then champagne brunch at work. Yes, I mean real champagne with real alcohol in it. I earned my champagne by doing a bit of KP. The Queen Bee drafted us li’l worker bees to help dip strawberries and bananas in chocolate. It was the Oscars in Cubeland today. Complete with people in fancy dresses walking a Red Carpet. Of course us nerds stayed well out of the limelight, looking the other way when Tock came around with his camera and making jokes about how much fun middle school was [not] when you weren’t one of the in crowd. I over ate, unusual for me, the Queen of Doggie Bags. I got up at 5:30 and walked, then had the aforementioned coffee, then went to work. No food until something like 11:00 AM? A bit jittery? Yes. I loaded my plate at the breakfast buffet. Let’s eat! Oh well, it ended up being a rather long slodgy day but I survived. And then, people [again] could not make it through the light out of Avis Farms. People? Get new taaaarrrrs. Of course tomorrow I will be driving the Ninja, which will be one of those spinning taaaars vee-hickles. Maybe I’ll work from home? We’ll see…

This was a pretty challenging day here on Ice Road Asteroid. Morning was fine even though it snowed to beat the band all morning. We had a meeting with CKL mid-morning, so I worked from home, then schlepped over to the meeting, then off to work. After navigating a two-foot snowdrift to get into work, I was greeted with, “KW is here. It won’t be quiet any more”, in a big booming voice. The ever-lovin’ LSCHP, of course.

The roads were absolutely awful but I was okay driving the Frog Hopper. The GG had the Ninja and hills were challenging for him when he got behind slower traffic but he managed. It’s kind of funny. It’s February and I am finally finding my “snow feet”. Most people were going slowly today, at least on the surface streets, freeways were closed all over because of accidents. Most folks were going slower than I was. I guess those road warriors have finally been humbled by all of the accidents and vee-hickles in snowbanks.

Me? I was doing okay today. Until I left work this afternoon and got stuck in the jaffic tram from hell. What the heck was going on to make the traffic back up this far? When I f-i-n-a-l-l-y got up to where I could see the traffic light, I figgered it out. Somebody in a vee-hickle without decent taaaarrrrs was having a difficult time getting through the short little green light that we get over at Avis Farms because the intersection was a bit slippery and his taaarrrrs didn’t have any traction. He wasn’t the only one. A UPS truck had trouble too. Eeeeeeventually, I got outta Avis Farms and snaked my way home. The snow had stopped hours ago and the sun was shining brightly (as you can see) and my homeward trip was not too bad.

If I had droven the Ninja today, it would still be in my work parking lot.

It’s cute though, isn’t it?

It was a mystery skirt. I received a package last week. Receiving a package in the mail around here is turning into an *event* given that there have been SIX days in 2014 that we haven’t received mail delivery. It was a shipping envelope that looked like it might contain an article of clothing. It was addressed to me. I didn’t recognize the return address. I order clothes online all the time. Shopping for clothes in person is not my thing. I hate going to the mall. I am pretty dern good at eyeballing things that will fit my stringent criteria for comfort with at least some modicum of style. Kayak Woman-type style that is, not fashionista style. At times it gets to the point where I don’t remember at any given moment what I have ordered.

So, okay. I opened it. There was this cute little skirt. Problem. I didn’t remember ordering it! Well, it almost looked a bit like a hiking skirt. I have been known to order hiking skirts. Then I noticed a handwritten note on the invoice: “Sorry for the delay!” or something like that. Then I realized it was probably waaaaaay too small for me and too short for a hiking skirt. Hiking skirts are usually not quiiiite that short. What size? I finally checked the size. S Or XS. Whatever… Hmmm… Medium is more my size. Sometimes Large…

Lizard Breath sent me an xmas list a while back, mostly clothing. Clickety-clickety-click, wasn’t that easy? Packages came in and I opened them and wrapped them and totally didn’t keep track of what I ordered. I didn’t care! I love buying things for my beach urchins. Took a photooo, sent it in a text message, “Uh Liz, is this something I bought you for xmas?” Yes, it was. I packaged it into a priority mail envelope, took it over to the Stadium post office uscan and sent it off to Day-Twa.

I used to wear stuff like that a lot. Mini-skirts were all the rage when I was a teenager. I can also remember when “hot pants” were a fad. Hot pants in those days were fashionable little shorts that you could actually wear to school. I made a loverly hot pants outfit in my then fave color burgundy with complementary colors. Do not google “hot pants”, you will get, well, not the relatively sedate outfit I used to wear to school. Liz is more years beyond high school than I am strong enough to admit on most days and I don’t think she ever wears “hot pants” but she will look cute chic? in this skirt. But probably not as chic as she looks in cross-country ski gear!

P.S. I still wear short skirts but they are knee-length or just below and I wear colorful tights with them.

What do I remember in this photooo?

The white cabinets.

The red cabinet interiors. Hmmm… painting the insides of cabinets? Hmmm… Yellow? Maybe a few? … … … I know. I dunno why yellow either… But maybe not…

That stove, believe it or not. Vaguely. I may remember it mainly because I remember us getting a *new* stove. It had pushbutton controls. I think I had a play stove with pushbutton controls. It was so cool!

That stool!

Jergen’s lotion! The Comm *always* had Jergen’s around. I remember the smell. I don’t use lotion. My teenage years were absolute hell with greasy hair and acne but nowadays I do not have lizard skin. But there is a reason I wash my hair virtually every day.

That cup. But why? Did we have china like that? My parents had Russell Wright china. Who had china like that cup? Somebody did. Did my parents steal that cup from a relative? Note that I was trusted with a china cup at that early age. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t use a *glass* glass or anything but china. We did not have melamime or plastic stuff as a rule. Did I break things? Of course I did. But I was never punished for it.

That shabby looking broom closet-type cupboard over on my right. Gertrude lived on the interior of the left-hand door to that closet, forever draped over her ironing board in a permanent state of housewifely exhaustion. I wish I had that cartoon. I have googled and googled and googled and googled and I cannot find a 1950s-era cartoon with a beleaguered housewife-type character named Gertrude. But I remember her and I have honored her by naming my loverly new (last year) stove after her.

What I do NOT remember? What the heck is that little woman on the cutting board my breakfast table? I do NOT remember her. I can only guess that she was a token entity that I needed in order to make my breakfast a perfect little experience.

Here’s to chitchens new and old. Cheers!

I clicked on a link from Houzz (or Dwell or Remodelista or Design Sponge or someplace) today. The link led to a list of things to do to prepare for a remodel. Number one on the list was to pack things away. Guess what? I had already packed up three boxes by the time I read that. I packed up two more today. Common sense.

Is it early? Maybe. Our targeted start date is in April. But I do not want to be packing stuff up in a big panic the last couple weekends before the [proverbial] wrecking ball descends. I want to do it at a slow pace, carefully considering what I want to keep and what I want to donate or whatever. Hmmm, maybe I will have a giveaway table at the moomincabin next summer? Give family and friends first dibs on some of my stuff as well as The Commander’s. Just thinking out loud for the moment anyway. So the Queen of Bubble Wrap and Banker’s Boxes swung into action on this wintery weekend and got a pretty dern good start if I do say so myself.

Random thoughts along the way: 1) What the heck are all these cables for? They were in my “office”, a small wicker box (like 12″ x 6″ x 4″ — *small*). I labeled them and put them by the GG’s ‘puter. 2) A lot of the stuff I currently have in my chitchen doesn’t “match” the style of the chitchen. Or maybe it does. The current chitchen style is kind of Grab Bag and so is all of my stuff. It isn’t all going to “match” the new chitchen. Some of it will be woefully out of place. Can I use it elsewhere in The Landfill? Where? Do I need to remodel the rest of The Landfill? (Yes…) 3) Not that everything has to match, of course. I could get really OCD about that but I like to keep a tight rein on any of the OCD issues I do have. Like please stay over there in the shadows and don’t bother anybody besides Kayak Woman!!!! !!!!

I do not have a Junk Drawer. I have Junk Drawers! I emptied my Junk Drawers yesterday (except for the two leftmost ones, which contain a billion paper clips and things). How many tape measures can a person own and who would want that watch? I bought the drawer thingy at Pier 1 in the Island Teal POC Era. It has served well in the Grab Bag Chitchen but it won’t really match the new one. So, what will I do with it? Will I give it away (any takers?)? Will I find a new home for it? What will I do with the STUFF that’s in it? I do not yet know where all of those random items will find a home. I will not get rid of those old 1st National Bank tape measures. I’m sure they were 1950s perks from my dad’s place of employment.

I am not a big sports fan. I particularly have very mixed feelings about football and the culture that often surrounds it. I do like the ambiance of football on TV — in the BACKGROUND! I do like to see marching bands at halftime. As far as I know, the Superbowl prefers crappy (in my opinion) pop singers at halftime. All that said, of *course* I am rooting for the Seahawks! I have three first cuzzints in the PAC northwest and a nephew and a couple of long-time blahggy friends. (At least one of those cuzzints probably couldn’t care less about football and is most likely playing one of her mbiras…) The GG has tried to get me to understand some stuff that has gone on early in the game. Sorry, I will not watch the game, at least not actively. I am a jinx! I am listening to folk music here in the Landfill Chitchen tonight!

Go Seahawks!!

I could actually write about the weather [again] but I bet if I look at my January posts, probably two thirds of them are about the damn weather. Nevertheless, the weather figured into today so here’s a synopsis: 1) Snowed to beat the band all morning and into the early afternoon. 2) About the time I decided maybe I needed to do some shoveling, I went out to *do* said shoveling and it was RAINING! They said it would. Ohhhh shoveling that heavy wet stuff was soooo much fun. We pretty much alternated between snow and rain and just about every variation thereof all day. It’s winter and this is Michigan. What can I say?

That snow cave. That snow cave? That snow cave! Oh my gosh! When I was a kid, we used to build snow caves and tunnels and things in the snowbanks in front of my house on Superior Street up there in the yooperland. This is the first kid-made snow cave I have ever seen down here on The Planet Ann Arbor Ice Road Asteroid. We had some good snowfalls when the beach urchins were small but I don’t think we *ever* had enough snow for long enough for a kid (and I’m gonna guess a parent) to make a snow cave. I stopped in my tracks to take that photooo. In a big puddle of water over slush and ice. Water droplets were collecting on my phone. It was snaining. I was prepared for just about anything today. I was wearing YakTrax (of course) and I had an umbrella in my backpack. I needed the YakTrax. I didn’t end up needing the umbrella.

I was walking home from the pre-glow party before the second night of the Ann Arbor Folk Festival. I love love love the festival and I love love love folk music. I do NOT like to sit in a seat in an auditorium for 4-5 hours. The GG supports the festival as a patron and I support that and so I always “sneak” into the pre-glow party. I used to be nervous that they would figure out that I wasn’t actually going to the show and deny me food. After a number of years that I don’t care to enumerate at the moment, I’ve learned that nobody much cares if I eat the donated buffet food or not. They even make me a damn name-tag. Tonight we sat at a table with Larry, who sat with us last year, a lovely couple from Grand Rapids, and a young couple from Virginia (keep me honest, Bob) who WON TICKETS and a whole bunch more stuff (like a flight, a fancy hotel room, and even some spending money) from an Acoustic Cafe contest. They were so excited and it was so cool.

As always, when I am at events like that, I struggle to sort out conversations. Tonight I watched how many red whines and beers the folks at the table had and realized it didn’t much matter. When somebody finally asked me what *I* did for a living, I said I was a systems analyst and then I added “I’m in the online banking industry”. Nobody (including me) can articulate what a systems analyst does but online banking generates a bit of interest. For about 30 seconds.. And that is okay. Mostly, I just used my iPhone to google the answers to questions other people at the table were kibbitzing about ad infinitum. Anyway, everyone else went to the folk festival and I walked slodged home, stopping at Kilwin’s on Liberty to give Mouse a seed package that came to my house. And here are the Yardbirds doing a song that I kind of feel some of the days.