First, the obligatory crocus pic. Note to self. Plant a big bunch of crocus bulbs next fall. The existing umpteen gazillion year old bulbs that were here when we bought The Landfill are slowly dying off (or whatever crocus bulbs do). Anyway, not a whole lot of crocus this year but they *are* coming up along with some other things.

Lots of good work done around here today. Yard work (the GG) and storm window removal (the GG) and research into how to replace the glass in our doorwalls instead of installing new ones, which we are both deciding that we don’t want because it would require a carpenter and probably more changes to the Back Room than we want. Plus it would cost something like $8,000 to do two doors. It’s not that we can’t afford that much money, it’s about what value we would get for that money? Sorry about the stream of consciousness stuff.

Me? I did my regular Saturday chores, which are too boring to detail, and cleaned the refrigerator and took a couple walks over to the Plum for grokkeries and prepped food for tonight’s dinner and somewhat beyond. And I worked for 4.5 hours. For my paying job, I mean. And then I steeled myself to flip the faaarplace over to its summer mode. Put all of the unburned wood back on the woodpile, put the the small chunks into the yard waste compost, shoveled out the ashes… You don’t wanna know… It’s really hard to take a good photo of our faaarplace unless it’s dark out and there’s an actual faaar in there. So this is what you get. Gratuitous shots of the GG at his big iMac, the Red Puano, a Cat Mobile that one of the Beach Urchins made, and some of the other funky stuff we live with. Disc drives anyone?

Oh, and then the mail came! I can’t figger this particular postman. He knocked LOUDLY on our door. I went to answer the door and he was nonchalantly putting mail in the box like he must do every day (but we usually aren’t here, does he knock then?). He handed me the mail and I picked up THE BOX ON THE PORCH! Remember when I couldn’t find gochujang sauce for a Korean cooking adventure here a while back? I ordered some from Amazon and we later found it at the Plum (behind a sign) but now I have some gochujang sauce straight from South Korea, courtesy of my internet buddy Margaret! Long story about how we “met” but she (and a couple of others) have become good friends via the internet. I don’t make a lot of friends on the internet (or in life) but there are a few people who haven’t given up on me and Margaret is one of them. Flinger that I am, I will have a hard time flinging these bottles when they are empty.

Last and least, the skies were not cloudy all day but somehow every time I walked anywhere, I remembered that I had forgotten my new sunnies. It was okay. I am not all that bothered by bright sunlight. I dunno if that is a function of spending summers on a beach or not. Not that our particular beach was always bright and sunny. But still. I was happier than I looked when I took the pic.

A warm day. A windy day. Cloudy turning into brilliant cloudless skies for my walk downtown to the Oscar Tango tonight. I wore my cute new Warby Parker sunnies, not because I exactly needed them, just because. I packed my backpack but good though. It was warm but this is April and you just don’t ever know. So, polartech jacket, ski band, and glubs. And and and and… Umbrella. Yes. Even though the skies were not cloudy all day the way downtown. Guess what? When we walked out the door at the Oscar Tango, it was raining cats and dogs. Jeebus. I swear that 10 minutes earlier when I was waiting for the Water Closet, it was not raining. We wanted to hang around at Fool Moon tonight. Guess what? We bagged it. We hitched a ride with Porter’s Free Cab Service and then we porterized the Lyme Lounge. Good times. Wish I had bothered to take some pics. It’s way past my bedtime here in EDT Land so G’night!

Lightning! It curtailed my Skunk Walk this morning. Except that “curtailed” isn’t exactly the right word. It kept me in the rack just a wee bit longer than usual. I was thinking back to my childhood when I was taught not to use the sink, etc., when there was lightning. As the first and long-awaited child (they were married 11 years before I came along), my moom was so concerned about my safety that, to this day, I am afraid to light a match (for example). I am also terrified of lucky-shucky although I can certainly turn light switches on and off and operate appliances, etc. But I’m still afraid of lightning. Having an iPhone weather app that tells me (sometimes accurately, sometimes not) how close lightning is to my location does not necessarily help. I will say that few years of hanging around with the GG cured me of my once-petrifying fear of overflowing terlets. Thanks buddy! Anyway, I left late for my Skunk Walk and had to limit it to a measly mile or so, so I’d be on time for work Coffee at Barry’s with MMCB.

Unlike my moom, I didn’t have to wait all that long for my first beach urchin to arrive but I know I was a wee bit more of a nervous parent with her than I was with the second one. Like when the second one got her driver’s license and I allowed her to drive downtown to go to a concert(?) until late at night two days after her license became valid (she passed the test a week before her birthday). The first BU was in *college* by then but was so totally incensed about this that she called/emailed/whatever to complain that *she* wouldn’t have been allowed to do that. I’m sorry. I really am. But, although both of my BUs are (and always have been) highly skilled drivers, I am a mother and I will always worry about them driving. As my moom did with me. Always, always, “be careful driving. Watch out for deer and the police are watching.” Yes moom.

Alert! Alert! We interrupt this boring blahg for a news flash. The GG is eating the bitsy piece of leftover salmon filet that was supposed to be my lunch tomorrow. That means I will have to buy something for lunch somewhere. It’s okay. I will manage. Back to the boring blahg.

I’m repeating myself here but this story bears an occasional repeat. There was the time that I was at the moomincabin with my blasted POC (1996 Island Teal Plymouth Voyager SE, if you haven’t been keeping up) and it was over at the Chrysler dealer getting something (I fergit what) done to it so I drove the ‘rent’s loverly little Traf (GEO Tracker) for a couple days. The then octogenarians went to town for the day and left a post-it note on the table. “Don’t drive it over 50 or the engine will blow up.” It was signed “Jack” but it was written in The Commander’s handwriting, including the signature. Say what? I emailed The Engineer to ask if he knew of any problems with the Traf that might cause the engine to blow up. My automotive engineer brother emailed directly back, “WHO THE HELL SAID THAT?” Indeed. In truth, when I drove that vee-hickle over 50, it didn’t quite feel quite right to me but it didn’t seem like the engine was about to blow up. Nevertheless, it motored along for quite a few years after that incident and my dad’s death until The Comm finally sold it.

In later years and particularly in the last horrible year of The Comm’s life, she told me over and over and over ad infinitum [ad nauseam] that I was a *wanted* child. When she was still well, I would banter with her about that. Moom, I may have been a “wanted child” but I am not sure I turned out to the child you *wanted*.

We are ending the day as we started it, with thunder and lightning. This time it’s pretty far away and I was not planning to go out walking.

Oh, except our phones just alerted us to a tornado warning. It’s not looking that threatening out there right now but we’ll see. The GG is doing what he usually does when there’s a tornado warning, which is going outside to look for mating moths around.

Is it really Wednesday already? Are those of us who work Banker’s Hours [another post someday about this] really over the hump already? Where did the time go? How does time manage to go so darn fast? And yet, I always seem to be looking forward to something (or wishing I had something to look forward to). This is how all of a sudden we end up being 90 (or whatever) and not able to live alone any more after a long, happy lifetime of independence.

I go out and skate drive whenever I want to, like I always have. One fender bender (knock on wood big time) in my life. Age 17, Sault Ste. Siberia, glare ice, and a guy came across the center line. Right outside the Hovie Funeral Home. Yes, really. You can imagine my parents’ reaction when they drove by a few minutes later and saw a couple of smashed up vee-hickles, including our Ford Fairlane 500, plus a cop car in the funeral home parking lot. I was found to be not at fault (pre-no-fault). That Ford Fairlane 500 that I was driving was my grandmother’s previous vee-hickle, which our family acquired after *she* got into a similar accident IN THE SAME DOGGAMN LOCATION RIGHT OUTSIDE THE HOVIE FUNERAL HOME and she willingly stopped driving.

Of course, stopping driving was not as difficult for my grandma Margaret as it is for a lot of elderly folks because she had two sons and their wives (The Comm and the White Tornado) and sometimes grandchildren in close proximity and they could and did drive her wherever she wanted to go. Alas, my moom was not as lucky because my brother and I both landed fairly far from home and therefore could not be at her beck and call at any old time, plus my brother died almost 10 years ago…

I dunno how I got off on this ridiculously depressing track. Live in the moment, KW! For the second year in a row, great lakes shipping is struggling due to ice in Lake Superior. Particularly in Whitefish Bay, which is directly upstream from the Moomincabin. It looks like the ships are finally moving thanks to the help of various ice-breaker ships, including The Pierre Radisson, an arctic ice-breaker.

This is what people do at the Houghton Lake Group Home on an average Saturday night. Actually, they were trying to get the speakers to work.

At least they weren’t pacing.

G’night. KW

A couple weekends ago, in my ongoing de-hoarding prodject, I was looking through appliance manuals. We can mostly get appliance manuals online nowadays but we have some really old stuff.

The GG went over to a lawn mower store tonight. I’m not sure why. We have three lawn mowers. I told him we didn’t need any more lawn mowers. He said he would bring back a couple more. We have so much fun!

Easter is not much of a holiday for us anymore, since our Beach Urchins have grown into Responsible Adults. Easter Baskets? Not so much. For a long time, we didn’t do any kind of Easter celebration at all. Nowadays, it is the one day of the year that I cook ham and here is our dinner table with candles and butter and pepper and stuff. Yesterday was a wonderful bonus with both beach urchins. And no doggamn snow!

Ice out didn’t happen at Houghton Lake yesterday. Five eagles stood out on the ice for at least an hour. There was a carcass out there too but we couldn’t tell what it was. Too far out and the ice was not safe! Ice out happened today. The North Has Risen!

This is what I woke up to this morning. Sort of. Actually, what I woke up to was 2-3 inches of snow on the ground (and road) and tons of snow coming down outta the sky. I was not a particularly happy camper and therefore I did not take a pitcher. You guys may know that I was sick and tired of snow driving before it even started this year. And it started in November. April? Snow? Yes, it snows in April here. And May. And… By the time I took the pic, the snow had stopped and the temperatures were edging slowly toward the predicted high of 40. Our road was wet and the big roads were dry, as you can see in the photooo below.

Before I turned the corner onto that road, I could see that a couple of cars were stopped. There is almost never ANY traffic on this road. Alas, my first reaction was annoyance. What the heck are they stopped for? Is there an accident? And then I saw that they were stopping for a flock of wild turkeys! And they were stopping long enough to take pictures of them. And so did we! We stopped long enough that the turkey flock actually walked across the road right in front of the Frog Hopper! As you can see.

Wonderful weekend at the Group Home with Lizard Breath and the Lord of Linden and his daughter’s dog Sunny. Smooth trip down traveling tandem with Lizard Breath with a stop to pick up Girl Scout cookies from our lovely grandniece along the way. 61 degrees when we got back to The Planet Ann Arbor. I was hot walking to the Plum this afternoon and I have my kitchen window open for the first time since I dunno when. Simple Easter dinner tonight with the beach urchins. I love that they *want* to spend time with their baggy old parents. Like I did.

I did get to see the partial lunar eclipse this morning! Yay for me. I woke up Lizard Breath (with her explicit permission) so she could see it too. The GG got up to visit the Water Closet. I have to admit that I am astronomically challenged enough that I looked out windows in every direction *except* where the moon was setting before I finally realized that it was happening out the upstairs water closet window. That window is behind the terlet, so the GG probably got the best view while on his Pbreak. A few minutes later, when I stepped into the shower, the eclipse was still visible. When I got out of the shower, it was too light and/or the moon was below the buildings and trees to the west.

I had the honor of taking Sunny the dog along on my morning walk. No dog eggs, although he squatted for a minute in one yard. I didn’t have a baggie and I didn’t look. This isn’t The Planet Ann Arbor and almost nobody is up here for this off-season weekend and there is plenty of scat from all kinds of aminals everywhere, so just sue me already. When we returned to the Group Home, Mr. Golden Sun was up and about in fine form.

And… Breakfast at Little Boots! Smokin’ Gun Quesadilla for me with a box to take a third of it home. Wish I was brave enough to take (and post) a pic of our fave waitress. Next time I think I will at least take a pic of my breakfast.

12 miles on the Mason Tract DNR trail this afternoon! The forests in the Great Lake State are beautiful at this time of the year but not necessarily very photogenic, at least not if you are strictly an amateur iPhoneographer. But there was this:

What is it? It is frozen sap! It is dripping from a big old tree that tried to fall down sometime last year (or thereabouts). Several of the trees across the trail caught it and so it leans rather precariously across the trail. Or at least it looks that way.

Or last stop was the Best Choice Market to get some stuff for dinner and a simple breakfast tomorrow. Nobody can figure out how we ended up with two packages of Zotz.

The title? We had the satty-lite radio 40s station on as we were driving into the Chase Bridge parking lot at the south end of the Mason Tract and it was playing this song (You-Tube link, may start with an ad). Reminded me of sitting in Kennys Pitchen with my ‘rents more than a few years back and my old coot said more about WWII than I think I have ever heard him say, which was something like, “Five o’clock in the morning and Bar rar rar.” As a flight instructor, he spent the war rattling around the American southwest. As I have probably blahgged about umpteen million times, he was at the ready to head over to fly in the South Pacific when our side dropped The Bomb. So he went home “unscathed”. Although he never participated in anything horrific himself, I know he had to live with the fact that he trained pilots who never returned to the states.

Didn’t mean to get off on that depressing tangent though. Anyone want some Zotz? Anyone know what the heck they are?

G’night,
KW

I have not been here at the Houghton Lake Group Home since early November. I do not know why. I work. It was winter. I hate snow driving. We had a lot of that over the winter. If you live in the Great Lake State, you try your best to take whatever vacay time you have in the summer when the weather is [sometimes] nice. That is about it.

I have to laugh. Someone who will not be named actually suggested that I do not work [to earn my own income]. “You just do yer blahg.” I think he is a bit behind the times because I am going on eight years at my current career but, given the loverly source, I cannot bring myself to be insulted. I do kind of miss the days when I was not gainfully employed and we could drive Up North (and back) when everyone else on earth was not also driving. Those were the days but I’ll take the dern money I earn these days.

Our lovely lizard is joining us this weekend and we had Bar Food at the Northshore tonight. The ‘hattans were a bit weird and the waitress said (at first) that there was no red whine there. I knew that there was because I have ordered it at the tiki bar a few times. Lo and behold, yes there was. It’s okay. We were well taken care of and a few of us are glad that you can still go to a barrrooom somewhere in the USA that doesn’t promote itself based on craft beer and fancy cocktails. On the other hand, we were offered free samples of homemade smoked fish and invited back for more of that tomorrow during the basketball finals(?). Doubt that we’ll be there for that but it was appreciated.

It was probably a half hour after I got here that I looked out at the lake and realized that it was still iced over. The GG thinks that there will be ice fishermen out there in the morning. I disagree. I think this ice is very dangerous and will probably disintegrate within days and I think that the area ice fishermen know that. It’s April.

And so, it is a bit smelly here and some people are talking about dog eggs and others are arguing that dogs, being mammals, do not lay eggs. If you are one of my nine reglear nucular taggers, you may be able to guess which “side” I am on about this. The dog was let out, the smell has dissipated (or maybe not, he’s going out again), and now we are futzing with the doggamn TV.

Lunar eclipse tomorrow morning. Not sure if we’ll see it or not.

G’night,
KW

Monday Thursday Coffee at Zola Barry Bagels… Broke my neck getting out the doggamn door and schlepped my bedraggled self over there right at 8:00 AM, the appointed meeting time for me and my main Planet Ann Arbor Gossip Club. Noticed outta the corner of my eye a “young” (50 maybe?) guy in a Suit heading for the door. He was only on my radar screen because I wanted to beat him to the door, which wasn’t all that hard to do because I am a FAST walker.

Standing in line waiting to order my usual “medium house coffee to go”, my walking-to-the-door competitor approached me to ask, in an unsettlingly flirtatious way, “What is your favorite bagel?” Yes, I was disconcerted! But being a baggy old kayak woman, I recovered a bit and answered, “Tomato basil or pesto, but I’m just ordering coffee today.” I do sometimes get bagels at Barry’s and they are as good as any other bagels but usually a bagel with cream cheese is more breakfast than I need. If he had been anybody else, the mom/systems analyst in me would’ve kicked in. Well, what choices are there and what kinds of things do you like/can eat, etc.? We’d’ve talked. [He ordered blueberry… Blueberry? Pies, yes. Not bagels…]

I wouldn’t have paid any more attention to this weird little encounter at all except that after I got my coffee, I went back to grab a [non-tippy] table and sit down at it — alone because MMCB were not there yet. He was still up at the counter and was kind of looking in my direction. Like, she’s alone? Yeek. I grabbed my iPhone, pulled up the xword, and made like I was working. Fortunately, within minutes, MMCB came in the door.

I’m sure I am exaggerating this person’s un-asked-for attention. I’ll bet he’s just an Extrovert. Still, it made me think a bit. If the GG were to get hit by a Beer Truck Train any time soon, I would not want to start a relationship with somebody who can’t even beat me to the Barry Bagels door. Nope. I need a guy who is dedicated to hiking far enough that I occasionally have to rein him in. Like after 17 miles or whatever. Har har har.

Houghton Lake or Bust this weekend. It’s been a while!

Yes, it is a thing. Teenagers with automotive vee-hickles drive up and down Ashmun Street, which is the main street in Sault Ste. Siberia. Mainly from Easterday Ave. down to Portage Ave. or maybe Water Street. That’s downtown, baby, where all the action is. Up and down, up and down, ad infinitum ad nauseam. If you are from the northern Dee-troit burbs, think Woodward Ave. Except Sault Ste. Siberia is a much smaller venue. I can’t exactly feature how this kind of activity could ever happen on The Planet Ann Arbor’s grid of downtown streets although the GG and I had a kind of snaky route once upon a time… What say kiddos? Oh, probably the equivalent was a River Ride, albeit not the same kind of thing.

What is the purpose of such an activity? To see and be seen, of course. What else? Who’s driving what? Who’s wearing what? Who’s with who? [wink wink].

Slashin’ or draggin’? I think I heard both of those terms in my time. I’m *thinking* we more often called it Draggin’ Ash. Maybe that comes from drag racing? But we called it Slashin’ Ash too. I have a slight preference for the draggin’ version. I am gonna GUESS that’s because it was more likely called that when I was a younger teenager and there were still more “greasers” (think Fonzie) around than “hippies” so being a wanna-drag-ash (but not having a car (or a driver’s license)), that’s the “cool” term I remember. Actually, hippies in Sault Ste. Siberia in the late 1960s? As if.

So, there’s a Slash/Drag Ash event (and car show?) up in Siberia this July. Am I going? Naw. Mainly because I highly doubt I’ll be up there when it occurs. Would I go if I *were* planning to be up there? Maybe. More likely I’d rather sit and watch the sun set over Whitefish Bay. But, although I did occasionally Drag Ash back in the day, I don’t remember ever doing it for a whole evening.

I do think that it is really cool that someone has organized an event to drag/slash Ashmun. These are the kind of things that I LIKE about facebook. Getting people who haven’t connected in years is [usually] a good thing. I love the screenshot I took. Those people at the bottom are all people I actually KNOW in life. I worked with Robin at Tempo a billion years ago. You could not ask for a more beautiful person, inside and out and throughout horribly difficult issues. Kathy? Bank manager and The Comm’s next door neighbor. When PNC closed that branch, she dredged up all kinds of photos of my grandfather from the bank basement and gave them to me! They’d’ve been thrown out otherwise. I put them in my backpack and schlepped them back to our berth at the Hotel Ojibway and then down to The Planet Ann Arbor. Brad and Kelly I don’t know quite as well in a personal sense but I certainly remember them and going by what they post on facebook, they are Class A people.

So, save the date. If you are gonna be in Sault Ste. Siberia on July 10th this summer and want to experience generations of folks driving up and down their hometown main street ad infinitum ad nauseam, go and drag Ash for me. Or sit and watch the sun set over Whitefish Bay. Actually, since Slash/Drag Ash ends at 9:00 PM, you could probably do both.

Love y’all,
KW

P.S. The new father next door was walking the dog so of course we ambushed him! Girl. Last Monday. Everyone is doing well!