You know how facebook wants to “help” you create your “content”? As if I didn’t already have enough “help” with that what with a couple people who kept posting “cute” little yooper memes to my “timeline” (or whatever it is). Memes with yooper stereotypes that do not apply to me at all. That is, they didn’t apply to me when I was a child in the yooperland, and they *certainly* don’t apply to me after living almost my entire adult life down here in Trollandia on The Planet Ann Arbor, working at various info tech careers. Not that I don’t love the yooperland. I certainly do. I even fit a few of the stereotypical things people say about yoopers. Maybe 5% of them. The other 95%? Not so much. I complained about this timeline grabbing phenomenon to Mouse once and she said, “Moom, do you know you can change your settings?” Duh… So I locked down my “timeline”, so to speak. Just to be clear, people who live in the yooperland cannot be stereotyped any more than people who live anywhere else. We are all *people*, wherever we grew up and wherever we live now.

Anyway, I got on to facebook this morning and the first thing it presented to me was a cute li’l “movie” of my seven years of being friends with my own daughter. I could “share” it if I wanted to but I didn’t. Jeebus. Actually it seems I became “friends” with both my daughters seven years ago today. I didn’t seek them out at all. I had joined a couple of months before to keep up with a dear friend who’d had a health crisis and almost died. (She is alive and very well today thank you very much.) I [very timidly] befriended a couple of old high school friends and that led to a mini-reunion for anyone who could get to the Lansing area. But my kids? I laid low and didn’t tell them I was on facebook. Why? I didn’t want them to think I was stalking them. And I didn’t *want* to stalk them.

So, seven years ago today, Lizard Breath emailed or texted me or whatever and said something like, “I think dad is on Facebook but I’m confused because his profile pic is the Uncly Uncle.” It was news to me that the GG was on facebook but it was fine with me because we are autonomous enough even as a long married couple to do social media separately. But I ‘fessed up to Liz that *I* was also on facebook. I told her that I wouldn’t be offended if she didn’t “friend” me and the next thing I knew, I had a friend request. And then the 21st century version of The Commander’s old Birch Point Telegraph got to work and the next person who sent me a friend request was Mouse.

So I have been facebook friends with my children for seven years now. I have tried my darndest not to be That Parent. The one who shares every single blasted cute thing her [adult] children do. Or posts all kinds of cutesy articles to her [adult] children’s timelines. Or incessantly tags them. I am not perfect but I try. I definitely post more stuff on FB than my kids do. I think FB has kind of evolved mostly into an old fart’s social media platform. That is not necessarily a bad thing but… oh well, I don’t think I have the energy for that whole discussion tonight.

That bird? You never quite know what you are going to find in the pond in West Park. Always ducks. Sometimes carp but not always. A 20-pound carp who ran for city council. Turtles sunning on rocks. A muskrat swimming a long vine to its home. Billions of toads engaged in reproductive activities and a biologist studying them (and making them vomit so she can analyze the DNA in the contents of their stomachs). And tonight? This majestic beastie! A great blue heron. I tiptoed past him on the boardwalk and, amazingly enough, he did not spook and fly away.

G’night! Oscar Tango with Porterization tonight and then the mayor’s green fair and a walk home and A SHOWER (felt soooo good). I apologize to anyone I may have alienated by systems analystism this week. Learn the vocabulary. Separate the issues. Look at the data. Research research research. Yada yada yada. Chill out, KW!

Thanks y’all for putting up with me!

I dressed for 40 this morning. I had good reason to because it was not that far out of the 40s, temperature-wise, this morning. I did not wear glubs. I think I am done with them until sometime in September or October although I do have a pair stashed away in my suitcase in case I need them in the yooperland sometime. Like July maybe? I knew that it was going to get seasonably warm (75) in southeast Trollandia this afternoon but I made a conscious decision to be warm this morning and 75 is tolerable for short jaunts in my 40s clothing, like the five minutes it takes me to walk around the building. Which I didn’t get to do as many times today as I wanted to (once an hour) because Legacy Speak Meetings. (You do not want to know 🐗.)

The Queen Bee admitted that she got up this morning and dressed for Friday! And then changed her clothes. I think that means that she dressed for Casual Friday. In that case, she really needn’t have changed her clothes because we are now into Summer Casual and I think that’s Every Day and it even includes shorts, which means that we are often “treated” to the sight of large men wearing cargo shorts and sandals. I don’t participate in any of the “casual” stuff because I am most comfortable in skirts, etc. Except that I wear hiking sandals pretty much year-round these days. I used to keep a pair of bizcaz shoes in one of my many empty cube drawers but I don’t even do that any more. Where I work, people are more interested in picking my brain than looking at my feet. And believe me, I couldn’t care less when large men wear cargo shorts and sandals. And this paragraph has gotten so far away from me that I’m not sure I can get it back to a proper conclusion and I’m not sure I care to try 🐸

So I told The Prince of Denmark about dressing for 40 and she retorted something like, “Well, why didn’t you dress for 62?” I’ll leave y’all to figger out what she meant by that. It’s not all that hard, after all. As luck would have it, I was able to report to The Prince of Denmark that, as I walked home from the Plum Market this afternoon (dressed for 40 and also for 62 even though it was 75 then), a jeepload of young boys catcalled me. Man, do I think they need glasses!

It was only last week that the GG and I were at the Plum after a long walk downtown and back when we were asked if we wanted the “senior discount”. What? Oh yeah… I certainly didn’t. I don’t think that people like me who are well compensated for our work and own multiple dwellings and vee-hickles, etc., and can afford to buy whatever food they want should be entitled to a discount while younger people who are struggling to support themselves and often their children cannot. This has always bugged me (and The Commander too) and, although the GG may not agree with me, I will not accept that kind of discount unless someday I truly need it. I don’t know what the answer is but there has to be a more complicated test than age. If I could’ve passed my discount to the next person in line (if they needed it), I’d’ve done that.

I didn’t mean to end on a downer kind of note. I had a good day today and I hope y’all did too!

So, the Prince of Denmark disappeared this afternoon. I *thought* she went down in the Landfill Dungeon (and maybe she did) but she didn’t come back up or at least I didn’t hear her come back up. It was really quiet in here for a while and even though I *knew* that the Prince of Denmark was alive and well somewhere, my moomdar kicked in just a wee bit. Grok grok grok around the Landfill upstairs. No answer. Grok grok down to the dungeon. No answer. Grok grok grok toward the back door. And an answering grok. Oh yeah, the Prince of Denmark is in the hammock. Duh.

It was a regular Wednesday and at some point during the afternoon, I looked at facebook and my facebook/high school friend Tom had shared a pic from somewhere of old doll heads outfitted as nightlights. One of my facebook “rules” is to not share stuff or comment on stuff other people have shared. I won’t go into those “rules” today except to say that I do occasionally break them and I HAD to break this one. Why? Well, partly because Tom is not your average facebook user. He has a unique sense of humor and I actually enjoy seeing most of the stuff he finds interesting enough to share. Also, I don’t own a doll head nightlight, but I do own the thing below and I commented on his post with a pic of it. I noted that *my* doll head thingy does not light up… I think Tom and The Pensioner would get along well.

Isn’t this a gorgeous little bit of scenery? Make no mistake. It is gorgeous but I have heard that it is frickin’ cold up in the Yooperland.

The Pensioner arrived at the moominbeach this morning after rattling around the eastern Yooperland with the engine of folks who chainsaw fallen trees off the North Country Trail and build boardwalks and re-route trails and whatever. Hats off to those folks! They make it possible for Salarywomen like me to *hike* the NCT when they can get enough time off to do that. (I am not complaining. I love my work and I am well compensated and very well treated.)

It is a Wednesday but it is also an important date. Can you guess what by this photooo The Pensioner sent from the moomincabin?

If not, maybe you might guess by the undated photooo below – BIG HINT, the birthday girl is on the left looking rather scary. I have to say that I am pretty sure the bote in the far background is the Presque Isle slipping down behind the point. We have always called the Roger Blough “Big Butt” and it *does* have a big butt but I actually think that the Presque Isle has a bigger one. It is also a different kind of bote but still.

If you have not guessed the birthday kiddo yet, here is our beautiful young cousin C*Q*L with a message for her.

Good night and love you all,
KW

What do you think this beautiful cat’s name is? I do not know. It is probably not Boots. Boots was The White Tornado’s cat when I was a little kid. He was a black cat with white boots and trapezoidal ears, at least in his later years. A cautionary tale of frostbite for those of us living in the Great White Yooperland.

I am guessing this catsa has killed a few aminals but I don’t really want to know about that. 🐗

I remember being afraid of Boots when I was a little kid. I’m not sure if he took a swipe at me or maybe just regarded me with typical catlike disdain. Or maybe it was just that I was afraid of aminals in general. Dogs in particular. The acquisition of Tigger when I was five cured my fear of dogs forever (except I don’t like them jumping on me) and for a while we had a cat too. Tigger was a member of our family until she got old and sick and we had to put her down. Twinkle the cat lasted through two litters of kittens after which The Comm adiosed her and a couple of remaining kittens to a farm family on Old US-2 or somewhere. No, I do not know why we didn’t get her spayed. We did spay Tigger. I will say that us kids and some friends (“Run down and get the Mullin kids”, commanded The Commander [no phone at the cabin]) got to watch Twinkle give birth to the last four kittens of her second litter (Butterball/Butterscotch was born before we noticed) and it was an experience I will never forget.

I enjoy other people’s aminals but I have resisted having pets as an adult. I think the GG is pretty much with me. I don’t want to deal with cleaning up after them. I can’t feature leaving them in a crate all day every weekday while no one is home. And yes, the GG is now The Pensioner but he is outta town for a week! So no one is here during most days. Except when the Prince of Denmark has a day off. The Prince of Denmark is only here for a short period and I would never saddle her with caring for parental pets in any case. I want to be able to leave town without having to arrange for pet care. And I don’t want to have to euthanize pets although I would definitely be capable of doing that if need be. I mean via a veterinarian of course 🐗

I’m done except that MS Office stuff got pushed to me at work again today and this time it worked and can I just say that MS Word 2016 is kinda pretty.

And now somebody on the EMU jazz-oriented public radio station is covering Jimi Hendrix on an acoustic guitar and he’s pretty darn good. I’ll have to figure out who he is but I missed his name and so probably not tonight.

Soooo… Rolled over to Cubelandia on this fine Monday morning, faaaarrred up my company-issued Windows Musheen and commenced to get to work figure out what the heck I do for a living. Well, hello! The Mother Ship has been pushing out an upgrade to Microsoft Office products to everyone in the company who uses them and my turn was today! Except. Installation failed! And ALL of my Microsoft stuff was blown out of the water. Word, Excel, Outlook, Communicator, well not Visio because that’s somehow handled separately. Not too long after this, the Queen Bee arrived with her cheery good morning. My response was something like @#$%. She summed it up with, “It is a *special* Monday.” I filed a support ticket about the problem but didn’t hear back today. I kept myself busy cleaning up some “messes” in our high fidelity html prototype for the day but…

Moving right along, did you hear the one about the black bear who attached himself to a great lakes freighter after a little swim. It ended well and if you don’t follow the Storm Warrior on facebook (or are not on facebook), you might try googling something like “Cason J. Calloway bear” and you’ll probably find TV 9&10’s story about it or whatever. I’ve been following Storm Warrior on facebook for a few years now. I also follow the Motor Vessel Algolake. One of my fave posts ever from the Algolake was on an early morning when I was walking the moominbeach in a dense fog. I couldn’t see the island but when I went to upload a random foggy beach photo to facebook, there was the Algolake posting a pic of drinking coffee out by the Pickle Finger waiting for the fog to lift so they could continue on down through the Upper St. Marys and Soo Locks. So close and yet so far away. Back when I was a beach urchin, I would be comfortably snuggling in my little bunk bed listening to foghorns and not having a clue about which boats were out there. And not caring.

Continuing on the theme of great lakes freighters, particularly those from the USS Great Lakes Fleet, The Roger Blough (referred to as Big Butt by my fam, not to be confused with Big Ass, which has long been the fave coffee mug of a lot of moomincabin family members) somehow, despite umpteen gazillion trips up and down Lake Superior and through Whitefish Bay into the Upper St. Marys, managed to run aground up at the mouth of the St. Marys River. I’ve lost track about whether it is still there or not (but I think it is). Here is the GG’s pic of the Philip R. Clarke taking the Blough’s cargo so it can be moved off the reef or whatever it crashed onto. I’m not sure whether he took this photo on the shore at Iroquois Light or up in the lighthouse. As an aside, when I was a very small child (three?), I toured the Philip R. Clarke with my parents. It was a pretty new bote then and I vaguely remember that tour. The Clarke and the Blough are sister ships with the Calloway (of bear cub fame). So much fun.

I mean *real* lightning bolts! The kind that reach down out of the sky and pulverize great big trees into shrapnel. Those kinds of lightning bolts. The pattern to my day today was that there would be bright sunshine and I would think something like, “In 10 minutes, I’ll walk over to the Plum Market.” And then, four minutes later, I would think something like, “What *is* that *noise*?” And I would look outside to pouring rain accompanied by lightning. I do not walk in lightning. You wouldn’t either if you saw what the piece of tree shrapnel did to the Frog Hopper’s moon roof back in March or whenever that happened. I could look it up but why bother. Sh*t happens and you deal with it and that’s what we did. I mean, no one was hurt!

So, judging by the activity going on at the neighbors’ across the street today, I am cautiously optimistic that they have resolved their differences. It looked like the daughter may have come back to get her belongings or [ahem] some of them. I dunno exactly what’s going on there but I am uncomfortable with the idea of 25-year-old college educated kids who still live with parents unless there is a good reason to do so and/or it is temporary. And I hate hate hate in any way, shape, or form, when a parent tries to manipulate a 20-something child. I don’t really know what’s going on across the street but I have seen it in other parts of my life, even in my own family.

In any case, I eventually managed to walk to the Plum in between storms and that is about it for the night. Love y’all.

First of all, some of you reached out to me the last couple days of sorta weird disjointed blahg entries. It was a strange week (although mostly not bad) and I am trying to move on and “adios” some bad stuff out of my life without burning any bridges because you never know what (or who) will be waiting for you around the bend. I would never leave anyone in the lurch if they ever needed me for something in some unforeseen future circumstance. At any rate, I appreciate all of you and I am okay! Just processing stuff.

The Pensioner is off rattling around with our buddies on the North Country Trail so I have been Moom Alone for a couple days. Or not but let’s leave that for a bit. I *was* alone on Thursday evening. It was beautiful that day and we do not seem to have many moe-skee-toes this year (knock on wood) so I was planning to sit in the back yard and read a book on my phone (Mockingjay if you care and yes, of *course* I love Katniss!). It was not to be. Knock knock knock. It wasn’t anything scary, just a young neighbor who was letting me know that she was leaving home. It’s okay – in a way. She’s a 20-something with a college education and (until now) a stable career and a plan and when she left my house, she was headed over to tell her parents. I get the feeling she didn’t think they would be happy. I am supportive and I hope that I came across that way but I also felt for her parents and wondered (to myself) whether to approach them. In the end, I did nothing. I think that was the right decision but it also took a while to process that whole thing.

I am not Moom Alone any more. The Prince of Denmark has moved her encampment into my back yard. She is between castles for the month of June and what a wonderful time of year to return to the Queen of Frickin’ Everything’s castle and camp in the back yard. Well, except when it rains… Of course the QOFE provides a full-service CLEAN bathroom and kitchen and free laundry facilities and even food sometimes.

The Prince of Denmark is a wonderful companion for the QOFE. She got up and WALKED with the QOFE to the farmers market at 0-skunk-30 this morning. Here are some May flowers that have seen better days but are still beautiful.

Look at the sun coming up behind the Kerrytown bell tower or whatever it is. We were sitting on a bench drinking coffee at this point.

We slodged back up the hill with bags and backpacks to the Landfill and here is our haul. Do not look at the froog. You’ll only encourage him.

And then the Prince of Denmark set up her encampment under the apple tree and “did lines”, which, if you are an actor, is a different thing than whatever you might be thinking.

And now we have beautiful rain. The Prince of Denmark left for work and I eventually pulled her hammock in and it’s hanging on the line in the Landfill Dungeon. We need the rain and the prince can sleep in the [once again] messiest guest bedroom on earth tonight.

My Mouse has apparently inherited some traits from The Trillium Bandit (aka The Commander aka my moom) although I will say that The Comm once dug up trillium by the roots while her grandchildren and I watched for the DNR poleeese to come by on a crappy old road in the Eastern Yooperland. I think Mouse stole this one beautiful flower. It had already bloomed and that’s a different thing. But still.

In my life, this week, I have been through the gamut. I’ll spare you the bad and the weird and the ugly and even some of the good. I’ll give you the funny instead. In which Louie-Louii baked a cake for our team today but didn’t have enough confectioners sugar to make the glaze that goes on top of the cake. So, where did he go to get confectioners sugar? Kroger? Meijer? Walmart? No. Tim Horton’s. Huh? Where did he finally get confectioners sugar? I won’t say where because I don’t want to google-bomb that company but it does start with a Z and I was impressed that they sold him some of that sugar. We *all* had fun with that all day at work, believe me.

Me? I was missing moi moom. A bit. People always talk about when their parents die they keep talking to them. The Comm talked about that with her dad. Funny Grandaddy. I can’t go too much further with this on my blahg but this is the *first* day that I have wanted to talk to my moom since she died. I mean The Comm back when we would get on the phone and gossip like crazy, not those last few difficult years. I mean the Birch Point Telegraph, as my late brother called her once way back when and we gnoffed and gnoffed.

I miss my brother and I miss The Commander. And that is about it except that the Haisley School Ice Cream Social is now going on. I remember when I was the PTO treasurer over there and maybe I will take a quick walk over to the edge of the woods to check it out. I remember when I used to handle the tickets and the money for that event and I was trusted enough to be given a key to the office and then the GG would drive the POC over to pick me up with my big bags of money. I had so much fun counting that stuff!

Oh, don’t worry, it’s all good, just secret. (And, as always, knock on wood!!!)

The bad? My fitbit is driving me a little bit nuts! Why? It’s catering to the OCD stuff that I very diligently try to keep over there in the corner of the room where [hopefully] it doesn’t bother anybody else. I’m okay with the daily goal. I actually set the bar low at the default 10K steps. On a typical work/week day, I get 8.5K of those steps out of the way by the time I leave for work. I usually get the rest by noon if I am not stagnated by meetings and usually end up with an average of 15K for a typical week/work day.

But… After a fairly recent Fitbit upgrade, I signed on to the 250 steps an hour thing. It is *easy* to get 250 steps an hour, make no mistake! Even with the sedentary kind of Cube Job that I have. For instance, there is a printer in the Food Cube next to my cube. My musheen cannot talk to it. It *can* talk to a printer approximately 80 steps away from my cube so that’s where I print. Mr. Luv asked me if I wanted to be able to send stuff to the printer next door. This was after I almost mowed him down a couple of times swinging around a corner at top speed. He knows how to fix that stuff better than I do but I declined. Because walking over to the printer my laptop can see gives me some steps and I want to get my steps in… But still, when I don’t manage to get 250 steps in each workday hour, I get a little crazy.

Mr. Luv is about the closest to a tech support person that we have in-house but that is not his job and so if he can’t fix it or is too busy to fix it because he is doing his *real* job, we have to deal with corporate tech support. And that is what it is and that’s about all I’ll say about that. Except that there are those days when you flip your work laptop on (and check your phone or get your cuppa or use the water closet) and it takes forever for your laptop to boot up and that’s because The Mothership has reached her hand in and changed whatever she thinks she needs to change. New OS? New Microsoft stuff? Maybe. Whatever. An operating system is an operating system is an operating system and I have been dealing with operating systems since back in the day of mainframes. So.

Good night. It does rain sometimes. I have had a more interesting night than usual and I hope I was of some help. But not sure, being such a baggy old person.

I love you all more than you know, even those of you who hate me (you probably know who you are),
KW

So I took these pics from a little road near the Reedsburg Dam where we did a small hike on Sunday morning. Broken down deserted farm, right? When I first started hangggggging around the Houghton Lake area with the GG more years ago than I am strong enough to report, I swear that this farm was occupied. I remember it as having a sort of “artistic” “aura” about it and somehow my once-upon-a-time hippie-wannabe self labeled it as a Hippie Farm.

Note that I was *never* anything resembling a hippie at any time in my life although I have, as an adult, occasionally been “labeled” an “old Ann Arbor hippie” by people who see me wearing something other than my fintech industry bizcaz attire (or what passes for it🐽). Like so many other folks who became teenagers in the 1960s, I kind of admired hippies. I agreed with a lot of their political ideas and romanticized their “communal” life-style (I do know this is stereotyping). Of course now I know that political ideas are pretty complicated and as for the “communal” lifestyle, I can share a bathroom (or even an outhouse) with others but only if it is CLEANED REGULARLY!

What I *was* was a Geek. Do you know how hard it was to be a girl geek in a northern outpost like Sault Ste. Siberia in the 1960s? I can’t even describe myself as a Band Geek even though I was in the band and top seat flute. But man oh man, well, I could go on and on and on about the awful band director I had for the first couple years of high school (and no, it was not Mr. Diecke (who was pretty darn good)) and how bad the band was during those years. Anyway, hippie? Not. And nowadays I am perfectly happy to be a “girl” geek because fintech industry career in the 21st century? Yes. I just wanted to be a music major back in those days (and I was) but who knew where I would end up? I certainly couldn’t have predicted a systems analyst career in the fintech industry. Who even knew what that was back in the day? My dad the banker certainly didn’t. But I am off the track. Or am I?

Anyway, we have been to the Reedsburg Dam maybe a million times over the years. We usually drive in but we have kayaked down the Muskegon to get there too. We pass this little ghost hippie farm almost every time we go there and it has been deteriorating for probably most of the years since I saw it when I was 26 years old or whatever. Was it really inhabited at that time? When did people stop inhabiting it? I made the GG stop the car so I could get these two pics (it didn’t take much to get him to stop). Who knows how long these structures will be around before they disintegrate into the ground. I couldn’t really get any closer. There were no trespassing signs (and I respected them!) and anyway, lots of vegetation would have stopped me in any case. Maybe even poison ivy… Anyway, hippie farm? I wish I knew but I don’t but I will always think of this piece of property as a hippie farm whether or not that’s what it was.

If this place *was* occupied at one time, I hope the owners are doing well wherever they are.

And sorry, I am kind of navel gazing tonight. Love y’all and hope you can put up with that 🐽