Random bits of my so-called life.

So yesterday morning I was hanging around doing word puzzles when first one then a second text message came in from people who had barfed multiple times during the night and needed someone to buy the typical comfort food and deliver it. Saltines, cup-a-soup, and ginger ale, etc. Well, sure I can do that. Meijer to get food. Plum has a LOT of fancy stuff but things like saltines and cup-a-soup, not so much, at least not in the form factor that people remember them from when they were children. In the pic I am on the way from the country mouse’s house to the city mouse’s house.

Okay. Much later in the day, 4:00-ish, it was time to take the garbage carts out. I felt strangely chilly and almost asked the GG to do the deed but he was still feeling fugly so I sucked it up and did it myself. Maybe five minutes after I got back to the house, I was running to the bathroom to do guess what. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Three more bouts of that ensued and then I felt like the worst of it was done but still felt like you-know-what.

I was better this morning and by afternoon I sent the GG over to pick up some leftover crackers and things from the beach urchins. Although I remain on the upswing, I have not done much today, which is driving me nuts.

I am 99% sure this is not COVID. The GG tested negative and although his symptoms were a bit different than the rest of us (no vomiting), this felt like the regular old 24-hour “flu”. Empty your gut and you start feeling better.

That is all you need to know. Cheers.

This is the GG in the Cozy Room with Skeletor. We’ll explore the Cozy Room some other day. This room has had various purposes throughout our tenure here at The Landfill. Sewing room. Computer room. Teenage daughter’s bedroom. Etc. We’ll go there some other day, including when that teenage daughter went to college and her dad TOTALLY rearranged the room her first few weeks away… Not fun. When she came home to go to a concert, she kinda freaked out and I said, “Dad’s at Hoton Lake. Call him.” But she doesn’t much care any more so it’s the GG’s lair now.

So, yes, the [baby?] board book “The President and the Big Boy Truck” was noticeable in yesterday’s photo. It was not a 2024 xmas gift from anyone to anyone… Yer fav-o-rite blahgger bought it for herself back in the early days (pre-COVID) of the first Trumpian Bombasty. It flew by on Twitter or somewhere one morning and I snagged it before it went away. Except it didn’t go away…

To me, it seemed to disparage Trump but of all things, my Trumpian life partner actually liked it. He liked it well enough that it disappeared. And I don’t mean he found himself alone with it somewhere that he could put it in the garbage without meeeee seeing it. I mean, he took it out to the Lyme Lounge and added it to his “library” there. All roight! It’s MINE and I want it back. I bought that book a loooong time ago but today I took a gander at whether it is still available. Yes. Yes, it is. New and used at all kinds of online book vendors. Google away.

Okay. Yesterday, I had myself set to cook stuff all day today. Also yesterday, sometime in the mid-afternoon, someone started feeling sick. This worsened throughout the evening and he (yes it was the GG) was miserable all morning, Was it the crackers he had just eaten? Or was it, dun dun dun, COVID? Or just a garden variety xmas flu.

As of this morning, it seemed like we weren’t really doing xmas so I sorta vegged out most of the day. I did drive out to the country mouse’s house to swap a chicken for a more up-to-date COVID test than sometime in 2022. We were *pretty* certain that this was not COVID. It wasn’t exactly the right symptoms (gastro but not the gross stuff, at least not that I know of). And yes, I *know* that COVID symptoms can vary greatly but my gut told me it wasn’t COVID. Anyway, COVID status yet unknown, I was welcomed into the mouse house for coffee and a cinnamon roll and it was a lovely slow drive over the river and through the woods along the dirt roads and at one point, two deer crossed the road in front of me. I was creeping along so in no danger of hitting them.

After three negative COVID tests of various vintage, I am willing to believe that he did NOT have COVID. But still, I was figuring on not having to do much cooking today and that was actually kinda nice. All kinds of “ebaborate abanements” (mid-1980s toddler speak) had been made to deal with the second chicken (don’t ask).

Mid-afternoon I heard some grumping and growling from the bedroom and shortly thereafter a BEAR emerged. Not 100% yet but feeling better enough to be able to consume chex mix and other edibles. So xmas dinner, etc., was on after all. By this time I was “comatose” enough that I couldn’t even remember what I was cooking besides a chicken (or two). I kicked myself out of my “coma” and all the food is in Gertrude’s ovens now and all of the available family is here. And boy oh boy am I glad Gertrude has two ovens because we usually cook holiday birds on the grill but that wasn’t really gonna work out this year for reasons too complicated to repeat here.

That’s about it. Instead of gathering with everyone in the back room to open gifts, I am in the chitchen and the everyone else is in the back room. They are delivering gifts to me and I am sending gifts out to them (because I did not label my gifts). The GG is (mostly) in a quarantine corner just in case.

This angel graces the top of our xmas tree most years.

She was given to me when I was very small by my great aunt Elizabeth, who lived in my grandparents’ house. The angel used to carry a wand in her right hand.

When I was a little kid in Sault Ste. Siberia, my grandparents lived a countable number of blocks away from our shabby little Superior Street bungalow. 8-9-10, I will have to count them the next time I’m up there. And I still GO there thanks to my grandparents passing vacation properties to their children and grandchildren. Thank you!

When I was a little kid, two great-aunts lived with my grandparents in their big house on John Street. There was my eccentric great aunt Ann (Grandma’s sister), who lived in the attic and I’ll talk about her some other day except that she lived to be 103 and I wasn’t named after her but I always worried that I might have been… (I was actually named after Anne of Green Gables, who didn’t like her name either.)

The other great-aunt was Elizabeth (Granddaddy’s sister) and she died when I was seven, my first funeral. I admit I was often a little afraid of Elizabeth. She could be “severe” with small children sometimes (she did not marry or have children). But she could also be kind and I have a particular memory of her that I cherish. When me and my cousins were little kids spending our summers at the Old Cabin, we slept on the Front Porch, which we loved (more on that some other day). One night a thunderstorm rolled in to the moominbeach and there was LOTS of thunder and lightning and we were all pretty scared, or at least I was. Great aunt Elizabeth suddenly appeared to close the numerous big windows and reassure us that the thunder was just Thor (the Norse god, right) rolling his bowling ball.

So whether or not the angel was given to ME or my family (I am unclear on that), I somehow absconded with it when I made my own home here on The Planet Ann Arbor. Wouldn’t you know that the first time we used her as our own tree-topper, her wand somehow got destroyed. I can’t remember what kind of errant weapon did the dirty deed but this was WELL before the Blowgun Era🤪😵‍💫🤣

When I was writing this I was thinking about a song by Lucinda Williams that I thought was called Broken Angel. It is not. It is Drunken Angel. But close enough. (Not that the person who caused the accident was actually drunk when it happened.)

Whew! Last night I wrote about how thankful I was to Old Man Winter for keeping the weather under control and the roads dry for the trip to our annual family holiday party.

And how! Today we’re having a pretty dern good ice storm. In the early afternoon, the GG went a mission to the Bag Tree (shown) to get me a photoooo. When he left, the driveway was wet but not slippery. When he returned like 15 minutes later, the driveway was icy as all getout and he had to salt it as well as the sidewalk. I particularly worry about postal workers when we have an ice storm. I’m pretty sure YakTrax would not be the best for them because they alternate frequently between driving and walking. Getting in and out of a vee-hickle wearing YakTrax comes with its own problems. Maybe they have a different system…

We drove by the Bag Tree last night but it’s difficult to get a pic from a vee-hickle because it is adjacent to a busy and somewhat complicated intersection and it is very hard to stop long enough to take a pic. Plus it was late and we were tired. Not to mention it’s illegal in the Great Lake State to operate a handheld device while driving.

The GG got a couple of good pics but in the end, Lizard Breath sent me the one I have posted, which she took on her walk home from work. It is marginally better than the GG’s pics because it was taken after dark so the tree is lit up. She had a fun time getting home. Ice was the main culprit exacerbated by having to climb a fairly steep hill. She walked on the grass a lot of time.

Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. It’s a rap song so don’t click if rap isn’t your cuppa. I was like, ‘Isn’t there a song ‘Ice Ice Baby’?” Yes, yes, there is. My brain was thinking it was something like Santa Baby. Nope. Rap. And then when I played it, I actually recognized it. I don’t hate rap but it isn’t my tiptop music genre. But Ice Ice Baby is actually pretty good.

Today was the first cFam xmas party since you know when (2019 was the last) and this is the only picture I took. The Twinz of Terror in Santa hats.

In truth, I usually don’t take many photos at events like this. For one thing, I’m pretty terrible at photographing people. Also, I understand why people like to take posed family pictures (even informal ones like at parties) but I kinda hate it and only grudgingly cooperate with it. I much prefer candids, at least when they are not “fuglies”, or photos that show some kind of action, not just a person’s face. Being an amateur iPhone-ographer, I’m only randomly good at capturing those moments.

Oh well, enough of that. I was too busy yakking to take pictures anyway. It was a lovely party, hosted by the Lord and Lady of Linden, the only folks in the family who own a house big enough to host even the fraction of our crowd that could attend. Pizza and some of its friends made it easy on the hostess. I hope. I know I was not much help.

It was great to reconnect to folks in person after so many years. I mean, we have been with a lot of these people individually or in small groups throughout but this once annual big bash has been on hold. I love how well our children’s generation has turned out, the 19 grandchildren of my late parents-in-law. Successful, thoughtful, articulate adults all.

I hung out at the introvert table. The GG was wildly mingling, helping little kids build forts and who knows what else. At one point he flew by to ask me why I wasn’t circulating. My reply was that I was at the introvert table and people were coming to me. And they were. Covid isolation taught me to embrace being introverted and to “re-brand” myself as a “friendly introvert”. I was able to put that into practice tonight.

Bone dry roads at 24 degrees or whatever were also appreciated for our 80 mile round trip. Thank you Old Man Winter.

One of my spaces anyway. This is a chitchen shelf above the counter where I *mainly* use my MacBook Pro. Standing desk if you will. My work laptop resides by the front window, which is another MySpace. I mostly blahg from the Kitchen Counter MySpace but sometimes I take my MacBook over by the window.

This shelf is decorated for xmas. Sorta. Most of the elements in this “scene” are there year-round. Lemme see:

— The glass bottles at the back were purchased for a blueberry liqueur making session the GG undertook waaaaaay back in the Jurassic Age. The liqueur was fine but he never repeated that adventure. I keep the bottles because I like them (not that they are valuable).

— The “cake mold” (I’m guessing that’s what it is) and the flour sifter are from The Commander’s collection. I remember her using the flour sifter when I was little. I don’t remember her using the “cake mold”. I have never used either of them.

— The teakettle? I’m not sure where that’s from. I *think* from The Commander’s collection but it could be a cFam artifact? I *like* old teakettles. When I was a kid, we used HUGE teakettles to heat dishwater in the Old Cabin and later in the moomincabin. This was before we had hot running water in either of those rustic cabins. Then I met the GG and lo and behold, at the moldy old Hoton Lake cabin, in the winter we used a huge teakettle to heat water for washing dishes. I was all on board with that. “I know how to do this, it’s just like home.” This teakettle looks too small to heat dishwater so I’m not sure I have its story straight. Maybe the GG used it for camping back in the day? I dunno.

— Red ornament: Red tree with the Great Lake State cut out in the middle (embiggen). The Uncly Uncle gifted me with this a few years ago. Embarrassing story is that I posted it on facebook when I first received it. But. I posted it BACKWARDS so the Upper Peninsula was “pointing” EAST instead of WEST. I have a lot of FB friends in/from the yooperland so you can guess what they thought🤪 It is correct in this pic and it stays there all year just so I remember where I came from, as if I needed a reminder.

— Green ornament: Frog. He doesn’t stay out year round even though I love him.

— Oh yeah, that white fluffy thingy is to clean out glasses or whatever. It is too pretty to use so I have never used it.

P.S. We’ll talk about the continuing resolution and Trump and his “advisor” Elon’s meddling in the process some other day. Or not… I’m just glad gov’t employees (and don’t forget the contractors) know when their next paycheck is coming. A lot of those folks are living paycheck to paycheck. Been there done that and also through a few gov’t shutdowns myself.

This falls into the category of “looking for something else, I found this”. Looking for what? I wasn’t really sure. December-type images, I guess.

It’s my dad sitting next to the Dillon Street faaaaaplace. My brother’s dog Sam is next to him and my brother’s wife is to the left of the dog. Behind her is the door to the Dillon House kitchen. The pic was taken on December 27, 2001. We must have traveled up there after xmas that year since we NEVER actually spent xmas day there.

Except once. When Lizard Breath was two months old I so wanted to take my infant up to spend xmas with her grandparents and various other relatives. Okay. Freezing rain on the way up so bad we actually got a motel room halfway up. Rain and freezing rain the whole week we were there to the point where it was hard to walk anywhere. Freezing rain on the way back home. The baby was crying in the back seat of our little Ford Fiesta. It was too dangerous to take her out of her car seat, which I have been known to do, so I reached back there and grabbed her feet. That settled her down for a while but the last half hour of the trip was dicey.

I swore right then and there that I would never make a plan to travel to the yooperland specifically *for* xmas again. I only got two weeks of vacation time back then and I would save it for summer. That’s not to say that we never went there during the holiday season again, just that we always spent xmas eve and day in our own house on The Planet Ann Arbor, creating our own holiday “traditions”, willy-nilly as they were (and still are).

The xmas in the pic, that tiny infant was in her senior year of high school. Her granddaddy lasted another five years. My brother (his son) left us nine months before he died.

Not to leave this on a sad note. I am still feeling some random holiday grumpiness but I took the afternoon off, the last four hours of my use-or-lose paid time off for 2024. I can’t say I got a whole lot done this afternoon but I was able to think ahead a bit about menu planning, which opened up some head space.

P.S. On the long-ago trip up north with the infant, when we FINALLY arrived, The Commander (her grandmother) was sitting in a chair next to the front door. I put the baby in her lap and… The baby, who hadn’t seen her grandmother in six weeks, looked up and immediately broke out in a HUGE smile! Did she remember her grandmother? Who knows.

xmas that is.

I don’t have gifts for *anyone* beyond the items they specifically requested. This always feels odd to me because I used to shower my kids et al with gifts. But we are all in the same boat with tooooo much crapola and the last thing I want to do is load them up with stuff to re-gift or take to the Kiwanis sale. BTW, gifts I do give come with no strings attached, meaning they can be re-gifted or donated without guilt. I would never visit their houses and ask, “Where is that ugly gewgaw I gave you three xmases ago?”

I am feeling really disorganized about xmas-type meals. Shopping must be done and at multiple places and I am… Well… Discombobulated. A bit of a reprieve came when the GG corrected me that the cFam party is on Sunday, NOT Saturday like I was thinking. One or two of the places I need to shop are only open on Saturday and the party is 45 minutes away. And and and…

We are having the cFam party this year for the first time since 2019 (pre-covid of course). It will be hosted by the hostess with the most-est. I mean she has a spacious house with multiple bathrooms. Plus she is a good hostess.

This can be a difficult time of year to throw a party here in the Great Lake State because weather. Fingers crossed that we don’t have to traverse a frickin’ ice storm like the year I was getting over the vomiting virus from hell and sat in a chair ALL NIGHT. No mingling for me. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t contagious by that time but post-covid I sure think about communicable diseases differently than I used to. Like even if I am a disease warrior, others may not be so I keep my distance if I have cold symptoms, etc. Or stay home.

The pic is of a setting moon. Waning gibbous from a couple years ago. The moon right now is also waning gibbous (but 10 days or so later). We can’t see the moon because cloud cover. And probably snow but I haven’t looked outside in a while.

Actually it’s an old pic. We still have some lights strung on the back of the “puano” (toddler-speak) but a lot of them are burnt out these days. Actually I would like to get rid of the piano…

I had a very grinchy morning. I get like that every xmas. Feeling behind about getting things done and are there enough gifts for everyone? Etc. I started to take my grinchie-ness out on the GG but then I realized what it was and backed off.

Giving (i.e., making a donation) this afternoon put me in a better mood somehow. I got serious about philanthropy when The Commander died and I took over a few of her causes. Sault [Ste. Siberia] Historic Sites, etc. (In case the GG deigns to read this entry, my disclaimer is that I *know* we are NOT “Warren Buffet” and I consider my donations carefully.)

Today an email came in from the Washtenaw Community College (WCC) Foundation and I made a donation. This is an organization that changed my life, even though I wasn’t exactly looking for a change.

I have a college degree (music) from long ago but instead of working in that field (I had no clue where to start), I fell into a tech job. Always an autodidact, I taught myself the BASIC computer language on our original Apple II+. At my job, I figured out FORTRAN. When Al Gore invented the internet [that’s a joke], I figured out how to code html PDQ and made my own (crappy) website along with sites for the middle school science fair and the youth theatre guild my kids (and I) were involved in.

I knew that I wasn’t coding html using “best practices”, so back in the early oughts (2000s), I took myself back to college. To WCC. There I found some of my people. Their web design/dev program was highly esteemed and I found the profs to be absolutely EXCELLENT. As luck would have it, one of my profs decided we needed to do internships as a part of an advanced class. The internship he assigned me to was the only PAID internship. $12 an hour was more than I was making at the time ($0) so with some trepidation, I did the interview and took the drug test. And wow has it paid off as I was hired full-time with a good salary after a couple months.

Community college can be a great opportunity but it’s worth noting that many of the folks who attend are just scraping by and don’t all have the background or support to be successful. I often sat next to a young man with learning disabilities (?) and although he was sincere about learning, I don’t think he could read well enough to succeed and I sometimes wonder where he is now. I would never let anyone copy any of my homework that was for credit (got busted for that in 7th grade in an attempt to be “popular”) but when we did in-class group activities that were not graded, I did let him copy. Laboriously, sigh.

This young man is one of the reasons I donated (and will continue to donate) to the WCC Foundation. And people like him are one of many reasons I do NOT support the Trump party. That party cares only about Trump and all of his billionaire friends. What does he know about a kid who has a learning disability, a disabled wife, a beloved cat, and no car (just a few facts that I know about this guy). Some of these folks do not have the bootstraps I (and Trump) grew up with.

This photooo is from last year and I can’t remember what got sent with dry ice then but TODAY’s delivery was LOBSTER POT PIE! The Mad Scientist did some of his usual dry ice shtick stuff but today’s pics were not as good as last year’s although I posted them on Instagram *anyway*.

I have two and a half days of work and then I am off until January 2. And that is about it.

G’night. KW.

These Santas were part of The Commander’s Santa collection. I think she believed in Santa Claus in the sense that he spreads good will throughout our increasingly war-torn world (not that our world has ever not been war-torn). In any case, The Commander had a Santa collection and I have informally inherited it.

The pic is from when she was living in the Freighter View assisted living facility. 13 years ago. We set up her place with xmas lights and decorations, including these Santas. You can’t see but out the window is the Soo Locks. I thought Freighter View would be a good place for her (and she could afford it plus keep her Dillon house aka Command Central). As it turned out, after a couple of trips to the hoosegow and a long stay there, The Commander succumbed to c.diff and its aftermath, a disease I had never heard of.

These little Santas were last displayed (for The Commander) on the window sill at her apartment at Freighter View. I do a small Santa display here at the Landfill and they were included in my display for years afterwards. Except there are only two of them left now. A couple years ago, someone besides me put away my little Santa collection and the next year, two of them were missing. I have not seen them since.

I am sad but life goes on.

It may have been dreary but I didn’t really feel very dreary and it couldda been WAY worse.

Freezing rain was predicted for over night and although temps were in the low 30s, I don’t think we actually had the kind of rain that hits the ground and immediately freezes into a sheet of ice. I did appreciate receiving my own personal weather/road report this morning. Everyone who had to work this morning got to work safely and the roads were pretty okay. These folks are not far out of town but they traverse dirt roads which have been going through a freeze/thaw cycle over the last few days.

Nevertheless, I put off my grock and post office runs for a little while and by the time I left for those, Cygnus proclaimed it was 37 outside so all was all fine on our city’s paved roads.

Once I got to the Plum, I was sighted by a co-worker of my beach urchin so she sought me out in the frozen food aisle, where I was getting frozen peas. I seem to be a minor celebrity at the plum🤪 A very minor one, I might add.

The extra fun part of the day was meeting my *other* beach urchin for lunch. Now that my covid cowardice has significantly abated, I am branching “out” back into my old fave restaurants. I told her I was thinking about either Conor O’Neill’s or the Jolly Pum(pkin). She said that we shouldn’t go to Conor’s without the GG so I said, “The Jolly it is!” We split a small pizza and a lovely kale salad with dried cranberries and I fergit what else. As I was walking back to Cygnus, I passed Conor’s and it sounded noisy in there so I think the Jolly was a good choice for us.

P.S. covid is NOT over yet. One of my co-workers had it last week. He did not (that I know of) need hospitalization but he felt like crap with fever and body aches and cold symptoms. I hope he is recovering from it now. Since we telecommute, of course, I have not been exposed.

That’s what the radio has been telling me off and on all day is the vision for Syria’s future. I know zilch about Syria except that a madman took over a decade or so ago and has been killing a lot of “his people” ever since. Madman is equivalent to dictator in my book. He’s in Russia now. Let’s hope he stays there.

I want a non-sectarian country too. Alas, I feel like we are heading *away* from our founding fathers’ vision. Flawed human beings that they were. I am at the top of the pyramid here. I am a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Ever hear of a WASP? That’s me. (Well, I am a woman, so there’s that.) I would substitute Celtic for Anglo Saxon and I went to a Protestant church but I haven’t believed in a “god” since I was about three.

The Central United Methodist church was not a bad place to go to Sunday School and early release Wednesday classes (that was actually fun, we got outta grade school early and walked downtown with friends). When I was 16 I asked my dad if I could quit Sunday School and he readily granted me permission. I had always suspected he was a non-believer and although we never discussed it, I think I am right about that. But whatever he thought about the Christian god and church, he was a small town banker who grew up going to that church and he voluntarily balanced its books every month sometimes having to call and “beg” the electric company etc. to give the church a little more time to pay its bill. I can still remember him clacking away at the typewriter.

I think that a non-sectarian country means that people are free to practice whatever religion they choose, including none, like me. With the Trumpian take-over of the GOP (this is NOT your parents’ GOP), I don’t think that’s where we are headed with the Trumpian party. I think the only religion he believes in is himself. My thoughts on that are a-swarm at the moment so I won’t go any further tonight.

I wish Syria luck on creating a non-sectarian country. We all need to live in non-sectarian countries. Alas, I am not optimistic. Especially since I see my own beautiful country drifting away from accepting people who practice all religions including none.

Sorry. I didn’t mean to get off on this tangent tonight.

Love, Kayak Woman

I am on The Planet Ann Arbor. We have gotten a few wimpy little snowstorms here this season. The last one was Wednesday overnight. It *maybe* dropped two inches but that was enough to cancel the local schools on Thursday. It was an amount of snow that wouldn’t have canceled school when the beach urchins were students and it DEFINITELY wouldn’t have canceled school when I was a child in Sault Ste. Siberia. If memory serves me, I remember something like THREE snow days growing up there. I’m sure there are many more now that there are a lot more school buses.

So, we didn’t have a lot of school buses back then. Those of us who lived in town (like meeee) walked to school or got driven (meeee occasionally but only in high school and only because my moom was a teacher there so she was going there anyway). But usually I preferred to walk. Even when it was 32 below zero (yes really) and I was wearing a mini-skirt and nylons (yes really). Why I never got frostbite, I do not know.

My high school served a large rural area and many kids got bused in. When the buses couldn’t navigate those roads, the “country” kids didn’t come to school. This was not probably a good thing for the “country” kids who didn’t have a whole lot of support at home but I am here to tell you that many of those kids have become very successful adults anyway. Some of them a lot more successful than I (a “snooty” town kid (not really)) have become🤣

The pic is from the GG. He’s in the yooperland but I am not sure which part of the North Country Trail this is.

I am NOT a blasted door mat but that is one of the things on my xmas list this year. The door mats we have are probably 20 years old and you can’t even tell what the picture on them was when they were new.

What I don’t want: 1) Anything with “Welcome” on it. The people who are welcome here know who they are and they don’t have to be greeted by a door mat, unless of course it is meeeee. Or the GG, who usually answers the door because he knows how much I hate answering the door unless it’s a neighbor. 2) Anything cutesy. No cats please and I greatly love small birds but I don’t want chickadees on my door mat.

<digression> Once when teenagers called the Landfill home, we were imminently expecting their friend from around the corner to arrive, known as “Shuggy” at the time. Doorbell rang. I answered it and Luke of Perrynet was on the porch. My immediate response was “You’re not Shuggy!” Oh, oops… Hilarity ensued. </digression>

Anyway, I have this kind of stoopid vision for a new door mat that includes a large aminal or bird (y’know, bear, moose, eagle, whatever) and maybe some astronomical things like moon and stars. And a pine tree. I texted this “vision” to the folks who WANT me to make an xmas list and somebody responded that my yooperland blood might be surfacing. Yes, it is.

I am just a poor boy but my story must be told… Simon and Garfunkel

This is the Back Light. Also my brother and his dog Laker, meaning this pic was taken a looooong time ago because my bro’ died in 2005 and Laker years before that.

Yes, this dilapidated lighthouse is in the middle of the woods. It is not the kind of lighthouse that alerts ships to rocky peninsulas or islands or whatever. It is a “range light”. Range lights come in pairs, one behind the other, which means the “back” light of the pair may be in the woods depending on the terrain. Range lights show boats traversing the shipping channels when to turn. When the back and front lights are lined up, it’s time to turn. Nowadays all kinds of sophisticated navigational systems exist but some range lights are still in use, including the Birch Point range lights a half mile or so to the west of the moominbeach. The Back Light in the pic is down the beach (and back in the woods) to the east and is obviously not used any more.

The next pic is npJane standing in front of the Back Light’s ruins after it collapsed. It collapsed in the middle of the night and the sound woke Radical Betty up in her moominbeach ski chalet.

The front range light was up on the edge of the bank above the beach. Building a permanent structures ON a sand beach is usually a losing proposition. When I was a teenager, the front light was vandalized by “classmates” of mine. By “classmates”, I mean some juvenile delinquents who attended my high school. Their parents had rented the Stevens’ “cottage” for a week. Maybe they thought getting the kids out in nature would be a good thing? Instead, those kids destroyed an important piece of history. I was maybe 14 but I understood this. It was part of MY history too.

Dreamscape? It’s what I sometimes think of when I remember all of the landmarks we “expotitioned” to as beach urchins. The Back Light was one particularly interesting destination. We could walk the beach to “Dolie’s” and cut up past the old lighthouse keeper’s house but I think we usually took the old overgrown two-track down to “Dolie’s”. Past the “fox holes”, over the log bridge, then over the “cement” bridge, then we would hang a right and head to the Back Light. The path started out the same “cement” as the bridge but quickly deteriorated to dirt and moss and whatever.

Back when my cousins and I were beach urchins, we went INSIDE and climbed the staircase up to the top, from where we could see out to the beach. I’m not sure when that was deemed unsafe. Maybe it was even back when we were climbing it but that particular expotition always required an adult chaperone.

I’m not sure if this made much sense. It seems higgledy-piggledy to me. What prompted me to write it at all is that a couple weeks ago the GG ran into a North Country Trail person who knows a LOT about the light houses surrounding the moominbeach, including the one on Round Island. He has a picture of the Back Light when it was in much better shape but I won’t share it because it’s not my photo. But it reminded me of my childhood expotitions. We can still walk to the location of the Back Light but for uncountable reasons, it isn’t anywhere near the same. It’s like a dream to me now.

I am neither a hippie nor a highlander. I was a hippie wannabe as a teenager but I would not have been able to live on a commune and go without bathing for long periods of time. Some of my ancestors were Scottish highlanders and probably went without bathing for however long they had to. That’s about as far as that goes.

When we were eating at Metzger’s German restaurant last weekend, I realized that I was wearing clothing that clashed like crazy. Tie-dyed skirt and a plaid scarf. Not sure if it is a Scottish tartan but it is similar. My fam does have a tartan, Farquharson, which has nothing to do with my scarf.

But looking at the pic I took, I’m not sure I clashed much at all. The colors are similar although the tie-dye has a few more colors in it than the plaid (hello blue and purple). But in both cases, jewel tone colors sink into BLACK. So maybe it all works? I dunno.

I’m not sure I’m making sense so I’ll sign off for now🤪 I just now got a notification that season 2 of Severance is out! Yay! And we’ll talk about lighthouses some other day…

P.S. Season 2 of Severance comes out in mid January…

After a looooong two-day drive from Boston, a couple of our cousins visited their dad (My Dear Uncle Harry, age 97) for dinner and still somehow had the stamina to cross The Planet Ann Arbor to have a ‘hattan at The Landfill.

I was concerned that they might not want to do ANY MORE DRIVING! I wouldn’t have wanted to. We could’ve met them downtown somewhere and we could’ve gotten ourselves a snacky dinner. It all worked out and we were able to provide them with a faaaar in the faaaarplace. This arrangement allowed us to warm up leftover food in our oven for an eventual dinner at home. We usually eat pretty late anyway so whatever.

I am blessed with cousins of many degrees that I love and get along with. It all began with our Grandma Margaret’s 11 grandchildren. I am in the middle with two female cousins. We are sixth, seventh, and eighth, all born in the same year. “Triplets.” I am personally EXACTLY in the middle of all the cousins, as the 6th, five older and five younger. The middle cousin? Of all things, two of us “triplets” have the same name. I am the first Anne (in birth order). I don’t like my name but that would be a topic for another day😵‍💫

The second Anne (who was here tonight) was born in a distant state and her parents never expected us to spend much time together so they gave her the same name (probably a long story short). But then her parents moved back to Michigan and we spent summers together at the moominbeach throughout childhood and forever more. That is, her mom Bubs moved back to Michigan. Her dad Harry was from The Bronx so The Great Lake State was new to him but he galumphed along to the occasion and is still vibrantly hanging around on The Planet Ann Arbor, his chosen home as a young married adult with children. If I have it right, he is currently helping direct traffic around new construction at his chosen independent living facility among other things.

I had a kind of a meeeee day in which I mostly read and tinked around with my xmas list (a weeee bit) and some apps.

I am trying out a different book tracking app, StoryGraph. I stumbled upon this recently. I have been using Goodreads for a number of years and it works fine for me so this is not a “dig” at Goodreads. But I am intrigued by Storygraph, which seems to offer a lot of “web 3.0” features (if I can call them that). Also, apparently a Black woman is behind this site? That’s based on my sometimes faulty memory and I’m sorry but I am not gonna fact check it tonight.

My sometimes faulty memory is not due to dementia. It’s more due to how much crapola is packed into my brain at this time of my life. I’m pretty much snap on most of the time which is why “we” (the GG and I) often use my brain.

Disclaimers… 1) I haven’t switched off Goodreads (and probably won’t) and 2) I didn’t download Storygraph only because it (maybe) has a Black woman at the helm. But I do in general like to support female tech entrepreneurs. I am not a entrepreneur but I do work in tech. My company treats women well but I know that not all of them do.

If you decide you want to check StoryGraph out, you can import your Goodreads history. This won’t work on your phone. You have to log in to both Goodreads and StoryGraph on a computer web browser. Goodreads allows you to export your books into a csv (comma-delimited) file and StoryGraph can then suck it into their database.

While I am on apps, I just renewed Plan-to-Eat for, well forever, I guess. When I first bought it a year ago, it was $49 a year (there are other price plans). When I renewed it yesterday, it was $24.50 and I selected to have it auto-renew. So here’s a plug. I can suck recipes into this app from anywhere on the web. I can copy/paste my old MS Word recipes into it. I can type recipes into it one character at a time. I can access it from my laptop and my phone. So if I am at the grocery store and suddenly think of something to cook, I can look up the recipe and get the ingredients. (If it’s in Plan-to-Eat.)

Yes I am a nerd 🤪