Random bits of my so-called life.

Oh don’t worry. I was talking to my Roomba. I dunno whether she got unplugged or knocked off her charging base since the last time I gave her any marching orders but she was NOT connected to wifi.

Okay. Delete long rant about meeee rebooting her and getting her running even though her error messages didn’t go away… … … She completed her job. Or so I thought. She didn’t send me a happy “I’ve completed my job” message though and wouldn’t you know, an hour or so later, there was something “running”. The GG was working outside putting together a couple of his xmas gifts so I wrote it off at first as “The GG is doing something.” But then the “something” rolled into the chitchen. So Rooomba had decided she wasn’t done yet. I let her run anyway but when this happened a SECOND time, I had to figure out how to make her go home. I think she is home to STAY for now (until I tell her to run again, at least). I hope she doesn’t decide it’s time to vacuum in the middle of the night because I’ll be going “What IS that noise?.” Robot amok.

The pic is at White Lotus Farms where I buy fancy goat cheese spread. Today the “seasonal flavors” were strawberry jam basil reduction and provencal herb. I bought both. I can get this stuff at the farmers market but I didn’t really need anything else from there today and at the moment, due to all kinds of construction downtown, it was easier and calmer to drive out Liberty to the vendor’s market than downtown.

Metzger’s is a looooong-time Planet Ann Arbor restaurant featuring top-notch German cuisine. It used to be downtown but at least 20 years ago it moved out to Zeeb Road.

Tonight was my second time eating at the “new” (Zeeb Road) location. The first time? January 25 (or so) 2006. I received a call from The Commander that afternoon. My dad had fallen and smashed his pelvis while walking down the escarpment to the post office. He was going to be air ambulanced that night to the Henry Ford hoosegow in downtown Detroit.

For whatever reason, we decided to go out to eat that night and tried Metzger’s new location. It was WONDERFUL. For whatever reason I didn’t feel like any of their German entrees that night so I ordered salmon. It was LOVERLY. I was like, we need to come back here again! Soon!

We didn’t… I spent the next few weeks schlepping down to the hoosegow where dad went through a couple surgeries to rebuild his pelvis, then another month or so schlepping back and forth to Sault Ste. Siberia where he was in rehab. Until his final trip to the Sault hoosegow for palliative care and death. Sepsis. Ugh.

Life was complicated for a while as I schlepped up and down to spend time with The Commander and then got a JOB (surprise!). For various non-reasons, we never got back to Metzger’s. Until tonight.

They don’t take reservations for parties of fewer than six people so it was with some trepidation that we porterized ourselves over there tonight. OMG! Why has it taken me so long to revisit this place? It was crowded but we were seated PDQ considering that it is a FRIDAY in DECEMBER, which brings all kinds of people out. And the food? Fantastic! It’s kinda funny that AGAIN I did not order German food. I got a swordfish “special”. Why? Because the beach urchins are coming over for dinner tomorrow night and we are having beef shish kebab and I had to have something non-“meat”.

My fave cocktail is a Manhattan but I don’t often order them in restaurants because they are often “wimpy” and I have encountered bartenders who don’t even know how to make them. I had a hunch Metzger’s would make a decent ‘hattan but I was still gobsmacked when our server handed me one that rivaled a Knight’s ‘hattan. (Knight’s is @strongdrinks on Twitter.) I even said something like, “That looks like a Knight’s drink”. Yikes. Did her silence indicate a possible rivalry between the Metzger and Knight families? 😵‍💫 Friendly or not, I do not know. It’s okay. She treated us well and I tipped her well. And we will be back. SOON! I mean that this time.

I got space-i-fied today while the GG and the beach urchins went down to Ohio to hike along the Maumee River on the Erie-Miami tow path. (There is a city named Miami in Ohio in case you didn’t know.)

The mice attached to the GG’s mouse’s backpack are Stowaway and Tagalong. MAGA that the GG is, people are complicated and although I don’t agree with his politics, he is a good life partner in many other ways. When I received the pic of Stowaway and Tagalong, it reminded me of the day the GG served as a 2nd grade field trip chaperone. He fastened Softy Beanbag to a backpack in such a way that she was looking out at the children.

I encountered one of the 2nd grade teachers later on and she said something like, “I was having a really rough morning but when I saw him with that mouse, I knew things would be okay.” The GG is good with things like that and I am not exactly although I did put in my time on field trips, etc.

The Boss? At the end of the day, well after the sun had set, a Big Truck pulled up in front of the Landfill. It backed up a bit and didn’t seem to know where the delivery was supposed to go. I knew that the delivery was to the Landfill and I knew what it was (and so the the GG although he kept quiet). Eventually with help from us and other people, they found our house. This was a HEAVY item and it took two young guys to schlep it up the driveway to the porch. Fortunately, the driveway was salted.

I can’t tell the rest of this in detail but we managed to get the delivery inside and by the end of it all, they were all calling me The Boss. Sign here… Etc. They were very hungry and thirsty and weren’t shy about it. I had Thanksgiving-purged the fridge and freezer earlier today so we didn’t have any good snack foods but they happily accepted apples and lemon-lime LaCroix water.

We’ve been watching Derry Girls. It’s fine but I am wanting the next episodes of Outlander and Silo to drop (I’m watching those alone). Tonight Derry Girls was exploring “differences” between Protestants and Catholics. This cracks me up. I was brought up “mainstream” Methodist (as opposed to holy roller or whatever) by parents who weren’t religious but went along with our extended family’s small-town culture. One of my “lots in life” is large Catholic families. I married into one (the GG doesn’t participate, at least not that I know of) but I also grew up with beloved Catholic friends.

Were us Protestants all that different than our Catholic friends? Not in any ways that matter as near as I can remember. But then we grew up in America, not Ireland… I sure hope our country can continue to be a place where people of different cultures can get along together but I am not all that optimistic at the moment.

Oh, it’s not my mood, not exactly at least. I had an uneasy feeling about the weather this morning that only intensified throughout the day. To be clear, the sidewalks and roads were dry as a bone today but Mr. Golden Sun deigned to make even one sniggly little appearance today and by my sluggish time of the afternoon (three-ish), I felt a wee bit chilly.

There was no way I was gonna turn up the thermostat. It was at 66 and the last time a Window Replacement person knocked on my door, I told her I LIKED my window. She asked me if it was drafty in my house. Well, not really. And it isn’t really but nevertheless, I felt chilly and this evening there has been a discussion about refurbishing the existing window. I am all aboard with that. Xmas gift? Bring it on. But not via a door-to-door salesperson.

Anyway, the forecast is for snow. Not a lot of snow but even a couple inches can majorly snarl traffic at this time of year when people have totally forgotten how to drive in slippery conditions. Or haven’t driven in them ever before as I saw a couple of Florida Men do years ago when I was driving to work (Fla license plate, trying to pass a LOOOONNNG line of cars and ended up in the ditch). Yep, there’s ice on this road.

So, I am not feeling blue at all really but finding this old photo (2007 and probably taken from whatever MacBook I had then) reminded me of the old Cream song Blue Condition. When I was a young teenager, I used to play records in my bedroom and dance to them. (I didn’t have a boyfriend but sooo wanted one.) I did magical thinking that my parents didn’t know I was dancing, which was ridiculous because they were watching TV in the next room and I’m sure they knew exactly what I was doing. To their credit, they NEVER mentioned it. And I’m not even sure how you dance to a song like Blue Condition🤪

We’re still in the Thanksgiving Leftover Era so I put some mashed potatoes and pork tenderloin in the oven on warm. Then. I have no fresh veggies here today but I could’ve sworn I had a baggie of lima beans in the freezer. I like lima beans, I know not everyone does. But I needed a PDQ green veggie tonight, even a frozen one.

When I opened my freezer, I could not find lima beans anywhere. I looked at the door. It was FILLED with ice packs. The kind that arrive when you order cold stuff on line and since covid, we have received tons of these things. And you save them to use in your camping trailer or schlep grocks up north. Nevertheless, I am frustrated that my freezer is overstuffed with these. I *think* that they do not need to be *stored* in a frozen state. Can’t you just freeze them before you pack your grocks for a trip?

I never did find lima beans in the freezer (they’re on the list) but after about eight ice packs got removed (by himself), underneath it all, I found a pack of frozen peas. That isn’t ideal but it’ll work. And, oh. Then. I remembered that there are some leftover lima beans in the fridge so I’ll combine them with the peas and…

Yes, we eat weird stuff here sometimes. 🤪

I for one am happy that Joe pardoned his son Hunter. I’m sure my MAGA buddies disagree with me. “Joe reneged on his promise.” Blah-de blah-de ad nauseam.

I haven’t been closely following Hunter’s crimes or journey through the system but it sounds like tax delinquency at least in part brought on by drug dependency? Not that I approve of either of these transgressions but c’mon. There are plenty of people who manage to find LEGAL ways to not pay their taxes. They call them loopholes, right? I wonder if Trump pays his fair share? Who knows? Only the IRS because Trump won’t release his records. And Hunter has apparently paid his delinquent tax bill? I have not done any serious fact checking on this. And drug addiction is a complicated issue. I am out of words for the moment except that I don’t believe it should be, in and of itself, a crime.

From the beginning this “witch hunt” (to borrow Trump’s oft-used word) has felt political. NASTILY political in true Trumpian style. I think Joe made his statement that he would not pardon his son thinking it might help him win the election. We all know how that turned out. I figure he’s thinking something like, “Why not pardon him?” And maybe, “That’s what Trump would do.” Because that’s undoubtedly what Trump WOULD do. Unabashedly. My kid never does anything wrong…

MAGA will probably scream and cry about the pardon (I haven’t been paying much attention to news today so don’t know). If Trump granted a similar pardon, they would be all supportive and fawning all over him.

I’m not gonna go anywhere near opening up the Pandora’s box containing the J6 insurrectionists (and YES, they WERE insurrectionists). Unlike Hunter’s crimes, people got *killed* at the Capitol that day. I dunno what Trump will do. I always say I won’t move to Canananada (and I won’t) but if he puts the Q Shaman in his Clown Car Cabinet, I may have to reconsider🤪.

After a few dreary snow flurrying days, here is a silhouette of an electrical company contractor trimming branches in our neighbor’s back yard in front of a blinding Mr. Golden Sun, who is rolling around to the south of us at this time of year. He’s at the top of the pic. Embiggen.

The neighborhood was aswarm with women in neon pink construction-type vests today. I couldn’t for the life of me figger out what they were doing until one of them approached my door and knocked.

I am not crazy about solicitors. I do NOT want replacement windows and I am not going to show some random solicitor my gas bill even if they tell me they could reduce it🤪. As if I could show them a bill, since I have been using auto-pay for at least 20 years. Vacuum cleaner? I’ve lost count of how many of those we have. Seven maybe? Vintages from 1950s (still works) until the last few years. There are two identical purple Dysons because the one at the moomincabin resides here for the winter, otherwise the battery freezes and we have to buy a new battery.

So who was the pink person at the door? A Planned Parenthood gal! I am TOTALLY in alignment with Planned Parenthood but I didn’t really want to talk so I tried to stave off the spiel by immediately saying I make a MONTHLY donation (on auto-pay, like the gas bill). Also that I grew up during the “coat-hanger” days and I didn’t want to go back to that although many backward (yes, backward) “red” states already have and who the hell knows what Trump will do. And don’t ask me if I ever knew anyone who had a “coat-hanger” abortion. No I do not (that I know of). I am using the term to refer to illegal, unsafe abortions. Because that is the reality for many women right now, TODAY. And ALSO don’t talk to me about “state’s rights”. That particular decision had nothing to do with state’s rights but we’ll go there some other day.

She gave me the spiel anyway albeit a bit nuanced to acknowledge the fact that I am a Planned Parenthood SUPPORTER. ALL stuff I already know because I follow reproductive issues pretty closely. I did let her go on for a while, again, because I am a SUPPORTER and felt like I wanted to stand with her in solidarity. The Planet Ann Arbor is a “blue bubble” but who knows what she has to deal with going door to door. She found a friend in me.

I’m not gonna go on and on (and on) tonight, even though I could (and have in other posts). I expected Trump’s packed Supreme Court would strike Roe v. Wade down and of course it did. As soon as I saw the news (probably on my phone), I panicked a bit. I stopped that PDQ and redirected to, “What can I do that might be positive?” Oh yeah, I am old and baggy and gainfully employed so I can put my MONEY where my mouth is. (What money I have, that is. Warren Buffett I am not.) I IMMEDIATELY hopped over to Planned Parenthood and set up a monthly donation.

I still don’t understand what people see in Trump. He isn’t going to “fix” *anything*, “the economy”, “immigration”, “grocery/gas prices”. Nothing. He isn’t going to “end wars in a day”. At least not in a way that will make our world a better place. He is in this game of thrones for ONE PERSON. HIMSELF! No matter what he says, he isn’t a friend to women, that’s for damn sure.

Signing off, Kassandra

This was the one year since the beach urchins were born that we had NOBODY coming home for tday and no other guests. Just the two of us. Mouse was in Dakar for study abroad and Lizard was living out in San Francisco. I’ve never understood Thanksgiving travel that involves planes. It’s such a short holiday. Why go through all that airport pain? They agreed with me and anyway, you don’t just fly home from Africa for Thanksgiving unless you own a private jet. Lizard spent the holiday with her family of friends in California, and it was probably a regular day in Dakar.

Anyway, we packed up the smallest turkey I could find and all its friends and took off for Hoton Lake for the weekend. This was also the year (2007) I started working for my current employer. I was a student intern at that time and only worked a day and a half each week so we were able to leave Wednesday morning (the GG was still working but had tons of PTO). Soon after this, my employer approached me with a full-time job offer and it wasn’t an easy decision to leave my carefree lifestyle (which also included community college web design/dev courses just to keep me on my toes). The job obviously worked out well but that’s a topic for some other day. Or not.

We’ve had snow for the last two days. Just a sniggly bit of snow, slowly but persistently flurrying down. The northern Great Lake State? Lemme see, has Sault Ste. Siberia had two or three feet? And it is still coming down. I get weather alerts for that area since it’s my hometown and I am still a property owner in the area. The local authorities are pleading with people to stay off the roads so they can quickly and efficiently plow them. And then plow them again. Ad infinitum ad nauseam. They do have heavy duty snow removal equipment up there and they are ON IT PDQ. Sometimes here on The Planet Ann Arbor it takes a few days before our street gets plowed.

I’ve personally seen snow in the yooperland in every month except July and August and it is NOT early for an extreme snowstorm there. Or even here although that’s not what we have been getting.

We woke up to a wee bit of snow this morning. Did we expect that? Maybe. Sault Ste. Siberia (home city and near the moomincabin 350 miles north of here) is in the midst of a MASSIVE three-day storm and the municipal authorities up there are urging people to stay home so they can plow the snow without obstructions.

What did I do today? It was a meeeee day. I was always transparent about that. I did the remaining dishioshios and cleanup from our Thanksgiving dinner. This was EASY to do in part because the beach urchins did a BANG UP job of pre-cleaning last night. The chitchen is cleaner than it was before Thanksgiving. Who raised these (adult) children. I don’t think it was me…

I do NOT do Black Friday but I did schlep over to the Plum for a few ingredients for Turkey Tetrahedron (actually tetrazzini) tonight. Sorted out some xmas gifts and ordered a few personal items for meeee. Like I am not gonna ask for underwear or tights on my xmas list. Those are intimates and it’s up to me to buy my own. The GG did a bit of Black Friday and he was annoyed that our fave xmas tree vendor had RAISED THE PRICES! Ya think? I wasn’t ready for a tree yet and I made that known LOUD AND CLEAR but it turned out that he was just going to buy one and keep it outside for a couple weeks, which I was okay with. He didn’t get a tree but he did make some successful purchases.

Rabbit Hole: I’m not sure how I got out to the Missioned Souls YouTube channel today. I was looking at the triangular girl song on YouTube and over on the sidebar was something like “ska version of Wooly Bully” (which was originally by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs). My best memory of hearing that song was in the Old Cabin on the moominbeach. So, I had to click over. And there is this family, the Missioned Souls who do covers of all kinds of songs. (I think I have encountered them before.) I listened to Wooly Bully (I was too young to drive when that came out) and then a Bon Jovi cover and a couple others. It was Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” that brought the GG running from his lair into the kitchen to see what I was listening to.

The Missioned Souls are good. Check out that wee drummer.

Our family Thanksgivings always begin with The Gobbler, an audio file of turkeys gobbling that makes its way around the world via text message to wherever our loved ones are.

After that and some eggs benny, the GG was in his lair and I heard him playing frogcasts. I wanted to yell, “Don’t play those!!!” but I sucked it up and eventually I kind of got into the spirit of things and it actually ended up being fun. So, what the heck are frogcasts? They are when Froggy (in the pic) commandeers my computer and Garage Band and sings ribald little ditties or recites poetry or whatever.

With a bit of trepidation, I will post a link to the old frogcast page. If you dare to go there at all, and I won’t blame you if you don’t, don’t try to listen to all of them. You won’t understand them all. I don’t even understand them all, particularly “Mr. Security”, which features The Mean Old Grunchy Old Grinchy aka my loverly cuzzint and I was right there front and center in Radical Betty’s house at the time. She was my aunt and I think she is also in the frogcast. She was providing breakfast for the Grinchie and coffee for me.

My fave (if you dare to listen to one) is “Cloopin’ Gloppers”. It features a reading from Dr. Seuss’s book “Happy Birthday To You” that has always been a fave of mine.

At a minimum, if you navigate to the frogcast page, note the little “thermometers”. That is what The Commander called the thingies that play the frogcasts. (They don’t work very well in my current browser, like they don’t let me rewind.)

To end this, we are listening to music on our Home pod and we have no clue where it’s coming from. Nobody here is playing “Triangular Girl Stuck in a Round Tubular World”. I don’t think anyone here has ever heard of it before. Although some people are thinking that *I* might relate to BEING a triangular girl stuck in a round tubular world. I am processing that🤪

The last thing I did yesterday afternoon was have a catch-up meeting with my boss. In the course of the conversation, he asked if I was taking any time off this week. He approved my time-off request for this week and through the end of the year on Monday but I’m sure he didn’t pay attention to what I was asking for. That is a good thing. Not because I would try to cheat, Workday wouldn’t let me cheat if I tried. Just that he doesn’t micro-manage.

I told him Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday is a Cooking Day and Friday is a Meeeee Day. So today was a cooking day. Lemme see… Cranberry sauce (quick and dirty), make-ahead mashed potatoes, the decadent kind with cream cheese and sour cream, Chex mix (with FRESH sesame sticks, thank you very much), What I didn’t get done? Hollandaise, haricots verts with almonds (but these haricots don’t look like they need extensive trimming), dressing but the bread is torn up and drying out and that’s the hard part. And I cleaned up some VERY messy multi-color carrots that somebody else is going to cut up and cook. The GG will take care of the turkey.

I went to the Plum this morning before it got crazy (although I have NEVER had to wait long in any line at the Plum, even the day before t-day, and there was nobody at “my” U-scan today). Then I went out to a farm to pick up some fancy goat cheese spread I had ordered online. I hadn’t been able to figger out from their website what the “seasonal” choice was so I just ordered it, thinking there was only one and knowing I would like whatever it was since I have NEVER disliked any of their spreads. (I’ve been buying stuff from them at the farmers market for years. This is the first time I’ve been out to their farm market.)

Turns out there were TWO “seasonal” choices and they couldn’t figger out what I wanted so they kindly set aside both for me. I said I had been fumbling with the website a bit and that was embarrassing because that’s what I do for a living (I was laughing at *myself* when I said this). The gal whispered, “It isn’t a very good website” and then she intimated that she’d told me that because I mentioned my occupation. Oh dear. If I had been wearing my on-line banking user experience hat, I could’ve given her a critique of that website. But I was wearing my Ann Arbor moom hat and I TOTALLY understand that a small farm doesn’t have the cash to pay for a professionally designed website. Instead, I reassured her that it was all okay. And it wasn’t even all THAT bad. I was able to order and pay for my product with ease even if I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting🤪

So what did I do? I whipped out my VISA card and said, “Y’know what, cranberry orange was my choice but I’ll also take the shallot herb!” Win win!

The pic: Nothing is wrong with Gertrude (knock on wood). Her ovens and glass windows are just getting a pre-Thanksgiving deep cleaning. The GG has his flaws (political🐽) but he rocks Suzy Homemaker. Today he vacuumed. Ignore all the clutter. Nothing to see here…

Characters: Kayak Woman (KW) and her daughter Lizard Breath (LB)
Setting: The Landfill as KW walks in the door, returning from a trip to Hoton Lake (this was back in the day)

LB: Moom can you use your super nose to figger out what that smell in the refrigerator is?
KW: [sniff] Old Dead Broccoli

THE END. (Except for the trip to the compost heap.)

There are two bad odors in the Landfill this afternoon.

One bad odor emanates from the chitchen garbage. I usually try to get through a whole week with one kitchen bag of garbage. This week, there will be two. This one will go out tomorrow and there will be another one the day after Tday. We normally take our garbage, etc., out on Thursday night for Friday morning pickup but because of the holiday that’ll be delayed a day. Plus, we’ll have more garbage than usual.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about the other bad odor but I am going to do a load of laundry tomorrow. Hint, hint🐽🐽🐽

Here we are driving to our 2021 Thanksgiving destination. No, we weren’t going to grandmother’s house, it was mouse’s (then) house.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was usually at my grandparents’ house but sometimes at my uncle’s and maybe once at my parents’ but our house was really small. My grandparents’ house was approximately ten blocks from our shabby little Superior Street bungalow in Sault Ste. Siberia. We didn’t have to cross any rivers to get there or go through any woods. We had woods at the moominbeach.

When I was a kid and my parents went out of town to attend banking functions or whatever, I would stay at my grandparents’ house and I could walk to my school (Lincoln) from there. With my friend Helen, who lived a couple blocks away from my grandparents. My house was directly across from the school and that was cool but I also loved the long walk with my friend Helen, who lived near my grandparents’ house.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at mouse’s house that year but in general, I like to host it here at The Landfill. Yeah, it’s a lot of work but at the end of the evening, I can be Home Alone (with the GG of course) in my own little house so I can chill out a bit. People are always very helpful with dishwashing but if there’s something left for morning, I have much more energy for cleaning up then. Please don’t tell Fly Lady.

Although we were all vaxxed by that Thanksgiving, lots of people were getting breakthrough covid cases, so our kids tested before the event. The next morning I remember waking up to the news that a new covid strain was going around. Omicron. I was devastated (we’re all vaxxed!) but after I GOT omicron (probably) and didn’t get sick, I slowly lost my fear of covid. This virus was doing what many viruses do, which was mutate into a milder version that didn’t kill its hosts. I still masked in public for a really long time but I don’t any more.

The last few Thanksgivings have been at The Landfill. And that’s where it’ll happen this year too.

You know what goes on this week. I did successfully make gravy today. As a safeguard against another disaster, I left my colander INSIDE a big bowl on the counter overnight. I was lucky in that the Plum had turkey parts this morning. The Plum is an upscale store and is *always* well stocked but I doubt there is a huge market for turkey parts, at least not year-round, so it only carries them for a short duration during winter holidays. So I was prepared to head out to Meijer if I had to but was really glad not to have to do that. I did have other things on my list so it wasn’t a “special” trip.

I’ll probably be at one grock store or another every morning the next three days. I’m picking up a turkey tomorrow. Not sure about Tuesday, maybe Meijer. Wednesday I’ll get the rest of whatever it is we need to get through turkey day. And I’m picking up some goat cheese spreads from White Lotus Farms that morning. I used to buy those at the farmers market and they still sell them there. But I haven’t been going there that often because meal planning has been a bit nutso for a while here with Michigan’s Main Helper in and out of town a lot. Also, it’s difficult to GET to the farmers market because of road construction. I mean, I can GET there, but what the heck, I ordered it online directly from the farm and I’m picking it up there.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are work days. Wednesday is a Cooking Day (day off) when I will get almost everything I can think of cooked as much as possible so as to do as little as possible on Thursday. But there’s always stuff left to do on Thursday.

Axe-throwing? What could go wrong? Well. A few years ago the GG took a cue from the male counterpart of the family triplets (young cousins of mine) and asked for a BLOWGUN for xmas. That was all fun until he shot it into the back doorwall, which shattered. In a very controlled way but still. After a moment of horrification, I burst out laughing. After all, no one was hurt and the doorwall was replaceable (and was *eventually* replaced). Still, we will not be setting up an axe throwing area in the Landfill. I don’t know the people in the pic but I’m sure they are now “first buddies” with Michigan’s Main Helper.

Aaaaand… Lunch at the Griz with Lizard Breath and Michigan’s Main Helper. This time, I did NOT follow the sheeple and get stuck in the parking lot 🐽

Make no mistake, he didn’t earn this shirt by being named Michigan’s Main Helper. One of his daughters dubbed him that. Long story. But he won it at a North Country Trail (NCT) Bawbeese Chapter raffle today.

I was just thinking about getting out of bed this morning when he hopped into the bathroom and got ready to leave. To… 1) Help with a boardwalk building project with the Chief Noonday NCT chapter and then… 2) Attend a meeting and have lunch (and throw axes) with the Bawbeese Chapter. I know where these places are but I won’t bore you with Michigan geography today.

So he was gone ALL DAY and that gave me a chance to do some things (or try to do some things). I sewed one of Vandegriff’s missing buttons back on and since there are a few other missing buttons that we don’t have replacements for, I measured that button (5/8ths of an inch) and ordered some replacement buttons so I can replace the others. And labeled a ziplock bag “Vandegriff” so as to store future buttons with him.

I organized the family xmas “gimme pig” lists onto the iPhone Notes app (except for one beach urchin but I’ll do that tomorrow). Note that none of us are “gimme pigs” in any way shape or form. We ALL have to be DRAGGED into providing xmas lists. None of us need anything.

And then I ruined the make-ahead gravy I tried to make today. I won’t try to explain this in detail but in one of the penultimate make-ahead gravy recipe steps, I have to strain the liquid broth out of the chopped up veggies. The problem was that I needed to drain it into a CONTAINER, like a big bowl. Unfortunately, I managed to drain it into the SINK, meaning all of the broth went down the drain. Crapola.

In a moment of magical thinking I was wondering how I could retrieve the broth. Not. I will have to repeat the whole thing tomorrow. If I can find turkey parts. It’ll be okay. It’s easy to do and if I did it every week, I couldda done the whole thing without thinking.

I didn’t blahg about this yesterday because 1) I didn’t want to jinx myself and 2) by the time I got around to blahgging, I had kind of forgotten about it.

Except for the one time I got covid, I have not had a respiratory illness since December 2019. In fact, the virus I got that December (actually it seemed like two in succession but who knows) was so awful that when covid finally did land on our shores, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had already had it. I’m still not 100% sure what I had wasn’t covid. Probably not but there was sooooo much we didn’t know about covid in the early days. And so much we still don’t know. I will say that I was a lot more sick with that virus than I was when omicron finally caught up with me a couple years later, since my one symptom was a mild cough. Oh yeah, two symptoms, the second being extreme annoyance at the person who brought the virus home.

Yesterday, my right nostril dripped almost all day. I felt completely well in every way except I had to keep blowing my nostril. Yes, just the right nostril. As the day wore on, I worried that I might have to cancel my participation in our dinner date the next night (meaning tonight). I didn’t really think it was covid but since covid, I have become hyper aware of infecting others with contagious diseases. But then all of a sudden, I realized I had not had to blow my nostril in several hours. It was dry throughout the night and did not start up again this morning. I used one Kleenex all day today (typical daily usage). I can’t count how many I used yesterday.

So yay. We went out to eat and my nostril continued to stay dry.

And so, to answer a friend’s rather rambling question, I do not blahg on a clockwork schedule. Last night I was “late” because the GG was on a North Country Trail zoom meeting and then we watched an episode of Bad Monkey. Tonight I am “late” because dinner at a restaurant with said friend. But “late” isn’t really applicable because I don’t have a set time to write my blahg. I’ll answer the question about what do I do if I can’t think of anything to blahg about some other day. It’ll be a rambling answer🐽

The GG purchased a digital picture frame for me a few years ago. This was a fine gift but I didn’t really need it because I have about a gazillion photos. But it’s still fun. Mostly because he loads photos onto it…

The Trump party (I’m sorry but it is not your parents’ GOP) is not benign but the GG pretty much is. We totally disagree about politics but we’ve been hanging out together for a long time. I’m not sure we talked too much about politics when we first met but given that he had waist-length hair (before I knew him) and, well, we won’t got down that road too far but given the stuff we did talk about, I thought we were pretty much in line politically. And maybe we were back then.

Things have changed a lot since then in ways I couldn’t have dreamed up if I had tried. The Commander completely disavowed the GOP and became an Obama fan. Other people (old hippies, etc.) have embraced MAGA for reasons I will never understand. (The GG was not a hippie albeit I think he looked like one for a while.)

But bizarrely, I get a kick out of the photos that he loads on to my anti-woke digital picture frame. Hillary Clinton picking her nose. I mean, really? This is a reason to hate Hillary? I think EVERYONE picks their nose. I certainly do. Do you? And there was something today about living in a sexist temperature house? Like the MAN decides what the temperature will be. That doesn’t exactly happen here at the Landfill, although sometimes I quietly let him have his way for a while. The funny thing was that the GG couldn’t even remember what “sexist temperature” meant or even understand the word “sexist” so I was like, “Then why did you put it on my picture frame?” (LOLOLOL)

I know that he’s just trying to harass me. Younger family members have been known to delete objectionable photos off my frame. That’s fine but I don’t really care that they’re on there. I know who I am. And so does the GG.

The term “woke”? Hmmmm. A lot of people have been throwing that term around without providing a comprehensive definition. Y’all, I don’t think it means exactly what y’all think it does. Not that I know exactly what it means either. Just that, like many words and phrases, I think it has a very complicated history and most people are not taking the time to research that.

Love y’all, KW. Cygnus X-1 was covered with our first snow of the season this morning.

It’s xmas time (almost) in the city. And that’s always a good time for things to go wrong. Last year, it was the Friday after turkey day when we realized our furnace wasn’t quiiiiite putting out full heat. We hired somebody to come out. HE WAS REAAAALLLLY GOOD. Got here exactly when he promised and determined that there wasn’t any real problem, except leaves and other detritus were blocking some ducts or whatever. And cleaned it all up. Under the fascinated eye of the GG who was probably figgering how to DIY it the next time…

Today it was clogged plumbing associated with the bathtub. The GG was up to that task, whipping out his snake (*drain* snake, I mean🐽) and the job was done in a jiffy. The culprit? My hair… It needs cutting (long story) but he actually likes my hair long, shaggy, and fugly so I guess he doesn’t mind snaking out the drain every once in a while?

I did not get a pic of today’s operation. This pic of the GG and mouse was taken on XMAS MORNING 2013! We argued about the year a bit. He thought he had snaked the drain in the current (renovated) bathroom. Obviously not. This is the old Blue and Only Bathroom and my brain won. Isn’t this bathroom fugly? Honestly, I could still clean the “porcelain”, etc., but the tile, etc., was beyond cleaning by that time. We limped along with this bathroom for another year and a half and then we gutted it.

He did another wee prodject today but that wasn’t to fix a problem unless you count an oven rice spill a problem. I mean, it is a problem but it’s just a cleaning problem. But. I have been noticing for quite a while how dirty the glass in the oven doors is. I can clean an oven. But I do not have the technical chops to take apart the doors in order to clean the glass and other hard to get at parts. So he took the oven doors apart and cleaned everything. BTW: I found an oven cleaner product that is MUCH better than that Easy-Off oven spray we all grew up with, which is NOT easy-off in my experience.

So, are our appliances, plumbing, and HVAC, etc., ready for the holidays? I’m not holding my breath but we’ll manage. If worse comes to worst, we could stay at one of our kids’ houses. “We have our sleeping bags🤪” Just kidding but the sleeping bag quote relates to a LONG AGO story about Radical Betty and Uncle Dcuk that I should write some day. Or not? We’ll see.

That’s what my father-in-law said once back when we were all young and gay. The Twinz of Terror were launching a motor bote at Houghton Lake and they had not put the PLUG in the bote. The Gumper was yelling, “PUT THE PLUG IN” from shore and they were merrily waving good-bye, unable to hear him over the motor noise. Neither of my beach urchins were in the bote (maybe they weren’t even born yet?) or I’d’ve been yelling and SCREAMING. (I don’t EXACTLY remember the details of this story so I am riffing a bit.)

So there was a minor (and I mean MINOR) panic this afternoon when the Twinz of Terror could not figure out what had happened to a fancy bottle of bourbon (Woodford Reserve) that they’d had on their trip to Asheville. Did they leave it in a hotel? At first I was flummoxed too. Then. I remembered a functionally empty bottle of Woodford Reserve that had made its way into the Landfill Chitchen. I poured what little was in there out, washed it out and threw it in the ree-cycle. “Did you drink what was left?” I was asked. Nooooo. There wasn’t enough left to drink!

At that point, I remembered the rest of the story. The Twinz arrived here at the Landfill in the late afternoon the Monday they returned from Asheville. The UU needed to continue on up north to his home but he rested long enough to join the GG for a wee snort of bourbon. And it was weeeeee because there wasn’t even enough for meeeeee.

Did either of them remember any of this? No they did not. Throughout our long relationship, the GG occasionally says something like, “let’s use your brain because it’s more efficient”. Yes. Yes. It usually is. (So are my hyper-sensitive ears and nose.) It didn’t work when he came at me this afternoon with my “Mexican” blue glass pitcher, asking me what the white “deposit” on it was. I’ve been wondering that too. He uses it to water the xmas tree. Did he put something in the water last year that made that happen? I did not know. My brain may be more efficient but I am not INSIDE his brain, at least not usually.

Alas, xmas is coming up way too soon but at least I know all the conic sections if the Gumper is somehow tuned in from wherever he is 🤪

This is not a pit orchestra although I have played in more than a few of those and they are FUN! But this is The Interlochen All State band in concert. I am actually in FIRST SEAT, which a lot of people didn’t expect a yooperlander to ever achieve.

And it was tricky to get to that seat as a yooperlander because usually I did NOT have any kind of a decent teacher. It wasn’t like I could take lessons from Detroit Symphony Orchestra flutists. They were five hours away. In the beginning, I had the band director and a senior in high school. Um, not. But. In 8th grade I hit gold. A professionally trained flutist moved across the schoolyard from me while her husband was at the Kincheloe Air Force Base and she was a WONDERFUL teacher and remembering how sweet she was to me after all these years, I think she realized how much I would be on my own when she moved on. Knowing she wouldn’t be there to mentor me for long, she loaded me up with standard flute repertoire pieces including a lot of virtuoso works. Knowing The Commander, she probably paid more for my lessons than the asking price plus she was more than willing to buy music. (We were not rich…) I am actually tearing up remembering and writing about this little period of my life, and I don’t tear up often.

What brought this on though was that yesterday on facebook, somebody posted a YouTube of a high school friend singing. How to make this short? Because it isn’t really. Mark was a good friend of mine in high school when a bunch of us were auditioning to attend the Interlochen All State program. I got in. I can’t remember if he did or not. I know he did not get into the college I started at (long story). He auditioned on piano, which he was good at. But. He auditioned with a splashy piece that is not part of the standard classical piano repertoire so he was rejected and kind of laughed at.

My assigned piano teacher actually TOLD ME why he wasn’t accepted. That was not the only reason I didn’t give in to my piano teacher’s “advances”. Can you say “old and ugly”? I learned pretty early how to deflect that kind of shitola. Beginning with him.

The thing is, I remembered my friend as a good pianist but I didn’t remember him acting/singing in Hello Dolly, the musical my school produced when I was a senior. Until I was almost finished with a long boring comment and then a LIGHT BULB lit up. He was a wonderful actor and singer.

He died last year after a long musical career out in the LA area, sounds like mostly teaching/coaching but with some performance. He was very clearly a talented musician. Godspeed Butch.