Random bits of my so-called life.

I woke up during my usual waking up time range. And then I was lulled back to sleep by a freighter’s fog horn. At the other end of the day gobbling turkeys are lulling me into my chill out zone before sleep.

This was the first day warm enough that I needed to replace the back door window with a screen and open up some other windows. Some people spent time on the beach but I was working on dinner for us and the Old Cabin cousins and by the time I was ready for the beach, it was too hot down there. I am not complaining. I enjoyed making FinFam Steak Dinner for my cousins. They are working hard on decluttering the Old Cabin and we all enjoyed whining and dining on the BUG FREE moomindeck this evening.

I don’t normally post photos of people without their permission but I don’t think this one shows anyone in a fugly or compromised position. It does show the big fireplace in the Old Cabin and some of the other artifacts there including one of the hooked rugs. We’ve been hanging out over there on the colder evenings but no fire was needed anywhere tonight.

I like to change my facebook profile and cover pic to (sorta) match the season or sometimes whatever is going on in my life. My profile and cover pic both featured SNOW and although when we got to the moomincabin last Wednesday, there was still a mini snow pile, it was time to change. So the first pic is meeeee when I was, hmmm, about two, I think? Playing in the sand in front of the Old Cabin, which is where we spent summers until we built the moomincabin (when I was six). The second pic is oh I dunno from maybe 10-14 years ago. Those sunglasses were my one purchase in Seattle besides food and booze. We had traveled with our daughters to the PacNW for a wedding on Lopez Island but we stayed at cousin Jay’s house the night before our return flight and did dinner and a bit of walking about with Jay and a cFam nephew living in the area. Good times.

Here at the moomin? Today? I made a Meijer dash to get dry sherry and a few other things this morning. It took me no less than 10 frickin’ minutes to find dry sherry. There are people who drink sherry but it is definitely a sipping wine. I mainly use it as an ingredient in a shrimp dish that just wouldn’t be the same without it. I was about to give up and change my dinner plan when there it was! Five bottles in a sea of wine bottles. I only bought one.

When I arrived back at the moomin, the moominbeach Road Commission (in this case, the GG and next door cousin Judd) was mobilizing to do a bit of chainsawing. They did not succeed in that they did NOT do any chainsawing. That was a good thing as the job turned out to be too dangerous for the equipment they had at hand. Talking themselves down off that ledge, they reasoned that the tree was on Our Northern Correspondent’s land so they went over to talk to the landowners. Who had ALREADY arranged for a PROFESSIONAL tree service to come out. Thank you very much.

It was a chilly misty moisty kind of day and I had “soup and whine at a restaurant” on my mind. The GG was kind of iffy about that but I figgered out how to drag him out. Next door at the Old Cabin, the Wicked Sisters (three of my cousins who are sisters) went off on various cabin reorganizing missions in Sault Ste. Siberia, abandoning Le Marquis. I said something like, “I wonder if Le Marquis would like to go to Cozy Corners for lunch with us.” And yes, yes, he did. So we trundled slowly over there and back in Mooon Yooonit and had a nice cozy lunch.

Not much to talk about today. Chainsaw Man and some other *certified* chainsaw folks and swampers went out and did trail maintenance on the North Country Trail (NCT). I stayed back at the moomincabin.

Way back when, when my family made the bad decision to donate a bunch of our land to the Nature Conservancy and a local real estate developer immediately grabbed our precious land and started developing it, I was terribly aggrieved. I had vehemently argued with my parents that this was a bad idea without very specifically drawn up contracts. I was kinda pooh-poohed about this. “Oh it’ll be fine,” they said. Nope.

Kassandra of Birch Point Beach (meeee) thought differently. I had a bad feeling and I was right. My generation (my cousins and I) mobilized. My strength was to cobble together addresses (email and snail mail) and coordinate communications. My brother was *fearless* about communicating with people including the developer even as he (my brother) was facing what turned out to be a terminal illness. Others did their parts.

I don’t wanna go too far in to this tonight. The developer did manage to make a gash into our land and there are some houses there now. Another more local conservancy (Little Traverse Conservancy aka LTC) stepped in to buy a lot of the land and now that we can, we support that conservancy with donations and trail maintenance on the trail named after my brother, the Jim Finlayson Trail.

Even way back in the beginning when the first houses were being built and I was angry as all getout, I realized that the people who moved into those houses were not the enemy and I wondered when I would be friendly with some of them. It has been maybe 25 years until that happened but the GG has made friends with folks who live up there and they all went out doing NCT trail maintenance today.

A part of me still misses the old Read property that my family once owned. I used to walk to the cabin on it with my dad. But the beaver dam area is still there and the Jim Finlayson Trail passes by it. And I find myself looking forward to meeting our NCT friends who live up there. Whenever they bought their property, they couldn’t have had a clue about my family’s 100 year history in the area. They are a positive force and I find myself welcoming them. Onward.

I thought we were going on a paint delivery mission this morning (blue paint to blaze trees, etc., on the North Country Trail (NCT)). That plan fizzled and I didn’t really want to deal with whatever tourists were at Tahquamenon Falls. So we took off on a slow drive along the shores of Gitchee Gumee, checking out various entrances to the NCT for possible trail maintenance activities.

When we got to the Tahqua Trail, which runs along the mouth of the Tahquamenon River, we (he) found some chainsawing opportunities and here he is chainsawing at an NCT trail head. A swamper accompanies a chainsaw person to “spot” them and administer first aid and/or call 911 if needed. I am not a real swamper. A real swamper needs serious training, particularly in first aid. My training is being able to dial 911. Assuming there is cell service. Not too many years ago there was NOT any cell service in this area. Nowadays there is enough that I could’ve called for help if needed. Fortunately these were very simple chainsawing jobs and no help was needed but chainsawing is dangerous and Chainsaw Man takes that seriously.

When I was still employed and it was a work day, I wouldda shooed the GG off for the day. But I am (happily) not employed so I was like, okay… It is an adjustment but it is a happy adjustment.

After we got back to the moominbeach, two carloads of cousins rolled in to the Old Cabin. Pooh and Le Marquis were in one car and Jay hitched a ride up from The Planet Ann Arbor with her “little” sister (and the “baby cousin” of the fam) npJane. It was a little warmer today. The wind was not screaming in off Lake Superior. It was what my dad apparently called an undertaker’s wind (that means it comes out of the swamp). We hung out on the beach forever in the late afternoon and we drank all of the GG’s sniggly amount of beer he bought yesterday at Meijer. Six cans? Really? Nope. I am not a big beer drinker but I even had one. And we’ll be buying more.

In the small world category… My blahgger cousin Jay has met my longtime blahggy friend Margaret IN PERSON. They both live in the Seattle area. A couple days ago Margaret commented on Jay’s blahg to say hi to KW (meeee) and Jay delivered that to me today. So Hi back to Stargazer Margaret. And love from all of us at the moominbeach.

Trees are budding around the area but at the moominbeach we still don’t have a lot of leaves. That’s okay. It means we don’t have a lot of MOE-skee-TOES either. Liz at about three, “Mama! There was a MOE-skee-TOE!” Yup. We have a lot of those around here. Once the trees start budding.

I got this pic after a trip to Meijer and the hardware store. I had planned to go to Meijer by myself but the GG wanted to go too and I decided that was okay on the condition that I could trundle along with my own grockery cart by myself. Yes. So. Okay. That’s what we did and we managed it without “fighting”. LOL

It was sooooo cold last night but with my sleeping bag and a comforter I had a beautiful sleep. We hung out on Bill’s Beach Bank Bench for a while this afternoon. Watching the winds change from north to northwest to southwest to whatever.

I forever and forever and ever thank my grandparents for buying this land and helping the next generation (my dad, etc.) own land here. And for all of us in the next generation who have managed to KEEP it.

And to people like the GG who married into the FinFam not having a goddamn CLUE what the HELL they were getting into but rising to the occasion anyway.

What a long day. Food dropoff at FlaMan’s (aka Columbo’s) place. One-and-a-half hours of lawn mowing at Hoton Lake. Lunch at the Driftwood in Iggy. And then we arrived… To the description in the title and the pic below.

Oh yeah, there is also the typical Memorial Day weekend ice pile, a pretty small one this year despite today’s frigidity.

Yesterday The Planet Ann Arbor was in the upper 80s and although it was a weeeee bit cooler this morning when we left, we were nowhere near dressed appropriately for the cold we encountered when we got here. The GG is below with bare calves and my fingers were totally frozen from unloading the groceries. Don’t worry, the water heater is in fine shape and my fingers are toasty now.

Next door neighbor cousin Judd came over to welcome us. He was appropriately dressed in abominable snowman clothing and we got caught up on some of the latest news from his family. Among other things, our old buddy Cap’n*QUEEN*Leila (his niece, my first cousin twice removed) is now a high school graduate!!! We are so proud of her.

This place does not have central heat or insulation but we *will* be able to warm it up enough to sleep. I think. If all else fails, the Lyme Lounge is behind the moomingarage and it has a “furnace” or whatever. But I’m hoping to be able to sleep in my childhood bedroom tonight. Right next to the water heater. LOL!

For today’s EPA retiree lunch, we gathered in a basement “speak-easy” style pub. It was pretty hard to find with the entrance in the alley and an elevator ride down to the basement and we were telling everyone who managed to get in that they had passed the “intelligence test”. We were the first to pass although Lee and Donna were basically there simultaneously with us and we figured it out as a group. This place will be on our repeat visit list for sure, especially now that we know how to get there.

We sat down and the GG started talking about the moominbeach (where we are going tomorrow) and we mentioned that it’s been in the family for (more than) 100 years. That piqued their attention (it piques everyone’s) but then… Then… Donna casually mentioned her childhood summers spent accompanying her father as he captained great lakes freighters all over the lakes. Whut!!! She’s a bit older than me so most of the freighter names were not familiar but, among other things, the family (her dad and grandad) “sailed” whaleback boats! I actually remember those if only a bit vaguely but I exclaimed, “Whalebacks!” What really got her attention was when I told her we can easily see lake freighters out the moomincabin windows. Such a small world.

If that wasn’t sweet enough, here in a Twitter play is a little convo I had with the guy sitting next to me, who I remember well as I do all of these beloved folks I knew in my youth. I dunno exactly how to describe this old friend. He is STILL wearing a long ponytail so I’ll just call him The Hippie, even though I doubt he identifies that way, at least not totally.

Setting: the GG is inspecting some old pipework of some sort mounted on the wall.

The Hippie [watching the GG]: Once a geek, always a geek.

Me [giggling]: I’m a geek too but a bit different kind of geek [meaning I don’t get all that turned on by old pipes hanging on walls].

The Hippie: I was so sweet on you back when you were working behind that window.

Me? ulp [All I could do was laugh to myself.]

Was I creeped out by this? No I was not. I was actually flattered. Although I never had any kind of crush on him, I thought he was really cool working at the EPA (as an engineer? I’m not sure) with his long, wild hippie hair and a tweed(?) hat I can’t even describe even though he probably had it on today. But he was always a gentleman to me and my beloved and beautiful friend and co-worker Kim at the damn window (not all people were, male or female). We worked pretty hard to change that culture and I think we were not totally unsuccessful.

About all I can say at this point it, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” –The Byrds.

The last time we had a cracked toilet seat was in the era of The Blue and Only Bathroom. We were in the years of simultaneously working and raising young children then and time was short. I’m not sure how many times I nagged Terlet Man that the Blue Toilet’s seat was cracked (or something, I can’t even exactly remember) but FINALLY I said in no uncertain terms that I was tired of living like a hillbilly and can we get a new toilet seat? I mean no offense to hillbillies. Heck, I am a yooper and grew up using an outhouse (in the summer). (Until The Commander acquired a daughter-in-law.)

Anyway, Terlet Man finally went out and got a new blue toilet seat and installed it. Fast forward. Lately I’ve been noticing something “odd” with Eco-Terlet’s seat but… Is it cracked? I couldn’t quite figger it out. Today, Terlet Man said, “The toilet seat is broken” and THEN and THEN and THEN… He almost immediately went out to Lowe’s/Menard’s/whatever, BOUGHT A NEW ONE, and replaced the cracked one. He then asked if he could put the old one in the recycle cart. Uh, noooooo… There is a very specific list of things that can go in the recycle cart and since I look at that list more frequently than even a Garbage Woman should have to, I can attest that toilet seats are not on it. So I don’t know what he did with it, probably put it in the garbage cart but here it is serving as a hat. Even though I clean the toilet seat almost every day, wearing an old toilet seat on your head kind of squicks me out. I know, I know, I married him…

The second pic is a view of the Blue Toilet in the Blue and Only Bathroom before we gutted it and renovated it. This, my friends is a 1959 American ticky-tacky house bathroom. Plenty of people here on The Planet Ann Arbor still have them. They also come in pink, beige, and maybe other colors. I don’t have the chops to show what the new Landfill bathroom looks like tonight. It isn’t anything fancy but has white fixtures and muted colors. It does give a nod to blue via tile accents but in shades of teal rather than baby blue.

There was talk of meeting for dinner tonight and while that often happens at the Landfill, when a lizardy beach urchin offered to host it at her house, it took me only a split second to reply with “Yes yes yes!” Accompanied by a bunch of heart emojis.

It was a *wonderful* dinner with grilled boneless, marinated chicken thighs and potato wedges, salad, and some lovely yogurt sauce. We ate in her driveway, in front of her garage. The breezes were cool and there were no goddamn bugs.

But the dinner is almost beside the point. The GG and I are heading up to the moomincabin on Wednesday to finish opening it up for the summer. Not hosting dinner (although I LOVE to host dinner) allowed me to spend some serious time shopping for and organizing supplies and pantry foods to take to the moomin for the summer. It also helps that I am not employed any more.

It’s not that I can’t buy stuff up there. There is a lovely Meijer store that I can get to without even dealing with a traffic light. It’s just that I want to at least *start* the summer such that we aren’t running out willy nilly to get stuff we didn’t know we forgot. I am also hoping that we won’t end the summer (like we usually do) with umpteen gazillion duplicates of things down here at the Landfill. We’ll see what happens with that. In case clarification is needed, I do not leave ANY food at the moomincabin over the winter, perishable or not.

Anyway, I basked in my daughter’s back yard and the food she cooked and all of the fun conversations we had and music we listened to (mostly courtesy of the racc). I brought some booze, of which we lightly partook.

Minus the beach urchin who took the pic. Are we basking in some god’s aura or what?

Lemme see… Not the most exciting day but the GG headed up to FlaMan’s place to do, well, you don’t wanna know, but cleaning and de-trashifying chores mainly. I went to the grockery store, where I managed to distract mouse’s lovely co-worker L with my “sparkling” conversation [snort] enough that she accidentally dropped a candle in a glass holder resulting in a little clean-up job in the Plum apothecary department. Topic? Shower frequency and that’s as far as we’ll go with that. It wasn’t really grockery store gossip material (or blahggable, at least not in detail) so we decided to call it “life” as in we’ve all been there done that in one way or another. We’re all friends and when an actual customer who needed help came along, I skedaddled.

So then… A load of laundry. This was mainly to wash the “guest” bedroom sheets but then I forgot to put them back on the bed. I’ll do it tomorrow.

And I made… BBQ sauce so the GG can try out his new grill grates (thank you mouse) on some chicken, garlic bread to freeze and take to the moominbeach (can’t reliably get good baguettes up there), and asparagus (local!) and friends for a pasta primavera recipe from the NYT cooking app to go with tonight’s BBQ chicken. Oh, and Greek orzo salad for whenever.

Throughout the day, a realtor was showing groups of prospective buyers the house next door. We really like the current neighbors but they have good reasons for moving. I won’t say what the house is listed for (actually I can’t remember exactly) but it’s something like six times what we paid for our house 40-(ulp)-something years ago. I remember my pregnant self counting herself to sleep via ten thousand dollar amounts and worrying that our offer might not be accepted. In the end it was and we are still very happy here.

I was kinda bored by the time the GG came back and I had decamped to the back yard. But I needed the space today. I love FlaMan but I am of no help with what needs to be done at his place and I love Gunsmoke but I didn’t wanna spend the whole day watching re-runs.

I don’t think these guys use the bird feeder and the only reason I could get this pic is because he was on the other side of the window and so couldn’t really see me. iPhone optical zoom also helped. Still a pretty sketchy photo.

Ate out twice today. This cannot become the norm… Lunch at Casey’s with the beach urchin that lives and works in that area. Friday is a good day for her to meet for lunch because she has fewer meetings and Casey’s is walking distance to her house and work (her job is hybrid, remote and in the office). Then dinner of porterization at The Griz tonight. We were a bit leery about going downtown on a Friday but it all worked out fine. Home and in the Landfill Loo smelling smoke… Ceegar smoke that is. Yep. Right outside the batroom window.

I could barely get the first two paragraphs together. I am here but my brain is done done done. Love y’all, KW.

Repeat! Nobody is moving to Canada. Nobody is moving to Canada. NOBODY IS MOVING TO CANADA!

Things to argue about? I find out about a new and surprising possible path for me to obtain Canadian citizenship and suddenly I am supposedly thinking about moving to Canada? Wait up! First, I am talking about DUAL citizenship. I would NOT give up the US citizenship I was born with umpteen gazillion years ago. I will not MOVE! Hopefully a Canadian passport would make it easier to cross the border (like it was when I was a kid) but I will mainly continue to gaze at Canada from the moominbeach on the American side of the St Marys (no apostrophe) River.

I dunno where anyone got the idea that I (or anyone else thinking about pursuing dual citizenship) might move but somehow they did. What the heck?

There are probably “lost Canadians” (like me) out there who *do* want to move to Canada for various reasons. One reason might be because of the current political situation in the US. I UNDERSTAND THAT. I abhor Trump and his sycophantic administration, not to mention the MAGA sheeple. All of it. Bow down to the Idiot King. Not me.

But “communism”. But “socialism”. I am a LOT less afraid of “communism” and “socialism” happening in the US than I am of being forced to bend my knee to a crackpot narcissist no matter what their ideology is. Their political views matter much less to me than the feeling that they want to control me, my speech, and my actions. Me, an upstanding, law-abiding (Trillium Bandit abetting aside), tax-paying US citizen. Unfortunately I do indeed feel an element of that.

I think a lot of “lost Canadians” are hoping that dual citizenship will provide an *option* if life gets too bad in the US. It is an option I would seriously consider but am not at this time. I have the Landfill and the moomincabin and those will keep me anchored in the United Snakes of America. I am *cautiously* optimistic that more people will come to their damn senses and VOTE these monsters of stupidity out of office!

This is all too complicated for a short blahg post and I’m having trouble keeping from digressing into a long drawn-out higgledy-piggledy manifesto. So how about we’ll end with what the GG did today? He started off from the Landfill at around 10:00 AM and walked to Mouse’s house, arriving there around noon. From there he walked to Liz’s house (about the same distance from Mouse’s as the Landfill, maybe a bit further?) where he had to break in to get a little snort of Connemara because Liz was not working from home this afternoon. From there back to the Landfill and I was just starting to wonder where he was when someone else texted that he was coming through Haisley, the schoolyard behind the Landfill. 16.5 miles.

P.S. The angle of this photo kinda makes it look like Skeletor might be hanging from a noose. I dunno what he is supposed to represent but he is not hanging from a noose.

What do old married couples fight about? Money, of course. Come to think about it, probably most married couples, young or old, rich or poor, fight about money.

We didn’t exactly fight about money today but okay, there had been a problem with the tub drain in the Landfill Loo and although the GG set it up to work fine while he was outta town, he was hot to make a more permanent fix now that he’s back. I am a fan of that.

He left for “the plumbing store” at around 11 this morning. “The plumbing store” could mean any number of things. Stadium Hardware, Ace Hardware, Lowe’s, Menard’s. You name it. When he returned an hour or so later, he greeted me with a recital of his expenditures. It was a short recital, $20 for the plumbing part plus $6-7 dollars in gas for driving around to find the part. Okay. Did that break the bank? Nooooo it did not. It barely touched my radar screen in terms of spending money.

Make no mistake. If I didn’t live with an “engineer” aka handyman, I’d’ve had to hire an actual plumber and who knows how many hundreds of dollars that might’ve cost me. So I am very grateful that I live with a handyman. Also, I think that being frugal is a good thing. My parents almost always were, maybe even to a fault, and we have been too albeit not quiiiite as frugal as my parents.

I don’t exactly know how to square the plumbing part excursion with this afternoon’s activity, which involved a drive out to Dexter’s Pub for a chili lunch and then a slow drive on the back roads past Ted’s house and Mouse’s house and Liz’s house (which is in the city, not on a back road). I know how much we spent on lunch. I dunno how much gas we used on the cruise but all in all we probably spent way more money on that boondoggle than we spent on obtaining the plumbing part.

Lunch bonus? I acquired a new boyfriend. Just kidding, I was sitting (with my husband) at the bar next to a friendly (and handsome) elderly gentleman. Like my age maybe? He tried his darndest to get me to share his taco salad with him but he was also friendly to both of us…

Our baby robin fledged on Mother’s Day and a new pair of robins is now perusing the other two nesting platforms, looking for a place to lay their eggs.

A couple days early. The north country trail maintenance session was canceled and apparently it was too cold to do anything worthwhile at the moomincabin (besides open it up) so he called me from 6 Mile Road late this morning. On his way home.

Because he took a shower after he got home, I had to ask if it was too cold to take a shower in the moomincabin this morning. Nope. He had set up a space heater in the [mini]bathroom. I am a little nervous about space heaters in general but I’m okay with them as long as they are used with safety precautions in mind. I don’t really care when he (or anybody else) takes a shower. I am strictly a morning shower gal but on a hot day I am not above taking a second shower in the late afternoon/evening.

So I spent the afternoon washing the sheets and towels I’d planned to wash the day he came home — two days from now. And running to the Plum to pick up chicken thighs and asparagus (Michigan grown but not local, close enough) for dinner. Noodles with pesto will round that out. I’ve got some pasta to get rid of…

This pic is where he parked the Lyme Lounge. It’s behind the moomingarage, which shields him from the high winds screaming in off Gitchee Gumee. I think the GG will be the next Birch Point Beach mayor (whenever Mayor Pete decides to hang up his crown and I’m in no hurry about that). Hanging out in the moomingarage, as the GG does, he talks to any number of folks who walk or drive by.

A number of us were not happy when the moomingarage was built and some are still not happy about it. Myself? I think there are more plusses than minuses. But that would be too long a story for tonight.

This is a familiar lake feighter but it is not one of the “party botes” I once imagined my dad and brother were passengers on after they died.

The main party bote would have been the Ryerson, a family bote favorite forever. I’m not sure it even runs any more but after my dad and brother died, it still occasionally made forays through the Soo Locks up into Lake Superior. I know that it was silly to imagine my dead family members partying aboard a lake freighter in the sky. Nope they weren’t doing that. I did occasionally hear ice cubes clinking in the Landfill after they died. It’s been a while since I’ve heard those. I think that’s a positive thing.

The land across the water? That’s Cananananada. The little scrap of land to the left? That’s the eastern edge of Round Island. It belongs to the USA. The remains of an old stone lighthouse are on Round Island. Plus about a bazillion seagulls. Beyond it is the St. Marys (no apostrophe) River mouth and Whitefish Bay / Lake Superior.

Here is Mr. Tom in his full Thanksgiving regalia standing in front of Lewie Read’s house. Lewie is long dead and last I knew the place belonged to some relatives of his. I know not who. He never married or had children (that anyone knows of). From what I remember about Lewie, I think probably he did not have any children…

Happy Mother’s Day to all who observe this greeting card type holiday. I know that it is not exactly manufactured by greeting card companies. Still it feels a bit that way. But any excuse to celebrate anything. The GG is in the yooperland but my beach urchins and friends descended upon me and cooked dinner. I got to help a teensy tinesy bit by shopping for some stuff and chopping a couple things. And doing a lot of the dishes, which will mostly not be done until sometime tomorrow. It’s okay. I actually like to wash dishes. [Delete very long story.]

Mother’s Day? Every day is mother’s day. Am I a good mother? I do not know. I try not to dwell on all the years of learning to be a mother. Reading all kinds of crapola about what to do (or not do) with your newborn, etc. What *do* you do with a newborn, especially if, like me, you have absolutely ZERO experience with babies. What did I do? Well, the first time around, the GG did most of the newborn care for a couple weeks. Being in the middle of 10 siblings with nieces and nephews galore, he had plenty of experience. I had never changed a diaper.

Throughout all the years did I do everything perfectly? No I did not. I regret so many things I can’t even count them all. But I could always sit back and think about my imperfect parenting methods and try to improve them.

With two mature adult daughters plus a bonus daughter, I have developed a couple of mantras. “Go with the flow” and “Stay outta the fray”. I dunno what I did to raise them “right” but they seem to have turned out just fine and whenever there is something I feel like second guessing, I just zip my lip. There are certain things in life that don’t change but in other ways, times do change and our children have to be able to adapt to some of those changes. And *we* need to stay out of their way.

Well, that’s the short story…

So, many years ago, long before covid, I returned from three weeks at the moominbeach to my childhood tech job. It was a Monday morning and I was feeling a wee bit under the weather. Very odd for me. It was not respiratory stuff, it was mild gastro stuff, emphasis on MILD! I suppose I could’ve taken a sick day but I have a work ethic that knocks me upside the head to begin with and I also knew there would be a stack of printouts on my desk. Error situations that nobody else could figure out. I couldn’t wait to dig in. Anyway by the next day I was fine.

But when I walked in that Monday morning, my buddy/co-worker Manuel greeted me with something like, “Have you heard about thees theeng? It eez coming from thee west!” (He was a Chilean/Spanish immigrant who had a lovely Hispanic accent and I am NOT making fun of it. We had so much fun back in those days.)

Of course he was talking about a hantavirus. This was the first time any of us knew there was such a thing. It was very scary because people were dying from it. Rather quickly. At the time, we were told you could only get it from hanging around rodent droppings. Well. Here at the Landfill the mice come in, the mice go out, (the mice play pinochle on your snout). Anyway, we do occasionally have to clean up rodent droppings. So we were all a bit nervous about this scary virus until we learned that it doesn’t spread between humans, not to mention it didn’t seem to spread widely at all. It mostly remained in the southwest. The story petered out and we all forgot about hantavirus.

So covid happened and we were all freaked out about that, so much that at my adult tech job, we were all dumped at home to work remotely, never to return. This happened literally overnight. (I had the foresight to stop at the liqwire store on the way home.) A couple weeks later, I joined the daily stand-up meeting in the middle of a discussion between Amazon Woman and some of our Indian colleagues about some “new” (and deadly) virus that had killed a few people in India. Hmmm, thought I… What virus was this? It was our old friend hantavirus. They were all excited but once I could get a word in edgewise, I reassured them all (I hope) that there were major differences between covid and hanta. Both can be deadly but covid is HIGHLY transmissible between humans while you have to be cleaning up rodent droppings to pick up a hantavirus.

The recent cruise ship situation was terrifying and I did not know that there was a strain of hantavirus that does transmit person to person. I’m still not afraid I’ll catch it. Of course, I’m not even afraid of covid any more.

Note that I am not in any way shape or form qualified to provide medical/scientific information or advice. I got most of this from NPR, where I get “all” my news and information. Just ask my MAGA husband. [snort]

I can tell the covid era* not to mention the career I retired from are getting pretty far back in the rear-view mirror because the GG has only been gone a couple days and I am feeling pretty bored. I’ll get my teeth into something new soon, I think, but I’m not quiiiiite there yet. And no, I do not need any advice, thank you veddy much. I really wanted to go to the yooperland but it just didn’t work out. So here I am.

Anyway, the GG made it to the moominbeach today and wouldn’t you know, IT IS A BEACH DAY!! That first pic is Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench. He constructed it and a few others that are placed on the North Country Trail. It is tipped on its back in the pic but he very shortly tipped it upright. Also, the land you can see across the water there is Cananananada. To the right (down the river out of frame) is the Soo Locks. To the left (out of frame) we look northwest up into Whitefish Bay and Lake Superior.

It is such a nice day up there that he nixed an idea to head to the Cozy Inn Friday night fish fry in favor of eating some kind of canned soup at the moomincabin. It might have been a good call because the Cozy hires a piano player who is very loud to play sometimes. Is it Friday? Not sure. Some of my cousins like her better than others. Me? I can’t even stand being at the Cozy when the TV is on. In general I DO support musicians. After all, I *am* a musician, albeit an inactive one.

The next pic is our main heating source for the moomincabin. It is a propane stove. I am not crazy about it, mainly because I am not usually successful at getting it going the first time of the season after it’s been shut down for the winter. The GG just flexes his muscles kinda Popeye-like and it’s on. But. Not user friendly or maybe not wimpy woman friendly although I bet my beach urchins can manhandle it.

It actually makes the moomincabin pretty cozy. Except when a northwest wind is screaming in off Gitchee Gumee and the ambient temp is less than 60. The main problem there is that the moomincabin is NOT INSULATED. In fact, I noticed from other photos that the Lyme Lounge was not in the parking area (where all the snow is). He is parked behind the garage. If we do get a northwest wind, he’ll be sheltered and the Lyme Lounge has heat if he needs it. In any case, the moomincabin has hot running water (which he has turned on) so he can take a shower, etc.

*I know that people are still struggling with covid in various forms. In the end, it was nothing for me but I don’t want others to think no one cares because I do and I am not happy about all the stupid politics that still surround it. As for the hanta virus cruise ship? That is VERY scary in many ways but the hanta virus is NOT anything like the covid virus.

Communicating with someone today, I was asked how we were doing with the flooding. I looked out the front Landfill window at a dry yard and street and lots of sunshine, la la la. I started to say, “No flooding.”

Immediately I knew I needed to back-pedal. Okay.

Planet Ann Arbor? No flooding in my neighborhood. Some people on lower ground and closer to the river may have had some issues. Not us. Dry as a bone. Except that the tub would not drain quickly yesterday. That has nothing to do with any area flooding, it’s a bad drain part. The GG put a “band aid” on that until he gets back and can do a more permanent fix. My personal plumber.

Then. “Well, we have two cabins,” I said. At the Houghton Lake cabin we spent most of last week dealing with flooding. The Houghton Lake area is in the middle of various complicated watersheds and there are many dams in the area. If there is too much water for any reason and the dams are not set up exactly right and the wind is unfavorable, water comes over our seawall and we get flooded. The cFam boys set up pumps that kept that from happening and also helped save some neighbors.

What about the “other” cabin? Oh, this person is on the ball and remembered that I had said “two cabins”. Most folks would already have moved on to whatever else is on their mind. The “other cabin” is on the shores of Gitchee Gumee and it is several feet off the ground and there’s a big beach, which makes it almost impossible for the water to get high enough to flood. Now. Our 2-track road can get pretty darn fugly but it is regularly maintained so there are never any water holes big enough to swallow a car. Even my little Ninja could navigate its biggest puddles without a problem. (I love that a first cousin twice removed called the moomincabin “the other cabin” a couple years ago when he visited as a toddler. He won’t be saying that the next time and will probably not be fixated on the doors.)

The Great Lake State is large and has a HUGE variety of terrains and eco-systems and habitats and what have you. So flooding can happen here and there but usually not everywhere.

P.S. It’s a deer rib cage. When you encounter these out in the woods, you HAVE to slam on the brakes and take a pic. We were on the Scenic Trails at Houghton Lake.

This is our remaining robin baby (embiggen). The GG gets these pics via a selfie stick with as little intrusion into the bird family as possible.

Mooma Robin (or maybe Daddy) was perched on the bowling ball in our back yard every time I was in the Landfill Loo and looked out there. Yes, we have a bowling ball in our back yard. It belonged to The Gumper, my father-in-law. It kind of drives me nuts because I keep kind of forgetting what it *is*. I wanted to get a pic but it didn’t seem possible. Too far away and through a screen. After the bird stopped perching on the ball, I realized I could’ve aimed my iPhone out the doorwall in the back room and used the optical zoom. Oh well.

We haven’t seen a bird parent in a couple hours and this has Big Daddy Bird aka The GG a little freaked out. Many years ago, he woke me up in the middle of the night by hopping in and out of bed and going outside a bazillion times. Whaaaa? Finally he asked, “Would you mind if I shot a cat?” SAY WHAT! Yes, of course I would mind if you shot a cat!

What was going on was a family of birds was afoot and the cat was trying to catch (and eat) the babies. The GG kept running outside to scare the cat off but in the end, the babies were caught (and eaten). It was years before he told me the gun he was talking about using was an air gun. Not that I really know much about air guns but it sounds a lot less lethal than some other kinds of guns.

The GG spent the morning working on volunteer stuff and when he seemed to be finished with that, I insisted he take me out for a chili lunch at Dexter’s Pub. He’s gonna be gone for a week to open up the moomincabin (and do more volunteer work) and I kinda wanna go but it can be hard to heat the moomin at this time of year and logistics will be difficult, like I don’t really want to take two automotive vee-hickles for this trip but I also don’t want to be left without one for more than a day. Why Dexter’s Pub? Because it was the path of least resistance. After a season of chili lunches, I know in which form factor each pub serves their chili. Bowl and/or cup. Loaded or not. And with what loading ingredients. So he obliged and took me out to lunch. Except I drove and paid the bill. Of course the money all comes out of the same pot, so that point is a bit moot. And I think Conor O’Neill’s has chili but if you go there, get their leek/potato soup!

P.S. News flash! The robin parents are back, the baby has just shat a big poop bag and the parents have carried it off. You wanted to know that, right?