Random bits of my so-called life.

I didn’t actually ask but I got a text that said he apparently is, more or less.

Himself called me today. I was kinda like whut but it was just to say hi. This kind of gobsmacked me though. Because I’m not sure how international calls work with the iPhone in this era but… Uh. He just. Called me. I remember when my kids were doing study abroad. We didn’t call often at all, don’t get me wrong. Email was much more reliable.

When I once called Lizard Breath (in Spain), it took me a few tries to figure it out. I still had a flip phone at the time (2004-5) and I think she was using a phone her host mom kept for students. But email worked the best. I was taking web design/dev classes at the community college at that time and I would arrive early in the morning an hour before my first class to chill out in the library, slugging along doing young actors guild business and reading emails from my kid in Spain. And once from a friend of Ray Bradbury (yes that Ray Bradbury) and it was not spam and I almost fell outta my chair.

Dakar (second beach urchin) was a bit different. We called ONCE. It was xmas day and we arranged (with her) a call. We managed to get to her and we talked for 47 minutes. Guess how much it cost? $470.00. Yes. I’m trying to remember if we tried to protest this. If we did, we gave up quickly. That amount of money did not break the bank and it was well worth it to talk to our far away daughter. Her host family was Christian (Catholic I think) so they celebrated the holiday but I don’t think in the big way Americans do. Which is certainly fine for us secular American Christians.

But now here in 2024 it seems like we can just call internationally on our iPhones without a problem. Of course, Ireland is not Senegal. I don’t really understand phone charges any more but if we do get some kind of charge, I doubt it will break the bank.

Himself is at Guinness. Because they arrived much earlier on Monday than their hotel room was available, Lizard Breath had scheduled a Guinness tour. The pic is apparently taken via a reflective surface so the sign is backwards. I can read English words both backwards and upside down🤣

Very few words were spoken at The Landfill this weekend but I could just about cut the atmosphere of tension with a knife. No it was NOT a marital fight. There was no fight at all. It was the GG in packing mode for his Ireland trip with our daughter and me trying my darndest to STAY OUTTA THE FRAY! But I was a nervous wreck suppressing all that negative energy.

They are there for 10 days and they didn’t check any bags (I wouldn’t have either). Our daughter came over Saturday afternoon while he was still packing and “steered” some questionable items out of his luggage (in her poised, calm, graceful way). Nothing dangerous, mind you. A phone charging cable that doesn’t fit the outlets in Ireland (so why take it) for one. And then there were a couple of weird handmade items that, while totally harmless, might raise alarms with the TSA, like what the hell is this? Whatever you think about the TSA, they are people doing a job and they inspect umpteen bazillion people every day (at least at Dee-troit Metro) and I can understand why they don’t have a robust sense of humor when they encounter weird things. I’m sure they have great stories to tell when they are off work. (Like the time FlaMan was flying back to Fla from a trip to Hoton Lake with the Beautiful Suzie (his late sister) and they x-rayed his checked luggage and found big round objects. Bombs? Nope. Houghton Lake rocks.)

At one point yesterday, the GG was heading toward the front door with his birthday “microbes” (tick and Lyme Disease microbe). He asked, “Should I take these to Ireland?” No no no no no. Why do you want to load up your carry-on baggage with stuffed aminals? They belong in the Lyme Lounge here in the Great Lake State anyway. We do NOT want to introduce Lyme Disease to Ireland🤣 He apparently did put those entities in the Lyme Lounge (where they belong) but after I dropped the travelers off, I got this pic of Stowaway and Tagalong, who obviously stowed away and tagged along. I hope they don’t get lost in Ireland.

So everyone got safely to Ireland and I was able to relax and get a lot of work done today. I made a more or less unnecessary trip to the Plum this morning largely to hang out with our other daughter for a few minutes.

P.S. I HAVE been known to take Froooggy on a plane trip in my carry-on luggage. We went to SanFran to visit Liz when she lived there. We stayed in a gorgeous Victorian bed-and-breakfast a few blocks from her place in the Mission District. The proprietor LOVED Froooggy and his cleaning staff enjoyed positioning him in various places.

This afternoon at the end of a somewhat stressful weekend, oh just for stupid marital reasons🐽, I decided I needed to get out of my neighborhood and into the country. It doesn’t take long to get into the country here if you go in the right direction and pick the right roads. You might see some MAGA signs (although NOTICEABLY fewer this year than in previous election years) but there are also plenty of BLM and rainbow signs. Take your pic. If you know me, you know what I pick.

So I drove around the back roads in the country mouse’s neighborhood. There were potholes galore and some of them had muddy water in them so Cygnus is all dirty again. I could avoid some of them but not all and then there were some BFT’s (Big F*ckin’ Twucks) that occasionally passed me going the other who were NOT avoiding them. Clunkity clunk c-clunk. So the GG is gonna prob’ly grump about that even though he has driven me through some of the worst roads on earth with water holes up to the running boards or whatever they are.

I was about to turn on to one road and there was a BEAR down there. A bear? I knew it wasn’t a bear because we don’t have bears in SE Michigan. Well, there was the Dexter Bare Bear a few years ago but sightings were never confirmed and the local on-line newspaper never corrected “bare” to “bear”. There is a difference.

So I knew it wasn’t a bear. Could a cow have gotten loose? I don’t usually see many cows around that area but who knows. I approached this aminal s-l-o-w-l-y. It turned out to be a HUGE and VERY SHAGGY dog. I wanted a pic but I couldn’t figger a way to get one. This character looked really friendly but I’m not stupid enough to get out of my car to approach an unknown dog, especially a big one. I will say that the few occasions I have accidentally killed an animal (rabbit, squirrel) have never left me. Unavoidable both times but I am not comfortable with taking another creature’s life. Except for food but that would be a topic for another day.

It’s a beautiful evening here on The Planet Ann Arbor and I haven’t seen the customer in the pic for a while. If he/she gets a chance he/she ends up in my lap for a few minutes. Not today. Today, this character got distracted by all of the bird song in my yard and spent about 10 minutes listening, not moving. Don’t worry, I don’t think any birds were harmed.

We’ve had distressing news from the moominbeach that a life-long friend and neighbor’s cabin/house caught fire yesterday. The good news is that NO ONE WAS INJURED but it did suffer an as yet undetermined amount of interior damage. I am not going to say much more about this. For one thing I have no details. For another, although I don’t think they know I am a blahgger, I am sure they are devastated by this event and I want to respect their privacy.

What I am going to take away from this is that our own moomincabin desperately needs a better emergency exit strategy from the upper story. Currently the only way to get up and down is a “ladder” in the interior of the structure. It was not built to code and we all regard it as dangerous. My parents bought rope ladders but I can’t feature anyone trying to figure out how to properly secure and deploy one in an emergency situation especially in the middle of the night.

Another important issue can be seen from this picture I took from the moomincabin deck. The building you can see across the lot is the Old Cabin. It is one of the original three log cabins my granddaddy and two of his friends had built 100 years ago. See all those trees between us? Our property is in a forest and it is very dry this spring. If a house fire ever gets out of control you can guess what might happen next. There is plenty of tinder there in the form of a blanket of dried out pine needles and twigs. I know because I used to have to collect tinder to start wood fires in the moomincabin when we still had a wood stove. A forest fire is a nightmare generations of moominbeach kiddos have had. THANK YOU to the volunteer fire crews who got this fire under control🙏

All we can do to prevent a forest fire is continue to be extremely careful. But maybe it’s time to get SERIOUS about having a sturdy outdoor staircase built at the moomincabin to allow easy exit from the upstairs. We’ve been talking about it for years now. It’s time for action.

What did you do on your birthday? The GG could answer, “I took two showers.” It isn’t all that unusual for meeeee to take two showers but it is a rarity for the GG. His speshul day could be described in two halves. He circumnavigated the city this morning (leaving me blissfully alone to replay a meeting I recorded earlier in the week). This afternoon he mostly napped. That was also fine with me. I was more than fine about the two showers.

I did not get him anything for his bday. At least not anything exciting. He’s taking a milestone bday trip to Ireland with one of our daughters. I figger he doesn’t really need any boy toyz. I will have to recount his conversation with The Uncly Uncle this afternoon to his daughter. The conversation in which he said he was packing lightly and he would be okay with being “stinky” but he wasn’t sure how much of that his daughter would tolerate… TMI?

I did buy these stuffties for the Lyme Lounge. A tick and a Lyme microbe. I encountered these at the Quiet Water Symposium in March. A delightful young PhD candidate had a booth about ticks and Lyme Disease and she had some of these cuties as part of her exhibit. A tick is not a microbe and microbes do not have eyes (that I know of) but this one does (not shown in pic). So, GiantMicrobes.com if you happen to need a microbe or two. BTW I am NOT on a stuffed aminal buying spree. This is a one off.

So this week’s family birthdays are on the 23rd, 24th, 26th, and 30th and I’m sure I’m forgetting some. I was drinking my morning coffee thinking today was nobody’s birthday and here comes a Facebook notification that it’s cousin Austin’s birthday.

I did not respond to it. I love Austin. I haven’t seen him since his dad and step-mom were still alive here on The Planet Ann Arbor and their kids (Austin and his two siblings) would come to visit them. That was pre-covid so it was a while ago. We would meet for lunch at the Sidetrack over in Ypsilanti. Sometimes our cousin Terri would schlep over from the Lansing area too. We had so much fun!

Actually Facebook birthday notices kind of annoy me, which is why I don’t respond to them. And why I have turned that notification off for myself. The first year I had a Facebook account I didn’t know to turn it off so I got all these happy birthday wishes from people I haven’t seen in umpteen bazillion years and/or didn’t know them well in the first place. Or know them at all. Ladies PLEASE include your birth name as part of your Facebook name!

Anyway I turned off that particular notification. I do NOT need my birthday remembered by a bunch of random people who don’t really give a hoot about me or when my birthday is. I mean this year covid disrupted my birthday (I did not have it) so we ended up celebrating The Day After Groundhog Day instead. That’s how much I care🐽

I first met Austin when I was two and he was four. My mom and I flew from Sault Ste. Siberia to Ann Arbor (we probably landed at Detroit Metro) so mom could help out with Austin’s newborn sister, two years younger than me. I remember nothing about that trip except that the airplane down had round windows and the airplane back had square windows. Or was it the other way around? And I remember butterflies in my stomach as we made our ascent.

Here we are. My uncle and his first wife (Austin and sibs’ mom) divorced many years ago. I don’t think it was easy at first but they were amicable at the end and my family attended her funeral. My uncle and his second wife died in the early days of covid OF covid. They were in a fancy nursing home at that point and, as we all know, nobody knew what they were doing in those days. We were all breathing on each other but we were focusing on washing our groceries. Our beloved cousin Terri died a few years later, NOT of covid.

Of all things, the baby that my moom and I flew downstate to help with, the one that I don’t remember from then. Well. We certainly saw each other growing up, mostly at our grandparents’ house in Detroit but I never got to know her. I hung around more with the cousins my age and a bit older. We eventually met up on The Planet a few years pre-covid when she was visiting her dad/stepmom. Of all things, we are DOPPELGANGERS! We look a lot alike and we were finishing each other’s sentences. We certainly have some of the same DNA.

So happy birthday to my cousin Austin who probably doesn’t even know my blahg exists.

The GG is talking to the UU (his ID twin) and I just heard him say that. I’m not sure what they’re talking about but definitely something to do with hiking… If it is in the yooperland, yes, it is sure to be buggy…

Today is my second daughter’s birthday. Are we celebrating with her? Yes. From afar. She is doing what she loves and the pic is one she sent me from the Hocking Hills area in Ohio today. A couple nights in a lodge there was her main birthday gift from me.

Here at The Landfill, I have been antsy about one of Cygnus’s taaaars for a while now. A very cold day can make a taaaar lose a little pressure. But the second time it happened, the temps hadn’t dropped below 40. So. My spidey senses sussed out a possible slow leak. And yes. That is what it was. The GG took Cygnus through the car wash and was able to find a goddamn *screw* in the taaaar. Subsequently we took Cygnus to Discount Tire and got it fixed.

It was my pregnancy with my second daughter that I worked up until the very end. She was due a couple-three weeks later but I remember being at work getting whatever done. I went home and I was in extreme “nesting” mode. Cleaning the tub and stuff like that. And then. Dun dun dun. She was coming. I’ve always thought (given her personality) she was thinking, “I am done with this. I want OUT!”

We had made arrangements for our then (beloved) neighbors to look after Lizard Breath while we went to do our business. I remember telling Lizard Breath, “We think that the new baby is trying to come out and we’re taking you to Ann and Becca’s for the night.” And then we did and we settled her in with a bottle of milk.

Things progressed as they do and by morning, we had a beautiful newborn baby. The GG brought Lizard Breath over to meet her newborn sister and later that day the grandparents arrived from the yooperland. Sibling relationships are not always easy but “big sis” loved this new baby from the moment they met and they are still great friends. I do have to say that Big Sis drank a bottle of milk sitting in her new sister’s car seat before being taken to meet her sister. Young children are smarter than we give them credit for.

Five years ago today we took our brother FlaMan out for a birthday lunch. Today! We finally got to do it again. No, covid is not over but a bunch of us braved a visit to a restaurant to celebrate. Of the 10 original siblings, we had the birthday boy, his three living brothers (including the Twinz of Terror), one of his living sisters, her husband, and yer fav-o-rite blahgger.

This was a surprise event, to me, not to the bday boy. The GG scrambled last night, calling around to his siblings trying to round as many as possible up. The GG’s identical twin (the UU) drove down from Gaylord, which is a few hours away. A rocket trip. I got online much earlier than I usually start work this morning, put in for a half-day of vacay, and asked that an important meeting be recorded. I could not miss this!

Everyone was in fine form including FlaMan, who often has difficulty mustering for outings. You never know what he is going to say next and some of the things he says are NSFW and thus NSFB (Not Safe For Blahg). Like you are driving along and he’s telling a story and then he says something that makes you jump in your seat a little and think, “Did he say what I think he just said?” This trip he didn’t say anything NSFW but he did recount a surprising story about sitting in a bar with Trump’s daughters. Trump was sitting at the bar (yes, that Trump) and FlaMan went up to the bar to talk to him. I can only guess this was somewhere in Fla. I know it was well before the Orange Baboon ran for president. I got the definite idea me and FlaMan disagree about the Orange Baboon but I was *fascinated* so I was polite and *mostly* kept my mouth shut. FlaMan doesn’t usually talk about politics so I was surprised when he brought up the subject. Do I think his little story was true? I have no clue. He says a lot of outlandish stuff but he is neither insane nor a liar.

Trips to FlaMan’s place always involve a stop at the grocery store (and usually a stop *before* going up there). When I am with the GG, our modus operandi is that the GG goes inside and I stay in the car in case FlaMan thinks of anything else he needs so I can text it to the GG. Given that some of the requests are repeats (Bud beer, Vernors ginger ale, butter, for a few) I think I am going to start putting them on MY grock list so I can pick them up and they’ll be here for the GG to schlep when he makes a trip up. I dunno if this will work or not. We’ll see…

I love FlaMan. I didn’t know him very well for a long time. When the GG and I “rescued” him from his dilapidated trailer in Fla a few years ago (pre-COVID), I got to know him a lot better during our three-day drive back to the Great Lake State. (I call that our LSD Trip – it featured a U-Haul trailer, a dog, oxygen in a couple different forms, and Hurricane Michael.) FlaMan has a different way of looking at the world than a lot of people do but he is highly intelligent and I have become a big fan. I don’t even care if he likes the Orange Baboon🤣. I would be kinda surprised if he votes…

Johnny’s Pour House was very accommodating and kind and the food was good. I had my eye on a Greek wrap but they specialize in burgers so I tried the black and blue and was not disappointed.

Oh probably not.

A quilter I follow on Instagram has been doing some interesting work incorporating words into his art. I have always been interested in using words in my small history as an amateur fiber artist working in quilt-type media. Usually what I have done is pencil words on the backing in cursive, then trace s-l-o-w-y along the lines with my sewing musheen. This guy cuts out big printed letters and tacks them down by hand or musheen or whatever. He probably uses a musheen, then uses slow-stitching to hand embroider various stitches over the finished product.

I love love love this guy’s work but I don’t think I could ever emulate it. It is too irregular for my brain. When I was a little kid, The Commander used to “complain” that I “put everything into little boxes”. I have a kind of idea about what she meant but not totally sure and I’m not really sure what’s wrong with putting things into boxes anyway. It *does* allow me to separate issues, which well, I won’t talk about work today (it wasn’t bad) but sometimes this innate “thing” came in handy when reining in people who were wandering off “scope”. But still. Never was sure exactly what my moom was talking about.

Anyway, this guy was using jungle aminal fabrics in his latest works and I found myself googling jungle aminal fabric and ended up with a bunch of fat quarters. Okay, I bought fat quarters. Now I have to wash and iron them. Problem? Complicated problem actually. I have an ironing board and an iron in the Landfill Dungeon. 1) I HATE the Landfill Dungeon. Dark, fugly, and cluttered. 2) I do NOT want the ironing board to live upstairs. So… I looked around online and found (voila) this loverly ironing cloth. I put it atop my quartz countertop and it did the job. I spent about a split second thinking about a new iron, cordless maybe? But my old, lightly used Rowenta worked like a charm. I think I’ll keep her.

What am I gonna do with this fabric? I do not know… Add it to my stash for now.

P.S. For those who are not “sewists” (which I think is a better word than “sewer”), if you are talking about making things outta fabric, a “fat quarter” is a quarter yard of fabric cut such that instead cutting a yard of fabric into four long skinny strips, the yard is cut lengthwise and crosswise into four. If that explanation doesn’t make sense (and you are interested enough), google it🐲

Apparently today was the day. What day? The day to pull everything outta the She Shed, CLEAN the She Shed, and put it all back in. Hopefully SOME items got put in the trash or set aside for recycle or donation. I stayed outta that particular fray.

The She Shed is not that old (shortly pre-covid). She is deeee-luxe and even has lucky-shucky. And a back door and windows with screens. It’s almost like being in a small cabin. She replaced a crappy old tin shed that, when we bought this place, the previous owner told he used to catch elementary school boys P-ing off the roof into the woods. Those guys are probably politicians now🤣 A tree fell on that shed and we knew it was time.

It was a perfect day for this. You can see how sunny it was but it wasn’t all that warm, so a good day for working outside.

I worked inside, cleaning up what dishes were left from last night and prepping food for tonight. If I were following Fly Lady to the letter, I would not be leaving any dishes undone before I retire for the night. But I ran out of real estate last night. I mean, everything that goes in the dishwasher WENT in the dishwasher but things that drip dry require a few rounds. I don’t usually dry dishes with a towel, also there were a few beer cans and I always let them drip dry. I have a lot more of the kind of energy doing dishes requires in the morning so I made pretty short work of what was left.

BTW, Fly Lady is AWESOME!!! You couldn’t call The Landfill a hoarder house but Fly Lady helped me out majorly a number of years ago when I was struggling a bit with clutter control. Her strategies involve breaking things up into small manageble tasks and ultimately I got the place under control enough that I didn’t really have to follow the rules to the letter because I never really get too far behind any more. (Disclaimer: I never really have gotten behind on things like dishes and laundry and cleaning the bathroom.) As my old boss the LSCHP aka The Benevolent Despot would often say about a HUGE renovation project that took us 15 years, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Or maybe it was “byte” given the industry I work for🤣

P.S. Fly Lady has an iPhone app now! I may have to check that out! Cheers to Fly Lady and cheers to y’all.

A beach urchin texted on Monday to ask if she could come over for dinner on Tuesday. I said sure even though I didn’t really have anything in the hopper for Tuesday. So I suggested steak because it’s really easy. But then we decided to postpone until Saturday (today) and darn it all, I decided I felt like BUILDING something, not just throwing pieces of beast on a grill.

I offered lasagna or enchiladas. Both beach urchins indicated that they would just enjoy having someone else cook but one of them zeroed in on lasagna. Yes! I have not made lasagna since last summer at the moomincabin and I have two partial boxes of noodles that are crying to be used up.

So that is what I’ve been doing today. Here is my “recipe”. I put “recipe” in quotes because it’s really more of a *plan* than an exact recipe. I have a basic tomato sauce recipe in my head but your sauce would also be fine or even something like Ragu. I don’t usually buy prepared pasta sauce but when a jar of Ragu was left at the moomin a while back, I used it. Don’t remember if it was for lasagna or something else but it was fine.

I usually make lasagna with meat (sweet Italian sausage) but I can make it veggie too and I vary the veggies I use in it. I always use spinach, even when I make it with sausage. Beyond that, carrots (grated or thinly sliced) work well and patty-pan squash is wonderful. Can’t wait for that season by the way. Broccoli, green beans and a lot of other things don’t seem like they would be a good fit but whatever.

For quite a while, there were a number of vegetarians in my circle of friends and family. Most folks are omnivorous now but I still try to accommodate the veggies. It’s pretty easy to make two smaller lasagnas, one with meat and one without.

DON’T PRE-COOK THE NOODLES! DON’T PRE-COOK THE NOODLES! DON’T PRE-COOK THE NOODLES! There is no need to. Just layer the dry ones with everything else. All that sauce and stuff will cook them just fine. That is, if you USE dry noodles. Fresh noodles are fine too. I don’t buy them frequently only because they are perishable.

I think the first time I made lasagna (by myself), I used the recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook, which is definitely veggie. So that was my original source but over more years than I am strong enough to count, it has morphed all over the place, taking little hints from The Commander and Radical Betty along the way.

This is also my go-to dish for potlucks. One of my favorite lasagna memories is that once on the day of the cFam xmas party, I was recovering from a vomiting virus from hell. I was over the acute phase but had NO appetite and not enough energy to get up off the old Green Couch for anything more than visiting the Blue and Only Terlet (to P, not to vomit thank you very much). My mouse stepped up and took directions from me to make the lasagna herself. I actually recovered enough to make it to the party although I sat in the same chair the whole night. I think we also had an ice storm that night. Yes, we do know how to have fun😵‍💫

Anyway, I had a fun day making lasagna (and no it didn’t take anywhere near all day). Garlic bread and salad are also on the menu.

The pic is to show that the flowers I posted yesterday are not large. I’m not sure what kind of bush this is but in a very short window of time, it blooms and at a certain time of day, it casts a pretty shadow on the She-Shed. I didn’t catch this today even though it was very sunny. This is from a couple years ago.

Our pottery daughter and her guild had a show this evening. I wanted to go but in the end I didn’t. Tomorrow is the annual spring Umich football game and I knew it would be a mess downtown, especially in the area of the Potter’s Guild. So I sent the GG (npJane also attended) and chilled out here making salmon piccata for dinner.

I continue to struggle to explain my position on “Christianity” and its current place in American politics. Again. I am NOT religious. I did have a religious upbringing and I learned about Jesus, who I believe is a mythological figure of sorts. What I learned has nothing to do with the politicians who are invoking him nowadays. Whether or not you believe in Jesus and/or participate in a Christian religion, Jesus’s “teachings” on love and kindness for people in less than fortunate circumstances have nothing to do with our current political culture. Again, our country was founded on a principle of separation of church and state. Let’s keep it that way but let’s also follow Jesus’s teachings on caring for others whether or not we participate in a Christian religion. I do not. Sorry but it was a rough zoom night for me tonight.

Here we go again. This time it was 4:00 AM. I woke up and noticed the GG was wandering the Landfill. *What* are you doing? Unintelligible answer. Okay, I’ll go back to sleep.

Except. Chirp-chirp. And then a bit later… Chirp-chirp. Y’all know where this is going right? 4:00 AM is too early for birds. After a little bit I figured out that it was probably about a 30-second interval between chirp-chirps so I pulled up my iPhone clock app and started the stopwatch. Yup. 30 seconds on the dot. Definitely not a bird.

This was a fainter chirp-chirp than the one I heard last week and it took me a FULL 10 MINUTES to get the GG to hear it at all although I later realized it was probably what woke him up. “I thought I heard something outside.” Nope. It was the smoke/CO alarm in the dungeon. A half hour or so later, he had it disconnected and the battery out of it (it’s also wired to the lucky-shuckial system). By that time there WAS bird song outside.

So I continued my campaign for “smart” alarms and I actually sorta won! Yay! We installed one Nest alarm this afternoon and another will be delivered tomorrow. We have 3-4 other smoke (only I think) alarms but they are all on the same “system” and I *think* our Nest alarms are “motherships” so hopefully we’re good.

As much as I like the idea of running household devices via phone apps, I remain a bit skeptical. My dryer has an app (to notify me when it’s done because it’s in the dungeon) but it works sporadically. Roooomba has an app but lately it has occasional trouble connecting to wifi, after MONTHS of no problems. Cygnus has an app and it works pretty well. I mainly use it for locking and remote start. But it is still telling me my left front taaaar has an issue even though it is now well within range. So we’ll see how this one works.

I have hopes though. My entire life I have HATED sudden loud noises. I was TERRIFIED of balloons as a small child. If something is going to wake me up by shrieking at me, there better be a REAL reason. Not just “I’m low on battery” or “It’s time to replace me” (which WAS the issue).

Twitter play

The GG (in the middle of the night): I don’t understand why they always go off in the middle of the night.
Kayak Woman (banging head against wall): Because they are too “stupid” to know it’s the middle of the night.

I mean, theoretically, if there is ever an issue while we are out of town, I will be notified and can call the faaaar department from afar.

Hopefully this is the last time I will post about this issue for a while. Fingers crossed.

The Pensioner came at me with a calendar today. What did I want to do this summer. Mainly he means when do you want to take PTO from work.

Sigh… Again… It is always best if *I* work around other people’s schedules. I have the MOST vacation time of anyone (except The Pensioner) and I don’t have a centralized bricks-and-mortar office to go to so as long as I’m at the stand-up meeting on days I’m scheduled to work, nobody cares where I am.

Last summer I pretty much hit the sweet spot in terms of schedule. We had two groups visiting the yooperland for approximately a week each. They came at different times, which was good but we would’ve figgered it out if they came simultaneously. What worked out was I had great fun spending vacay time with them while they were here. Then, since I didn’t have to hustle back to The Planet Ann Arbor to work at Cubelandia (which has been empty for a few years now), I could take the next week to reset the moomincabin refrigerator and laundry and whatever. I had to work but since I didn’t have to commute (except to walk out to the Lyme Lounge), I had plenty of time to get things done.

The Comm and Grandroobly’s house was 15-20 minutes away from the moominbeach. They moved to the cabin for the whole summer. When I was a kid, we moved the day after school ended and came back on Labor Day. I was issued a bushel basket to pack my clothes and stuff in. In my adult life, I am happy that my parents were able to pass this property on to us. But I have spent my adult life on The Planet Ann Arbor and I like to spend at least some of the summer down here. I cannot miss pea shelling season at the farmers market for one thing.

Because of that I manage things differently at the moomincabin than The Comm did. (My kids are totally tired of hearing about this.) I leave non-perishable food items on the shelves and things like condiments and butter in the refrigerator throughout the summer. Usually there are a few things in the freezer. Anything else, we use or pack up to take downstate. Or toss if I don’t feel like it’s something worth keeping. We don’t compost up there because bears. At the end of the summer, everything goes. Downstate or in the garbage, which also goes downstate.

Linens? I make a more-or-less weekly run to the Up North laundromat for linens and clothing. I stopped using sheets up there after The Comm died (or maybe even before). I have a VERY comfortable (and ancient) cotton LLBean sleeping bag and we have TONS of blankets and comforters if it gets cold. Much easier to schlep a sleeping bag up there than muck around with sheets. DISCLAIMER! I don’t expect anyone else to schlep a sleeping bag up there. I am happy for people to use sheets and I am happy to launder them 🧡🧡🧡 I want people to be as comfortable as possible in our semi-rustic cabin.

I have a harder time dealing with my company about vacay time. Oh my boss doesn’t care when I take vacay. He is very accommodating. The issue is that the company likes people to schedule their time well in advance. I know there are corporate accounting reasons for this and I am not complaining even though I don’t totally understand them. I have been a bean counter in my day albeit not for a global corporation like the one I work for. But I get it. Still it’s hard to schedule vacation when you are traveling to your own vacation property and not taking a cruise or something.

My bean counting happened back in the Jurassic Age when I was well known as a good and honest treasurer for parent/teacher organizations in town. I think my favorite memory is when I came home from a middle school “fun night” event with gallon ziplock bags of [mostly] small bills. Those bags were sitting on my kitchen counter when a friend (see previous post) unexpectedly came by for whine and said something like “looks like you’re dealing drugs” 🤣 By the next morning that mess was sorted and counted and ready to take to the bank. Where I was well known for depositing perfectly counted money. Those were the days. I miss them sometimes.

This morning was “zoom” coffee with MMCB. We’ve now migrated to Tuesday mornings. It doesn’t really matter to me what morning. I can get online just about any old morning.

MMCB are Jewish so as you might imagine, the topics of late very often touch on Israel. And Palestine. And Gaza. And Hamas. Aaaaaand now Iran. I follow along as well as I can but don’t really understand all of the issues. I do know that they are so overwhelmingly complicated that I am not the person to try to untangle them. I will say that my personal Jewish friends are humanitarian mensches first and foremost and wish for everyone to get along together. We also talk about local politics…

After a bit we happily threw our hands up in the air and got on to our middle school days. I mean our kids’ middle school days. That is when our coffee clatch started down at Cafe Zola. Most of the folks we met with then have moved on (we are still friendly with them) but somehow we have stuck together, moving to Barry Bagels and then “zoom” with COVID. I am thinking we may venture back to Barry’s in the not too distant future. One of us (not me) has had a string of respiratory viruses including a second COVID case and we want to protect her.

So purple. One of our original Cafe Zola moms and a LONG time neighborhood friend of mine came up in the conversation. Vicky is ALWAYS over-the-top. Once another friend called her “the woman who never has a bad day”. Well, I knew that was not true but most people would never know it the way she cheerfully brute-forces her way through life.

This morning I recounted the day she painted her living room royal purple. I had been up and down her street numerous times that day. It was a Saturday and her husband and their two boys were off on a Boy Scout junket. I felt like something was going on but not sure what it was. At the end of the day I was walking by and she came out on her porch DRESSED HEAD TO TOE IN PURPLE and said, “Get in here!”

SHE HAD PAINTED ALL OF THE WALLS IN HER LIVING ROOM PURPLE! I walked by there again the next day and her husband, returned from the Boy Scout trip, was sitting on the porch looking straight into space. A neighbor (who was probably also on the Boy Scout trip) down the street was yelling, “Got purple walls John?”

My purple friend, after struggling for years to find a *lucrative* career ended up in real estate and she is successful at that, which doesn’t surprise me. She divorced and remarried but her then husband hangs out with her and the new husband and whoever.

We were really close when our kids were in grade school and middle school but we have both kinda moved on now. She doesn’t live in the neighborhood any more (although her then husband does). Not that we are not friends. We occasionally connect on Linked In and Facebook. But we have moved on and that is okay.

You can still see through “our” woods to the schoolyard. I can see buses lining up to drop off/pick up kids through the woods. There is a lot of green on our bushes but the big trees in the woods (oaks I think mostly) have yet to sprout anything I can see. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t sprouting.

So what do we do when we belong to families with divided political opinions. I mean when we are together and people insist on talking about politicians and issues we ABHOR (Orange Baboon, etc.). At the Hoton Lake group home (a long time ago when the Orange Baboon was new and shiny fugly and baggy), I was hanging out in the Lyme Lounge one evening and one of my loverly sister-out-laws texted me from the Mother Cabin with something like how do I stop the talk? I didn’t know how to stop the talk so I think I invited her to visit me in the Lyme Lounge. You can have some whine out here with a kindred spirit.

This out-law once labeled me “the family liberal”. The story that led to that label is NSFW but cracked me up because, well, I have ALWAYS been liberal about social issues. Fer kee-reist, live and let live. But I am kind of a fiscal conservative. Except that I DO NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM agree with the MEANness that the MAGAts have brought on. My republican-voting parents would not have liked it either. “Welfare queens” are few and far between. Most poor people just don’t have any goddamn bootstraps to pull themselves up with. Kudos to those who do and those folks should hand some of their damn bootstraps down to someone else. As we all should. My bootstraps are several generations old. And I strongly believe that most people are not trying to game the system.

Okay, I don’t know how I got off on that tangent.

Tax Day. Hahaha. A few people at the morning standup were sounding a little panicked. Our taxes were done a while back and the refund is in the bank. Yes it’s a refund this year. That isn’t always true…

Not the most exciting day. Refrigerator reset. EVERYTHING out of the fridge, shelves and crispers cleaned and expired things thrown out.

Mayo? Yes. One (of two) expired. Horseradish? 2021 anyone? A couple of bottles of hot sauce that expired long ago and I don’t know when they ever even get used. A can of Zing Zang. I’m not sure if that was expired or not but I have been schlepping it back and forth to the moomincabin for multiple summers now and I was just done done done. If somebody wants Zing Zang there is a Meijer store 15 minutes away from the moomin on uncrowded roads, no less. So I emptied it and put the rinsed-out can in the recycle. And some little bottle of neon orange zero-something drink. I am sick sick sick of moving it in and out of the fridge whenever I clean it so I dumped it and recycled the plastic bottle.

I am not complaining about anyone or anything with that little diatribe. I also threw out a few things *I* bought that didn’t get used before they expired or turned into slime — like some lettuce I didn’t use up.

After that and a few other chores, I took Cygnus out and am happy to report that her left front tire was just fine today. Of course I drove with the tire display on the dash watchfully watching when each tire went a wee bit up or down. I like that we get so much information with modern cars but…

I was all set to eat a prepared chicken something or other, breaded and flattened when a beach urchin usurped my plan with some pizza. We did not order a pizza. She brought the ingredients over and baked it here. Okay then. It was spinach and artichokes and some lemon and I dunno what all else but it was good.

And so good night.

My daughter gave me this little painting for xmas a few years ago during covid. It took us FOREVER to get it framed, dodging various waves of covid, etc. and then just forgetfulness.

We finally took it over to the frame shop in February and made our choices, including “museum quality glass”, not that you care. Just that we were mindful about this and had paid a decent amount of money… I told them I wasn’t in a rush for it to be done… A couple weeks ago I was kinda wondering why we hadn’t heard about it. I figgered I had probably not noticed a call from them because I have my phone set to ignore all calls that aren’t in my contacts.

Finally today I LOOKED at the receipt. The order was in my daughter’s name and had her phone number on it. She checked her phone history and yes, she had a number that could have been the frame shop. She ignored it because she was being spammed by 734 numbers in general. Anyway, I schlepped over there today and yes they had it and I apologized for the phone confusion.

I love how it turned out.

The frame shop parking lot is essentially the Plum Market parking lot. It was the second time I drove over there today. This time my driver’s side front taaaar pressure was 26, not 25.

The *first* time I drove over there today, I went into the Plum and humbly beseeched my mouse to come over after work and put a wee bit of air in my taaar (I bought grocks too). 33 is recommended for my front taars. My mouse is a wizard at dealing with car maintenance and she managed it with aplomb. I really need to do this kind of thing myself but I don’t think the analog device she was using would work for me. “Moom, I remember this thing from when I was a kid.” So we have plans for me to buy a MODERN tire pump and for her to teach me how to use it. Sorry but I don’t do well with man-splainin’.

…or not. Why not? Because c-c-c-c-old and windy. It’s okay, he’s parked behind the moomingarage. The Betty Mobile having been moved since the last time the GG graced the moomin with his presence.

We are happy to let the Grinchie park there when we’re not around but it became evident that the GG would need a sheltered place to park for tonight and behind the garage is it. So we’re lucky the Betty Mobile was not there because it can be a challenge to get hold of the Grinch at any random time.

The Lyme Lounge does have heat (and a CO alarm🤣). The last couple winters the GG was doing a lot of winter hiking and camping and he has managed to insulate it quite a bit. Between that and various sleeping bags and blankets and things he should be fine. He probably won’t even need to go inside the moomincabin to grab some of the NUMEROUS blankets and comforters there. When you live on the shores of Gitchee Gumee, even if you are there mostly in the summer, you have blankets!

At the end of today I took a Brain Break and drove Cygnus out into the county a bit, mainly to the north in the area of the country mouse. Wouldn’t you know, the taaaaar light came on. In Cygnus, the little tire icon doesn’t just come on. A big yellow message lights up the dashboard. Alarming as this is, I kept cool. Often this means a change in temperature or whatever is behind the issue, especially when you have tires that are still pretty damn new.

Still. Cygnus has a dash display that shows all four tires and what pressure they are at. Could I get to that screen? No I could not. At least not while driving. I made it home successfully, then sat in my driveway for a few minutes and figured out how to get that display on. I also opened my Subie phone app, which tells me all about my tires..

I think it’s probably not a leak but I will be keeping an eye on it now that I have the display front and center.

My beloved Ninja (2008 Honda Civic SI) was the first car we owned that had a tire light. The first time it went on I was like what the heck is that little yellow symbol. And. This is a brand new car! Those tires were always sensitive and that light came on umpteen bazillion times while I owned it. I got kinda cavalier about it because it was always temperature sensitivity or whatever. Until. It went on one day on my way to Cubelandia. Oh la-di-dah, I thought. I made it there just fine but when I went out to the parking lot after work a tire was totally flat.

Another memory just came to mind. Radical Betty was talking about a time she and The Commander were going to take my granddaddy’s car (RB’s dad, The Comm’s father-in-law) out on some kind of junket. I think this was when they were young married women but didn’t have children yet. Before lending them his car, my granddaddy carefully demonstrated how to change a tire. And wouldn’t you know, according to Radical Betty, they had to change a tire during their outing. No Triple A in those days. I’ve always guessed that granddaddy knew there was a bad tire before they left. No tire lights in those days.

Kim Jong Un completes this trio but he is not visible in the pic. He’s behind them facing the other direction. Oh maybe you can kind of see him, in the shadow of the OB’s face. Is that an ear?

And it’s an old pic from the 2018 Festifools Parade. I can’t find a good link to Festifools. It seems they don’t have a website and I’m not gonna link to their facebook page. But there are third-party news articles and things out there so google it if you’re interested in a parade featuring larger-than-life puppets like the ones in the pic.

We used to go to Festifools and its companion event Fool Moon every year. One year the GG wore his ghillie suit, which is tricked out with huge googly eyes. He was very popular that year and a bunch of women hugged him. I on the other hand was wearing basically business casual 🐽 Playing the straight woman. We would usually leave before the parade was over so we could stop at the Oscar Tango for a wee cocktail before the crowds hit.

Of course the parade was canceled in 2020 and although there have been some smaller events in subsequent years (I think), this year is (I think) the first year it has returned in full force. We did not attend this year. The GG was down in O-haaaa-o for the eclipse and it wasn’t really on my radar screen. I have not fully regained my ability to tolerate large crowds, indoor or out. I never have been all that crazy about crowds, although maybe a bit more so in my mis-spent youth. Friendly introvert here. Need an easily accessible freak-out chamber.