Random bits of my so-called life.

I always forget that we have these flowers in the back yard. When I got home yesterday I looked back there and I was pretty excited to see them and thought I would get a photo. Alas when I got back there, they were past their prime, starting to look a little doggy and even worse today. So here’s one from two years ago. Apparently we were getting rain two years ago. We are not getting any rain this year. There are little dribs and drabs of it in the forecast but it feels like one of those seasons when predictions don’t come to pass. At least it isn’t very HOT, knock on wood big time. 70s are fine with me.

I have a few weeks of sorting things out here before we return to the yooperland. We are having VISITORS this summer. A young cousin who we didn’t connect with last summer and her fiance. And my PacNW cousins a little later in the summer. And Pengo who isn’t really a visitor as she is a co-owner but we have not seen much of her in the last few years, partly because of COVID but also because she has moved a couple times, lives in far-away places, and has turned into a globe-trotter.

So that’s about it. It was a pretty darn slow day but after yesterday, I think that’s what I needed. G’night.

Whoof! Oh not that it was all that bad. There was hardly any traffic until I got waaaay down south. It’s a Monday, right? I did see a horrendous backup on the northbound side of US23 somewhere around the I96 interchange. I did not have to navigate that today, thank you very much.

I stopped ONCE (you can’t count the Mackinac Bridge because that’s a rolling stop when you have a commuter card). I stopped at Waters (exit 270) for gas. I saw that I had 18 text messages. There was a link to some good-looking pasta dish somewhere in there but I did not take the time to look. I just texted “Waters”, knowing the beach urchins would understand that, then I jumped back on to the southbound I75 SUV Speedway.

I was almost home and all was fine but I decided I didn’t wanna deal with the whole M14 stretch of freeway that leads onto the Planet Ann Arbor. Instead I bagged off onto the N. Territorial Road exit and navigated along the slow gravel roads in the mouse neighborhood and then home. Absolutely beautiful on the back roads north of town. Everything fully leafed out and some trees/bushes still flowering.

After I got home, I actually LOOKED at the pasta recipe in the text messages and boy oh boy did it look good. And then. The beach urchin who posted it came over and COOKED it for me. It was sooooo goooood. Lemon Artichoke Spaghetti with Bread Crumbs. It’s on my list! I had actually had a plan B since there is an Uncle Peter’s pasty in the freezer but that can wait for another night. And I will make a grock run tomorrow morning.

G’night! KW! Typos be damned.

Really not feeling it. So why do it? Because there are a few people out there who expect it and might wonder what’s going on if I don’t.

So here is a starflower I grabbed a pic of this afternoon. I had been hanging out on the moomindeck WITHOUT a lot of MO-skee-TOES until I walked out into the back yard to grab a pic of this flower. Mosquitos SWARMED me back to the deck and for the next 15 minutes or so. I think I have figured out that mosquitos get disturbed when people (meeee) move around. After the aforementioned 15 minutes or so (and I had slapped a bunch of them), they left me mostly alone. I’m not sure why it took me my entire lifetime to figger this out. I will also say that at certain times of day (dusk for instance) they are just OUT THERE. I used After Bite ONCE today and that skeeter bite is long gone.

To any prospective moominbeach goers… I wanted to scour the chitchen sink today. Alas, for whatever reason I didn’t have any of my currently preferred cleanser (Barkeeper’s Friend) around. I really didn’t want to drive out to obtain it although I suspect the “new” lovely Ace Hardware in Brimley probably carries it. Anyway, the sink isn’t gross (and won’t poison anyone) but it is not scoured. I did clean the bathroom and some stove burners as needed. I doubt anyone will be up here until I return and rectify the situation. At least not anyone who cares. Just sayin’.

So after some chores and errands (quick run to Meijer and dumping a Green Bag of garbage up at the res) I decided to read the afternoon away. The beach was fine if quite hazy (faaaars in Canananada, we think) but my phone started losing battery so I decamped to the deck where we have an outdoor lucky-shuckial outlet.

The GG was off on a NCT trail maintenance boondoggle so I was blissfully space-i-fied for much of the afternoon. There was a nice Undertaker’s Breeze and there were MO-skee-TOES but I was easily able to keep slapping them. Until. The GG came home. I swear to god-or-whoever, EVERY single dad-blasted time he came onto the moomindeck, the MO-skee-TOES came out in Full Force. Slap slap slapity slap.

I don’t REALLY know if he is a magnet or not. It’s possible there were just a bunch of them hanging around and his comings and goings disturbed them. In any case not one MO-skee-TOE managed to successfully bite me this afternoon and if one had, I have After Bite at the ready to mitigate the situation.

I am not one of those people who have particular issues with MO-skee-TOES. When they do bite me (and of course they do), the bites don’t swell up into big ugly welts. They itch for a little while and then they disappear. I don’t know if this is because I spent my childhood summers in yooperland mosquito habitat or if I have some kind of natural resistance to them. I suspect it is a combination of the two. I am NOT allergic to anything that I know of although I once got a case of hives when I was about eight and I had a nasty spider bite (we think) as a young teenager but I don’t THINK that was an allergy.

Anyway. Every time I think about mosquitos, I remember when my older beach urchin was a beautiful blueberry-eyed three-year-old. She was familiar with mosquitos and her talking skills were well honed. We were here at the moomin and she spied a mosquito and said (with great wonder), “Mama! There is a MO-skee-TOE!” Yes indeed. “Mama” probably unceremoniously SLAPPED it. I hate killing living beings but I do NOT have a problem killing mosquitos.

So there are faaars in Canananada but… A forest faaar is burning near Grayling today and I75 has been closed on and off. Our mouse and raccoon spent the weekend in the Petoskey/Charlevoix area and managed to traverse the I75 SUV Speedway BEFORE this happened. I have scheduled myself to drive down on Monday but will be watching…

Today was [insert my 3-letter company name here] Day. So I got a paid day off. This began in 2020. Something to do with the pandemic but I’m not totally sure what. Lots of stuff about people needing time off, etc., etc., etc. I get six weeks off. Not too shabby.

So it’s cool. I did kinda need a day off from working in the Lyme Lounge in high heat. What did I do with my day off? I did laundry. I don’t mean that it took me all day to do the laundry. I schlepped a basket of laundry into the Up North Laundry in Sault Ste. Siberia. It’s across from the post office. Just before I got outta my car I saw the Mean Old Grunchy Old Grinchy’s vee-hickle over at the post office. I could tell by the tons of mail through his front window (don’t ask, you don’t wanna know). He didn’t see me. I was still in Cygnus and I don’t think he recognizes Cygnus, at least not when she is out of context, like not behind the moomincabin garage. Oh well.

I love the Up North Laundry. They have an app to use the warshing musheens so you don’t have to put umpteen bazillion quarters in to get your warshing musheen going. Dryers are a whole different thing and still require quarters. The problem I had today was there were NO BENCHES outside the laundromat. I LOVE sitting outside waiting for my stuff to wash and dry. It was okay with the washing because I walked down to the locks and got a message when the washer was done. I had to sit and wait inside for the dryers. I didn’t mask at that point because was I waaaaay off in the back area where I do my laundry where nobody usually is. And then a woman (friendly) came along to put her stuff into a dryer. i didn’t put a mask on. She was pretty close to me. I hope I don’t get covid from her.

There are other guns around but this is the gun of choice for shooting off the deck. I was sitting on the beach a few days ago and I heard the BB gun being shot from the deck but… I heard the pellets landing somewhere on the beach? Nope. Do NOT shoot in the direction of the beach.

We got porterized at the end of this hot hot hot day. I advocated for us to meet on the moomincabin deck. The beach is way too hot in the late afternoon and our deck becomes shaded, especially since a beautiful marine layer came in over our bay this evening.

I can’t really do polly-tickle stuff today although I have been thinking about it a lot. I will just say that one of my main mantras in life is the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I have never been religious although I grew up attending a church as a child. I don’t really believe in a god or Jesus but the golden rule has always made sense to me.

My childhood church was mainstream Methodist. Big beautiful stone building with stained glass windows and a fancy pipe organ and nooks and crannies and sneaky hidden rooms everywhere. I figured out early (via a few Sunday school teachers and they were NOT all bad) that a lot of church folk were hypocrites. I didn’t even know that word when I figured that out. I came by this genetically as my dad felt the same way. He volunteered for the church ANYWAY. It’s what you do when you are a businessman in a small town and your family belongs to a church. But when I was 16 and I said I didn’t want to go to Sunday school any more, my dad gave me permission to quit. And probably chortled a bit once I was out of earshot.

I have a pretty clear memory of being something like eight and lying on the back seat of my parents’ car (no car seat of course) and being SICK. Like with a fever. A summer bug.

We were driving up (down?) Ashmun, the MAIN street in town, where all the banks and department stores were in those days. The Sault Savings Bank (not the bank my old coot worked at) had a fancy time and temperature sign and it proclaimed the temperature was 82 degrees. Back in those days, that was a high temperature for the yooperland. And since I wasn’t delirious with that fever, I can still remember it.

I don’t wanna get into global warming or what might be causing it but I can remember wearing a ski jacket up here at this time of year. This week? Not so much. It was more like 88 today and my Lyme Lounge office was hot hot hot and I finally logged off a bit early and decamped to the deck. The back of the deck where the sun doesn’t shine in the late afternoon.

I was HAPPILY interrupted from my work this morning by a visit from The Mean Old Grunchy Old Grinchy (and the GG). It was fine but they got into polly-ticks and I finally feigned work stuff. They decamped to the deck but I could still hear them talking (they were loud). They have totally different polly-tickle viewpoints. I agree more with the Grinch than the GG. A lot of the yooperland folks the Grinch hangs out with (and employs) are also at odds with his views. He’s always been one of my fave cousins and I kinda understand him but not totally and that’s probably a good thing since I don’t really want anyone to totally understand me either.

So they were loud but it was a friendly convo and it was okay. I love them both and I am so glad they (and we) are still able to talk to each other as relatives and friends even when our polly-tickle views differ.

A more interesting day than I often have. It began at something like 3:00 AM when “people” were up jumping around turning lights on and off. WTF? Well. It’s “cold” (not) so he was closing windows and… and… and… “I found a tick!” Yick. I didn’t ask until morning but I spent the next half hour or so feeling like there were ticks in my sleeping bag. Eventually I got back to sleep.

Next up was the grockery store but that was a no-brainer. Then I opened up my work laptop and… Could not connect to the internet. I watched the VPN app spin for a while and contacted a co-worker that I was having problems and might not get to the daily standup. Until… I realized I had to go “beneath” the VPN and. Uh. Enter the password to the router. Duh. I can be soooo stooopid sometimes. This was a result of our switch to fiber optic last week.

Some lucky-shuckial folks arrived (unexpectedly) this afternoon to do some work with the new fiber optic installation. Wouldn’t you know that one of those guys is married to one of my childhood friends. One who I have “known” since we were small babies and our mooms were best friends.

My adult BFF and her husband (also a very good friend) are currently in the yooperland at their summer cabin and THEY made a trip to our Meijer today too (and lunch and I don’t remember what else). They are not close to a comprehensive grock store in their area, at least not as comprehensive as our Meijer. Sriracha? Say what? So they stopped at our place on their way home. Much gabblety gabblety ensued, most of it from me. Introvert that I am, I do have friends and it felt really good to talk to one I don’t see all that often, even in the best of times, not to mention the COVID years.

I strongly encouraged a moomincabin deck meeting today because the beach was beastly hot again. It was fine on the deck with the undertaker’s wind but the sun did get hot. After they left, the deck became a bit more shaded but then the moe-skee-toes started coming back out.

P.S. the GG may have just found another tick. I am not sleeping with him until I am sure he isn’t harboring ticks.

I did not have to drive today. I’m gonna telecommute from here this week. But the beach urchin who spent the weekend with us did drive today. She can also telecommute but for whatever reason she is not doing that this week, at least not from here. But that’s her business and I don’t meddle with my adult children’s business.

Leave-takings are always a little nerve-racking. Even if your kid is a well-established adult and good experienced driver, sending her off on a five hour drive is, well, nerve-racking for mom. (My daughters are very sharp cookies and KNOW this.) I am always okay after one of the kids leaves but I love getting that text message that they’re home safely. When The Commander was still alive, we had to call, which was kind of a chore, one I would usually foist on one of the urchins when they were old enough to handle that responsibility without help. Of course in The Comm’s last few years, she had an iPhone and became a champion texter herself.

So my beach urchin experienced some traffic slow-downs today but I checked GooMaps a few times (of course I did) and it didn’t look as bad as it often is. Still, it is a SLOG.

Here? Cold morning and then somebody somewhere threw a SWITCH and it got HOT HOT HOT! So hot that we decamped from the beach up to the deck where we are enjoying what my dad called an undertaker’s wind. That means it comes outta the swamp.

Although there are plenty of flowering trees in the yooperland (apple anyone? or flowering crab?) we don’t have many here in the moominbeach ecosystem. Except for serviceberry. If you look carefully (or embiggen) you can see the white flowers on the tree (bush?) just to the right of the big red pine trunk. That’s serviceberry or when we were kids, we called it sugar plum. It makes a sweet purple berry. Good to eat but we never get enough berries to do anything with them. Just pick and eat. I am almost never here when the serviceberries bloom but Memorial Day weekend somehow hit the sweet spot for them this year.

Where are we here? This is our “parking lot”. Between the moomincabin and the Old Cabin. No pavement anywhere around here, just sand covered with pine needles.

The beach urchin who is with us this weekend suggested I move Cygnus from right in front of the moomincabin to behind the garage. So we could be looking at the Old Cabin, not Cygnus. Cygnus is beautiful but as much as I love her, it really is nice to not have to look at a car outside in this particular place. So I moved her.

There was a lot of talk yesterday about what to do today. In the end, the GG did a lot of stuff but lizard breath and I did next to nothing. The GG was working on the motor bote and some sort of mower for the North Country Trail. It was COLD for a long time this morning (30s to start with) and I was sorta sluggish except for doing dishioshios and stuff. At the end of the day I was wishing we had gone out for lunch to Pickles or somewhere. Pickles does have outside seating and we wouldda been okay COVID-wise.

The radio was annoying today. I normally like to have NPR rolling in the background. But. I have great respect for Tina Turner although her music was not my fave (I can tell she was talented just not my style). But I am taaarred of hearing about her. And then there is the whole damn debt ceiling thing. Do yer damn jobs and kick Marj out while you’re at it. What are y’all gonna do when your social security recipient constituents (etc.) flood your offices with calls about why they aren’t getting the money they’ve paid into their entire working lives. Get with it.

The radio was annoying until I turned it on in the afternoon and there was a show about talking aminals. I mean dogs and cats. My brother’s dog Sam was kind of a talking dog. His “parents” taught him how to say a number of different things. the only one I remember right now was grandma. Grrrma. I’m not sure what I really think about this but maybe my brother was ahead of the game. Apparently people are teaching cats to “paw” iPad icons that can convey English words to their owners. One cat apparently paws the icon for “mad” frequently. I dunno.

One of these days the GG is gonna crash. So says his daughter. He has been running at top speed on intense prodjects for several weeks now. This morning he was chainsawing stuff on the memorial hiking trail named after my brother, which is up the escarpment from the moominbeach. Our daughter was with him acting as a swamper. That means she gets to call 911 when he cuts his leg off or whatever. He did not do that today and all she did was remove small sticks and things from the trail. That is a good thing.

They had another errand in town but we won’t talk about that for now because it involves a work in progress.

And so he hasn’t crashed yet but we’ll see what he does tomorrow.

I am done done done. G’night.

So the well guys got here today and we now have uninterrupted water from our own well. Guess how long it took them to fix our issue. Five minutes maybe? As they were leaving and I was potting impatiens, I had to ask if it was really done. Yes. I told them that we’d been having issues for maybe five years. They laughed and said to call them any time. DIY is great when it works and it did work when the GG fixed the Lyme Lounge wheels (or whatever) last week. Not so much with the well although to be fair, he didn’t attempt that repair.

Anyway, the story with the well folks didn’t quite end there. The GG asked them where they were from. They gave the easy answer which was Rudyard. But then they said, “Actually we’re from Fibre.” Well. We know where Fibre is. I was driven through Fibre many times as a child when my family took Sunday drives and the GG and I have driven through Fibre in recent years. There really isn’t anything in Fibre. A railroad track runs through and the remains of a store exist. Nothing like a main street although there are farms and houses WIDELY scattered throughout the area.

So back when the GG was still gainfully employed, a new person was employed at his work. He detected a bit of a yooperland accent to her speech and asked where she had lived before moving to Ann Arbor. She told him he was unlikely to have ever heard of her “town” but when pressed, she told him Fibre. His response was, “So you know Marilyn.” Yes. Marilyn is a North Country Trail friend of ours.

So the GG was telling the well guys the story about the woman he worked with and when he got to the “Marilyn” part, one of the guys said, “She’s my grandma.” Small world.

P.S. This morning I had the best shower I’ve had in years here at the moomincabin via the hose hookup from the Old Cabin. No interruptions in water flow. Thanks youz guyz.

In the end we did not tandem drive to the yooperland today. Cygnus and I had a very calm trip with not a lot of traffic. I have always LOVED to drive but the pandemic did SOMETHING, not sure what, to my driving confidence. I’m not sure that’s totally over yet (and no, I don’t need a therapist for this!) but I enjoyed today’s drive a lot.

When I pulled into the “parking lot” (note that it is NOT paved), there was a Jamadots truck here and within a couple hours we had FIBER OPTIC installed. So far it is working fine. We are a weeeee bit nervous just because our DSL worked so well for so many years. Why mess around with POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

Believe it or not, we still have a working landline here, not that we ever use it. Because of that we were given an “emergency device” that will provide phone service and internet for a number of hours (8?) during a power outage. I may not have those details straight. The takeaway for me was that we have a device with a battery that we’ll have to schlep to the Planet Ann Arbor for the winter so the battery doesn’t drain when the moomincabin freezes solid. We have rarely lost power here KNOCK ON WOOD BIG TIME!

So the fiber optics guy came but the pump guy did not. That left the status for our running water in limbo for quite a while. I tried to remain calm and stay outta the fray. Worst case scenario would be to shower and wash dishes at the neighbor-cousins next door. Thank the gods that they are HERE and have water (and are gracious)!

But that turned out to be Plan B, as I shouldda known, knowing the GG. Plan A was to run a hose from their cabin to ours. I mean a garden hose. That is now in place and it is working well. After all, I grew up with water that ran through a garden hose from my uncle’s cabin to ours. He supplied water from his well to his three siblings’ family beach dwellings and it wasn’t until that generation started getting on in years that his siblings (my dad, etc.) had their own wells drilled. With luck the well folks will come out tomorrow. If not, we GREATLY APPRECIATE permission to run the hose from the Old Cabin. Thank you thank you thank you.

I should add that until I gained a sister-in-law, the only running water we had at the moomincabin was cold water in the kitchen sink. If I wanted to take a shower in those days (and I DID!), I either had to borrow one or bathe in Gitchee Gumee. Gitchee Gumee is waaaaay too cold at this time of year so I was not up for that this weekend.

A final story is that my old coot, who was a child at the Old Cabin and didn’t have running water at all for I dunno how many years, would often say something like: “Running water? You grab a bucket, run down to the lake, fill it up, and run back up.”

First of all, photo credit to mouse, who texted this and a bunch of other photos uh when? Yesterday or the day before? I fergit. She also included a may apple photo that puts mine from yesterday to shame. I think I need a new camera aka iPhone.

So why don’t I just go ahead and BUY a new iPhone? I certainly could. It’s been at least five years since I upgraded. The thing is, the GG and I have always bought iPhones TOGETHER, i.e., we always have the same model. And he seems to be dragging his heels for reasons I don’t really understand. At some point, I am just gonna move ahead and he can “follow” me or not.

Our approach to COMPUTERS is totally different in that we haven’t EVER been in “sync”. Well, at least not since the days of the “family” computer, when we only had ONE computer and everyone had to take turns. In 2003, I opened up the latest issue of the New Yorker, the dead tree version of course. What did I see? A splashy ad introducing the 12″ G4 Powerbook! We had the “truckers are b*ttholes” laptop but that wasn’t really usable. I HAD TO HAVE THIS NEW LAPTOP. SO. I ORDERED ONE. Without even discussing it with the GG who I figured would pooh-pooh the idea. We were “poor” then and I didn’t have a viable income.

Anyway, I never again used a big desktop computer after that. The GG is all about big desktop iMacs although he also uses my old laptops or repurposes them to run webcams or whatever.

Today? I could talk about the much-awaited Fedex delivery that was dropped off at the next door neighbors’ (but we found it) and all the subsequent mechanical work going on in the driveway plus the multiple test drives and all of the crapola that went out the front door. But I won’t because the only way I could remain calm today was to stay outta the fray. And since we are not tandem driving tomorrow, I will be keeping an eye on this construction season’s backups on NB US23 and wherever. I WILL say it was NOT the most productive work day I’ve ever had but it did have its highlights…

This was not an easy pic to take. This flower is about six inches off the ground and faces downward so whenever I want to take a pic of one, I have to get down on the ground and turn myself into a pretzel. The petals are actually white [delete long photography ramble about the angle of the sun and using an app (Instagram) to increase the contrast].

What is this flower? I know what it is. It’s in my yard, not that I know every plant in my yard. But today my brain kept outputting the wrong names. It tried to serve up daylily. Say what? This is NOT a daylily. Then it tried moonflower. I’m not even exactly sure what eees a moonflower but this is not it. Oh! MAY APPLE! MAY APPLE MAY APPLE MAY APPLE MAY APPLE! BINGO! Unfortunately I lowered myself to ask the GG the flower name. Fortunately, by the time he managed to understand the question, my brain had rebooted. MAY APPLE! And no I am not senile nor is the talking moose in the system folder. Again.

The GG returned from today’s boondoggle (EPA retiree luncheon in Fenton and delivering the 10 bags of FRITOS he FORGOT! two days ago to FlaMan) just as a meeting was starting. I didn’t quiiiite mute fast enough and a bit of Landfill domestic “chatter” was audible. It was okay. The two other women on the call caught it and we had a fun little convo about the cons of being a permanent telecommuter with your spouse. The men were notably silent. I’m not sure why and I do not know whether their wives work or not or if they do work, whether they telecommute or not. Or whether they may have been within earshot.

I am missing a bl8 word in today’s spelling bee. Blamblam is not it.

Oh. My. Gawd. Today the GG was… In and out and around and about and in and out and around and about. ALL. DAY. And I mean in and out the DOOR, I don’t think either vee-hickle left the block although Cygnus did get parked in the street for a while and then mouse came to get her to borrow her overnight.

When mouse came over to snag Cygnus, she witnessed a bit of the nutso-ness that had been going on all day. She stage-whispered, “Senile?” But no. Just frenetic activity.

But… Lemme see… He was harassing me about did I need a cooler? To transport food five miles hours north? Nope. I don’t plan on hauling a bunch of food. There are wonderful grock stores up there and COVID is not the issue it was three years ago although I will be masking. What food I will take will either be frozen solid (and will not thaw on the trip) or will be fine in a bag with one of the MANY ice packs we have collected during the pandemic years.

Then there was the Red Bag that I have been looking at from Telecubelandia for DAYS. He was rummaging the whole house. I had no idea what he was looking for. Finally he spied the Red Bag. Is that what you’ve been rummaging for? Yes it was. I had been looking at it for days! Right in plain sight.

In general, I think he is taking up waaaay tooooo much crapola. To be fair, he isn’t just going up there for the holiday weekend. At some point, he will be taking off (from the yooperland) to support our friend Joan as she finishes hiking the North Country Trail for the second time in her life.

So I support all of this frenetic packing activity but I do wish he would streamline a bit. And I don’t like that Cygnus will probably be hauling some crap too. Isn’t one vee-hickle plus a camping trailer enough?

When I was in junior high, one of the people that sometimes drove me to local ski areas was my best friend’s sister, who drove one of the family vee-hickles, an ANCIENT Buick. Once we were out at Mission Hill and she went to start it up to head home (a 45 minute trip). Nothing happened. An UN-helpful bystander said over and over, “It’s the lug nuts.” I didn’t know what lug nuts were but that didn’t sound very likely. I have no memory of how it eventually got started but we did successfully make it back to town. In that car.

This problem really IS the lug nuts. On the Lyme Lounge. Himself discovered the issue YESTERDAY. It was a Saturday and local taaaar shops were of no help. In fact they don’t even really deal with trailer wheels. The trailer shops were no help either since they were closing for the rest of the weekend. I vaguely remember from previous experiences that they are always too “busy” and we have to wait a few weeks for a repair.

So the GG spent the entire afternoon in this position next to the Lyme Lounge trying to get the lug nuts off so he can do whatever it is he needs to do to fix the brake drums or whatever it is that’s broken. In the end, it was his own ingenuity plus some troubleshooting over the phone with FlaMan that has allowed him to progress on this. The cFam boyz’ dad was a highly successful mechanical engineer with an automotive career. The boyz apparently inherited some of his DNA plus most of them did auto factory work in their youth. The Twinz of Terror spent college summers working at Hamtramck Assembly and maybe other places I’m not remembering.

Will it be fixed in time to go north with us later this week? That will depend partly on the timely delivery of a part he ordered yesterday. Fingers crossed.

I still don’t really know what a lug nut is. Something to do with wheels. Don’t try to ‘splain it to me. It’ll go straight over my head with a big whooshing noise.

Lightweight farmers market haul today: scallions, spinach, kale, and apples. Oh yeah, and Copper River salmon!!! Then plum where the uber cheerful store manager was working the service desk. I forget what he said to me but I am obviously a recognized person. Whatever it was he said I told him that I’d been shopping there since it opened (16 years ago) and that I lived in the “neighborhood”.

The fish market was a trip today. The counter guy and the customer ahead of me were talking and I heard the counter guy say he was going “up north” this week. Of course I had to ask whereya goin’? Kalkaska. So I said I was going to Sault Ste. Siberia. He asked if I knew so-and-so and I DID!!! To be completely accurate, I do not PERSONALLY know the person he named. He is a bit older than me and I think he may have hung out with a few of my cousins and the older Piedy “kids” back in the day. But my family and his family are very familiar with each other and their family beach/cabin property is maybe a half mile west of ours. Anyway, the fish counter guy’s mother is MARRIED to said person. Small world and very very often when somebody asks if I know someone from up there, I do NOT. Very often it is my husband who is asking that question…

I spent the morning doing laundry and some pre-packing chores and replied to an email from my cousin UKW (and did our daily word puzzles). The GG has been futzing around with some recalcitrant lug nuts on the Lyme Lounge ALL DAY!!! Around noon, he received a call from my cousin Pooh’s husband asking if we wanted to meet them for lunch. They’ve been in town visiting their branch of the fam but we haven’t seen them. I did my usual COVID Panic Dance and then threw caution to the winds and we met them at the Griz where I questioned someone and found out (alas) that our old bartender buddy Janel does not work there any more. I miss her and hope she’s doing well.

Oh and then! We were outside saying our farewells and all of a sudden the GG was yelling LIZ! ELIZABETH! And there was our beach urchin walking across the street. She was on her way to the library but came over for a fugly-op and probably walked to the library with our cousins since that was where they had parked their car.

A day of coincidences and other small world stuff. My life isn’t ALWAYS as boring as my blahg might indicate🤡

FlaMan needs 10 bags of Fritos? The ORIGINAL kind thank you veddy much? Okay, he’s got ’em via my 7:00 AM dash to the Jackson Rd. Meijer. Actually he doesn’t have them yet but someday hopefully soon, the GG will space-i-fy me and make a delivery trip. I am always happy to provide FlaMan with whatever he’s a-hankerin’ for, even a nose hair trimmer and that is all I will say about that😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

I still make grock runs as early as possible. When the store opens. Although Meijer is open before 7:00, I just wait until then to shop there. It isn’t really about COVID any more although I still mask. My personal grock workers mask and I stand in solidarity with them. It isn’t over and essential workers are more vulnerable than the rest of us since they have unmasked folks up in their face all day long. COVID or not, it is soooo much easier to shop earlier. No one is in the store (except on Mother’s Day🐽) and traffic is not an issue. That said, if I neeeeed something I am comfortable shopping at any time of the day. I’m still not crazy about the mall but that predates COVID.

And so it is Friday night and we ate tamale pie and got porterzoomed and I am done done done. G’night. An Outlander episode tonight and farmers market and Plum in the morning.

Love y’all, KW

Whaddya think? I think the resemblance is uncanny, don’t you? And that’s all for today!