Random bits of my so-called life.

The GG bought me this picture frame a while back. It isn’t really a thing I need but he struggles to find gifts for me and I have to love it.

I don’t really love Melania at all. I struggle to figure out what she sees in Trump. Besides money? I dunno. I like Hillary Clinton a whole lot more than I like Melania and I love the (possibly faked) photo of her picking her nose that the GG sent me once. I mean, we ALL pick our noses. Yes. We do.

The GG sends pics to my photo frame to bug me. When the Racc comes over, he often deletes pics that he does not like and knows that are not what I like. I love that he does this. On the other hand, I’m kinda okay with the stuff the GG sends to my frame, even when I disagree with it, like the Melania pic. I dunno why, I have just learned to laugh about it. That’s about all I can do.

I love football Saturdays on The Planet Ann Arbor but you have to plan your travel carefully so as to be able to get around town.

There was a noon game today and I did not plan my travel very carefully. I waited until I’d had my coffee to leave for the Plum. But. When I finally left, I went down to make a left turn onto N. Maple and THERE WERE NO CARS coming from either direction.

The Plum was also not crowded and I met up with my mouse and some of her co-workers for a few minutes and we shared stories about today’s football traffic or lack thereof. Our take is that the football folks were all camped out in their RVs over at Pioneer High or wherever and were partying this morning.

A while after that and after umpteen bazillion phone calls with family members, the GG space-i-fied me to drive up to FlaMan’s place. I had the afternoon to myself. Was I productive? Not really. Just semi. I did unbox the new canvas laundry hamper for the moomincabin and put the clean moomincabin laundry into it. We’ll see how this contraption works.

At the end of the afternoon, the GG was back, the football game was over and there was a huge amount of yowling and caterwauling coming from the direction of Vet’s Park. Was it a skate park event? Yes. But it was also a bunch of “old” guys doing a rock band type concert. They sounded really raspy and we were guessing they had some kind of amplified sound musheen thingy to make the raspy stuff. It wasn’t exactly the best music I’ve ever heard but I have learned over the years that almost any music is good music. I enjoyed it a lot from our back yard a few blocks away.

This is not a very recent pic. It is from the moominbeach sometime a week or so ago or whatever. Maybe from one of the nights npJane and I had cocktails on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench while watching the sun set.

This afternoon, the GG took a porterization nap and then we porterized ourselves out at Dexter’s Pub. We haven’t been there all summer and we weren’t immediately recognized by the owner although our waitress definitely remembered the Porters when they came in. Oh, yeah, I know you guys. Indeed.

And so we are back on the Planet Ann Arbor. I had a great time at Dexter’s Pub tonight but I could not outlast our friends who are on a different schedule than we are. I don’t necessarily go to bed at 10:00 PM but I need to be chilling out by then. In a place that isn’t as noisy as a pub. Like my house.

I’m not sure I can capture all of the conversation tonight. As acute as my hearing is, I couldn’t hear all of it because of all the background noise. I do know that when people try to say that “things” aren’t like they used to be, meaning they are much worse nowadays, they are probably not remembering the bad stuff that happened when we were children. Riding your bike alone as a kid was definitely not any safer when I was a kid than it is now. It also wasn’t any more dangerous. The key thing is to teach kids to keep their wits about them and NEVER talk to strangers.

In my case, I was about eight and on an OCD-type mission to ride my bike around the block 20 times after dinner. On about the 18th time, a MAN in a noisy car pulled up next to me and said, “Hey kid, do you want a ride to the Pictney(?) Shoberg. Years later I realized he was probably saying “picture show”, but at the time, there was a funeral home in town with a name that sounded like what he said. I FREAKED OUT, jumped off my bike and ran like hell with it to my house two doors down and into the garage. He was yelling “hey kid” the whole time. I got into the house and out the back window I saw him screaming down the alley looking for me.

I didn’t tell my parents about this until I was an adult. My dad was the bank manager when I was a kid and knew a lot of the police and if I had told him, the police would certainly would have been johnny on the spot.

All that said, a judge I am acquainted with in Ann Arbor once said that child abductions by strangers are extremely rare. I believe her but still.

Okay, my daughter (guess her name) sent me this pic from a tunnel under the railroad on her way to work. It took me ALL DAY to realize that it didn’t say her name (or that of Queen Elizabeth).

When my first baby was a newborn, we would often hold her up in front of us and, well, what the heck do you talk to a newborn baby about? We said her name. A-B-C-D-EEEEE-lizabeth. Over and over again. I’m sure we talked to her about other things too but I can’t really remember them as well. I did tell her (over and over) her origin story, meaning her journey from conception to birth. I won’t bore you or embarrass her with that.

Our first child didn’t really have a lot of nicknames. The Commander tried to call her a rapscallion (which she kinda was) but she adamantly refused that moniker. Same with Mrs. Kafouli. I think these were things my mother was called by her dad. But this kid was Elizabeth and that was pretty much it. NO! I am NOT a rapscallion! NO! I am NOT Mrs. Kafouli!

My second child hated the name we assigned her at birth and called herself all kinds of things. Ababa. Mr. Golden Sun. MOUSE. Mouse was the name that stuck and she has coerced everyone she has ever known to call her Mouse and not her “government name”. I have always been okay with this, partially since I have never been crazy about my own name. Plus I like to be known as Mouse’s Moom. It has a nice ring to it.

I think my older daughter has a couple of nicknames she likes or at least tolerates, Little Cat Z being one of the most recent ones. “It has a nice ring to it.”

But she can certainly be an Elizabitch if she needs to. But always politely and diplomatically. Did I actually birth this person?

We’ll maybe talk about Dr. Seuss some other day🐸

I can’t really talk about what I did today. It was annoying but not all that scary in the end. I’m not gonna ‘splain it until it is totally resolved. I’m working on that with a lovely woman who remembers my family.

Lots of folks in Sault Ste. Siberia do remember my fam and people to this day ask if Doctor Finlayson was my dad. Nope. Doc Fin was my uncle and he delivered just about every baby in the Sault for many years (not me though) and was much beloved. My dad? Not a medical guy at all. He was a banker and was eventually remembered for that but when I was a kid, he was a lowly teller who worked himself up to bank manager and eventually president and CEO. A successful failure as he called himself.

I didn’t know he was the bank manager until I was a teenager and I was skiing up at Minneapolis Woods one night. My dad came to pick me and my friends up and a friend’s boyfriend hitched onto my dad’s back bumper for an ice ride and my dad maneuvered him safely off the back bumper. The kid said something like, “That was Mr. Finlayson, the bank manager. He’s a great driver.” Well yes, my dad was a good driver (and WWII pilot trainer). This was the first time I’d ever heard him be called the bank manager and apparently the kid didn’t realize Mr. Finlayson was my dad. My family was quiet about whatever little successes we had. I still try to be that way.

That’s Grandma Margaret in the pic on the beach with a bunch of her younger 11 grandchildren surrounding her. And The Commander. And my dog Tigger, it looks like. Napping on the sand.

DEI hires was the topic. I was kinda glad when MMCB and I moved on from her friends who are slowly trickling into memory care facilities (note that they are quite a bit older than yer fav-o-rite blahgger and MMCB is not a memory care candidate).

At least DEI hires STARTED the topic. It then devolved into how some of our fellow citizens seem to be trying to devalue women’s contributions to our society. I know most folks don’t believe this but there are quiet little rumblings about what women should be allowed to do in life. I don’t think we’re going the way of Afghanistan any time soon but then again…

What do you do with your life if you were a child like me, who at three years of age, often sat around contemplating the concept of infinity? It was many years later that I equated the act of folding a piece of paper in half and half again until I couldn’t fold it any more with infinity but, friends, that is what it was. How many young afghan girls are doing similar things?

And then, until music took me over (for a while), MATH was my favorite subject. I was always working ahead in the math book or (later on) working through an ancient analytical geometry textbook of my dad’s because I could take ONE elective senior year (high school) and I chose music theory, knowing that my dad’s textbook was available for me to study on my own. I was going out with my second high school boyfriend at the time, a cute and gallant college sophomore from town, and being his girlfriend somehow gave me the confidence to not hide my geekiness any more. But why did I think I needed a man for that? I do not know. [delete complicated thoughts]

So. Are all women destined only to be wives and mothers? I mean I LOVE being a wife and mother but I am so much more. Male or female, people are people. Why denigrate a person who at the age of three sat in her bedroom contemplating the concept of infinity because she’s female? Intelligent “geeky” women have helped us get to space, crack enemy codes, you name it. PEOPLE can do all kinds of things. It doesn’t matter what sex they are. And that is not a totally binary thing anyway despite what MAGA thinks.

I was not a DEI hire (I don’t think). One of my community college profs (male) hooked me up with an internship (as part of a class) with my company, an internship I really didn’t want. I’m pretty sure he thought I was the best match for this corporate job. As it turned out I hit it off with my then boss (male) and after three months, I was hired full-time. I think they liked that I could do the job and WRITE, which is an important part of my job.

DEI hire? I don’t really know but I have worked with many women and men, all kinds of people throughout the years. We have always had a respectful workplace culture and we get the job done. Who cares what we look like or where we are from?

This was a higgledy-piggledy brain dump and may or may not have made any sense. Lots more thoughts percolating to be dumped some other day. Or not.

Arguing (for one thing) about the traffic merging situation just north of the N. Maple/Dexter intersection. I won’t try to describe it to y’all, just saying that me and the GG have different ways of approaching it. I think my way is best. He disagrees? The lane to the right of me north of the intersection is a MERGING LANE, NOT a PASSING LANE.

I am all for making our city more bike/pedestrian friendly. I don’t think the powers that be are thinking through all of the design issues involved in that. I am a designer, albeit of web applications, not of city infrastructure. But user-friendly (for all types of transit) is the keyword. And we are just not there. When the beach urchins were very young, The Commander was down here once and she actually figured out how to use the bus. I eventually did that too although I haven’t done it since covid. Must figger it out again.

So the GG spent the entire day washing windows, even taking them apart if I could understand all the noise. They all needed it. At the end of the day, I rather timidly asked, “Aren’t we gonna do replacement windows?” I think his answer was “YES”. I hope so. We really need them.

It was a busy work day and so g’night. KW.

I made it a slow kind of morning but eventually I made it over to the Plum Market to get supplies for a family enchilada dinner tonight. When I got home yesterday, one of the beach urchins replied to my 🏡 text with something like, “Landfill dinner soon?” I asked, “Is tomorrow too soon?” No. No, it wasn’t. She had actually been thinking of a Landfill dinner today. Okay.

I eventually got over to Plum this morning and it was so fun to be noticed by various employees who know me, both as Mouse’s Moom and because I am a very regular customer. “We were wondering when you would be back!” Yes. I have been outta town for two whole months.

It was a chilly day but sunny and it was perfect for a backyard faaaar, so we ate our enchiladas outside this evening. Lots of conversation but the one that cracked me up the most was when the GG tried to kvetch about not being invited to a Pictured Rocks kayak trip me and a bunch of relatives took back in 2006. It was me, Little Cat Z (my daughter), UKW, Grinch, and Radical Betty and a dad and teenage daughter we didn’t know. Me, UKW, Grinch, the teenager, and the kayak guide did ALL the schlepping of huge tandem kayaks, etc., up and down big sand dunes.

So, was the GG not invited? No he was not. At least not exactly. The truth was that HEEEEE was at the 2006 Bonaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee with our other daughter, Mouse. In other words, he was having a GREAT TIME and CHOSE not to do a Pictured Rocks kayak trip with us.

Soooo good to be home close to my kids and fave grock store, etc. Love y’all, KW.

I can’t believe how much stuff I packed and schlepped down to the Planet Ann Arbor today. It didn’t seem like there was a lot in the fridge or the “pantry” but by the time I was done there were AT LEAST five grocery bags plus a couple insulated bags of stuff from the freezer. Shelled peas anyone? We’ll eat some tonight! Because I do not have enough space to put all the non-perishables away at the moment, it’s looking a bit like Pandemic City here. Why did I think I needed so much Soy Vay? I do not know. It’s okay. It’s all stuff I USE, just not in the quantities I currently have.

After that the GG was still galumphing around. I’m not sure what I would do without him. Just packing up the kitchen and laundry and stuff is enough for me. Because I was nervous about the trip — and that’s ridiculous because I have made this trip umpteen bazillion times — I SAT and chilled out on the day’s word puzzles. Plus a color-by-number phone “game” that I pull out when I REALLY NEED TO CHILL. And today I did! Brain, take a rest. To clarify, traveling back and forth from southeast Trollandia to the yooperland my entire adult life has made me a Road Warrior but covid took me down a notch or so for reasons I can’t articulate.

With that said, our trip today was FLAWLESS and I was calm the whole way (five hours). Very little traffic. The GG was in the lead with Mooon Yooonit and the Lyme Lounge and he never ONCE jumped out into traffic such that I had to struggle to catch up to him. Today was the annual Mackinac Bridge tractor crossing but that didn’t really interfere with other traffic much, at least not southbound traffic like us. A couple of gnarly rainstorms in the Gaylord area where visibility was down around 10% but they were short-lived.

P.S. I sooo miss the moomincabin but here on the Planet Ann Arbor, I have a freezer with a LIGHT in it. I have to use my iPhone flashlight at the moomin. Mom, what were you thinking when you bought that fridge?

The sleeping has been pretty sweet, covid (or whatever) be damned. We’ve had a lot of cold mornings and I have been a wee bit lazy, getting up early to turn on the propane stove then heading back to bed until things warm up a bit.

Way back when before the propane stove, we had a big wood stove. It would heat the place up oh boy oh boy but if you started it up on a cold morning and then the weather warmed up (warmer outside than in), the place would be all heated up and no way to cool it off. Eventually the parents decided a propane stove was more efficient. It took me a while to “warm up” to the new system but it works pretty well.

I will never forget one morning when I was about eight and before sunup it was 39 degrees and one of my feet was a total block of ice. Moooooom? I’m really cold. She grabbed an old army air corps blanket outta the “little room” (now the bathroom) and it immediately and totally warmed me up.

The photo is from a video the GG took of meeee wandering around down on the bank yesterday afternoon. I did not know he was doing that. I am at the end of the path we built when the moomincabin was new. A few years later, the older generations re-discovered an old path to the beach between the Old Cabin and the moomin and we have used that ever since.

Steak dinner with npJane tonight and we are all out tomorrow morning.

I am taaaarrred and this will be a short one. You’re welcome.

It was a work day but I’m taking tomorrow off in order to get ready for a “soft close” on Saturday and a long drive down to The Planet Ann Arbor. A soft close means we put a whole bunch of stuff away and pack up ALL food, perishable or not, to take home. Pretty much everything except shutting down the water, aka draining the pipes and putting antifreeze in them.

I am not really ready for this. I am never really ready for this although I well know that staying in a seasonal place like this is not viable for the colder months. When I was a kid, we just schlepped in to our house in town, 10-15 miles away, a house with central heat and insulation. We packed our clothes and stuff in bushel baskets.

I wanted to get some lake fish from the fish ladies at the farmers market this afternoon. They were not there so I got a couple chicken pot pies from the Farendy Farms truck instead. If I had known how good they would be, I’d’ve bought a bunch more to take home. Oh well.

The Old Cabin lucky-shucky got a bit more modernized today so npJane was ready for a cocktail after all that and we had those over here at the moomincabin. I had a fun time getting cash at the “bank” in Brimley. I fat-fingered my debit card PIN and it wasn’t accepted and I thought it was all over but, being stubborn, I tried AGAIN. This time it worked but I accidentally selected “Spanish” instead of “English” so that was a bit interesting. At the end of it all I was accosted (in a FRIENDLY manner) by my cousin (1st, once removed) K, who was also visiting the bank.

I am feeling very well but still coughing occasionally. Fuck covid(?).

Nobody at teleCublandia much cares where I am as long as I can get online when I need to be online. And I can do that from here, no problem with since we have fiber optic wifi. People do ask sometimes. The biggest problem that I can figger with remote work is the post covid Return To Office mandates. That synergy, don’tcha know.

But Amazon Woman still sometimes wonders where I am and the GG is always, “When are you going back to the Planet Ann Arbor?” The answer is SATURDAY! I am taking Friday off so that I can kinda chill through whatever packing I have to do and I can take the recycle and the garbage and we can maybe get lunch at Pickles.

This morning began pretty warm. At lunch I tried to eat outside. It was raining but it was warm. Until it wasn’t. And then the wind came up.

The pic is from the Twinz of Terror’s trip to Asheville. I asked for a pic of their bonfire and I SPECIFICALLY asked for one without the childrens’ pics in it. Of course I got one with the kids. Nope. I asked AGAIN and I got this one of the Uncly Uncle. That was fine. I don’t mind posting pics of the Twins of Terror.

The Asheville kids have done outdoor school for the last few years and they know how to start and handle faaaars and who knows what else. I think outdoor education is wonderful but I have to admit that when I was a kid in Sault Ste. Siberia the weather was so cold so much of the time in the winter that I’m not sure how viable it would’ve been. Also, winter clothing was HORRIBLE in those days. We’ve come a long way since then.

I have my co-workers at work and then I have my co-workers at the moominbeach, some of whom are my cousins.

I had Little Cat Z for a while and now I have npJane. At the end of a very beautiful beach day, np headed down to the beach and yelled over, I’m gonna have a cocktail down on the beach. I was totally on board and, after doing a few dinner prep things, I joined her.

The GG flew from Asheville to Traverse City today and eventually he joined us for a cocktail. A freezer ‘hattan that I set up for him. We ate pretty late but watching the sun go down was more important than just about anything else.

I was in the middle of a daily stand-up meeting this morning when my phone went nuts. It was not spam, it was my cousin Doug. Youngest cousin on my mom’s side. I dived to answer the call. I did NOT want to miss it. The standup today was the dev team and some others gabbling away about technical stuff that had nothing to do with me, so I immediately put in the meeting chat “I have to drop for a while”, then took my phone out to the moominkitchen so I could talk to Doug.

His subject was putting our aunt Roberta’s ashes to rest. It’s been quite a few years. As much of an idiot as I can be, I felt today that he wanted to talk to meee. In some ways to help him (our youngest cousin) figure out how to talk to some of the cousins he doesn’t know very well. I am thinking about how I might help with this… At any rate, I told him how happy I was that he called me today and I really meant that.

In a conversation about cousin ages, I reminded him of my age and he said I sounded absolutely robust! Yes, and by the way THANK YOU! I did qualify that I also sound CONGESTED. He acknowledged that but still gave me a thumbs up.

I love lying in bed in the moomincabin in the morning listening to the foghorns. It was foggy this morning, which I didn’t know until I got up and botes in the channel started blowing their horns.

I faaaared up Marine Traffic and WHOA! One of the boats coming south was the Wilfred Sykes! This was a family bote fave when I was a child, along with the Ryerson and the Cliffs Victory and I fergit what else. My dad and brother were the serious Boat Nerds in my childhood family.

The dilemma this morning was how to meet up with the Sykes to get a pic. The laundromat and a quick stop at Meijer were on my agenda and I was about to leave for those errands. The Up North Laundry is a block away from the locks. Would the bote paparazzi gods put me close enough to the Sykes to get a pic? I rolled the dice and left for the laundromat.

The adventure there *today* (it’s a boring one) is that when I schlepped my laundry in to My Corner (which is usually deserted except for the day Felon Voter and Betty Boop were there), there was a woman in a MASK doing something with laundry next to musheens 17 and 18, which I wanted to use. I was kicking myself for not bringing a mask up here (I had thought about it). I was hoping against hope that I could suppress any cough that might bubble up. I managed to throw my laundry in, pay for it (Dexter Pay app) and skedaddle to the bench outside without coughing. Hopefully I wasn’t close to her long enough to give her whatever I have. Phew. [Delete long thoughts here. Some other time. I do hope I didn’t make her sick…]

Whenever I leave the Up North Laundry, I head west on Portage (past the Soo Locks) to check if there are any botes. There was a bote in the locks but it wasn’t the Sykes. It was the bote coming down from Gitchee Gumee ahead of the Sykes. I held my breath a bit. I inched along Portage until the end. I went on into the West Pier. THERE WAS THE SYKES, BIG AS LIFE! I couldn’t believe my luck. I parked Cygnus on the grass. I got out of Cygnus and angled myself the best I could to get a pic of the Sykes. There were a lot of other bote paparazzi and seeing all of us, she blew a huge captain’s salute.

If I had been on my “game”, I might have schmoozed with the other paparazzi a little. I am learning to do that a *bit* nowadays, but I was focused on my next errand (Meijer) and didn’t think it through. Although I did schmooze with the Meijer uScan gal, just not about the Sykes. (I also hope I didn’t give *her* covid or whatever it was.)

But maybe I could’ve told another bote paparazzi about my story of watching the Sykes from the moominbeach since well before they were alive and maaaayybbbeeee they might have cared? Ya nevah know. But try harder, KW. You do have stories to tell. If people don’t care to hear them, that’s OKAY!

Oh, not from the cold/covid(?) virus. I never had any trouble catching my breath during that. My hacking, unproductive cough was alarming people although I knew I just had to wait it out. So by way of update, in the middle of the night last night, Little Cat Z (LCZ) crept quietly down the “stairs” (ladder) to use the water closet and I woke up. Of course I coughed, because that’s been one of my main activities the last few days. But. This time I realized that I was no longer trying to cough up a big cement block (at least that’s what it felt like). I’m not done with this thing yet but “things” were obviously moving more “fluidly” again.

My beach urchin returned to The Planet Ann Arbor today. Fastest trip ever, she said. That’s because every Michigander under the sun is walking the Mackinac Bridge tomorrow, which means it is closed to vehicular traffic until noon. Which is (one reason) why she left today.

I will miss her but. I dunno. I have been up here all summer. I’ve either been working remotely or have had guests. Even though no guests actually stayed here, we all gathered here for dinner and afterward every night. DO NOT GET ME WRONG! I LOVED THIS! But all summer, little chores and issues have been nagging me and I couldn’t quite get to them. Long-term moominkitchen reorganizations (minor ones, like where is that old yellow pot lid? Oh there, underneath a whole bunch of crapola). And my clothing has been in a huge shambling mound ALL SUMMER. Related to that, why the heck do I have FOUR tie-dyed t-shirts here? I can easily get to a laundromat and two would suffice. The answer to the last question is because when I packed to come up here, I more or less randomly threw a whole bunch of clothes into a bag.

Almost as soon as LCZ left today, I sort of EMERGED from my summer-long fog. I took care of my clothes (and made myself a list for future reference, i.e., only TWO tie-dyed t-shirts). I cleaned out several kitchen storage areas and found the missing pot lid. I organized laundry for tomorrow, including some filthy rugs and things LCZ dredged out when she voomed the bathroom. I am COUNTING on the Up North laundry being open on Labor Day but if it is not, I have some grocks to get too so a trip to town will not be in vain. I’ll figure out another laundry day or send the GG to the laundromat. Wonder if he’ll be able to work the washing musheen payment app. The proprietor sez women are better at catching on to it than men. I wonder why🐽

I’m thinking I could go on and on and on tonight but I’ll leave you with two thoughts. 1) I cooked bacon (ignore the grease, it wasn’t drained yet) using the Bacon Pliers. My little brother, a future mechanical engineer, named that utensil Bacon Pliers when he was about three. 2) THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Little Cat Z for everything you did, including but not limited to vooming the bathroom and taking care of me when I was sick but didn’t really know it yet😵‍💫

Tomorrow commences my last week here for the summer. Love y’all and cheers, KW.

I had big plans to take the recycle in by about Thursday. Unfortunately that didn’t happen due to illness. So I took it today. I had also planned to take a green bag up to the dump today and that *did* happen. And wouldn’t you know it, as I was driving out, a neighbor cousin came out of the Old Cabin with a green bag in tow. The more the merrier? I said, “put it in the back and I’ll take it up.” I think that was a welcome offer as those folks were going out to lunch in town, the opposite direction from the dump. We could’ve joined them but begged off due to coughing and sneezing and blowing our noses.

A beloved neighbor stopped by with some covid tests. Although we were very grateful, we haven’t used them. Since we aren’t that sick and can easily isolate from infecting others with whatever we have, there doesn’t seem to be much point. I’m not sure there’s any meaningful place to report covid cases with RFKjr at the “helm”.

I am HUGELY skeptical of the whole MAHA thing in general and not just because of the crackpot in charge. If you want to make Americans get healthy you have to make a sea change in how they conduct their lives. Just in terms of eating habits, that would mean cutting out at least half of the grocery store products available today and all of the fast food restaurants. Those things aren’t going to happen unless PEOPLE WANT THEM TO HAPPEN, which means they would have to stop buying that crapola. I don’t see that happening any time soon. And as someone else pointed out during our late-afternoon moominbeach conclave of kibbitz, if we got rid of fast food what would the orange baboon eat? Anyway, vaccine policy may need to be tweaked (what doesn’t?) but it is NOT at the crux of the issue and vaccines save many many lives. My parents, who watched as friends dropped dead of polio overnight, would be horrified. Yet here we are. I was tentative about expressing my views but I was reassured that I was preaching to the choir.

So we are slowly improving and coughing is my main symptom, which it ALWAYS is when I am kicking a respiratory virus to the curb. Onward and upward.

Last night my beach urchin was taking care of her baggy old moom even though she wasn’t at 100% either. She got me to lie down on the couch and got me water and I actually dozed off in the evening well before the sun went down. She got this pic (and one of me sleeping). Obviously this is the one I have posted.

Slept “late” again this morning (8 AM is late for me). Actually I stayed in bed as long as that because it was COLD this morning and I needed to run the propane heater for a bit before getting up. It’s supposed to be even colder tonight and I may have to sleep in socks so I don’t freeze my feet getting up to turn on the heater tomorrow morning.

The neighbor cousins saved us this morning by bringing over some of their blueberry muffins for breakfast. Then I logged on to work long enough to bag off for another day because why not and my beach urchin voomed the bathroom Little Cat Z style, which it NEEDED DESPERATELY. Although I am not the absolute worst cleaner on earth, I’ve never gotten the hang of voom. Of course if you voom the bathroom, you get the first shower.

Since we don’t know if we’ve had covid or not, we weren’t very social today. Are covid tests still around? I can only guess they are but obtaining one would mean a trip to town and neither of us wanted to go there although Lizard did venture to the park store for a few supplies to cobble something together for dinner.

And so goodnight, KW and Little Cat Z

I am always grumpy about Trump. Today I have a more pedestrian reason to be grumpy. It is a virus. I do not think it is covid but who knows. It is not a terrible illness but I am not used to being sick at this point so I am really grumpy.

I took most of today off (sick day) and plan on doing the same tomorrow. I have not taken a sick day since I had covid in January 2022. I was less sick with covid than I am with this thing.

And that is about all I have to say.

The Twinz of Terror, those jet/camper-setters, wung it today. The UU was scheduled to visit his son and grandchildren. His young grandson made a request. “Can the other one come too?” Get it? Look-alike grandpas🤪

They have had some interesting times being identical grandpas. Once, when another grandson was *very* young, the GG was carrying him around at a party. It was all good. He thought he was with his granddad. But then. His granddad walked up to them. Oops. How can my granddad be in *front* of me if he’s carrying me?

Anyway, “the other one” thought “Why not?” and I said, “Get outta here”, so he bought plane tickets for the same flight as his brother and off they went. They left me and Lizard Breath here at the moomincabin salt mines on a rainy, chilly day. My Indian and Floridian colleagues were not much help in keeping me warm here in the Great Green Wet Windy North. You can’t send heat through a teams meeting.🤪

And I’m wondering if I’ve been left with my first respiratory virus since covid. If so, it’s very mild so far, not much more coughing than I do on any other random day and cold weather makes my nose run so it’s been running a lot at the moomin this summer. IS it covid? I do not know. I do know that covid cases are up this summer. The GG apparently had only one day of feeling like crap so my fingers are crossed that I have missed whatever virus it is or it’ll be mild. Most viruses are milder for me than him, butchya nevah know. I feel really good overall but knock on wood.

Still deciding “virus or not” (and I am STILL deciding hours later), I drove into Sault Ste. Siberia to pick up lunch at Penny’s Kitchen for me and my Cabin Co-worker (beach urchin, different job than me to be clear). Pesto grill (veggie for her, turkey for me), and a cup of gumbo. I forgot to order a HALF sandwich but that’s okay. We have lunch for tomorrow too! Penny’s Kitchen is a fave of ours and we used to eat there ALL THE TIME when The Comm and Radical Betty were still around. It was a regular spot on their pod of little old ladies’ lunch circuit. Miss them when I go to Penny’s and see this decade’s little old lady pods🧡 So glad my pod died before covid because I’m thinking not being able to meet for lunch might’ve killed them quicker.

Our mother and daughter work days ended and after I got the zucchini parmesan assembled, I joined my beach urchin down on Bill’s Birch Point Beach Bank Bench for a Beach Hour. This is about the second day of a “three-day blow” but it was pretty warm down there wearing my blue polar fleece jacket.

The Round Island seagulls are gone (we think). Except for the young ones who (sadly) are not going to make it through the upcoming winter season. That means sick or injured youngsters along with some of those incorrigible teenagers who stubbornly refuse to listen to their parents. It’s possible that *some* of those will survive???

We did see a bunch of graceful birds that we *think* are Caspian terns. That’s our best guess. And soaring high over the beach was a boiled iggle. One of my younger cousins (but not that much younger) called bald eagles “boiled iggles” as a very young child. I’m sure us slightly older cousins teased her unmercifully about that. We were older and knew so much more. Not. All these years later I still remember that and, having raised young children myself, I think it is a WONDERFUL interpretation of “bald eagle”.

We eventually came up to the moomincabin to get our (late) dinner going and the radio is talk around here in the evening. I prefer music in the evening. My beach urchin didn’t want talk radio either so she put Paul Winter’s Common Ground on the pod. When she was a very young child, we used to play a tape of that almost every night at the moomin as we were getting dinner ready. Our good buddy Master Woodring gave it to us. I think it has whale song in it. I had been thinking about that just before she played it.