Random bits of my so-called life.

Big P.S. to yesterday’s rant. As my blahggy friends Margaret and Tonya have reminded me in the comments, there are plenty of people who ARE EMPLOYED and still need SNAP, etc. to make ends meet.

In my first post-college job, I was terribly underpaid. It was a tech job and I had NO EXPERIENCE with computers. I had been a flute major. One of my main tasks at that job was to pull people’s printouts off a Data 100 printer, separate them, and put them into cubbies to pass out to people through the “Operations window”. I went to college for this? It’s okay. I took to computer work and parlayed that inauspicious start into a pretty good career overall. But not everyone has that kind of opportunity.

I get that entry level salaries should be less than what more experienced employees get paid. But why can’t we pay all employed people a LIVING WAGE? Mine was not exactly a living wage. And no, that’s not socialism. It’s Corporate America (and billionaires) valuing their employees enough to pay them enough to afford decent housing and food so they don’t have to apply for goverment aid. I could barely manage on the ridiculous salary I was being paid ($8,000). I probably didn’t qualify for food stamps (and was too proud to apply for them). But I had some bootstraps in the form of parents who could and would have helped me if I’d needed help.

But what educated adult wants to ask their parents for financial help? And I didn’t ask although there were little ways they did help. It was a common practice in my nuclear family that the older (richer) generation paid for restaurant meals. When we were up at the moominbeach, The Commander paid for groceries if we were shopping together. I paid them for them if I was alone with the beach urchins in tow. We kept that up until the last few years of The Comm’s life and at that point, everything flipped and I paid for restaurants and groceries. Not because she couldn’t afford to. Just because it was time for me to step in. I carry those financial traditions on with my own adult children.

Oh, yeah, my parents did buy me a car once. A new 1979 Ford Fiesta. 4-speed manual tranny. $5,000. That humble car was a bootstrap a lot of people don’t have.

I probably can’t write about food stamps/SNAP coherently because I am not all that familiar with the program except for the snippets I hear on the radio. But I’ma gonna try. If nothing else, I gotta get this crapola outta my head.

I was horrified about a lot of the stuff that happened in Trump 1.0. There is so much more that horrifies me about Trump 2.0. Slash and burn and fix the mistakes later. Or not.

The Big Beautiful Bill and ensuing government shutdown are HURTING PEOPLE. They aren’t hurting billionaires. They aren’t even hurting people like meeee and the GG, who are certainly not ultra-wealthy but after years and years of hard work and carefully saving money, and some built-in “bootstraps”, we are pretty darn okay.

I get that the SNAP program that expired today(?) is probably going to be funded thanks to a couple of judges who called out Trump’s bullshit. (I THINK I have that right.)

Okay. I get that people don’t want government assistance programs to be misused. People should be working for a living, not taking food stamps, I agree with that. There are probably a few “welfare queens” sitting around watching TV but I think that’s a very small percentage of the people who are receiving government aid.

More often than not, I think people who are receiving aid want to work but are not able to jump through the hoops required to find and KEEP a job. What hoops? Let me count the ways. Caregiving responsibilities. Children, parents, disabled relatives. Lack of access to things like toilets and showers and presentable clothing. Transportation. Access to the internet! I could go on and on.

Trump and his sycophants have no clue about what poor peoples’ lives are about. How could a billionaire know? If I was a billionaire, I would be a philanthropist. I *am* a philanthropist, just at a small-time level.

A number of years ago, I was at the Plum Market, in line behind a young man who was trying to pay for food ($25 or so) with an out-of-state food card. It wasn’t working. I snuck in behind him and swiped my credit card. I’m not bragging about that wee bit of philanthropy. Just that we have to take care of our fellow citizens when our government goes awry and refuses to fund programs for our most vulnerable citizens.

We had THREE trick or treat customers tonight. I loved the trick or treaters we had, I just wanted to have more.

I put a whole bunch of the leftover candy info a paper Plum Market bag and put it out at the end of the driveway so anyone who wanted to could take some candy. The GG was not crazy about that strategy so the bag is still outside but it isn’t out at the end of the driveway.

Our first and most favorite trick or treaters were the across the street neighbors’ daughter, son-in-law and 9-month grandson. Wouldn’t you know they are already expecting their second child. More is better as the GG would say, being one of 10 siblings and an ID twin.

P.S. The three characters in the pic were NOT the trick-or-treaters.

When I was a child, we lived in a shabby little bungalow on Superior Street (in Sault Ste. Siberia). We lived across the street from the back of Lincoln School. I “red-queened” over to school every morning in kindergarten and first grade. After that, I didn’t really “red-queen” any more. It might’ve stopped being “cool”. Re-read Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass if you want to know what red-queening means. Or just google it.

We had a modern electric stove in our shabby little bungalow and I’m not sure I’m remembering this accurately but I think there was a light that told you a burner or the oven was still on? I’m not sure. Its label was “Units”. I mean, as a user experience designer, I think that’s a terrible label but even though I didn’t really understand what “Units” meant as a kid, I knew enough to tell The Commander when “Units” was on so she could make sure the stove was totally turned off. “Mom! Units is on!”.

In The Landfill today, among many of the things the GG did was try to figger out how to sign up for an internet service. He kept throwing out figures like $1,000 or $39 or $11.49. Okay. The business systems analyst persona that defines my career of the last 18 years was screaming, “What are the units”? Is it per year or month or day? If it’s $1,000, I hope it is not per day.”

So the GG is still fussing around with this and I dunno what the outcome will be. Hopefully he will do some research and critical thinking before signing up to pay anyone anything.

When The Commander was around 87-88, she decided she wanted an iPhone. So we helped her buy one. We made sure that her phone would NOT roam to Canananada since she lived a hop, skip, and a jump from there.

She had one demand. “I want BIRD!” She meant iBird, which our lifelong friend Barb Mullin had on HER new iPhone. To clarify “lifelong”, Barb was a lifelong friend of MINE. The Commander and Barb did not meet until they were young married women in Sault Ste. Siberia and Barb and her husband bought property down the beach from us from Doc Read. Long story but they were wonderful friends and neighbors and I grew up with the Mullin kids (adopted fratenal twins, girl and boy). I ran with them and my cousins back and forth up and down the beach or along the paths in the woods.

When my cat Twinkle had her second litter of kittens and first-born Butterball/scotch arrived, I ran like hell down the woods paths to collect the Mullen kids to come and watch the rest of the kittens (five in all) be born. This event was pre-arranged and I had to run the paths because we had no phone at the moomincabin in those days.

I got off on a tangent although Barb is a good tangent. The photoooo is of The Commander and the Uncly Uncle, my husband’s ID twin using their iPhones on the moomindeck. I don’t think they were interacting with each other on their phones. The Commander and I used to text all the time. Late in her life it was often easier than talking on the phone. It wasn’t dementia, just a processing difficulty. But I missed the old days when I would occasionally talk for an hour to the Birch Point Telegraph (my brother’s sometimes name for her).

My point in posting this photo and writing this entry is to illustrate how much The Twinz of Terror cared for my mother in her later years. When she turned 90, I wasn’t easily able to get to the yooperland to celebrate her birthday with her. The Twinz of Terror were going up there anyway and they filled in for me. They took her out to a wonderful dinner at “the hotel”. Dining at “the hotel” has been spotty for a long time. Food and service can vary. The night the twinz took my mother out, everything was wonderful. She told me something like, “those boys (boys?), they throw money around like nothing”. Well really. I knew they weren’t spending anything more than they could afford without decimating their childrens’ inheritance.

In the end, the point is I married the right guy. He and sometimes his brother helped me take care of my mother.

So the plan was to tow the Lyme Lounge over to the planetory sector of porterization. We would back up the Lyme Lounge into their driveway and have a bit of a happy hour.

That was the idea, but we didn’t do it. When the GG proposed this idea to the Porters, the reply was that it would be great but one of them was suffering from a cold. Whenever I say “cold virus”, in the back of my mind is “covid.” I’m not really worried about getting covid (again) at this point but if covid has taught me anything, it that when I get an aerosolized virus (like the common cold (or covid)), I need to keep myself away from other people. Or at least mask and I have tons of N95 masks around.

I used to travel hither and yon with horrible cold symptoms. I felt good even when I was hacking up a lung. You go girl. But how many vulnerable people did I infect? I have had covid once for sure and possibly a second time in the late summer. But I didn’t test. I just stuck it out with Little Cat Z (who also had whatever it was I had).

Covid WAS extremely scary in the beginning. I think people forget that. People were dying. I have heard stories from my parents about polio. Covid was different but (like polio) it was random about who died. As with polio we didn’t know the virus’s rules and a lot of people did die. Heck, we still don’t really know Covid’s rules.

We are not really pet people. I am a one-dog woman (even on a three dog night) and that was my childhood dog Tigger. We got her when I was five mainly to get me over my fear of dogs (she definitely did) and I said goodbye to her as I was leaving for my college sophomore year.

We love animals but I know much work pets are and and I spent a lot of my adult life helping take care of my brother’s increasing number of dogs. To be fair, I loved them and I didn’t have to care for them all that often but I decided it was better not to have pets. I think know the GG agreed with me.

Well, we ended up having umpteen bazillion guppies, five anole lizards, Izzy the rat and this little Piggie. Who was originally named Dina until we figured out it was male. I think we were outta names by then so Piglet was it.

This cute little guinea pig got along with me and the female beach urchins just fine. One time when I had been up in the yooperland, I arrived back at the Landfill. Piglet waited for me to talk to the GG and the beach urchins. When I was done with that, I squeaked, “Hello Piggie!” Reep reep reep reep.

He was a bit more concerned about the GG but the GG eventually whispered him into a good relationship such that Piglet snuggled into the GG’s black sweater. He approached trick-or-treaters with Piglet and little kids were entranced by him.

A potato decision. We had FinFam Steak Dinner tonight and I wasn’t sure what kind of potatoes to serve. Should we roast the cute little mini potatoes or mash the big russets. It turned out that we mashed the big russets. All but one. I had overbought a bit so we’ll use the fifth one some other day. And the minis. Potatoes keep a long time.

Also on the menu were rib-eye steaks that were purchased from Best Choice last spring and have been frozen ever since. The problem was that four were purchased and packaged together and we haven’t had an occasion since where that amount of meat fit the number of guests. Also caramelized onions and mushrooms, garlic bread, and salad. Smoked salmon and appetizer friends and lovely Russian candy rounded it all out.

All in all, it was a beautiful day and only a bit chilly so we sat around a faaaar in the backyard until it was time to actually eat. And that is about all. I mean, I’m sure y’all don’t want to know about doing the damn TAXES. In October, roight?

Another photoooo from my mouse at her Pigeon River camping site. (Last night. She’s home now and works tomorrow.)

As I write this, the Michigan/Michigan State football game just kicked off and it is on TV. College football games have been on TV since the early afternoon. I am okay with that. As I have said many times, I don’t give a crap about football or other team games but I love the ambience of football in the fall.

I think the first football game I went to was with my dad and granddaddy. I was in sixth grade and my cousin Mac was a ninth grader and on the team so we went to watch him play. It was really exciting sitting up in the bleachers and I’m sure they bought me pop and popcorn or whatever. I don’t remember that and I don’t remember anything about the game but except my dad yelling out, “Come on Soo! Buckle down!” I was amazed. Just to say, my dad did NOT play football in high school (or any time). He was a cross-country runner. His older brother (Mac’s dad) played football.

The next year I was in junior high and began my marching career in the high school band (long boring story about why I was in the high school band). Fast forward a bit more. I was a high school senior and my brother was a freshman. My parents took a two-week bank trip to Hawaii and my brother and I stayed with Don and Katie (our aunt and uncle).

I had one of my parents’ cars and was responsible for driving my brother (and me) to school every day. It was fall so most mornings that meant marching band practice at the football field. One morning we got there and the bleachers et al had been vandalized with all kinds of paper crapola hanging everywhere. Alas, I knew who had done it. It was my boyfriend and his buddy “Foot”. Foot had organized it. My little brother was absolutely gobsmacked. I can still remember him laughing his head off and yelling, “Foot was here! Foot was here!” I don’t think Foot and my boyfriend got in any kind of trouble. My boyfriend was well known for being very responsible. He was a college accounting student at the time and had a good job. Foot went on to join the army and rose to a high rank, I know not what. Of course, it’s also possible that they didn’t get CAUGHT!

I loved staying with Don and Katie for those two weeks. Their four children were all born before I was and they gave me a lot more leeway than my parents did. My parents were wonderful but I was their first (after *11* years of trying) and were, I dunno, somewhat stricter than Don and Katie who seemed to trust me to drive around town and go out with my boyfriend until all hours of the night. And they were right to do that because I was definitely pretty responsible.

Yep. Forgot to hit Publish last night.

Not much to say today. Very quiet in general. Nothing going on at work, at least not that I had anything to do with. All dev stuff. My Replacement didn’t need anything or at least didn’t ping me about anything so maybe they were beating through it on their own. I love that My Replacement likes to do that. Also that they ask if they don’t understand some bit of idiomatic jargon. I have been there 18 years and I still do not understand all of the idiomatic jargon.

It is a strange autumn with not a whole lot of brilliant color, at least not on The Planet Ann Arbor. Mouse and the racc are up north. They stayed at the Hoton Lake Group Home for a couple nights, where they eventually found the teakettle. In a jointly owned cabin things get moved around. Not so much at the moomincabin because the owners are few and not there frequently and we close it for the winter. Well, except *I* was there for two months last summer but I keep things *mostly* in the same places The Commander did. Not that we don’t ever “lose” things but it’s a small place and we eventually find them. The Hoton Lake cabin/cottage is a modern house with modern utilities and stays open year round. A lot of people visit frequently throughout the year and stuff gets moved around.

Anyway, mouse and the racc hiked locally (Mason Tract) while they were staying at Hoton Lake and are now camping. Quite a bit more color at their camping site.

And that’s about the end of my boring bunch of blather for today. We porterized ourselves at Dexter’s Pub tonight and I won’t talk too much about the political stuff I didn’t really want to talk about but did. I could talk about many things but all I will say is that demolishing a whole wing of the White House does not in any way shape or form compare to converting a tennis court to a basketball court. Nope. I don’t think big demolition equipment was needed for that. Somebody stop him!

P.S. Trying out “My Replacement” instead of “new co-worker”. I hope he will *be* my replacement when I ride off into the sunset in the not too distant future. I have not pulled the plug yet so best wishes are not yet in order. I still have some work to do.

In the middle of a virtual maelstrom of messages this morning, work and family, email, facebook messages, work I/M, and text, I managed to text my work “team” that I would be AWOL in the middle of the day. Why? We took Little Cat Z (our daughter) out to lunch. Where? Casey’s Tavern. Why? It is her birthday. The message maelstrom was FUN! I am not complaining.

We’re at the point in our lives (all our lives) that we don’t do big birthday bashes with cake and candles and Japanese lanterns and a bazillion packages to open. We’re gonna do the usual FinFam steak dinner faaaar in the backyard kind of party on the weekend when mouse and the racc are home from camping. I asked the bday gal if she wanted to do dinner with us today. She is adjusting to EDT (and life) after a week in San Francisco and really wanted to have a quiet evening. Which was A-okay with me! But then. She rallied a bit and said, “How ’bout lunch?” Yes yes yes.

I like to post this pic on her birthday (and sometimes other days). We are walking out into Lake Superior. Little Cat Z is holding tight to ONE of the bikini clad woman’s fingers aka her mother aka MEEEEE. She seems to think that one finger keeps her safe and actually she is right for reasons I can’t articulate. The two women ahead of us are Radical Betty and The Commander, good friends since they met in college and how my mom and dad met but that’d be a story for another day. The bikini woman hasn’t worn a bikini or tanned herself into that dark color for many years.

But happy birthday to Little Cat Z. How the heck did we raise her into the beautiful, capable woman she is? To quote my dad responding to compliments (not necessarily deserved) from co-workers at my childhood EPA job, “We didn’t raise her. She raised herself.” Indeed.

What a stupid mistake. I corrected yesterday’s entry but I neeeeed to call attention to it. We owned that jeep for *17* years, not 7. There is only one vee-hickle that we ever got rid of at seven years and that was our 1985 VW Jetta. It was a really nice car for a while but in the end it began $50 and $100 dollaring us to death, as my auto engineer brother once said about HIS VW Scirocco.

Of course he replaced vee-hickles left and right. He was on the General Motors (GM) discount. I guess apparently *I* could actually use his GM discount but I went sour on American-made cars a pretty long time ago Long complicated story but when I switched to Japanese cars it was on my GM engineer brother’s advice. It was a good switch.

My brother was always trading cars in for new ones. One time I was at the moomincabin and I was checking email. It was back in the days of dial-up internet and my messages were taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to load. When they did, a message with the subject “Twuk” popped up from my brother, with a picture of a white pickup truck that he had just bought. I showed it to The Commander and she kind of gasped! He bought that? Yes, moom. This wasn’t a replacement vee-hickle, he had added it to the fleet. He bought it because it was languishing on some dealer’s lot and he felt sorry for it.

Alas, he didn’t get to enjoy Twuk for very long because he died less than a year later. As my sister-in-law and I were walking to our cars after that event, she turned to me and asked, “Wanna buy a Twuk?” Well, sorry, but no thanks. That was in the years when we had three or four cars if you counted the kids’ cars, NO GARAGE, and not a terribly long driveway. And I didn’t really want a pickup truck, not even a relatively small one, if I remember Twuk accurately. To tell the truth, I felt a bit sorry for Twuk too but our fleet just couldn’t absorb him.

We usually drive our cars for over 10 years. I would be happy to drive them until they fell apart (like the jeep more or less did at 17 years) but I don’t like the idea of them falling apart when I am traveling solo on a long freeway trip. We sold my beloved Ninja when she was 13. She was still beautiful (we’d had her re-painted a few years earlier) and ran like a top but I figured that sooner or later her time of reliability would be over. We sold her in ONE HOUR! The GG listed her on Craigs list and within seconds after she was posted, somebody called. He came over with his son (the intended driver). They test drove her and off she went. We picked up Cygnus the next day.

That’s yer fav-o-rite witch blahgger in the pic. Her broom is on the left and there is a hedgehog on the right. Which isn’t really a Halloween aminal but yesterday morning I turned on the porch light and there was a ‘possum on the porch! I could not get a pic but this kinda looks like the possum.

We bought this loverly vee-hickle in 2002 1992? I think? We bought it from a dealer in megalopolis (greater Detroit Metro off Telegraph Road) and it seemed to take an age to complete the transaction. I drove the the child with the ear infection home in the Exxon Tanker Valdez (our first of two Chrysler minivans). Little Cat Z rode in the new as yet to be named jeep with the GG.

I quickly learned to love the jeep — a basic Wrangler with five speeds and NO air-conditioning. We had some hot and windy rides in that car, kinda like when I was a kid and we didn’t own a car with A/C until dad bought the “banker green” Buick around the time he became bank president. My brother and I used to joke about that car. We were so young then. No partners yet and no kids. And he has been dead for more years than I am strong enough to count.

The GG had been hankering for a bare bones Jeep Wrangler for a while and I finally gave in. I took to it immediately and the first time I picked up mouse at nursery school in it, Teacher Annie was doing curb duty and she marveled at my new vee-hickle. I told her it wasn’t a car, it was a mid-life crisis. We were in our 30s then.

The GG’s brother Don (long dead, alas) decided we needed to name the jeep “The Indefatigable”. I was skeptical but that name stuck and wouldn’t you know, we drove the damn thing for 17 years. It taught our kids to drive on the two-track forest roads of the yooperland as well as many of their cousins and some friends. And they learned how to drive “stick” no less.

I can certainly drive “stick” although I don’t own a car with a manual transmission any more. I wonder if I will transition into the EV age. We’ll see. I’m an old dog but I can learn new tricks.

I had a vague inkling that a comet was passing by our solar system but I didn’t really have the details so I was surprised when the GG asked if I wanted to go out and try to catch a look out on Joy Road. Well. I know from my experience with Halley’s Comet that it can be difficult to see comets without a telescope. And it wasn’t dark yet and I had leftovers in the ohh-ven, etc. So I scooted him off with the promise of dinner and a freezer ‘hattan when he returned.

Okay, so we did see Halley’s Comet back in 1986. We took a trip to Florida that March. We drove our 1985 VW Jetta (5-speed manual) and we had us, Little Cat Z (18 months old), and The Beautiful Susie (one of the GG’s little sisters) with us. Susie LOVED Little Cat Z (and all of her many nieces and nephews) and she and LCZ totally bonded on that trip. Suzie taught her how to say alligator (“erderator” was LCZ’s rendition). Susie was a special friend of mine too and I miss her.

When we left The Planet Ann Arbor for that trip, our Jetta was topped by a hard crust of ice/snow. I don’t think it melted until we got past O-haaa-o. After our first night in a motel, Little Cat Z freaked out when we were packing the car the next morning and made extra sure she was outside the room and next to the car. I DO NOT WANT TO BE LEFT HERE ALONE was the vibe. I held her and looked into her eyes and explained that we would NEVER leave her in a motel and I don’t think we ever had that issue again. Small children are a lot smarter than everyone thinks they are.

So we were in the GG’s parents’ Florida condo and we had a great time. Because of Halley’s Comet, the GG spent many early mornings (like 5:00 AM) driving a half hour into the interior of Florida with his telescope to observe Halley’s Comet. He would arrive back in Bradenton just about when LCZ was waking up, which was still way early and we would take her out somewhere for scrambled eggs and friends.

The pics are from Coquina Beach. In the first pic, LCZ is pointing at a seagull. In the second you can see the seagull.

So for a while now, every time I drive, my left peripheral vision occasionally tells me there is a Bichon Frise (or other little white dog) on a collision course with Cygnus. When I turn my head enough to actually LOOK at the “dog”, it is obviously a little dollop of dried bird poop on the driver’s side window. This afternoon we were driving around pulling Halloween pranks and I noticed that the “dog” has mostly disintegrated, probably from the heavy rain we had overnight. It was a warm night and we slept in the Lyme Lounge so we could hear the rain on the roof. And yes, I could’ve cleaned the bird shit off but I kept forgetting to💩

The first thing I managed to do this morning was to knock a full glass of water (a BIG one) off my couch table. Bad things about this? It was stoopid and it happened just at the GG came into the house from the Lyme Lounge so he witnessed my clumsiness. Good things about this? 1) It was just water. 2) There was no open laptop on the table at the time (or any laptop). 3) It was a plastic glass so nothing broke. But still, off to a good start KW.

Two grock trips today. The GG to Kroger (where I don’t really shop any more) and meeeee to Plum where I do shop (a lot) and I knew my mouse would be there. Then, after Halloween pranks, an afternoon of food prep and reading (me) and feetsball and blowgunning (the GG).

The pic features Dr. Frankenstein power-carving a pumpkin in preparation for our Halloween pranks.

Finally. It was mid-morning when I first heard of the Trump shit-bomb AI generated video. I actually googled a BIT but couldn’t find a source I felt I could trust. A facebook friend that I DO trust shared it so I eventually saw it. I dunno. People keep asking me various versions of why don’t I support him or what is he doing that is “bad” (for lack of a better word). Um. First. Lemme count the ways. Insurrection instigation. Chainsawing federal employees who are dedicated to their jobs without having a CLUE to what they DO. All of his immigration “policies”, too many to enumerate. But really. Dumping shit (AI generated or not) from from a fighter jet (or whatever it was) on peaceful protesters? Who created this? Some junior high kid? Or the president of the United States? It isn’t funny and I don’t know why y’all voted for him.

Hahaha. I started out with shit (bird) and I ended with shit (Trump).

I didn’t attend a protest today. Oh, it isn’t because I don’t agree with the No Kings movement. Not at all. If you know me in real life or ever read this boring blahg of blather, you know what a low opinion I have of Trump and his Sycophants of Stupidity.

I finished a memoir today by Beth Macy (Paper Girl), who grew up poor in rural Ohio (not far from JD Vance’s hometown). She clawed her way into COLLEGE and out of poverty and became a journalist. When her mom and other relatives needed help in later life (no college and still mostly poor), she began to travel back and forth to help them and ended up writing a book about the whole “project” (her word). The “project” meaning what had happened to her home town in the years she had left and how poverty (and drugs and lack of educational support and lots of other stuff) had changed her childhood community. It’s a complicated story. She is 10 years younger than I am but her eldest sibling contracted polio before the vaccine was available and has lifelong disabilities because of it. That means her sister is around my age. Yikes.

I did not get polio although I knew kids my age who survived it with disabilities. My parents (RIP) and I thank whatever gods there are who believed in scientific research enough to create a polio vaccine. And I thank those same gods that my parents believed in vaccines.

I didn’t go to a protest today. I am not really a protester. I didn’t have a sign. I loved the photos posted by my friends here on the Planet Ann Arbor and those in Sault Ste. Siberia. I live in a BLUE bubble but Sault Ste. Siberia (where our cabin is) is a RED area but there are definitely anti-fascists there. Some of the folks who protested I wasn’t surprised about. Others I was. Happily. A lot of us live in divided families. It’s hard.

I did not wear a witch’s hat but I was in simpatico with all the gals who joined the Dexter Witches Night Out festivities. By the time I walked out of the pub and took this pic, the festivities were basically over (although some of them may have continued at the pub) and taaaared but happy looking women were walking along the sidewalk with witch hats in their hands and toting bags of clothing or props or whatever.

We porterized ourselves at Dexter’s Pub tonight. We haven’t been there much since last spring and I laughed when our waitress recognized the Porters immediately. It had taken a split second for her to recognize the GG and me. Having spent my childhood as the child of a prominent small-town family and a wannabe wild child, I like to be a bit incognito in general so this made me happy

“Remember who you are and act accordingly” was what Moi Mama would often tell me. And just about had a hissy when I wanted to wear jeans to stay at the “fancy” Book Cadillac Hotel in DayTwa. There was some kind of bank meeting that I have very few memories about. I probably wasn’t even at the bank meeting. Mom probably took me and my brother shopping at the downtown Hudson department store where she had worked her first job out of college. My branch of the prominent family was not rich in any way shape or form but I always managed to come out of Hudson’s with a couple of new and stylish outfits. (Thank you mom.)

I appreciate modern hotel room amenities nowadays but that hotel room was NOT memorable. I would’ve rather have stayed with my Detroit grandparents in their quirky art deco house on Mark Twain. Breakfast nook? A basement display of artifacts and pictures from their wedding trip “around the world” that I never tired of? Yes. My grandparents were married a year or so before I was born. My bio grandma Emily died in a car crash when mom was 15. Bolette did not have any children of her own but was a wonderful grandma to me.

Back to the 21st century, what we were a bit unprepared for was how crowded Dexter was tonight. I had an inkling that a warm fall evening and uMich football game tomorrow might bring a lot of people out EVERYWHERE but I had no clue about the witch event. But we know enough to reserve a booth at the pub and it all worked out.

Cackle cackle cackle and g’night🧙‍♀️

A chicken coop (at the mouse/racc house) that doesn’t get used. It isn’t my business why but probably lots of reasons. Bird flu being one (a couple years ago) but also just general maintenance issues.

My mouse lives outside the Planet Ann Arbor city limits so she can have as many chickens as she wants, including roosters. For a while, we had a neighbor who had chickens and there was a rooster. I loved hearing him cock-a-doodle-doo early in the morning but others did not and someone (Luke of Perry Net) turned him in. Make no mistake. I love Luke. He is a new granddaddy and is gleefully scouting all over the place for toys for his grandson. A great guy but I do miss the rooster.

The GG spent umpteen bazillion hours today trying to get our webcams working, here and at Hoton Lake. For complicated reasons I was involved in the whole thing even though I didn’t wanna be, especially since I was involved in stuff at work today that made big whooshing sounds over my head, They always say BAs (business analysts) are not supposed to be involved in “technical stuff” but somehow we are still asked to deal with that stuff.

The GG had another zoom meeting with North Country Trail folks tonight, this one with an Ohio chapter. I don’t know those folks as well as our home chapter, the Hiawatha Shore to Shore up in my homeland, I don’t join these meetings but I love listening to them from the kitchen. The cultural differences are fascinating. The person who was running tonight’s meeting had a “midwest twang” that another person couldn’t understand. I could understand it but then I talk to “Indiuh” every day, So. Everyone is passionate about the North Country Trail and that’s the important thing.

Tonight the GG is zoom meeting with North Country Trail folks.

The first time he did a zoom call was in March 2020. You know when that was. I had just become a permanent telecommuter. I still am. My company has recently instituted RTO (return to office) policies but it doesn’t affect meeeee. There isn’t an office within 45 miles of me (any more) and in any case, I would just retaaaar if they really tried to make me drive in to an office. At the time I hired into this job, I didn’t think I would ever have a job again, And then I ended up with this one. 18 years. Jeebus.

So the first North Country Trail hike we took was in the yooperland when the beach urchins were teenagers. They stayed back at the moomincabin with their grandparents. We hiked from M28 to Naomikong. It was a long walk and we got lost a couple times because at that time the trail was not terribly well marked.

A few years after that, the GG went to meet up with a bunch of folks that were trying to start up a sorta formal North Country Trail chapter. If I get it right, none of them knew each other and nobody knew exactly what they needed to do. Fast forward a bunch of years and the Hiawatha Shore-to-Shore portion of the trail is very well maintained. No way to get lost any more and there are all kinds of folks who maintain the trails and a few certified chain sawyers who take care of downed trees. The GG is one of the certified sawyers.

I was asked today if there was anything positive I could say about Trump. (‘scuse me while I blow the dead MOE-skee-TOE off my laptop screen.)

Um, nope. I think the same thing about him as I did when he ran for president the first time and when he was a “reality TV star” [snort]. Anything Trump does, he does for HIMSELF. He does not care about anyone else, including (I think) many members of his own family. When he says he’s gonna do things like end wars “on the first day” or whatever, he’s lying. He did not do that and could not have done that. We’ll see how long the Gaza ceasefire lasts. And whatever it was he said, late in his campaign, about how wonderful he was gonna be for women? That so pissed me off. He is not wonderful for women, from the reversal of Roe v. Wade to all of the chainsaw cuts he has made to lifelines for poor single mothers to obtain food and health care for their families. This doesn’t apply only to women BTW. It applies to all people who are struggling to raise families without decent jobs or other forms of support and often mental health issues, etc. And don’t forget, many people do not have any bootstraps to pull themselves up with.

I kinda hate memes but one of the memes that resonated with me today is the one that says something like “There are two types of Trump supporters: billionaires and idiots. Check your bank balance to figure out which one you are.” My bank balance is fine but I ain’t no billionaire by a long shot. Why are all of us little people, i.e., not billionaires, voting for him. Well. Not me. I cannot stand him, I don’t think he gives a flyin’ f*ck about me and the middle class that I belong to, and I didn’t vote for him in any of the last three elections. Flim flam man. That is all. Well, except insurrectionist. And yes he WAS an insurrectionist.

Sorry about the rant. Some days are easier than others.