Random bits of my so-called life.

I was MORTIFIED this morning when I returned from a bacon run to Meijer to find that I was 13 minutes late for a meeting. How do I ‘splain this? I ‘fessed up that it was a bacon run.

When Lizard Breath arrived here on Saturday, she asked if we had bacon. Well, oops, no. I had thought about it but for some confuddled reason or another, I didn’t buy it. Bacon used to be a staple at the moomincabin when the beach urchins were young and we made some most mornings. We don’t eat as much of it as we used to but it is nice to have some around the moomin. So I was caught out doing a “sinful” errand. As it turned out, I was able to significantly contribute to the meeting *anyway* and it was also recorded, always a good thing when people are MIA or even if they are not.

When my original boss, the LSCHP, hired me, he provided the rules for meetings. Meetings happened between 10AM and noon and 2-4PM. Other times sometimes happen. 9AM happens occasionally. 1PM happens occasionally. Meetings *can* but usually don’t last until 5 PM. Noon is verboten because the LSCHP went out to lunch a lot. He was a really good boss and I still channel him but Amazon Woman is also fantabulous. And we still pretty much follow his meeting rules among other things.

So 9AM meetings are rare, especially on Mondays and I totally missed that this one was scheduled. It was all right and everyone laughed about the bacon run.

These bearded and John Bolton mustachioed guys returned from their trip to North Dakota today. One of them brought a friend with him in the form of a cold-type virus. I hope it’s not covid but whatever it is, I am keeping him at arms length. Fortunately he is sleeping in the Lyme Lounge and I am sleeping in the moomincabin. TMI or not, I kinda miss sleeping with another human but I do not wanna get sick.

I pulled down a baking dish to heat up last night’s leftovers for dinner. There was a spider in it. It was alive and energetically crawling around. If The Commander had been here, she prob’ly would’ve grabbed a paper towel and dispatched it PDQ. She had a pretty serious phobia about spiders despite the fact that we only have a couple of dangerous spiders in the Great Lake State and they are rarely seen. I don’t think this spider was dangerous but I dumped it out onto the floor. Lizard Breath, always vigilant about cleanliness (which is good), asked if I was gonna wash the baking dish. Yes. I was. And I did.

Lizard Breath and I drove up to Whitefish Point today. She drove Cygnus X-1 and I looked out the window. After Whitefish Point, we had lunch at the Wheelhouse Diner and Goatlocker Saloon in Paradise. It was wonderful. I had a veggie wrap with pepperjack cheese, black beans, corn, tomatoes, and I dunno what else. I took half of it home but I’m not gonna look up the ingredients now.

Paradise has come a long way since I was a kid and even since my kids were kids. Mainly that means you can get an “upscale” kind of meal instead of a hamburger or whatever, although I certainly could’ve gotten a hamburger today. When I was a kid and we trekked up to the Paradise area (Tahquemenon Falls and Whitefish Point are in the area), we took PBJ sandwiches. We even did that when our kids were kids.

I have never been to the Goat Locker (which is four years old), but Liz and the Twinz of Terror traveled to Paradise last winter and they ate at the Goat Locker *twice* and The Inn once. The Inn sounded familiar to me and I kept asking if it was the gastropub. Because I have eaten at a gastropub in Paradise but it was before COVID and I wondered if that place had survived. In the end, GooMaps told me that it *had* survived and it was called The Inn. It was a good place but we chose the Goat Locker because I hadn’t been there before. It was a good choice although I will be back to The Inn too.

As ecstatic as I am about the relative plethora of restaurant choices in the Paradise area (and the cell service, which has expanded its range significantly), I am less than pleased about the burgeoning number of new dwellings being built along the road up to Whitefish Point. Not to mention that the road is lined with real estate signs. I wish the best for the people who are hot for Lake Superior shoreline property without the rustic conditions the first three American generations of my family dealt with. Outhouses, cold water running through garden hoses (or up from the lake). I get that. We aren’t quite as rustic as we were when I was a child. Hello fiber optic internet and telecommuting. I just hope we aren’t building a new megalopolis along Whitefish Bay.

We really NEVER see moose here at the moominbeach but the Paradise area gets a lot of them. I dunno where this moosehead came from.

Thunderstorms overnight. Two or three? I’m not sure. Definitely one before I crashed out, then one or two in the wee hours. Were they severe storms? They were occasionally loud but I don’t think so.

I had chores and errands up the wazoo this morning but it was pretty darn gorgeous this morning (and warm) so I sat on the deck for a while, organizing my grock list, a relatively meager one, and just soaking up an end of summer morning.

Laundry, grocks (a few), recycle, back out to the moomincabin to pick up my stinky fruit fly attracting green garbage bag and then the dump.

I never know what I’ll encounter at the laundromat. Sometimes weirdness, sometimes not. Today was weirdness. Oh, not the dangereuse kind. Three young turks (early 20s) were in there in MY corner of the laundromat. They might’ve freaked somebody else out. A reeeeallly tall kid with an “I voted for the Felon” t-shirt. A shorter guy with red pajama pants plastered with Betty Boop images.

If I didn’t know that laundromat pretty well, I mightta been freaked out? But I do know the laundromat and the owner was there and the usual bunch of senior citizen couples arguing (or not) loudly (or not) with their spouses. Today it was loudly but we won’t go there.

So I was waiting patiently (really) for the guys to figure out how the dryers worked and after a few minutes felon voter noticed me standing there with my laundry cart and VERY gallantly apologized for himself and his friends and shooed them off. I put my stuff in the dryers… 10 minutes later, I nipped in to pull a skirt out of one of the dryers. I was putting the skirt into Cygnus X-1 when Betty Boop came out of the laundromat. “Miss? This fell out of your dryer.” Oh, it was a Smartwool sock that must’ve gotten stuck to my skirt.

Much later in the day after chores and visits with beloved cousins, Lizard Breath arrived. When I told her my laundromat story, she asked if the dropped item was underwear. Ouch, no, not this time. I’m guessing if it had been underwear, Betty Boop wouldn’t have touched it with a 10-foot pole. And I do not wear granny pants. I wear black Smartwool bikini style underwear. But still.

All of that reminded me of being at Hoton Lake with Grandpa Garth umpteen bazillion years ago. When he would find women’s or girl’s panties in some weird place (dropped from somewhere), he would bring them into the main room (kitchen) of that old cabin, holding them delicately with two fingers, with a sly smile on his face. Make no mistake, this father of 10, grandfather of 19 was NOT CREEPY.

Cubelandia was on land that was originally owned by the Avis family. The rental car company folks. Mr. Avis was dead by the time I worked there but some co-workers remembered him being driven around the park in a golf cart.

Thinking back, it wasn’t a bad business park. There were a lot of buildings but I think the tallest may have been three stories? Cubelandia was one story. There were also a number of ponds, man-made or not, I’m not sure. And a nature trail, although by the time we got bounced outta there (covid), it was overgrown and infested with ticks.

This was the only time I saw a sandhill crane walk through the “garden” along the side of the building.

The Metavante Vultures (turkey vultures) used to walk there frequently the first few years I worked at Cubelandia. There were always a bazillion geese and red-wing blackbirds used to crap on my side mirrors, and one day a couple of seagulls took a nap on my beloved old Ninja’s roof. And any number of other aminals and things that I won’t bore y’all with.

Of course, EVERYONE gathered in the lunch room to take pictures of this lovely bird. I think I was the first person at Cubelandia to own an iPhone (it was 2007 and people were kinda like, “Oh, can I touch it?”) but I certainly wasn’t the last as you can see.

The lovely woman on the left is retiring NEXT WEEK. Yikes! We will miss her greatly but she has worked there for 25 years and she is ready. The lovely woman in the middle is Building Mom, a “gem”, as my old boss the LSCHP called her. Despite much trying by my/her manager to find a role for her post covid, it didn’t work out. She managed a building, not a bunch of people working from home and scattered all over the globe. But she landed on her feet because she is a gem.

You’ve heard of SAT test coaches and college admissions coaches, roight? Did you know you can pay $3-$6K to coach your budding young debutante daughter to get into the college sorority of her choice? Yes, yes, you can. Well, except these coaches don’t guarantee entry into her preferred sorority or any sorority.

Never was I was ever interested in joining a sorority. I was not that kind of gal. I may have wished I was but I just couldn’t get to that point. Was I pretty enough? Yeah, I probably was. I am not bragging here. When I was a young teenager, it felt like the only card I had to play. What I am NOT is SOCIAL enough. I had the idea that sorority girls were flibbertygibbets who cared only about clothes and make-up and engaged in superficial conversations. I know that was not universally true. I also know that *I* cared a lot about clothes and make-up. Superficial conversations not so much. I much preferred hanging around with “interesting” people. Like “hippies” or whatever. Although I was *never* a hippie myself. Highly trained, focused 1st seat flute musician who practiced MANY hours and still aced my non-music classes? Yes. Not bragging, just simple truth.

NPR ran a segment on All Things Considered yesterday where they interviewed someone about these sorority coaches. These kinds of topics interest me so I tuned my ears in. Among other things was that these coaches are particularly sought after in southern schools, think Ole Miss and ‘bama if you will. Okay, that kind of thing seemed stereotypical to me. But then… Apparently many northern gals (like meeeee) are seeking out some of those schools because of the sorority culture, not that we don’t have sorority cultures up in the Great White North because we sure do.

The main thing that bothered me about the NPR segment was that the interviewee said “exspecially” umpteen bazillion times. Yes, there is an “x” inserted into “especially”. The first time, I thought I had mis-heard. But nope. Over and over and over again. My ears felt like they were being pierced by an ice pick. Does this woman really work for the New York Times or did I mis-hear that too? Exspecially, exspecially, exspecially. Jeebus.

“Exspecially” brings me to the end of this rambling, incoherent rant. I hope I haven’t insulted any “Greek” (frat) folks. Just because it wasn’t for me doesn’t mean it wasn’t for you. Also I am mashing a whole bunch of unsorted crapola from various stages of my life together into one blahg post so in a way, it’s all gibberish.

In other news, I was just about to nod off last night when… Yikes! Someone has droven in! Bright lights behind Cygnus X-1. I freaked out for about a millisecond, but I knew PDQ I was being Porterized by benign aliens. I welcomed them in and managed to find them a couple beers and it was a good time and I got to bed on time for a “school” night.

Love y’all, KW

Fortunately I do not get a lot of comments, and that’s okay, see below. But when I do, lately, they show up on my blahg but I canNOT always find them anywhere else.

For many years, comments arrived in my email mailbox with great reliability. Then, a few years ago, they started getting routed to the spam folder. Years ago it seemed I could mark emails as NOT SPAM but I can’t find how nowadays (probably my bad) so I got into the habit of fishing them out of spam so I could reply to them from my inbox. Recently, they started getting delivered to my inbox again. YAY! This is so cool. Except. Now three things seem to (randomly) happen to them. 1) They get delivered to my inbox. 2) They get delivered to spam and I fish them out. 3) They get POSTED but they don’t get delivered ANYWHERE. It’s like the wild wild west and I do not know why🤷‍♀️ All that to say that I might not see your comment right away and if I reply to it, the email subject will be “your comment”.

So, I am not a “comment whore”. While I welcome comments, I don’t feel shunned if I don’t get them. As always my main reason for writing this blahg of blather is to dump whatever is in my baggy old brain. It is an interesting writing exercise, which is probably why I have continued to blahg for 22 years (or whatever). There is soooo much I can’t say on my blahg and although it would be more interesting if I could include the “I-can’t-blahg-about-that” category, best not to.

My other writing gig, the paid one, requires a whole different set of rules. There is NO I-can’t-blahg-about-that category, or at least just about EVERYTHING belongs in that category. I have a different audience, which is mainly web developers and testers (and posterity) and I have to come up with very precise specification for our online banking application.

Nothing terribly “deep” here, just that it is an interesting exercise to write for different audiences.

I’m not gonna show you the ree-cycle mess just outside the back door and to the right. It is toadily overflowing at this point. I usually keep up with the ree-cycle here at the moominbeach. I can’t just dump it all unsorted into a big cart next to my front door like I can at the Landfill. I have to sort it and take it to Northern Transitions to dump. So I usually keep up with it, filling reusable grock bags with sorted recycle (I’m taaared of typing “ree-cycle” and you are taaared of reading it). I dump the recycle and then I have empty grock bags to buy grocks with at Meijer or Pat’s or wherever. I am Garbage Woman and I have it down pat.

Except… The recycle center had a bailer failure 10 days ago so they had to close for a while. Which meant I couldn’t dump my recycle. So it has been piling up like crazy. We have a lot of GLASS this time. We don’t usually because I buy box whine when we are up here. But when we were flooded by beloved my cousins (of a couple degrees) here, we finished a few bottles of sippin’ spirits so, all roight, we have some glass.

The bailer failure was fixed last week but I couldn’t get there at a time it was open. It’s a long story but I can go tomorrow.

What is cracking me up is that every time I think of “bailer failure”, I think of “testicle festival”. Sorry.

So, today I logged onto work for the first time in 2-1/2 weeks. What meetings did I have today? Was it just the usual Monday 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock? Or did someone sneak some other meetings in there? Phew! It’s only the usual. Okay. I emailed Amazon Woman and my new(ish) colleague (need a blahg name for him…) and said, “I’m back but I’m meeting friends for lunch a few miles up the road.”

Was that okay? On my first day back from vacation? Of COURSE it was okay! Anyway, Pickles is only a few miles up the road on the res. No traffic lights and light traffic. And Amazon Woman was okay with it as I knew she would be. And I was back in plenty of time for the 2 o’clock. Which was a great meeting but that’s boring work stuff.

I met up with Sam (archaeologist, not dog) and the Guru, who has kept this boring blahg of blather going since forever. I have known Sam since way back when before the internet. They were passing through today and I hadn’t seen them in a couple(?) years and they looked absolutely fabulous. A sight for sore eyes.

We all had a lot to say. We know a lot of people in common. My family, her family, a few of our in-laws and a few friends sprinkled in here and there. We did NOT get into MAGA rants. That is a good thing although we are on the same side of that ridiculous crapola. Better that we were gabbling about our own lives and those of the people we all know and love. At times I felt like I was monopolizing the conversation. It just felt sooooo good to talk to my long-time friend.

I first met Sam on Radical Betty’s back deck when I was a college girl. Betty was my cool aunt. Sam was my cousin Jay’s college friend and a guest at the Old Cabin. I am an introvert and do not seek out friends but sometimes people kinda “stick” to me anyway. Sam was wonderful but in no way did I think we would be friends at the time we first met. I didn’t really think we would ever see each other again. WRONG! I don’t remember exactly how our relationship evolved into umpteen bazillion years of being BFFs but here we are🧡🧡🧡

Summer is winding down and I am faced with the reality that I will have to return to Trollandia in a couple weeks. It isn’t all that bad. I knew that I wanted to live on The Planet Ann Arbor by the time I was 12 years old or so. Somehow I made that happen and even ended up marrying a guy who was willing to help make that little dream come true. We bought The Landfill (our house) there and brought up our daughters there. Our little house in Ann Arbor was a wonderful place to raise our children. And. They both live there (or near there) as adults🧡

I am also lucky in that the guy I convinced to move to A2 with me embraced my family’s beach land here on Gitchee Gumee (Lake Superior). Although my family is friendly and welcoming, this place isn’t for everyone. I mean, when the GG first visited, we still had an outhouse. We have modern plumbing today but the place isn’t fancy. The moomincabin is small and there isn’t a whole lot of privacy, etc., etc. The GG was pretty okay with all this having grown up going to a rustic cabin with his family. He got along well with my family and was a special friend to The Commander in her later years, which helped me out a LOT since I was beginning a new job at that time. My moom was very proud of me for embarking on a new career after the age of 50 but I didn’t have a whole lot of time off to spend with her.

We still have some summertime left and the Twinz of Terror ate breakfast here this morning and then left for a North Country Trail mini-celebration in North Dakota. npJane will be heading up later this week and Lizard Breath this weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous on the beach this evening and after I decamped to the moomincabin, I turned on the deck lights so the next door cousins would know it was okay to visit, although we had also texted about that. It was a great opportunity for me to vent about MAGA.

Love y’all and thanks cousins for letting me vent. KW.

We had a big thunderstorm in the middle of last night and then another one late this afternoon. The overnight storm was violent enough that I went out to the moomindeck to move my basket inside and the GG went down to the beach. This afternoon. we were on the beach watching the storm clouds approach. It started to rain so we decamped up to the moomincabin and Lyme Lounge and after a bit all hell broke loose.

When it all settled down a bit, the current Next Door Cousins came over for dinner with a gorgeous salad in tow.

The GG spent just about the entire day working on a lucky-shuckial problem with the Lyme Lounge. The Lyme Lounge is scheduled to be towed via Mooon Yooonit to North Dakota beginning tomorrow. Hoping it all works out well. Since the Twinz of Terror are going on this trip, I am pretty optimistic that they will prevail over any problems. Do they need snake boots out there? I dunno.

The Great Lake State is such a benign place to live in a lot of ways. Only one venomous snake (Massasauga rattlesnake) and it is rarely seen. No volcanoes. Occasional tornadoes. Floods and wildfires happen but they are rare. I do hate driving in blizzards and freezing rain and we get plenty of that.

G’night, KW.

…you will replace the window in the back door with its associated SCREEN.

I have posted various versions of this pic before. The door straight ahead is the “back” door. The door to the right is the “front” door. They aren’t very far apart, are they? Why? Because the moomincabin is not a very big place. It’s okay, it’s comfortable and easy to heat. Also, the “front” door is on the “side” of the cabin. Why? Because Gitchee Gumee is in “front” of the cabin and if you put a door in the front, there will be days when you can’t get the door to open because of high northwest winds. Also because outside the “front” door is the main moomincabin parking spot, used almost exclusively by meeeee this summer because I am the main “hopper”, aka I get most of the grocks and schlep the laundry to the laundromat. After four years of owning Cygnus X-1, I am getting really good at precision backing up with her backup cam.

So the refrigerator was not quiiiiite fixed when the GG was ready this evening and he was looking at me with a hangdog look. I said something like, “I’ll be in to fix the fridge in a few minutes but meanwhile, you could put the screen in the back door.” He made some hedging noises and I countered with, “I will be in the moominkitchen and it is hot today and I will need air and oh BTW if you don’t put the screen in, The Commander will hurl a lightning bolt at you.”

As any woman who has ever cooked in the moominkitchen knows, when it is HOT out, which it is today (that means it’s in the 80s), the back door is the first door to be replaced with its associated screen. The doors look identical but don’t try to put the front screen in the back door or vice versa. If it’s hot enough. we also replace the front door with its screen but that doesn’t happen as often. Oh, men do cook in the moominkitchen but usually us gals commandeer it. The Commander led that charge but we all know our way around. Even UKW, who visits only every couple years.

So he put the screen in and I fixed the refrigerator. And Trumpty Dumpty did something today but I know not what because the radio is basically not talking about the specifics yet. Maybe because there aren’t any specifics yet?

The GG is “modeling” this loverly t-shirt but it does not belong to him. Our mouse spied this at Meijer on a rack “over at the ‘stuff’ end of the store.” She didn’t buy it then but she did take a pic of it and I located it today and purchased it for her.

I could only guess what the “stuff” end of the store was but I guessed correctly that it the part of the store that is at the other end from the grock end of the store and I was correct. “Yeah, over by the toothpaste end of things.” That’s not an exact quote but close. The eight deodorants that I accidentally bought during covid are long gone so, while I was over in that area, I butt danced a bit with a guy in the shaving/deodorant aisle.

Meijer is a Michigan-based chain of big box grock stores. I have a young cousin who works for Meijer corporate but I’ve been shopping at Meijer since well before she was born. I mostly shopped at Meijer in college over in the East Lansing area and then on The Planet Ann Arbor. I will never forget when Sault Ste. Siberia acquired a Meijer. We were all ecstatic about that and when I posted a photooo of mouse and I in the parking lot on Instagram, an Ann Arbor yooper from Marquette marveled, “There is a *Meijer* in Sault Ste. Marie?” Yes. Yes there is and I think there is now one in Marquette too.

The best thing about the Sault Meijer, for me anyway, is that I can drive to it in 15 minutes without encountering ANY traffic lights or traffic if you don’t count deer, turkeys, sandhill cranes, or the occasional bear. I have posted this before. If I have recycling to drop off, I can also snake down 14th Ave/St/whatever from Meijer to Easterday without encountering any traffic lights. Alas, the recycling center is currently closed due to a bailer failure so I may have to drive out to Bay Mills Township to dump my growing pile of recycle. Oh well.

So, most Meijer stores have similar inventories but there are little areas where they sell local stuff, like Soo High Blue Devil sweatshirts and this loverly tee shirt. Apparently the idea is to wear it around on The Planet Ann Arbor on a football Saturday. I totally approve!

This nor’wester came on in a fury last evening, tipping deck chairs over and I dunno what else. The GG was actually kind of freaked out. He is NOT as totally unflappable as he would like to portray himself but he is usually calm in the face of scary weather.

Meeeee? I was not afraid of this weather. I sensed a fast-moving front that would hit hard at first, dump some rain on us, and eventually calm down. And that’s what it did. I have experienced these kinds of storms (in this location) my entire life and they are pretty predictable. Well, there was the Labor Day storm of 2010 that flung kayaks and beach chairs all over the place, sinking some of them and moving the Motor Bote down in front of Don and Katie’s and filling it with sand and water. That one caught us off guard.

That’s not to say that big wind storms are not a concern. We have a LOT of big trees around here, mostly red and white pines but also birch and other deciduous trees. The thing is, they rarely fall *over*. Unlike the trees in the little woods behind our landfill on the Planet Ann Arbor, which tip over all the time. But it’s still a possibility for trees to fall down here and I am not one to be nonchalant about that although I kind of am…

I personally have watched exactly ONE tree “fall” down. It was an ancient birch next to the path to the beach and it didn’t really “fall”, it collapsed into itself – sorta World Trade Center style.

It was a beautiful warm, deadly calm day in October and I was up here at the moomin to help The Commander turn off the cabin water for the winter. I was not much help. I’m sorry moom. The GG was in San Francisco for the weekend that year but every year since then, he has been the main cabin opener and closer. I am greatly appreciative for all his help as I am not talented in those kinds of things.

Anyway. I bought fancy take-out food from Karl’s Cuisine and Radical Betty brought a bottle of whine over and after the water was shut off, we sat on the deck for lunch. All of a sudden, there was a really weird noise and the top of the birch tree in question was kind of spiraling and then, just like I said, it kind of collapsed into itself. Again, there was NO WIND! It was 2006 so I didn’t have an iPhone in my pocket and therefore do not have a pic.

Actually that’s a moot question because I will likely leave my job (in good graces, I think!) before that can happen. Rosie the Robutt is not gonna barge into my house and confiscate my laptop. But it’s a question a lot of us in the tech industries are asking ourselves these days.

It might (arguably) be more likely that developers/coders’ jobs could be taken over by AI although I am a bit skeptical even of that and think AI might need at least some *sane* human oversight. I mean we can’t let our AI “assistants” (if I can call them that) insert stuff about Hitler into the code, or even name variables after him. Or even name a variable bOOBA, like once happened in my office. It was a female co-worker who (quite inadvertently) did that — to great hilarity. Hey, women can be just as nerdy as men and she was following an established variable naming convention.

The thing is, although I do some crap html/css/javascript coding that an AI actually MIGHT be able to take over, the main thing I do is *write*. In English. Coherently, at least most of the time. I have been paying a little attention to AI and how it’s being “taught” to write. I remain skeptical that it can do what I do, at least when I am actually *on* my game.

An NPR segment of On Point was on the radio yesterday when I was doing stuff in Sault Ste. Siberia in the rain. I will maybe have to re-visit it because I couldn’t catch all of it but what caught my attention was how different kinds of writing “activate” different kinds of brain activity. Hand-writing, typing, whatever. This totally resonated with me.

I can’t put it all into words but hand-writing is definitely different for me than typing. And writing (and brains) can be just plain weird in general. I cannot count how many times I would be at work at the end of the day (back when I had an office but it happens at home too). I would be trying for the life of me to figure out how to explain something in writing to my audience and nada. I would go out and get in my car and before I even got out of the parking lot, it would all come together in my head. The tricky part was to remember it the next day.

In general though, when I need to write something, sometimes the best way to start is to “just START”. Start writing things down as you think of them. If they come out of your brain organized, that’s fine. If not, they can be organized later.

I dunno know if any of this makes sense. It doesn’t necessarily make sense to me. But I wrote it down! And I can tweak it later. Or not.

And the turkey pic is the best pic I have gotten of turkeys yet. Unfortunately it also includes a damp beach towel or two draped over a deck chair. And a clothesline. Gotta keep it real🤪

I abso*t*utely had to do laundry today. Towels and a few sheets and dish cloths/towels. Everything was a mess. When the GG and I are here alone, it’s manageable but when others are around, not so much. To any beach urchins or others who may be lurking, that is A-OKAY! It always gets that way when there are a lot of people around and I *love* when there are a lot of people around. So did The Comm, which is why she did NOT want a visiting schedule for the future owners (aka “us”).

But. Problem. It was raining cats and dogs this morning. That was okay too except I like to put my laundry in and sit on the bench outside at the Up North Laundry. That wasn’t gonna work this morning. So, I dumped my laundry in (two triple-loaders) and headed over to Pat’s Grocks for a very short list. I can get to Pat’s and back to the Up North before the washers are done, which is 25 minutes. Traffic lights? Who needs those in Sault Ste. Siberia? Actually there are plenty of traffic lights but almost NEVER any backups of any sort.

As luck would have it, when I got back to the laundromat, the rain had stopped. The benches were wet but what the heck, I was wearing a cotton skirt. It would dry out quickly. (And did I mention it was HOT out.) I sat down and made quick work of the spelling bee with hyoid (huh?) for 👸🐝 A friendly (and impressively tall) woman also sat down and said she didn’t care if her “bum” got wet, it was hot inside. She lives part-time in an RV and it sounds like she uses a lot of different laundromats. I mostly avoid laundromat conversations but I liked her and I assured her that I’ve been using this one (and some of its predecessors) for umpteen bazillion years and it is THE BEST! And sure enough, when the owner arrived, he set up some decent fans inside and it cooled down. It doesn’t have A/C but, hey, this is Sault Ste. Siberia.

I should qualify this by reporting that the bathroom was broken for something like two years but. 1) They made arrangements with the business next door so that laundry customers could use its bathrooms. 2) I avoid using laundromat bathrooms like poison just because I know enough about laundromats to know weird stuff happens in them.

Anyway, rain off and on throughout the day, sometimes very heavy, and now we have heavy rain again.

P.S. Why the H-E-double hockey sticks are we treating Trumpty Dumpty like he’s a reasonable person. Tariff CHAOS is on the radio right now (turn it off, kW) but martial law in DC and maybe other cities? Um MAGA folks, is THIS what you really want? Don’t try to ‘splain it away by repeating his lies about how horrible crime is. Statistics say otherwise. It seems like a dictatorship rehearsal to me. I don’t want a dictatorship and neither do you, whether you know it or not. And if you are my age (71), your dad may have served in WWII to help get rid of Hitler. Read some history, please please please.

I woke up a few times during last night. I woke up when the cousins bunking next door got up to make coffee for their trip down to DayTwa Metro for an afternoon (I think) flight. They did not *wake* me up, I woke myself up. I dozed a bit, then woke up again in time to see them drive out at 4:30. I beeped a master salute (lake freighter language) to them in my head.

They texted from Metro to say they had arrived safely and their flight seemed to be on time. They took a planned side trip to Belle Isle to see the aquariums. Belle Isle was a favorite place of mine when I was a child as I went there many times with my parents and Detroit grandparents, Granddaddy and Bolette, who lived in a cool little art deco house (9975 Mark Twain Street). I love(d) the aquariums but my favorite thing on the isle is probably the periscope in the Dossin bote museum. The aquariums were the right choice for these young children, who may not understand the periscope and to whom the rest of the bote museum would likely be pretty damn boring🐽

I woke up a third time hearing a dad-blasted beeping alarm of some sort. It wasn’t inside the cabin and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was or where it was coming from. In the morning, when the GG stumbled a bit haggardly up the moomindeck steps, he solved the mystery by reporting that the Lyme Lounge SMOKE ALARM went off in the middle of the night because of HUMIDITY!!!

The rest of the morning was occupied by the stress of waiting for our own adult children to pack and depart. I tend to kind of cocoon into myself, staying outta the fray and not wanting to hover like my poor mother used to do when I was packing. Her hovering was to make sure we didn’t forget anything. Unfortunately, it interrupted my focus and that’s when I would forget things😵‍💫 Eventually, I devised a strategy of handing her a grocery bag to collect things that might be causing her stress.

The GG does a kind of different thing from both me and The Commander. He doesn’t cocoon and he doesn’t [exactly] hover. Instead he fidgets and jumps around a bit randomly making everyone a little crazy. I usually settle down after they leave but I am always greatly relieved when they text their safe arrival home on The Planet Ann Arbor and thereabouts. Texting is so handy. I used to have to remember to call The Commander on the Landfill land line to let her know we were home although I eventually farmed that task out to the beach urchins.

So we are alone again and it is a mixed bag because it’s quiet again but it sure was fun having a party here every night. The moomincabin is in between the Old Cabin and the cousins’ cabin where our left coast guests were bunking so it was a convenient gathering place especially when it was warm enough to hang on the deck and it usually was.

I didn’t personally put the leftovers away last night so I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t immediately find any leftover steak and friends because that was kinda what I was planning for tonight. We had a lot of steak but we also had a lot of guests. Could we really have eaten it all? Nope. There is some left and it’s gonna go into the oven to warm as soon as I transfer it to an oven safe container.

Miss all the folks who have left us and continued safe travels to those flying to the PacNW.

After a string of long hot sunny days, the last evening for a bunch of us cousins to be together began with a beautiful thunderstorm rolling through.

Cousins of several degrees from all four branches of my grandparents’ family. I mean descendants from each of the four children my grandparents birthed. We did FinFam steak dinner tonight with filet mignon, potatoes, corn, salad, and dessert. Lots of people are leaving tomorrow and I will miss them all so much.

There was a bit of talk about ghosts tonight. Other people seem to feel them. I don’t think I do. I lost my brother and dad in pretty quick succession and during that time, it always felt like I was holding the world up in my own two hands. I’m not sure if others perceived that I was doing that but it felt that way to me. Mostly I was driving. Back and forth from the Planet Ann Arbor to the yooperland. Sometimes with passengers, sometimes not. Top dollar Honda Accord six cylinder automatic tranny. Vrooom.

It’s okay that people feel ghosts. I’m not trying to negate that feeling. I just haven’t ever felt it. I’ve felt the presence of vampires and werewolves out by the moomincabin outhouse when I was a young teenager. I don’t think that’s the same thing. It was just meeee feeling freaked out from watching horror movies in the theatres in town back in those days.

There is so much about our lives we don’t understand. Who are we? Who created us and our universe? If there is a creator, do they call it a universe? Why are we here? Etc. Tonight we were on the moomindeck with a whole bunch of relatives during a beautiful thunderstorm. Gabbily gabbing away about everything under the sun. Sometimes even politics although we shut that stuff up PDQ.

To me, that’s what life is all about and I wish I could’ve made this evening go on forever. Love y’all, KW.

I didn’t expect any storms last night so I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up to some distant thunder at 2:30 AM or whatever. Also? Lots of turkey noise. Not gobbling, just noise.

We didn’t get the full brunt of the storm for another couple hours so I slept fitfully all night, tossing and turning. It was okay and I enjoyed the storm when it did actually arrive. After it blew through, I fell into REM sleep for a half hour or whatever. Dreaming of a totally crazy fabric store with at least 50 rooms of fabric and all kinds of levels with staircases to get to them. The Commander and Mouse were there with me although I lost track of them. I was trying to call them on my iPhone when I ran into all kinds of phone dialing trouble and then I woke up. Phone dialing dreams have been a theme since back when we used those old rotary dial phones. Apparently they still haunt me now. I mean I think I could just say, “Hey Siri, call The Commander.” Er well, maybe that wouldn’t work very well.

Anyway, I did a Meijer run to up our steak dinner game and get some more sipping bourbon and some night light bulbs and then dumped off some (more) recycling. After at least half a day of the GG frenetically jumping around between the moomincabin, garage, and camper, he left to join the UU to camp the night before a hike and then UKW wandered over wondering if the refrigerator was fixed. Nope but I’ll fix it pronto. And I did and we hung out on the moomindeck with Liz for a while, then threw together a leftover dinner.

That’s Heinrich (snowshoe hare) in the not-very-good pic. And I am taaaaared so g’night and typos be damned.

Kinda almost looks like the back roads of Appalachia. Or northern Michigan. I mean, there’s even a fridge (you maybe can’t see it way at the back right). It’s a mini “beer” fridge but still a fridge.

I looked at this mess before this evening’s dinner crew arrived and I had a moment of wondering something like “What would The Commander think about this?” And then I thought something like, “I don’t care what she might’ve thought. I am not gonna neaten this mess up.” After all, I have the whole rest of the summer to do that.

Tonight was chicken and tofu stir fry dishes, engineered by UKW and her d-i-l with me and mouse attending as dishwashers, etc., and Lizard distracting just about the chillest five-month-old any of us have ever met. Smiles anyone? Yes. Lizard herself was a pretty chill baby but she was our first child and had plenty of adult attention in her early babyhood. This child’s older sister managed to somersault (in slow motion) down the (four) back steps from the deck to the ground but she was pronounced to be intact by GoGo, her grandmother, also an RN. All’s well that ends well.

Sipping spirits ended the night along with more MOE-skee-TOES than I was happy about although I don’t think any of them actually bit me. We are semi-battened down for predicted thunderstorms that I personally think will be a plassover, that is they will “plass”-over Whitefish Bay and totally miss us. We’ll see though.

Sayonara, KW

Michigan’s Designated Helper (aka The GG) and I were on the moomindeck this afternoon enjoying the undertaker’s wind (outta the swamp) when a beach urchin came up from the beach. “Dad dad dad. The neighbors have capsized a few times and we think they are all right but maybe you should take the motor bote out there.” She wasn’t in a panic, just trying to get his attention.

Yes. By the time the GG got down to the beach, a passing pontoon bote had already done whatever rescuing needed to be done. I do not know what happened but there was some bailing going on and someone was in the water. I thought they were VERY close to the second sandbar where adults and most children can easily stand up but others are dissenting about that. Apparently one of the sailboaters got into the pontoon bote and the pontoon towed the sailboat back to shore. Sounds like everyone was safe. If they hadn’t been, there’d’ve been ambulances and maybe even Coast Guard helicopters.

We have yet to have a fatal water accident on this beach in the 100 years the family has owned it. But we’ve had some near misses over the years. Usually not someone who LIVES on the beach. All of us beach kids had water safety rules drilled mercilessly into our heads since we were babies. Don’t go swimming without asking an adult to watch you. And guess what? We could *always* get a parent to lifeguard for us, even on the days they had to sit on the beach wearing winter jackets. There are many of those frigid summer days but not today. Hotter than Hades.

We’ll talk about testicle festivals some other day. Or not… Look up “Last Bus to Wisdom.”