Random bits of my so-called life.

This was the result of various conversations about my childhood tech job boss Byron being bossed around by who? I can’t exactly remember. Probably his wife. I certainly didn’t boss him around. I “worked around him”. It was okay. He allowed me to do that. We had a silent “arrangement.” I would “run” the office and handle all the problems while he hung out in his car in the parking lot.

That only went on for a while, when he was going through some sort of difficult period. I know not what. But I always handled most of the problems anyway, at least the technical stuff. Like, what does that error message mean? It means you left this column in this row blank when you filled out your input data sheet. Or whatever. Garbage in, garbage out. BOMB! When I first worked there, I didn’t get a lot of respect, being a blonde woman with no tech experience. I had to earn respect and I did. My paycheck there never quite measured up…

It took a while for my beach urchin to process what little discussion the GG and I had about this “boss” discussion. The GG worked at the same place I did but did not have the same boss as me. But she is a smart cookie and she got it PDQ.

So, this is one of a series of pics of my parents taking the garbage up to the top of the two-track road the night before garbage pickup. It was a Procedure and everything had to be packaged into Blue Bags into the parents’ can. Even though they did it every week, the air turned blue every darn time. I posted a series of pics (including this one) on my blahg and my brother guest blahgged this:

Since the majority of readers of this here blog are at least semi-centurians or well beyond, I thought a young whipper-snapper’s perspective might be worth it. It isn’t so bad being less than 50 (or 80 for that matter). You learn to live with it. Perhaps the best thing about being on the tail-end of a generation is that you can at least see what is coming your way. I can hardly wait to argue about blue garbage bags in the year 2037!! Maybe they will be yellow by then and we can turn the air yellow instead of blue to match the bags (go ahead, expand that thought in your imagination).

Alas, my brother didn’t live long enough to reach the GREEN BAG era (and we never had the yellow bag era). Instead of bagging up garbage and driving it up to the top of the cabin road on a designated day, we now buy Green Bags at various tribal businesses. When we fill up a green bag (or two), we drive up to the res and a friendly attendant comes out, takes our bag(s) out of the trunk, and puts them in the hopper.

Uhhhh, what holes? For one thing, there are always squoils and chickmunks hanging around at this time of year. I don’t think they are big and strong enough to make holes of that size in a matter of days. For another thing, the GG was doing a lot of things before he left for his latest chainsawing junket. Did I hear him making holes in the house? I couldn’t remember.

Little Cat Z sent him a pic and apparently he WAS doing something. I can’t remember what he said he was doing. It’s hard to get in touch with him in general right now because he is camping in a yooperland area where the internet is sketchy. LCZ did get in touch with him as he was driving to Rudyard because the Lyme Lounge didn’t have any decent food in it. I will let that statement lie…

LCZ came over and cooked dinner for me. A beautiful chicken, broccoli, orzo, feta, etc., casserole. I’m gonna have to do that one again. And then she surveyed my kitchen expressing the opinion that she might have to come back and voom it soon. And yes, it is kind of a mess. We have vacuum cleaner issues around here for one thing. Gotta git to that.

That is about it. G’night, KW

I follow (and support) Tangle.com, an independent news source. I like the format, which presents well researched information on multiple sides of a topic, including quotes from people writing on both sides of our polarized political landscape and often other viewpoints, then opinions from the Tangle founder or other editorial staff. Also comments from readers, including those who disagree with whatever Tangle said about a topic. Yes, this is a plug for Tangle. It can be a LOT of information. I usually don’t read the whole thing and I don’t read it every day.

Wednesday’s topic was school phone bans. There is no way I can write comprehensively and/or coherently about my thoughts about this. There were no cell phones at any time I was in the public schools or college… Until I went to community college… I had a “dumb” cell phone at first and then, VOILA! An iPhone. In the 20 seconds I spent in an Apple store back in the fall of 2007, I went from “I may want a phone/camera/GPS/I-fergit-what-else device someday” to gimme gimme and the GG and I plunked down $1200 or whatever for two of them.

I enrolled in community college classes at around the age of 50. I can still remember my then college daughter telling me (a straight-A student in “childhood” college), “Moom, you do not know how to go to college,” and handing me three Kalamazoo College (her college) folders to keep my papers in. That is absolutely one of my favorite memories of her as a college student. I happily accepted the folders (and used them) and thought something like, “she’s turning into her mother🐽“

I got off on a tangent there. I think that constant phone use by students should not be tolerated in classrooms but I am not really comfortable about outright bans. On one hand, I think that letting kids use their phones unleashed in the classroom (even when silenced) would be bedlam. But I am thinking that limited communications with parents, like changes in after school plans, would be helpful to students, parents, teachers, and office staff. Of course, parents can definitely be ridiculous about not establishing appropriate communication boundaries with their kids. Don’t even get me going about that…

I’ll be thinking about this for a while but I’ll leave you with a time I was in a community college class and I knew there was a possibility that I would need to connect with my college junior that evening. She was scheduled to fly to Dakar for a six month study abroad that coming weekend and our household was kind of on high alert. Not for anything in particular, just, if you are launching one of your children on a study abroad stint, you might know what I mean.

That night, she was driving to her college (100 miles away) to meet up with friends. When I went to class that night, I told Jason (the prof, the one who hooked me up with my Corporate America job) that I needed to keep my phone on but silenced in case my kid needed to call me for anything. I assured him that I would go outside the classroom if I needed to answer my phone. I don’t think I did get a call but I think she did text that there was a big traffic backup. She certainly didn’t need to talk to me on the phone about that.

Of course it was okay with my prof (whose kids have probably done their own study abroad stints by now). But I was an old bag even then and most high school kids now have grown up with smart phones and that train has left the station and I dunno what the answer is to handling cell phone use in schools. I do know that it’s complicated. Like everything else. Hopefully a goddamn dictator will not use a sledgehammer to try to solve it.

I finally got a sunset pic from last night. It is of the GG. He is waving. Hello.

I dunno. I don’t think he called me tonight. That’s okay. I don’t like to talk on the phone every night. I mean sometimes he calls me when I am in the bathroom? Also I think he is in a low cell phone service area. So…

There a lot of footprints in the sand in this pic. That’s because (I think) there are a lot more people walking on the beach over on the west side of Birch Point. We have a lot fewer footprints on our beach but that’s because our population density is a lot lower. I remember when the beach urchins were in college and after and on many days, I was the only person on the beach. It has changed a bit now that we have people at the east end of the beach. I am not all that happy about that. But. I sure hope it stays low density. Most relatives and some neighbors agree with me.

Ima gonna watch another episode of the Foundation trilogy. And tomorrow is a clean-up day.

So the GG and the Porters were having a happy hour on birch point beach. To the west of Birch Point, not the east where the moomincabin is.

I fergit why I called the GG but probably because I had texted him something that he didn’t reply to. Probably today’s pic, which is a lawnmower part. Okay. So we’re on the phone of porterization and they are all talking about the sunset so I asked them to take pictures of the sunset and send some (some, not all) to me. At least 15 minutes of posing and picture taking ensued. WTF was I thinking? I finally managed to redirect the whole crew to something else (not sure what, hopefully not financial crapola). Did I ever get any sunset pics? No I did not. Not one person sent me one.

So you get this lawnmower part instead. This is the second part we have received and it is the correct one. The first part arrived the day before the GG left for the yooperland. He needed it because the lawnmower was broken and he couldn’t mow the lawn before he left for 10 days or whatever. Okay. It was the wrong part.

It’s mid-late September and it’s been dry and I told him not to worry about mowing the lawn because it seemed to me we weren’t in a super growing mode anyway.

He ordered a new part and it arrived today and it was the correct part and I had to send a pic to him so he could verify. That’s how exciting my life was today. You’re welcome.

That was kinda like this morning was like. The GG was rather chaotically launching on a road trip to the yooperland. He’ll close the moomincabin over the next couple days, then decamp to a North Country Trail location for trail work over the next week or so. Rev up those chainsaws, folks.

I don’t think the GG thought his packing process was chaotic but I… I… I… I dunno. How many bags can one man have. The tools and the chainsaw crapola and then there is the clean laundry that needs to go back to the moomin in its new canvas “hamper”. I am done done done with plastic laundry baskets. [Delete long explanation about how unwieldy they are and how the handles break.]

Anyway, the last couple days have been various versions of in and out and around and about with trips to the hardware store and the auto parts store and lunch with all the retaaaaared EPA folks yesterday. At least that space-i-fied me for a couple hours.

So he left and a morning of meetings ensued and I finally made a Plum dash for a few grocks at around 1:00 PM and I ran into a neighbor there and I struggled to figure out how to talk to him. I stammered out something about going home to work and, uh, was I still working? Yes I am but… And I struggled to talk about retaaaaring to this perfectly nice neighbor. It’s my business to sort it out and I am still sorting it out so I think I will return to my usual early morning grock trips to the plum when nobody else is there. Sigh.

How can I miss you when you won’t go away? The first time I ever heard this song was when UKW (my cousin) was cleaning her mother’s (Radical Betty’s) stove and Radical Betty wouldn’t just let her doooooo it. I am not as elderly as Radical Betty was at that time but I definitely allow Little Cat Z to voom the moomincabin bathroom!

Also, the GG stopped at Narnia (John Arthur Woollam Preserve) on the way to Pickford for a monthly NCT meeting and the moomincabin for the next couple nights. Ths pic is from Narnia. I read all of the Narnia books to the beach urchins when they were young, even when they were independent readers and could read those books by themselves. I love to read aloud.

First world problems but I’m sorta at my wit’s end for the night. That is all😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

In the last five days or so, I had to scramble to make sure the family cabin was insured. It’s a long boring story about the agency we’ve been using FOREVER no longer carrying the insurance company we’ve been using FOREVER. The agency could offer a replacement at FIVE TIMES THE PRICE. Yes, you read that right. And, nope.

This kind of stuff is waaaay beyond my introvert comfort level so okay, whaddo I do. On the internet, I located an agency in the area that carried the same insurance company that we’d had before. Nervous as an introvert gets when having to talk to a PERSON THEY DON’T KNOW, I clicked the “Request a quote” button. Yikes! What have I done? But then. Whoosh! K and I had our first conversation last Wednesday and TODAY we have a new insurance policy and I was able to pay it online.

Early in our conversations, she recognized my last name and asked if Doctor Finlayson was my dad. Nope. My dad was a [small-town] banker. But I have been answering this question most of my adult life. My doctor-uncle, during the active years of his career, delivered just about every baby in town, or so it would seem. He did other stuff. Like sew someone’s nose back onto their face after a snowmobile accident and deal with the aftermath of two snowmobilers who were beheaded by a wire. But most people remember him because he delivered them or their children and I think that was the part of his job he liked the most. He did not like making house calls (he did make them early in his career) and finding no food in the refrigerator…

There are people who remember my dad as a banker but mostly it is my uncle they remember. That is okay with me and it would be okay with my dad. “Don” (dad’s brother) can do whatever the hell Don wants to do is the kind of thing my dad would say. (They *were* friendly and loved each other.)

When I deal with local Sault Ste. Siberia business people who remember my name, I NEVER want any kind of special treatment because I am a Finlayson. That isn’t what my family would want. We stand on our own personal reputations. I don’t think the woman who helped me with the insurance gave me special treatment. She was a total professional and would have done what she did for my family for anyone. But knowing that we had something in common, mainly that I grew up in Sault Ste. Siberia, may have helped us find things to talk about if that makes any sense.

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.