Random bits of my so-called life.

We went over a number of creeks and through a lot of woods but we did not go to grandmother’s house.

With quite a bit of trepidation and precautionary COVID tests, we gathered with our two daughters and one SO at Mouse’s house out in the wilderness. As I was walking out on their deck to get this pic, the raccoon cautioned me that the railings are not really very safe. Yes, they look very sturdy don’t they? 🤣 I [sincerely] appreciated his concern and replied that I have just enough acrophobia that I don’t get too close to “edges”. Having navigated a lot of slippery wet north country trail boardwalk, I was also a little nervous about the wet deck but that was not slippery although my tights got wet. 🐽 I don’t think the picture adequately shows that it is a looooonnnng way down off that deck!

My contributions to this Turkey Day dinner were Chex Mix (long story), my beauteous turkey platter, some serving utensils, and manhattan makings. That was it. This is the first time in many years I haven’t orchestrated Thanksgiving dinner and I could get used to this. Couch potato? Yes. My girls are wonderful cooks but we laughed about how we all seem to do a version of our mom’s menu. And we sort of do but it does morph a bit and I have never tried to duplicate the lima bean puree that The Commander and Radical Betty tried to make many years ago. They were using a Gourmet magazine menu and due to some kind of blender accident (I wasn’t there), there was lima bean puree everywhere including the ceiling. That was back when uncle duck was still around and they all had soooo much fun!

As usual, I had to drag the GG out of a party before I turned into a pumpkin. We encountered SNOW on Pleasant Lake Road and the first part of M52. Fortunately it wasn’t accumulating and the road was just wet. By the time we got up to the freeway, it was light rain which was pretty much gone by the time we were in range to beam up to the Planet Ann Arbor.

I’m glad we were able to gather this year. I expect to host many more Turkey Day dinners in the future but this one was wonderful and I appreciated a break. 🧡🧡🧡

There’s apparently a name for Thanksgiving Eve nowadays. College kids going home for the long weekend and hit up the barrooms on Wednesday night. In my case it was usually the Alpha Bar down on Portage Ave. I would meet up with my cousin the Mean Old Grunchie Old Grinchie and our friends who lived up there and other people who happened to also be home for the weekend. Once, a lot of people were making jungle aminal sounds and our old friend Ozone Jim said, “Sounds like a terrarium in here.”

Getting home to the yooperland for Thanksgiving often involved snow driving on the frickin’ freeway. Once I was ALMOST home after a snow drive and I fishtailed a couple miles outta town and slid the rear end of my car into the ditch. At least I would have been in the ditch if there wasn’t already a few feet of snow in the ditch. There was so much snow that I just kind of stopped on the shoulder. A trucker pulled me out and a state trooper stopped by to check on me. No ticket or anything. I was not a speed demon but I was probably going a little faster than I should have been, given the conditions. I don’t know if the cop recognized me but I’m pretty sure he was my high school geography teacher. Cops must make more money than teachers. In my book they both deserve more money than they probably make but that would be a whole ‘nother topic.

I got home safely that night and almost immediately schlepped down to the Alphaaaaa for what is now called Drinksgiving. I could tell some stories about being at the Alpha over the years but I’m not organized enough to do that tonight not to mention that some of them are not internetable. I have not been in the Alpha in about a bazillion years. One of these days I will have to go there again. If this F*CKING PANDEMIC ever ends. Vax/Boost/Mask/Distance y’all. Please. It may not kill you. It may not kill me. It is killing a lot of people.

The pic is from 2019 and it is the day AFTER Thanksgiving, not Drinksgiving. We were porterized at the Oscar Tango with no idea that we were a couple months away from a pandemic. We once did eat at the Oscar Tango on Drinksgiving. We were there early and it was quiet and we were sitting at the bar. The bartender and I were talking about how it would probably get nutso later on. Just then somebody walked in and trilled like a jungle aminal. The bartender said, “It’s starting early.” In a nod to Ozone Jim I said, “Sounds like a terrarium in here.” I don’t know where Ozone Jim is these days. I hope he still walks this planet… Oh hell, he’s probably a lawyer or something 🐽

If you embiggen, you might be able to see who the three-eyed alien is (and if you know the GG).

It’s that time of year again. Whaddya want for xmas? Meeee? I have one thing on my list (which I haven’t sent to anyone yet). The GG is annoyed with me about the whole thing so he “threatened” to buy me a toaster. I said sure! This time get me one that I can clean easily.

I have a perfectly good basic toaster. (We won’t talk about the two old “inherited” toasters in the dungeon.) I use it occasionally. The only thing I don’t like about it is that the “plate” or whatever you call it at the bottom does not come completely off the toaster, making it difficult to clean. I mean toasters are by definition hard to clean because you can’t immerse them in water, even when they’re not plugged in ⚡️⚡️⚡️. Nevertheless, I don’t really want a new toaster. The thing I’m terrified about is that if I get a new toaster, I will own FOUR toasters! Three in the dungeon and one upstairs.

He was surprised that I even entertained the idea of a toaster xmas gift and ‘fessed up that he was kidding about it.

Besides the one item I have on my list (I promise I’ll publish it soon), there are a few things I do want but they are not easily packaged xmas gifts.

I want a frickin’ smoke alarm that TEXTS me when the battery is low. it is totally traumatic to have your smoke alarm wake you up in the middle of the night with loud noises and a voice saying “fire, fire”. Jeebus. There was no fire. So why did it wake me up?

I want a new couch in my front room pandemic office. We’ll see what happens with that. We would also have to get rid of the Green Couch. It’s time.

Other than that, I don’t really know what I want for xmas. Less stuff, mostly.

Taking the back roads to FlaMan’s place yesterday fulfilled a mission for me. We hooked up with Argentine Road and this time I FOUND the girl scout camp. The last time we took Argentine, I looked high and low for the turn into Camp Linden but couldn’t find it. Probably because I couldn’t remember the name of the road. On the way home, I happened to look up from my phone just in time to see that we were passing a sign for Hogan Road. THAT’S IT!!!

We were too fried to turn down Hogan on that trip but this time we did and yes the girl scout camp is alive and well. Out of respect for whatever girl scout troops may have been there this weekend, we honored the PRIVATE! KEEP OUT signs.

I spent quite a few weekends there as a troop co-leader and sometimes just as a mom. I am NOT good at organizing PEOPLE and comforting children and all that stuff. I am a NERD and I always had fun on those trips but appreciated that there were other moms who were better at the mom/leader type stuff.

This camp, like others in the area is kind of an “urban” camp. I mean it is in a beautiful forested area with a system of ponds and streams running through it. But it is probably less than a mile from the freeway and there are towns of all sizes in the area and cities not far away. Once, a wide-eyed brownie asked me if there would be bears there. No no no no. Bears do not come this far south in the Great Lake State.

If I’d had an iPhone in those days I’d probably have tons of photooos. As it is, I only have memories of the place and my mom friends and all of our daughters. The ones who are running the world now. Haha, for me they are at least running Thanksgiving, home antigen tests willing 🐽

I don’t often agree with this orange man either but he is a LOT nicer than the former guy.

He is not a hunter, at least not as an adult. I think his family did some hunting when he was a kid and he once shot bow and arrow on Poop Deck Paul, a TV show I had NEVER heard of, being from the yooperland where there were TWO TV channels until I was in high school or thereabouts. I’m sure he was shooting at a target, not live aminals 🤣

Hoton Lake neighbor Nancy the Schoolteacher gave him this vest and I greatly approve because it is rifle season for deer and you can’t be too careful gallivanting around out in the woods. It gets crazy around HL during deer season and I can remember being at the Spikehorn Bar on a Saturday night when various women had parked trailers in the parking lot. At least I think I remember that. Or did I dream it?

Our only travel this weekend involved a day trip to visit FlaMan and we are both pretty exhausted from that. I dunno why exactly. FlaMan was pretty exhausted so maybe it rubbed off on us? He sat on his bed watching Gunsmoke and doing xword puzzles. I sat in the living room watching Gunsmoke and doing xword puzzles. The GG hopped around looking for things and surreptitiously throwing out trash. At the end of our visit FlaMan decided he was in desperate need of a certain item (it was not beer) so we went out to hunt it down and finally hit the road to return home.

I didn’t really want to go up there today but it’s been a while since I have visited FlaMan. I know he has been a bit starved for companionship since his dog’s death and the onset of COVID, not to mention he moved facilities just before COVID. So I agreed as long as we took back roads and that’s what we did. Can I just say a huge THANK YOU to whoever cleans his terlet? And with that, good night and typos be damned!

P.S. Upon re-reading it’s probably not clear that I *love* FlaMan. He can sometimes be difficult to be around but he is the epitome of uniqueness and extremely intelligent and if you need to hear a sincere “I love you”, he will not disappoint.

Pettifog was the spelling bee pangram today. Poopgoop was not an acceptable word but poop was and it is the word that kicked me up into the “genius” level. My puzzle pal texted me that it didn’t accept poopgoop and after one instance of that “word”, I typed “poop” in a reply and autocorrect tried to change it to “poopgoop”. TMI? It doesn’t take much to entertain us. And no, nobody thought poopgoop was a real word 🤣

After I got to 👸🐝 I went to read the spelling bee forum and people were of two minds about pettifog oh boy oh boy. Love it or hate it. I happen to LOVE it. I learned it a few years back when I was under siege by a legal pettifog who was taking money from somebody to send me hostile, threatening letters about basically nothing. At least I never found out what the problem was. The pettifog and his client eventually slunk away, leaving me alone to go through whatever grief processing I needed to do for losing the last of my childhood nuclear family. The word pettifoggery gave me a good laugh during a dark time.

I also don’t think it would be too far-fetched to apply the term to many of the folks we’re paying to run the government.

Saturday market day and this pic was from the drive down. Still lots of great produce available. I brought home delicata, brussels, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, a wee red cabbage, and lettuce. Always lettuce. Red leaf. Home by 7:30 AM doing puzzles, drinking coffee, washing my lettuce, doing chores, and making gravy, which I do ahead and freeze.

But then again… We do have an invitation for turkey day that I am considering, COVID Coward that I am. But this isn’t anywhere near 50 people and all are vaxxed and some are boosted. I am not boosted yet although I FULLY INTEND to get boosted. So, I am talking myself into it. I mean the gathering, not the booster. If I attend, I can wear my new peacock thingy from Chicos…

P.S. This pic was taken at the nadir of Miller, beginning a potentially difficult finish for new Commie High drivers to navigate if they are driving stick shift vee-hickles. The beach urchins did not struggle with this. They learned to drive at 10 or whatever in a manual tranny basic Jeep Wrangler (The Indefatigable) and did not have trouble with this uphill stretch.

You know the one. The question involved whether my work team talked about the Verdict during our two hour call this afternoon. Well, NOOOO! We were solving a PROBLEM. Um, for one thing, we have high-end paying customers and if something goes wrong, we are ON IT and yes, “we” solved it. And “we” is in quotes because my own role in this solution was to be a fly on the wall during the meeting. At the end of the call people were all heading off to their kitchens to get a cocktail 🤣

We NEVER talk polly-ticks at work. I mean occasionally my boss and I veer in that direction but we KNOW we agree. There are others who may or may not. There are still others who live in India and may not even care about ‘murican polly-ticks. At the end of the day we are NERDS. We get our kicks from winding around through our sprawling application in whatever way our job requires, designing and implementing new functionality and problem solving issues.

Here at the Landfill this afternoon, I was asked multiple times if I wanted to watch the delivery of the Verdict. No no no no no… I didn’t watch it but I could hear it…

The whole thing makes me feel a little bit sick. I am NOT saying that I disagree with the Verdict. I actually don’t know if I disagree with it. I have not paid a whole lot of attention to the issues and process. If the defendant is truly innocent, so be it.

But. Does this send a message that taking a gun to a protest event is okay? Or anywhere outside of a war (and I also hate war)? Is it okay that people died at the hands of the shooter that day? I can see that maybe there was an element of self defense involved but maybe the best choice for the teenage defendant might have been to STAY HOME. Play video games or whatever. What was he thinking? What was his mom thinking “letting” him go there? (He was 17 and I went plenty of places my parents didn’t know about at that age.) Still, people died at his hands. I hope he takes this reprieve as a chance to rethink how he wants to live his life. He did kill people…

I am a gun owner (by inheritance). My old coot didn’t own assault rifles and I think I only saw him shoot a gun once, trying to bring down a squirrel for my dog. He was using some kind of long gun and he missed. I never take a gun with me ANYWHERE. If I did, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I know shooting guns can be fun but it isn’t something I’m interested in. I would rather read and do word puzzles.

The pic has been posted before. It’s my old coot and his friend Jim Sherman doing a staged photo shoot out in the yooperland woods when they were in high school. My dad is on the right.

I was RETURNING from the Saline Road Meijer and I was trapped at the back of a LONG line of cars waiting to turn left off Scio Church onto S. Maple. It turned out to be a good thing. The light had just turned red and it’s a long light so when I looked up and saw this skyscape, I knew I had time to put Mooon Yooonit in park, dredge out my phone, and take a pic.

I navigated this intersection every day for all the years I commuted to Cubelandia. The line of traffic I am behind is crossing a two-lane bridge over the I94 18-wheel Clogway. Do I miss it? Sometimes and sorta.

I was relieved yesterday when the GG’s family decided to bag the xmas party for the second year in a row. I had been nervous about this, especially since the Great Lake State has AGAIN achieved the number one spot for COVID cases. My husband’s family is HUGE (10 siblings in his generation) and those parties are FUN but attending it this year would’ve been a hard NO for me. And possibly an argument with the GG that I wasn’t looking forward to. And antigen home tests if he insisted on attending.

I’m still nervous about going to the grocery store fer kee-reist. As I was swooshing through Meijer today I was constantly noticing those who were NOT wearing masks (customers and alas some employees). I noticed how far away I was from every person I encountered. Mostly pretty far away, given that it was 7:30 AM. Or else we passed each other too quickly for a stray COVID particle to make its way through my mask. At least that’s what I told myself.

Still scary though. MASK UP and GET VAXXED if you aren’t already! COVID is smarter than we are. Let’s get through this together.

I was having a friendly little argument last weekend with someone whose political views oppose mine.

That person sent me a link to an article and I read it. But. I also checked out some of the meta data surrounding the article. I can’t exactly remember but I THINK it was from the Wall St. Journal. I know a lot of people think of the WSJ as an alt-right rag but I have a slightly more moderate take on it, having subscribed to it for many years (my subscription is strictly online now and I usually can’t remember the password but still 🐽).

What grabbed my attention front and center in a BIG RED FLAG way was that this article was an OPINION piece. I read opinion pieces too. I’m more likely to read them from sources that align more closely to my own political views. I think we all do that. But I know them for what they are. Opinions. Facts? Sometimes / maybe but usually op-eds are light on that.

Back in the day when dead tree newspapers came to the door, there was a designated space for op-ed pieces. You knew that the actual *news* was on the front page and somewhere near the back was the op-ed / letters to the editor page. Next to that page, the WSJ had a great whaddya-call-it, arts page or whatever. They had wonderful writers (I wonder if the Marquise of Manhattan is still alive) and that is where I first learned about the late artist Christo and his surrounded islands.

Like probably a lot of people, I use Twitter as a news aggregator these days. (To be fair, I’m not sure whether my friend uses Twitter or something else.) But I think it’s difficult to scroll through everything Twitter throws out to sort out legitimate news articles from op-ed pieces, not to mention ads and just plain weird twitter folks you followed in the Twitter Dark Ages and can’t remember why. It’s overwhelming and easy to lose focus on what’s important.

A slice of my memory to end this bunch o’ blarney for now. The dead tree WSJ came early in the morning back in the day and I remember one of my beach urchins scrutinizing the paper while eating cereal before heading over to Haisley to her 2nd grade class. I asked her what she was reading about and the answer was, “Aluminum production.” Yes. Talking through cereal. I had no words then or now… … …

P.S. The photooo is from around this time last year. It’s a waning crescent. Today we have a waxing crescent two days before full and the skies are not have been cloudy all day 🎶

That used to be a common theme when I schlepped over to Cubelandia on an almost daily basis. Lemme see… Laptop. Keys in hand. Whatever outerwear I may need. Purse.

Now? Purse. Grockery bags. Key fob in pocket. Debit card in zipper pocket. MASK MASK MASK ALERT (unless I have left my current KN95 in my car). I was taking off on an 8:00 AM trip to the Plum and I had all that stuff. I threw it into Cygnus and then… Oh yeah, there’s mail for my 🐭. Back inside to get it. Got in Cygnus and faaared her up and… Frosty veeendsheeld. Oh yeah. It’s that season. No ice scraper in Cygnus so back in AGAIN to grab an ice scraper. Why did I not think to remote start? Um, note to KW. Check out HOW to remote start Cygnus…

Plum was fine and Oriole was in the parking lot so I brought the 🐭 mail in with me. I was at the Uscan and hadn’t seen 🐭 so I texted her and next thing I knew she was right next to me helping me check out. What a cluster f*ck that was albeit a fun one! We were both talking a mile a minute while dealing with (and sometimes confusing) the Uscan.

I have always loved the Plum. It opened while 🐭 was on study abroad in Dakar and it has been one of my main stores ever since. And now it’s fun that some people recognize me as “Mom”. (I usually keep my relationship with 🐭 quiet.)

I got my first KN95 mask from one of my uber cousins, also an uber nurse and a Champion Masker (her son’s words). At that time, we were all gathered and vaxxed at the moominbeach and COVID cases were low in the eastern yooperland. I felt okay wearing my cotton masks into Meijer at that time. Alas. Given that COVID infections are once again skyrocketing in the Great Lake State (why?) and there are breakthroughs, I recently bought a box of KN95 masks. I notice that my 🐭 double-masks at work.

It was called Our Country Friends and, as obscure as my wee blahg is, I don’t really want to dis the author.

It wasn’t terrible! It was a LOT better than the traveling funeral book some of us read a few years ago. I picked Our Country Friends for my last read because it purported to explore the early months of the pandemic. I mean OUR pandemic, COVID-19, not a plague from history or some invented disease. Some people think it’s satire? I’m not sure…

A bunch of friends hole up at another friend’s mini-compound to ride out the virus for you know two or three weeks or whatever. Roight.

These people are friends? A few of them are supposed to be friends since high school! They are quite a bit younger than yer fav-o-rite blahgger but high school was a loooong time ago for them. But they don’t seem to like each other very much. Romantic entanglements abound ANYWAY.

There is no internet anywhere but in the main house and the plumbing doesn’t provide any more than a couple of showers a day. I mean for MULTIPLE people. I think I am in the minority here but I (occasionally) take two showers a day.

And yet. There is a gourmet cook amongst the “friends” and they were eating fancy dinners every night.

Okay… At the beginning of the pandemic would you have pulled up roots to go and shelter with a bunch of “friends” that you don’t really like (admit it)? In a place where you know (because you have been there before) that you won’t have internet in your “cabin”? No way! I stayed right here where I was working remotely from my not-fancy but comfortable house where Internet and hot running water are NEVER problems. I have always put my foot down (even pre-COVID) about going anywhere that doesn’t have internet or hot running water.

Obtaining food was not a problem on the Cornucopia Ann Arbor but in the early months of the pandemic it took a LOT of time and energy to figure out where and how to get it without going into a store and breathing someone else’s air. The book never talks about how they get their food.

All of the book characters are financially well-off or at least have access to family wealth if they need it. What possessed them to NOT shelter in place? In writing this, I think I have the answer to that. As much as the GG and I annoy each other if we have to be together 24/7, we are decent pandemic mates. Maybe these folks were afraid of being alone. That’s fair.

Anyway, the pandemic these folks were living through doesn’t seem to match the one I was living through (and still am). The book ends in fall 2020 and I certainly don’t fault the author for publishing it then. Sometimes you just have to stop somewhere.

I’m not sure whether I’d recommend this as a great book but am also curious to know what others might think, especially measuring it against their own COVID-19 pandemic experience.

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